The Kiwi Connection In Palestine
I DON’T KNOW which is more embarrassing: to have a lawyer called Trotter defending a woman who prostituted her own daughter; or a PhD history candidate called Trotter “Exploring the Kiwi connection as Israel turns 70”.
Read More →MUST READ: Letting In The Light
The position of Jacinda’s government is not made any easier by elements within the news media who act as if the Right’s suspicion and resentment is, in some unexplained way, justified. In spite of the fact that the Labour-NZF-Green government has been in office barely six months, and ignoring the almost daily revelations of the previous government’s extraordinary derelictions and mismanagement, they lash Jacinda’s ministers as if they alone are responsible for the fact that the country’s infrastructure is, quite literally, rotting away.
Read More →No Enemies To Labour’s Left?
THE BIGGEST THREAT to NZ First’s and the Greens’ political survival is Labour deciding that it doesn’t need them.
Read More →Waiting For The Market’s Music To Stop
Everything now points to another such detonation being imminent. Pumped-up by the steady expansion of global liquidity the world’s stockmarkets have climbed to giddy and unprecedented heights. Over the last few weeks, however, the value of the stocks and shares traded on the world’s exchanges has fluctuated wildly. Such volatility, warns Pettifor, almost always precedes a catastrophic market crash.
Read More →Russia: An Alternative View
BEFORE CRITICISING THOSE who continue to treat Russia as an “evil empire”, I should first explain why I don’t. It’s not only because I know that without the extraordinary sacrifices of the Russian people during the Second World War (twenty million dead!) the United States and British Empire losses would have been much, much higher.
Read More →MUST READ: Piling-On The Pressure
Can liberal democracy survive if the news media abandons evidence-based judgement and simply piles-on “as one” against a prime minister and her government? And what if it isn’t just the timing that’s consistent, but the message as well? What then? How is the public to avoid the impression that the news media is rooting for one side and not the other?
Read More →MUST READ: The Politics Of Public Service Broadcasting
Once appraised of Curran’s hopes and fears, and quite possibly, of her intentions vis-à-vis the reappointment – or not – of RNZ Board Chairperson, Richard Griffin, did Hirschfeld suddenly find herself in possession of information as sensitive and compromising as it was potentially career-destroying? Did the Right and its media allies, informed of Curran’s meeting with Hirschfeld, simply seize an opportunity to kill two potentially very dangerous birds with a single stone?
Read More →Teaching Their Parents Well
Forty years of right-wing counter-revolution has left its mark on the Baby-Boomers. For too many of them it proved a lot easier (and much more profitable) to give up the fight for a kinder, gentler America. For those “of tender years”, the trick will be to convince their parents and grandparents that the March For Our Lives is a march for their lives too.
Read More →Are Labour and NZ First Partners in Populism – Or Not?
POPULISM VERSUS RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT. The Regions versus Metropolitan New Zealand. NZ First versus Labour. Shane Jones versus Grant Robertson. “Oh yes, Ladies and gentlemen, there’s Trouble: Trouble with a capital ‘T’; and it’s brewing right here in Political City!”
Read More →The Political Economy of Mainstream Political Journalism
FEW WOULD ARGUE that journalism is not in crisis. Beset by the manifold challenges of a global on-line culture, journalists struggle to keep pace with the demands of readers, listeners and viewers whose tastes they once led but now must follow. The mainstream news media’s dwindling share of the advertising dollar drives it inexorably towards the sensational, scandalous, salacious and bizarre “clickbait” upon which its profitability increasingly depends.
Read More →Questioning The Greens
If the Greens really were determined to subject the Labour-NZ First Coalition to the scrutiny of the most informed, articulate and progressive members of the House of Representatives, then they would hardly have given away the chance to do exactly that to Parliament’s most ill-informed, inarticulate and reactionary elements. Progressive Kiwis have only to ask themselves: “Who would we rather held this Government to account: Chloe Swarbrick or Mark Mitchell? Golriz Ghahraman or Judith Collins?” – to realise that the justification advanced to them by Green Party co-leader, James Shaw, is pure, unadulterated, bullshit.
Read More →The Theory And Practice of Plausible Deniability
WHY HASN’T ANDREW KIRTON been sacked? By any common-sense definition of accountability, the actions of the Labour Party’s General Secretary offer ample justification for dismissal.
Read More →MUST READ: A Fork In The Road
Over the course of the next few days, Jacinda Ardern and Winston Peters must decide whether the international relationships and economic interests of New Zealanders are to be decided in Wellington, by the government they have democratically elected, or in London and Canberra by politicians, spies and soldiers over whom they exercise no control whatsoever.
Read More →A Very Special Sort of New Zealander
WHENEVER A POLICE CHASE ends in tragedy, a very special sort of New Zealander steps forward into the spotlight. The contribution offered by this kind of Kiwi never varies. What happened is all about “The Law”. The offenders, otherwise known as the dead and horribly injured, are solely to blame for the tragic outcome of their offending. They chose not to stop when ordered to do so by the Police – a crime. As law-breakers, they simply had to be apprehended and punished. Any other course of action is unthinkable. The Law is The Law.
Read More →Still Looking For A Compatible Rabbit
New Zealanders haven’t “moved away from representative democracy”, Mr Sutton, representative democracy has been moved away from them. A necessary precaution, lest ordinary people get it into their heads to take on the greatest “power-hungry despot” of them all: the totalitarian ideology we call Neoliberalism.
Read More →Bridges and Adams trapped in the Ghetto of the Comfortable Third
Anyone seized with the notion that the Nats new leadership team might actually make a serious effort to face up to the enormous challenges confronting New Zealand and the world should now un-seize themselves. Adams has made it very clear that National will be governing, as it has always done, for the only New Zealanders who have ever counted for anything in their political universe – farmers and businessmen.
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