Author: Martyn Bradbury

We can’t evaluate our role in this war crime of an invasion because we are too close to it and don’t want to sully the engagement, but history will judge us as merely a poodle of deeply flawed US foreign policy, the involvement of which made our soldiers commit war crimes.

For too long we have allowed corporate interests and political spinelessness to squander time that could have been spent finding solutions. The time is over. We only have decades now.

So the timeline over the Treasury hack/leak has been clarified. But there’s still an enormous question hanging over all this.

The tribalism isn’t new, the hypocrisy isn’t either (we saw it play out with the free speech debate last year between Chelsea Manning & Southern & Moluneux) but what is illuminating is the depth with which the entrenchment has become.

The poll results last night are the worst possible outcome for pundits  because no one has any clear idea which one is right – TVNZ uses 50% landline & 50% cell phones and that methodology suggests something very different to TV3s 75% landline/25% online poll.

The neutering of the Union movement from the radical right wing agendas of the 1990s followed by the nothing Helen Clark did for workers, followed by the subdued fear under the Key has left most Union Leaders too shy to actually demand anything so the explosion of activism from the base has finally put real muscle back into negotiations.