Political analysis and commentary shaping the progressive debate in Aotearoa New Zealand, focused on power, policy, and accountability.
Re engaging with our communities is vital, the low voter turnout is disappointing. The mainstream media ignore us or make us the object of ridicule and then we wonder why people don’t vote. The role of alternative media voices is going to be vital over the next 3 years.
It is all very weird in a world where a rugby player can do a real crime with real victims and not even get a conviction because it would hurt his career. Women without means can have their lives ruined because they must be made examples of as warning to others, while the plight of their children can be totally ignored. Fairly disgraceful.
New Zealand’s problems with masculinity are deeply embedded in its social and cultural history. New Zealand men are notorious for being excessively repressed and emotionally unavailable: tightly-wound machines with an aversion to mechanics.
We didn’t win the mayoralty but we made great progress on the major issue of asset sales and we think we have pushed the incoming council to take a stronger stand on each of the big issues we raised during the campaign.
. . Continued from: Questions over Serco’s “independent” monitors and it’s Contract with the Crown As I wrote over a year…
In an article published on 7 October, Dr Paul Moon, Auckland University of Technology, called the women whose vessel was hijacked in international waters by the Israeli Navy, “fools”. Astonishingly, he accused Green MP Marama Davidson of having “little understanding of the geopolitical situation in the region”. Dr Moon called the courageous expedition “a ship of fools” and a “cheap media stunt”.
Marama, the proud mother of six tamariki, needs your support to pressure the Israeli government to release her and the other 12 peaceful international activists who were on board of Zaytouna when illegally intercepted by the Israeli Navy on international waters.
We ask you to strongly condemn the illegal Israeli hijacking of the Women’s Boat to Gaza, Zaytouna-Oliva, in international waters, 70 kilometres from the Gaza shore.
“Philip Stoner Twyford, you are charged with hoodwinking the New Zealand electorate. You are not obliged to say anything (and, quite frankly, if this is best you can manage, you’d do better to keep your mouth shut) but your failure to acknowledge, when posting, the achievements of the second and third Labour governments, and your refusal to condemn the betrayals of the fourth, will certainly harm your defence in the High Court of History.”
I grew up on a dead end street, each side divided into quarter, or fifth acre sections. At the end of the street was farmland, where cows would graze; beyond the paddocks the Waipa river, glistening and murky, and in the far distance: Mt Pirongia. It was rarely cold enough for snow to fall on that mountain.