Political analysis and commentary shaping the progressive debate in Aotearoa New Zealand, focused on power, policy, and accountability.
The government’s attempts to revive the Trade Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) have, as predicted, failed. Instead, the government is now putting its faith in negotiating numerous Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). It’s more of the same, ignoring the lessons from the TPPA debacle.
Despite a previous poison gas attack in Ghouta, Syria in 2013 – for which the Assad regime was implicated, but not proven – there is little actual firm evidence that the Syrian government was responsible for the gassing at Khan Sheikhoun on 7 April.
The rapidity with which Bill English fell in behind Trump’s unilateral strike on Syria shows how little the NZ government values the UN Security Council, despite just having completed two years on it. New Zealand sidelined the Security Council and supported a US strike contravening the UN Charter. Article 51 of the Charter allows one nation to strike another only in “self-defence”. America wasn’t being attacked by Syria.
Across the media Myers is being praised as a business leader and philanthropist yet he made money not through his own efforts but through using his massive inherited wealth to exploit the free-market economic policies he championed, as a leading light in the Business Roundtable, alongside the Labour Party of the 1980s. That wealth he gained was at the expense of middle and low-income New Zealanders who continue to struggle today to provide that triple lining to the pockets of the super wealthy.
The world now waits and watches with amply baited breath to see what Putin and Russia will say or do in response. Not for the first time, the hopes for continued (broad) peace in our time rest upon burly Russian shoulders and pragmatic Slavic restraint.
In the era of President Donald Trump in the US, CAFCA’s Murray Horton provides a hard look at Aotearoa’s place in the world. And he asks the question – why are we still a loyal member of the American Empire?
For Jewish-only colonists in the Palestinian West Bank there are, of course, no water shortages. The average Israeli uses around 300 litres of water per person per day and settlers enjoy up to six times the amount of water than that allowed for nearby Palestinian communities.
What has also become clear, since the missile launch, is that the American congress was not consulted or advised before the order to attack Syria was given. President Trump decided to make war upon another sovereign state unilaterally – apparently unconcerned that his decision was in clear contravention of Article One, Section 8, Clause 11 of the United States Constitution which states that “[The Congress shall have Power…] To declare War” – not the President.
Fast food companies are trying to wriggle out of legal and contractual obligations around basic rights of workers to guaranteed hours and annual leave.
I don’t know this woman personally. All I know is that this is a frightening case for its insights into the judicial system.. Shamed for all the world to see in the media, this so called “benefit fraudster has “appealed her sentence in the High Court. Her original sin and conviction was for living with someone that MSD has deemed to be her partner.