MIL-OSI Export

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Corbould, Associate Professor of History and Associate Head (Research) of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Deakin University

American comedian Druski has gone viral with a short parody video titled “How Conservative Women in America Act”.

In it, Druski plays a character whose costumes, make-up and activities all resemble those of right-wing activist Erika Kirk, widow of former Turning Point CEO Charlie Kirk – whose role she has taken up.

Conservatives are up in arms, predictably. Many are calling it racism or reverse racism. Imagine, they declare, how fast a white man would be cancelled if he were to don blackface to send up the activities of an African American widow.

But this backlash misses the point. Blackface and whiteface are not opposite and equal.

Blackface punches down. Whiteface can’t

Whiteface draws attention to the privileges and protections that whiteness allows.

It uses exaggeration – in this case the ordering of not just coffee, but a “sweet cream foam chai ice matcha” with an “organic pup cup” for the fluffy pet – to draw attention to how gaudy and obviously performative the elite white class can be.

The joke in whiteface comedy is not “this person is white”, but “this person is protected, entitled and used to being in control”.

That privilege can even extend to white people who aren’t especially wealthy, as Druski has explored in other whiteface videos. In “Guy who is just proud to be an American”, the comedian portrays a stereotypical, ultra-patriotic NASCAR fan, whose racist and misogynistic remarks are egged on by his white peers.

Druski shows how his character’s feelings of superiority come from a very deliberate set of conditions and environments that produce his whiteness.

Key to the distinction between whiteface and blackface is simply the relative power of the groups being parodied.

Blackface minstrelsy emerged in the United States in the 1830s – just as slavery began to disappear – as a mass entertainment form that degraded Black people. White performers used burnt cork on their faces, and painted on enlarged red lips and white eyes, to create offensive caricatures.

Most white people embraced the new stereotypes, wanting to maintain a cheap labour force and cling to the feeling of superiority they gave them.

Blackface soon became the most popular form of entertainment all over the English-speaking world, including in Australia, New Zealand and Britain. It remained a mainstay of popular culture in movies, on television and even on radio, as late as the 1970s.

Whiteface, by contrast, is a prime example of what anthropologist James Scott called “weapons of the weak” – an idea taken up by historians of African American labour and social life, such as Robin D. G. Kelley in his work Race Rebels.

Rather than just reversing blackface, whiteface aims to expose whiteness as a social and historical performance with material consequences. In doing so, it calls into question any sense that racial inequality is natural.

Whiteface emerged before blackface

This method of undermining white people’s authority goes all the way back to slavery in colonial North America. For example, in 1772, in the city of Charleston, South Carolina, a group of about 60 enslaved Black people gathered for a party.

Thinking themselves in private, they mocked their white owners in an elongated performance including dress, speech and dance.

Annual one-day festivals or parades, which took place from the 1740s up until the Civil War provided similar opportunities for enslaved people in North America to come together for rare celebrations. Participants performed rituals – such as electing a Black person to be king or governor for a day – that demonstrated a deep understanding of white society.

Some white onlookers regarded these performances as merely poor imitations. Many, however, were unsettled when they saw that the people they had enslaved understood white society all too well.

Discomfort is the point

White onlookers of African American comedy have likewise been made uncomfortable, since at least Richard Pryor’s stand-up shows of the 1970s. Nobody who ever saw Pryor send up white people’s walking, eating, cussing, or indeed their ideas about race and safety, can ever forget them.

Pryor’s collaborator Paul Mooney, also a Black comedian, once said:

My job is to make white people mad. They have to learn how to laugh at themselves.

A more recent example comes from actor Maya Rudolph, who impersonated Donatella Versace in a series of early 2000s TV skits. Whiteface enabled her to exaggerate the signs of elite whiteness by portraying a camp, hyper-mediated version of European white femininity. In this context, whiteness becomes costume drama.

Exposing white fragility and grievance

This is the tradition Druski belongs in. His over-the-top portrayal of affluent and conservative white women compels viewers to notice the artifice of the performance.

His target is not women in general, but a rich, entitled figure who turns privilege into threatened innocence and then demands protection from racialised “dangers” she and other people like her have largely invented.

The complaint about “racism” draws a false equivalence between Druski’s satire and centuries of anti-Black racism. It also aims to distract from white women’s electoral power, including their majority allegiance to the Republican Party.

What the complaint really shows, as Paul Mooney might have said, is that too many white people are still refusing to laugh at themselves.

– ref. Druski’s viral whiteface skit isn’t racism. It’s satire that punches up at power – https://theconversation.com/druskis-viral-whiteface-skit-isnt-racism-its-satire-that-punches-up-at-power-279460

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/03/31/druskis-viral-whiteface-skit-isnt-racism-its-satire-that-punches-up-at-power-279460/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lisa M. Given, Professor of Information Sciences & Director, Social Change Enabling Impact Platform, RMIT University

Nearly four months into Australia’s social media ban for under-16s, the online regulator today released its first detailed compliance update report on how the world-first policy is progressing.

eSafety’s report comes at a crucial time, with many other countries eyeing the progress of the ban. Since the ban took effect on December 10 last year, I have spoken with journalists from Canada, France, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and elsewhere. Everyone asks two questions: how successful is the ban, and are children still accessing social media platforms?

The new report paints a complicated picture – and leaves other key questions about the social media ban unanswered.

A number of compliance concerns

The report acknowledges social media companies have taken “some steps” to comply with the social media legislation (which restricts account holders to those aged 16 and older). Some 4.7 million accounts were removed by mid-January and another 310,000 by early March.

However, the report also highlights “compliance concerns” in four key areas:

1. Messaging to under-16s on some platforms encouraged children to attempt age assurance even where they declared themselves to be underage

2. Some platforms enabled under-16s to repeatedly attempt the same age-assurance method to ultimately pass age checks

3. Pathways for reporting age-restricted accounts have generally not been accessible and effective, particularly for parents

4. Some platforms appear not to have done enough to prevent under-16s having accounts.

The report explains the eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, is now investigating Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube for “potential non-compliance”. None of these companies has yet been fined. A decision about any enforcement action will be made by the middle of the year.

The report comes a week after the Australian government registered a new legislative rule to ensure the definition of social media platforms includes those “that have addictive or otherwise harmful design features”. These include:

• infinite scroll, which shows new content with no end point
• feedback features, such as displaying “likes” or “upvotes”, which can pressure people to compare themselves to others, and
• time-limited features such as disappearing “stories” that create a sense of urgency and encourage constant checking.

This rule change was implemented in the same week Meta and Google (parent companies of Instagram and YouTube) were found liable by a jury in the United States for the addictive features of their social media platforms.

A ‘constantly evolving’ landscape

The removal of more than 5 million accounts in four months sounds impressive. But this does not equal the number of social media users.

Many people hold several social media accounts. So it remains unclear how many children under 16 still remain on one or more platforms. The report also doesn’t detail how many new accounts children created since the legislation was implemented.

The report also does not estimate the number of under-16s who now use alternative platforms. However, there have been reports of a significant spike in downloads of non-mainstream platforms (such as RedNote, Yope and Lemon8) since December.

The report acknowledges the social media landscape is “constantly evolving” and that it’s impossible to maintain a complete list of platforms that fall under the age restrictions. However, eSafety does maintain a list of the initial platforms included under the ban legislation, and those that have self-identified and agreed to comply. These include Bluesky, dating platforms (such as Tinder) and Lemon8, but other platforms remain accessible to under-16s.

Since December, there have also been questions about whether Australia’s ban should extend to other platforms.

Reports point to the legislation’s “loophole” for gaming apps and exclusions for messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Messenger, as well as other platforms that include social networking features.

Roblox, which was initially considered under the ban and then exempted, has also made headlines related to child safety.

It is currently being reviewed by the government over concerns about child grooming.

Unanswered questions

As eSafety continues to investigate issues related to compliance with the legislation, several key questions remain unanswered.

One is to do with the “reasonable steps” social media companies must take to comply with social media age restrictions. The report says this is “ultimately a question for the courts to determine”. It also explains that defining what steps are reasonable must be considered “in the context of the platform’s service, technological feasibility, and the regulatory landscape”.

But if a company uses age-assurance technologies, whose inbuilt error rates allow some children to slip through the checks, will that company be considered to have taken reasonable steps to control account access?

A second question is whether eSafety will extend its compliance checks beyond the five mainstream platforms currently being investigated.

As new platforms are launched, and as children continue to seek new ways to connect with peers online, the potential spaces where they can encounter harm continues to grow. Is self-assessment by technology companies sufficient to enforce legislation intended to apply to all platforms that meet the definition of an age-restricted platform?

Finally, will the government continue to add new rules to keep kids safe?

One key limitation experts like me have highlighted since 2024 is that restricting access to accounts does not address the actual harms posed by content, algorithms and other platform features.

The government has completed consultation on its digital duty of care legislation. But it is still unclear when this legislation will be introduced.

The new report on social media restrictions shows there is a long road ahead for compliance. And if we want to fully address the harms posed by these platforms, new legislation that actually targets the root problems is needed.

– ref. Social media giants are not complying with under-16s social media ban, new report finds – https://theconversation.com/social-media-giants-are-not-complying-with-under-16s-social-media-ban-new-report-finds-279555

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/03/31/social-media-giants-are-not-complying-with-under-16s-social-media-ban-new-report-finds-279555/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Shannon Bosch, Associate Professor (Law), Edith Cowan University

Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, this week passed legislation that would vastly expand capital punishment in Israel and in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The changes, made via an amendment to Israel’s penal law, allow for executions without proper appeal, pardons or meaningful judicial discretion.

According to media reports, 62 of 120 Knesset members voted in favour of the bill on Monday, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and 48 voted against. The remainder absented themselves from the vote or abstained.

UN experts and Amnesty International have warned these new death sentencing rules would apply almost exclusively to Palestinians.

It would, they argue, entrench discrimination already identified by the International Court of Justice as amounting to apartheid. UN experts said of the bill:

Since Israeli military trials of civilians typically do not meet fair trial standards under international human rights law and humanitarian law, any resulting death sentence would further violate the right to life […] Denial of a fair trial is also a war crime.

This development is a significant change for Israel, which has not executed anyone for more than 60 years. It reverses decades of global movement towards abolition, while normalising executions in an occupied territory.

Death penalty as the default

These changes were made via legislation brought by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and his far-right Otzma Yehudit party.

The Penal Bill (Amendment ― Death Penalty for Terrorists) amends both Israeli civil law (applicable to Israeli settlers) and Israeli military law (applicable to Palestinians) in the occupied West Bank.

The law states, according to a Deutsche Welle media report:

Palestinians in the occupied West Bank convicted of terrorism in military courts will face a mandatory death sentence or, in the wording of the bill “his sentence shall be death, and this penalty only.” Only if the court determines that there are “special reasons” can it then commute the death sentence to life in prison.

Under this change:

• prosecutors do not need to request the death penalty
• the defence minister may submit an opinion to the judicial panel of three military officials who only need a simple majority to impose the death penalty
• judges need to record exceptional reasons for imposing a life sentence over the death penalty
• avenues for appeal would be tightly restricted
• there would be no possibility of a pardon
• people sentenced to death would be detained in isolated facilities that would have restricted visitor access, with legal counsel only by video link
• executions (by hanging) would take place within 90 days of the final judgement.

Another yet-to-be-passed bill that may still be brought before the Knesset – the Prosecution of Participants in the October 7 Massacre Events Bill – would also see more death sentences handed down.

It establishes ad hoc military tribunals with retrospective jurisdiction to prosecute those accused of participating in the October 7 2023 Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel.

These tribunals would:

• consist of a retired district court judge and two officers qualified to serve as judges
• be authorised to depart from ordinary rules around evidence and procedure
• be able to impose the death penalty via a simple majority, without prosecutors requesting it.

Appeals and clemency mechanisms would again be extremely limited.

Taken together, the two amendments significantly expand the scope of capital punishment in Israel. They also remove many procedural safeguards.

Supporters argue capital punishment could deter future attacks and preclude hostage-taking for prisoner exchanges.

Yet, historically, Israel’s intelligence services have opposed death sentences. They have argued it may encourage armed groups to kidnap Israelis as bargaining chips to prevent executions.

International humanitarian law

Critics have argued the new changes place Israel in breach of international humanitarian law and international human rights law.

As critics point out, Israel’s new death penalty rules limit access to legal counsel. They also:

• restrict appeals
• allows trials before ad hoc military tribunals for new capital offences
• mandate executions be carried out within 90 days.

This all runs counter to international humanitarian law.

Significant legal concerns are raised by Israel enforcing new capital offences in the occupied territory after the International Court of Justice concluded Israel’s occupation violates international law and must cease.

These concerns are compounded by longstanding criticisms of Israeli military courts in the occupied West Bank, where conviction rates for Palestinian defendants reportedly exceed 99%.

International human rights law

Under international human rights law people should be guaranteed equality before the law and protected from discrimination.

But the changes passed by the Knesset this week subject Palestinians to death sentences as the default, while Israeli citizens accused of killing Palestinians would appear before civil courts. Here, capital punishment would be discretionary and far more limited. This entrenches a discriminatory system.

Critics argue this amounts to collective punishment against Palestinians, which is prohibited under the Geneva Convention.

The European Union has warned that executions through hanging would also violate the absolute prohibition on cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

Taken together, the two new amendments normalise state-sanctioned executions and violate Israel’s obligations under international law.

– ref. New Israeli law could mean death penalty by default for Palestinians convicted of deadly attacks – https://theconversation.com/new-israeli-law-could-mean-death-penalty-by-default-for-palestinians-convicted-of-deadly-attacks-279458

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/03/31/new-israeli-law-could-mean-death-penalty-by-default-for-palestinians-convicted-of-deadly-attacks-279458/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Austin Haynes, PhD Candidate, School of Arts and Media, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

Hollywood science fiction blockbuster Project Hail Mary, starring Ryan Gosling, opened to generally positive reviews and strong box office receipts, but in Aotearoa New Zealand it made news for another reason.

Local audiences were surprised, and seemingly delighted, by the movie’s soundtrack featuring a song in te reo Māori, alongside tracks by the Beatles and Harry Styles.

The waiata (song) in question is a version of Pō Atarau, sung by the Turakina Māori Girls Choir, a bittersweet song of farewell. In a film about a human and an alien learning each other’s language and coming to care for each other, it is also remarkably fitting.

Known and loved by many, Pō Atarau first appeared in the mid-1910s when Māori words were added to the tune of a popular piano piece known as the Swiss Cradle Song composed by Australian Clement Scott.

The waiata circulated within Aotearoa as Pō Atarau or Haere Rā and was often included in cultural performances for tourists. Visiting Rotorua in the 1940s, British actress and singer Gracie Fields heard the song sung at the home of tourist guide Rangitīaria Dennan.

It soon shot to worldwide fame, performed in English as The Māori Farewell or Now is the Hour, recorded by various artists including Fields, Bing Crosby and Vera Lynn. But despite the song’s extraordinary popularity, most people know little about the woman credited with its lyrics and adapted tune, Erima Maewa Kaihau (1879–1941).

In her day, Kaihau was a well-known composer and singer. She was one of the first Māori composers to have her songs published and to gain wide recognition in the Pākehā (European) world.

But she was also a woman with considerable political mana (authority). A kind of cultural “broker”, she used her music and voice to foster understanding between Māori and Pākehā.

My research involves reconstructing Kaihau’s story and music. As an opera singer, I have sung her songs many times. And as a poet and translator working in te reo Māori, I return often to her hauntingly evocative words.

Being a Pākehā New Zealander, Kaihau also offers me an example of how song and literature can be used to foster connections between the Māori and Pākehā worlds in general.

But she has been strangely overlooked despite her talent and significance. I have discovered forgotten manuscripts and unpublished songs by Kaihau that have lain unnoticed or miscatalogued in archives across the country.

By piecing her story back together, I want to show what her music and life can tell us about how wāhine Māori used waiata as tools of diplomacy – to express their own mana, and to build relationships between peoples.

Between worlds

For those who take the time to listen to her, Kaihau offers a vision of what it means to live with and to love one another on these islands we call home.

Born in 1879 with the name Louisa Flavell, she grew up in Whangaroa in Northland. Part of a prominent Pākehā-Māori family, she belonged to the Ngāpuhi iwi (tribe) in the north and to the Ngāti Te Ata iwi around Waiuku near Auckland.

She traced her descent from prominent ancestors from both tribes, including her great-grandfather Ururoa, a rangatira who signed the 1835 Māori Declaration of Independence.

As a teenager, Maewa (the name she most often chose to be known by) and her family moved from Northland to live with relatives in Waiuku, where they discovered most of their ancestral land had been confiscated. Like neighbouring Waikato, this was a Māori community still reeling from the Crown’s invasion and land confiscations in the 1860s.

She later married Hēnare Kaihau, a politician and rangatira of Ngāti Te Ata who was chief advisor to the Māori King Mahuta. She attended political hui (meetings) alongside her husband and occasionally on her own – always impeccably dressed, and often one of the only wāhine (women) present.

We don’t know when Kaihau started composing, but her earliest published songs were printed in 1918. Many of her songs focused on unhappy lovers, but she also composed and published a number of songs of welcome and farewell used when foreign dignitaries visited Aotearoa.

In 1926, she even performed her songs for famed Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova, who was performing in New Zealand at the time. In 1927 she welcomed the Duke and Duchess of York with her song The Huia. In 1930, she farewelled and welcomed the wives of successive governors-general with her own compositions.

Kaihau’s work as a cultural guide flowed in both directions. In 1900, for example, she took King Mahuta (who spoke almost no English) to watch a performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta The Gondoliers – one can only imagine what he made of it.

Waiata diplomacy

Kaihau’s songs work as a kind of musical diplomacy. As a wahine Māori, to perform them allowed her to assert her right as tangata whenua to undertake the work of welcoming and farewelling.

Several of her published songs feature cover illustrations of Māori women waving off European-style ships.

Kaihau’s waiata also offer a vision of bicultural cooperation. Her lyrics draw freely from the poetic conventions of both Māori and European literatures. Her songs about unhappy lovers evoke the pre-European genre of waiata aroha as much as they echo English parlour songs of the day.

It is this quality of Kaihau’s music that Ngāi Tahu author Becky Manawatu noted when she referenced Akoako o te Rangi in her 2019 novel Auē. Manawatu has described the song as “strange and beautiful” and admitted she originally assumed it was composed by a Pākehā due to its peculiar style.

I think Kaihau’s rich and unique songs, which paint with both Pākehā and Māori palettes, are a key to her role as a diplomat for Māoridom.

They speak of the ties that bind, and the affection expressed at parting, in ways that weave together Pākehā and Māori emotional vocabularies, creating something new.

What might Erima Maewa Kaihau have made of her famous waiata featuring in a sci-fi epic about alien contact? Given her efforts to create a musical language that speaks across worlds and languages, I imagine she would be pleased.

– ref. Her song features in Ryan Gosling’s hit movie, but Erima Maewa Kaihau was once a star too – https://theconversation.com/her-song-features-in-ryan-goslings-hit-movie-but-erima-maewa-kaihau-was-once-a-star-too-279326

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/03/31/her-song-features-in-ryan-goslings-hit-movie-but-erima-maewa-kaihau-was-once-a-star-too-279326/