Mike Treen leaves NZ for Gaza Flotilla
Mike Treen – National Director of Unite Union Auckland speaks before departing to join the 2018 Gaza Freedom Flotilla
Setting the Agenda
Political analysis and commentary shaping the progressive debate in Aotearoa New Zealand, focused on power, policy, and accountability.
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If You’re Serious About Southern – This Is The Next Logical Step
While s61 of the Human Rights Act makes it unlawful to “excite hostility against or bring into contempt” racial/ethnic groups in a variety of contexts … I am unaware of any parallel and corresponding prohibition on doing likewise against religious groups or adherents on a similar basis.
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An Inconvenient Truth About Free Speech Denialism
Nothing could be more helpful to the cause of the Right than a Left which has lost its faith in the people. What, after all, is more likely to cause the people to lose faith in the Left than a nagging suspicion that their self-appointed liberators regard them as being either too vicious or too stupid to grasp the arguments in favour of individual freedom and social justice without instruction from above?
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Free speech for racist or religious hatred?
In this environment progressive New Zealanders must fight for free speech in every arena possible but this does not include defending “rights” of anyone to promote racist or religious hatred which smooths the path to fascism.
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Dr Liz Gordon – Custodial alternatives to prison for women
There is a mountain of good research evidence that placing women in prison causes undue harm to their families and children. Most children end up living with extended family (few are looked after by the father), often grandparents. The children are often traumatised. There is little therapy, counselling or other support for the children. They are vulnerable to poor health outcomes and poor education outcomes.
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Never mind the wagging tail, the system’s a dog
This week a range of environmental group representatives, fishing company agents, scientists, consultants and international experts gathered in Wellington to review the threats facing Maui and Hector’s dolphins. The meeting was organised by DoC and Fisheries NZ and participants had to agree to Terms of Reference which included a clause saying they wouldn’t talk to the media about the proceedings.
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Urgent appeal: stop the ethnic cleansing of Khan al-Ahmar
Condemnation of Israel’s most recent act of destruction in the Palestinian village of Khan al-Ahmar was expressed on 4 July this year by the European Union and the United Nations. Since the 1950s the Jahalin Bedouin community’s homes, schools and livelihoods have been under constant threat by the Israel. As one villager, Tahreer Abu Dahouk, a mother of four children all aged under ten years, put it: “we sleep afraid, wake afraid”.
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American Fissures
Recently, upon arriving in Eugene, Oregon a taxi driver told me a story which sums up America`s incivility today. A prospective customer, with avowed pro-Trump sentiments was about to enter the vehicle. When the driver, part Hispanic but Caucasian looking, gave an opposite view the customer walked away. Avoiding the company of an anti-Trump liberal was well worth the inconvenience of a delayed journey.
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Free Speech Denialism Is Fascism In Action
IT HAS BEEN DISPIRITING, this past week, to learn how little people who consider themselves leftists know about fascism.
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The Costa Rican Solution
GOLRIZ GHARAMAN, the Greens’ defence spokesperson has castigated her coalition partners for purchasing four Boeing P-8 maritime surveillance aircraft to replace the Air Force’s ageing fleet of Orions. Her stance is more-or-less in keeping with the Green Party’s pacifist leanings, but Gharaman’s objections to the aircraft’s war-fighting capabilities raises the more interesting question of why the party needs a defence spokesperson at all?