Political analysis and commentary shaping the progressive debate in Aotearoa New Zealand, focused on power, policy, and accountability.
So now that the dust’s started to settle and the excitement’s mostly over (barring one or two personages who’ll be sitting on tenterhooks awaiting the results of special voting), the attention of the Commentariat has sensibly turned to picking over the weekend’s local body electoral result.
THE SECOND US PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE demonstrated brilliantly the difference between strategy and tactics. Hillary Clinton’s performance was all about the political needs of the next 30 days. Donald Trump was fighting for his life.
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.