Political analysis and commentary shaping the progressive debate in Aotearoa New Zealand, focused on power, policy, and accountability.
We can but hope that those fundamentally, quintessentially Kiwi characteristics of an inexorable resiliency of spirit and cast-iron commitment to community, mean that at least here – here of all places, in what should otherwise be (but sadly, often isn’t), “the best of all possible worlds” – “the lights” may be dimmed somewhat … but that they do not , *cannot* , go out in perpetuity.
We often hear certain sorts of people going on about the “threat” from “Muslim migration” or whatever other demographic they can scaremonger about. And yet, quite directly – quite simply – what we have seen here is the opposite. Shootings at multiple sites, would-be bombings, and other such things, with a stated intent to show “nowhere in the world is safe” … as carried out by English-speaking white chaps.
I had just completed the blog below when I heard about today’s attack on people in Christchurch, by at least one male self-proclaimed white supremacist. Guns and meth, meth and guns, the message is clear: New Zealand is becoming less safe and more like the USA. I do not yet know what toll has been taken by today’s events. I do know I have already had two comments reported to me approving of this gun crime. I find this almost incomprehensible. I am sure we will hear more.
A person has been named on social media as the gunman, I have no confirmation of this but I’m reading their manifesto that was loaded up 2 hours ago, it is white supremacist madness.
I am encouraging my son to miss a day at school because learning how to goad politicians and corporations to act is a very useful education in itself and possibly the only effective method to fight the climate change.
You know what one of the more ridiculous parts of the whole thing is ? Shaw’s actually one of the more reasonable and personally-decent politicians around these days.
It is a tragedy that in the eighteen months this government has been in office there’s been so little evidence of the renegade economics made popular by writers like Raworth. The Finance Minister, Grant Robertson, schooled by his mentor – the former Finance Minister, Sir Michael Cullen – is a ploddingly orthodox economic manager. The economic settings he has chosen to steer by, being virtually identical to those the previous National Government chose to steer by, will inevitably deliver New Zealand to a very similar destination.
When the US Government warned the rest of the world that, when it comes to securing regime change in Venezuela, “nothing is off the table”, most observers assumed it was talking about some form of military intervention. (An impression encouraged by a video-clip of National Security Advisor John Bolton’s hand-scrawled aide memoire “5,000 troops”.)
Ever since Mary Wollstonecraft wrote the ‘Vindication of the Rights of Women’ in 1793, there has been a women’s movement in the English -speaking world. Mary, you will remember, was famous for arguing that women’s apparent inferiority to men stemmed from their lack of education, not their nature. She argued for a social order founded on reason, not gender.
WHY ISN’T JACINDA ARDERN channelling Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC)? This is not a frivolous question. Labour found itself swept into a winning position at the end of 2017 almost entirely on the strength of Jacinda’s extraordinary appeal – especially to voters under 40.