The bewildering self sabotage and self mutilation of te Pati Maori is a gasp inducing, heads held in hands, cavalcade of own goals that is as shocking as it is impossible to stop watching.

It’s not just a train wreck, it’s a train carrying toxic chemicals colliding with a full school bus that explodes into a pet shop for disabled kittens.

There are of course Political Winners and Losers:

WINNERS:

David Seymour, Don Brash, Taxpayers’ Union, Sean Plunkett, Mike Hosking, Rednecks, Chris Luxon, Winston Peters, Federated Farmers, Atlas Network, NZ Initiative, ZB and NZME: They are laughing and singing and praising this implosion just as te Pati Māori looked like an actual threat to their agenda.

Labour: Set to take back the Māori electorates as Māori voters turn in fury at having their hearts broken. Again.

LOSERS:

Doc + Mariameno: Put their ego before the waka with their desire for a leadership challenge.

Eru: Was attacking the leadership despite leaving out his own very self interested role in all the machinations behind the scenes.

Debbie + Rawiri: They deserved loyalty, not plotting.

John Tamihere: Despite being the architect of the Māori Party success, he’s been portrayed as an anti-tikanga Machiavellian dark prince who runs the party like a dictatorship when only about 2/3rds of that is true. The CIA once said of Saddam Hussein, “He’s a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch”. If there is to be any real material  change out of post election negotiations, you will need JT to be part of that negotiating team. Capitalism won’t just let you change it, you have to force it to change, and that is JTs superpower. Having him blamed misses who embarked upon this destabilisation.

Māori Party Voters: As we face the worst Government ever, the Māori Party is in a civil war. It is heart breaking.

The wider Left: Every Poll tells us Labour + Greens + MP = 51%, watching te Pati Māori hand so much political ammunition to the right and robbing us collectively of a means to fight this terrible Government is rage inducing.

PREDICTIONS:

After defeating all the corruption investigations into them.

After an amazing by-election win.

After one of the biggest protest marches in NZ History against the terrible Anti-Treaty legislation.

After all that te Pati Māori are now imploding because some wanted to weaponise tikanga and use that to justify their own personal ambitions.

It is heart breaking because a Labour + Green + MP Government could be the most transformational since the Savage Government.

There will be a last ditch attempt to heal things at the AGM in December, but if a truce is declared and healed it means everyone shuts up on Social Media and works together without one single example that the Right can use.

If the egos can’t be unwound, it will end in 2 by-elections that no one will want to fight.

If there are 2 by-elections, you will see te Pati Māori put up candidates against Doc and Mariameno and the Labour candidate will come through the middle.

The question now is, how self mutilating is te Pati Māori?

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Fractured relationship between NZ-Cook Islands dealt another blow

The fractured political relationship between New Zealand and the Cook Islands has been dealt another major blow.

Confidential documents leaked to 1News reveal the Cook Islands government was looking at new plans to seize tainted cryptocurrency worldwide.

Experts say it amounted to state-sponsored hacking, and the move has set alarm bells ringing with the New Zealand Government.

Last year in Rarotonga, a cryptocurrency bill, drafted by US company Drumcliffe, was tabled in the realm country’s parliament but rejected after Crown Law deemed it deeply flawed, unconstitutional and essentially validated criminal activities.

Now, a similar bill, the Cook Islands Cryptocurrency (Ransomware Suppression) Bill 2025, has been drafted and is currently under review.

The Cooks are going rogue now.

Winston cuts millions in aid…

New Zealand suspends nearly $30m in aid to Cook Islands

…as the ongoing friction between the Cook Islands and the Realm of NZ heats up while the Cooks continue to cosy up with China.

My question is, did Winston fuck it up in 2023?

US to open embassies in the Cook Islands, Niue

In 2023, we allowed the bloody Americans to open embassies in the Cook Island and Nuie without talking to us first and the ‘free association’ lesson taken by the Cook Islands of the Americans pushing past us that they could also allow China to do the same!

Winston should have immediately stopped that.

We should never have allowed America to do that to us, because it set a precedence that China could as well, which is exactly what happened!

If this was truly about Pacific Island independence, we should stand aside and allow the Cooks to be independent, but the fear here is that this is genuine Chinese encroachment into our territory.

The recent 3 ship flotilla by China through the Tasman sea had more firepower than the entire Australian and NZ Navy’s combined.

If we want to strengthen our ties with the cooks, why not have our national carrier, Air NZ subsidize flights to the Cooks for NZ holidaymakers to boost the tourism and cultural ties?

If the Cooks want to go independent and believe China will protect their interests, knock yourself out, but if they are a Realm of NZ, they have legal obligations to us that they are breaching.

This can’t continue.

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In NZ we have the Public Service vs the Private Sector to generate the friction of competition.

That is a corrupted friction.

NZ is 3 huge sparsely populated Islands.

We simply don’t have the population density for free market dynamics to generate the competitive advantages that they can provide, NZ has ALWAYS required the State to step in as the foundation stone.

National and ACT want to kick that foundation stone out from under us and pretend that’s not economic vandalism.

I want to see that competitive friction to be generated by Public Service vs Te ao Māori Service!

That would be True Treaty Capitalism.

Real Aotearoa solutions.

Daniel McLauchlan is one of the greatest political columnists in New Zealand and his criticism of the Wellington Professional Managerial Class raises important questions on how the State should regulate itself during Late Stage Capitalism that the Political Left need to look at…

Unjarndycing the State

The dogmatic political left invests its faith in the bureaucratic state; the dogmatic right trusts oligopolistic free markets – leaving New Zealand with crumbling infrastructure and corruption

…the Political Left have allowed the self-interested Public Service and the Professional Managerial Class to push self interested virtue signals rather than structural change and increased capacity of the State!

David Seymour says the Public Service is Left wing, bullshit!

If only this was true!

The Wellington Bureaucracy isn’t left wing! It’s a self interested Professional Managerial Class who use identity politics to mask their neoliberal hands-off-do-nothing-but-build-glass-palaces fiefdoms.

Oh they do the reo, and expose their pronouns and militantly ride bikes, they are effortless in their use of inclusion as a means to dominate and control the narrative, but they are a middle class clique, not left wing egalitarianism.

The Wellington Bureaucracy is a culture war of woke middle class Identity Politics aspirations backed with State funding, they may aesthetically be Left but they sure as fuck aren’t economically Left.

To brand the Public Service as ‘Left’ misdiagnoses the disease, symptom and patient!

The real power struggle in NZ isn’t Left vs Right, it’s between the Professional Managerial Class Corporate Consultants who influence policy to maintain their dominance and profit margins vs the self serving Public Service wanting to spend taxpayer money on their latest glass palace.

The Politicians are merely a masquerade of democracy to ensure participation that generates legitimacy, but the real power is between the Corporate Consultants who influence all policy to keep NZ deregulated and the self serving Public Service who are in it for their own fiefdoms.

Daniel talks about the lack of actual competition to the self-serving Public Service and to that effect Māori Social Service Providers could easily become the competition the self serving Public Service needs while building State capacity with a Ministry of Green Works.

Public Service vs Te ao Māori Service NOT Public Service vs Private Sector

The lack of results from a self serving Public Service riddled with Corporate Consultants could finally be challenged by Māori Social Service Providers that treat everyone who comes, but in a Māori cultural setting.

That development can drive the self serving Public Service to be far more responsive and force actual results out of them.

It’s allowing regulated capitalism to inject the dynamic of competition while building State capacity.

Imagine a scenario where Iwi joined forces with the State to create a 3rd Supermarket Operator with a focus on lower costs to customers, better work conditions for workers and better prices for suppliers.

Or expanding existing community health groups that are open to the entire community but run within Kaupapa Māori.

Same with Māori schools.

You can generate the competitive friction Capitalism requires while building up the State, not denigrating it.

That would be a true hybrid system using the Treaty as the template for sovereignty and , using Iwi wealth to encode into our most important social infrastructures.

There is a vast field of new horizons opening that demand attention.

Structural deficits in the hegemony are becoming impossible to ignore economically and climate change adaptation is the only game in town infrastructure and community resilience wise.

Working with each other, Māori and Pakeha, Pacifica, Migrant is what will make NZ stronger.

Not weaker.

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The astroturf constellation of Taxpayers’ Union, Free Speech Union, The Campaign Company, Groundswell, Federated Farmers, The NZ Initiative, The Atlas Network, Business NZ etc etc etc are all having enormous success at pimping for corporate interests while distracting with culture war talking points.

Kiwis are having their petty bigotries manipulated by these astroturf organisations to advance corporate interests.

Take the recent local elections, Dr Bryce Edwards makes the following point…

…the issue isn’t that the right are using dark money to run influence campaigns and winning, the issue is why the hell can’t the Left counter that influence?

How does NZ Left beat influence of astroturf Taxpayers’ Union/NZ Initiative stable of clients? 

The problem is that while the right all hate each other, they put that aside to work for their masters.

On the Left, we are far too focused on attacking each other.

On the Right they search for recruits, on the Left we search for traitors.

This has become a real issue for the Left because the next generation don”t see themselves as a class or as citizens, they see themselves as hashtag identities and the woke infiltration of many Left wing groups (as seen most tragically in 2021 when Auckland Students Against Climate Change cancelled themselves for being too racist) has ended up with a brittle dispirit group of Wellington based groups that are still on talking terms with each other.

The current ‘unity’ on the Left is like a threesome that goes bad.

Hilariously when you speak with Left Wing Generals in private, they all acknowledge that the woke cancel culture of 2016-2020 has left us decimated to the extremes of the reactionary anti-woke right.

I believe there is infrastructure within the NZ Left that could be harnessed in time for the election to act as a counter weight to the Right’s astroturf influencers, it is finding the will to make then Left work together.

We need to build a group of think tanks and support their work through amplification that goes beyond Action Stations list of approved Wellington friend group.

THINK TANKS

In this area, we desperately require real intellectual weight to argue for Left Universalism and capitalist critiques.

The Helen Clark Foundation – The amazing work Helen’s Foundation does and the issues they raise mark her Foundation as one of the best think tanks we have.

Dr Bryce Edwards – Bryce has probably had the best insights into the influence of the right wing astro turf organisations.

Greenpeace – Continue to be the best critic of the Government’s denial of climate change.

NZCTU – They have the money to fund research and step up as leaders.

AMPLIFIERS: 

There has to be an acknowledgment that if we are to win the next election, it has to go beyond Action Stations rainbow of the approved Wellington friend group association.

Against the Current, Nick Rockell, Gerard Otto + BHN – All important voices on the Left that need to be patched into this flow of info from the think tanks for distribution online.

Māori Media – Waatea has built their Facebook page to 110 000, Māori media are doing better at building influence than most of the mainstream media.

Political Party social media – They need to step in here as well and promote wider content that isn’t just party based.

Spinoff – Scoop is dead, which is a problem because their press release section once mattered. The Spinoff has social media muscle and they should become the new place for all press releases for the Left.

WHO SHOULD LEAD THIS LEFT INFLUENCE INFRASTRUCTURE:

Max Harris is the obvious candidate to act as the bridge between all these groups.

If the Left doesn’t work to build a counter weight to the right wing astroturf organisations, we can’t win hearts and minds.

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Comrades, the Climate Crisis is happening far faster than feared…

World’s oceans, greenhouse gasses at highest levels in 800,000 years, climate report warns

“Alarming year for extremes”: 2021 saw record-high greenhouse gas, ocean heat and sea levels rise, new report finds

Major sea-level rise caused by melting of Greenland ice cap is ‘now inevitable’

…the speed and extreme nature of the heatwaves and floods that are destroying the planet in real time are damaging the ability for the economy to function…

Cars. Batteries. Solar panels. Food. Global shortages and soaring prices are almost certain as China’s seemingly never-ending heatwave sears on.

It’s the most extreme heat event ever recorded in world history. For more than 70 days, the intense heat has blasted China’s population, factories and fields. Lakes and rivers have dried up. Crops have been killed. Factories have been closed.

More than 900 million people across 17 Chinese provinces are subjected to record-breaking conditions. From Sichuan in the southwest to Shanghai in the east, temperatures have been topping 40C.

…and remember, this only gets worse and worse and worse.

We aren’t doing anything meaningful on climate change, each country passes the buck to the next country, and the future is actually far more dangerous than we are currently anticipating…

‘We’re going to pay in a big way’: a shocking new book on the climate crisis

In An Inconvenient Apocalypse, authors Wes Jackson and Robert Jensen write that society needs to be better prepared for an inevitable collapse

…the scale of the geopolitical shockwaves coming our way will be enormous…

Increasingly dysfunctional society and climate catastrophe leading humanity to ‘cliff edge’

Spiralling wealth inequality is leading to dysfunctional societies unable to cope with existential threats such as the climate crisis, experts have warned.

A two-year research project examining different future scenarios indicates that at present, societies around the world are at growing risk of “extreme political destabilisation”, with declines in public trust, while the climate crisis intensifies.

…I’ve been following the IPCC reports on climate change from the beginning, and the criticism made against the IPCC was that due to its strict need for only unilaterally agreed science to make the official report, it was always underplaying the urgency and severity of the climate crisis.

There was always a section in each report where the science was presented that wasn’t universally accepted but included to show the reach and scope of debate.

Increasingly over the years, the worst case scenarios in the IPCC are playing out in real time.

The scientists were wrong, but only in their optimism.

You understand that each year that passes now will get worse or remain as starkly bad as they are now right?

You get that it doesn’t go back to normal after this right?

The extreme weather will get worse and worse.

More extreme than these extremes now.

Consider this baseline extreme normal now.

The radical adaptation required to get us ready for what’s coming will splinter the political spectrum whether we like it or not.

Why shouldn’t we have our own basic pharmaceutical industry?

Engineering industry?

Industrial industry?

Free Market Globalisation is dead, hyper regionalism is here. Supply chains in China are no longer safe and must be brought back to friendly supply chains which imports more inflation.

Radical adaptation and communal community resourcing alongside a Big State approach to lynchpin infrastructure for basic self-reliance as an Island country facing enormous economic shockwaves is the only means to build the muscle mass to respond to the ever intensifying external disruption of late stage capitalism.

The need to increase military spending to 3% alongside the new costs for this infrastructure must be funded via new taxes aimed at corporations and banks.

Drones are going toe an essential part of that defence infrastructure…

Could NZ plug into Australian ‘drone wall’ to keep China at bay?

…it’s not just keeping China at bay, we also need to keep bloody America away as well!

A financial transaction tax and windfall profit tax would take the yoke of taxation off working people and place it upon the shoulders of the wealthy.

National and ACT  see mass immigration as a means to create fake growth at a time when we should be focused on de-growth.

Climate Crisis is here and adaptation is now.

We need to start rethinking Isolationism as a strength and Think Big as Economic Sovereignty.

The geopolitical shock waves are only getting more intense.

If you think being carbon neutral by 2050 is the solution, you are the problem.

Post growth capitalism with true sustainability calls for Autarky on a burning planet that can’t take anymore globalism.

The tyranny of distance has always been our malaise but on a burning planet of constant external shocks the Shire of NZ is looking very good right now.

‘Build that wall’ will soon become ‘defend that moat’.

In 1980, the time between billion dollar climate destruction events was 3 months.

It’s now 18 days.

There is a point where the next destructive weather event strikes before you can rebuild from the last one.

Fortress Aotearoa is coming whether we want it or not.

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Elon Musk’s $1tn pay deal approved by Tesla shareholders

Tesla boss Elon Musk has had a record-breaking pay package that could be worth nearly $1tn (£760bn) approved by shareholders.

The unprecedented deal was approved by 75% of votes and drew huge applause from the audience at the firm’s annual general meeting on Thursday.

Musk, who is already the world’s richest man, must drastically raise the electric car firm’s market value over 10 years. If he does this and meets various targets, he will be rewarded with hundreds of millions of new shares.

The scale of the potential payout has drawn criticism, but the Tesla board argued that Musk might leave the company if it was not approved – and that it could not afford to lose him.

Doesn’t this all kind reek of desperation?

Firstly, it’s an enormous jump in sales and growth he will be required to make to get that pay.

Secondly, isn’t it a bit desperate to need to offer your drug addled super genius spectrum super villain nerd a Trillion dollars in the vain hope of keeping his attention on the project you are all heavily invested in?

It’s so desperate.

It’s the kind of Hail Mary you make just before the AI bubble pops.

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Ummmmmmmmmmmm.

Is Trump going to invade Venezuela???

Stakes rise as Trump deploys world’s largest aircraft carrier to the Caribbean

Expert says military action may be ‘imminent’ in Venezuela, while others suspect deployment is a negotiating tactic

Two months ago Story, who was Washington’s top diplomat for Venezuelafrom 2018 to 2023, saw only a 10% chance of some kind of US attack on Venezuelan soil and an 80% chance that Trump’s gambit would come to nothing. Now, he said he was 80% sure things would evolve into some kind of military action and saw only a 20% chance the status quo would hold.

…that’s an enormous amount of firepower for just a negotiating tactic.

Look, I have very little time or sympathy for Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro.

I’m all for Socialist Revolution, but to then use the State to murder, torture strangle free and fair elections, create an economic collapse that sees the largest refugee exoduses in Latin American history alongside Repression of Civil Society and the Press?

That’s not my kind of Revolution comrades!

I like a consensual Revolution.

Maduro’s regime has serious questions to answer for the way he has abused his own people, of that there can be little doubt HOWEVER that doesn’t in any way shape or form justify what Trump is embarking upon here.

Trump is attacking any boat he suspects of drug trafficking and using military level violence to simply blow those boats up with zero legal evidence or process whatsoever.

Those are extrajudicial assassinations, that’s not Justice.

Trump’s build up of military is unacceptable.

Trump’s extrajudicial assassinations are unacceptable.

Trump’s use of the CIA to undermine Maduro’s regime is unacceptable.

This matters because America is now doing this in the Pacific, OUR pacific…

US strikes two more alleged drug-carrying boats, this time in the Pacific Ocean

The U.S. military on Wednesday launched its ninth strike against an alleged drug-carrying vessel, killing three people in the eastern Pacific Ocean, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said, expanding the Trump administration’s campaign against drug trafficking in South America.

It followed another strike Tuesday night, also in the eastern Pacific, that killed two people, Hegseth posted on social media hours earlier. The attacks were departures from the seven previous U.S. strikes that had targeted vessels in the Caribbean Sea. They bring the death toll to at least 37 from attacks that began last month.

The strikes represent an expansion of the military’s targeting area as well as a shift to the waters off South America where much of the cocaine from the world’s largest producers is smuggled. Hegseth’s social media posts also drew a direct comparison between the war on terrorism that the U.S. declared after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the Trump administration’s crackdown.

…14% of the US Navy fleet is off the coast of Venezuela!

Now with the arrival of the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group, all the chess pieces are on the board and they are simply awaiting for Trump’s order to attack.

Maduro certainly has crimes to answer for, but that is for the Venezuelan people to decide, it is utterly inappropriate in the extreme that Trump gets involved.

Trump has no authority here, the claim that he’s stopping terrorists from bringing drugs into America is farcical when you consider alcohol kills more people in America than all drugs combined.

It is farcical when you consider 20% of over doses are from legal prescriptions and it is farcical when so many American’s dying from Fentanyl got their first taste on legally prescribed Oxycodone and Hydrocodone!

If Trump cared about drug over dosses he would crack down on booze, legal heroin and provide public health, instead he sends a fucking Carrier Strike Group to bomb speedboats and over throw a regime he doesn’t like!

It’s so difficult to keep up with all the crazy Trump is unleashing, that invading Venezuela gets missed.

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Boom…

Poll results: Labour jumps to 38% after capital gains tax announcement

The Talbot Mills/Anacta poll was conducted between November 1 and 10, for corporate clients, so it began in the days after Labour’s policy announcement.

Labour – 38

National – 33

Greens – 9

NZF – 8

ACT – 7

MP – 2.4

The most important part of this is the fact its was taken AFTER Labour’s Targeted Capital Gains Tax, so all that screwing by the Right Wing Trolls that Labour would collapse after the announcement shows that the electorate is far more mature than ZB listeners.

No surprises that the Māori Party continue ti meltdown as their train wreck continues ti explode.

NZF and ACTs extremism and polarisation continue to alienate more than they attract with National pulling votes away from them as soft blue voters flee to Labour.

Greens take a hit, but that was always going to happen after Labour’s Capital Gains Tax announcement (this is why it was important Labour didn’t launch a wealth tax).

On these numbers the Left bloc wins which only highlights how important it is for te Pati Māori not to self mutilate themselves any more than they have.

The economy is melting down, 73 000 fled the country and it is directly attributable to National’s desirous policies.

The numbers are being run now on Luxon’s leadership inside the National Party.

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