Radio New Zealand gets the tick of approval from an investigation into its Gaza journalism - So let's see how it covered the Palestinian Red Crescent massacre
NZ Labour are like Lucy in Peanuts repeatedly pulling away the football at the last minute, with the proviso that in this analogy NZ Labour are also Charlie Brown. They believe their own lies more than the electorate does.
With “the big squeeze” put on working people, we can see how it is not such a reach that to reduce security in the nation—as represented by the rate of unemployment rising—is to guarantee rising social and personal ills. This will naturally extend to the most extreme social problems, such as suicide. What New Zealanders must confront is how tolerant are we of the degree of precarity that exists in our nation, and if so, are we comfortable with the dark consequences?
This week a coterie of Chrises (PM Luxon, Infrastructure Minister Bishop and presumably Building Minister Penk) will be welcoming some big name investors, pension funds, and construction companies to Auckland to try and flog off some big ticket public-private partnership deals. The $10 billion Northland Expressway is top of the list (although the list is understood to be only four projects).
The most bizarre thing about this is that everyone - both in Israel and in the West - already knew the Bibas family was dead. As Owen Jones points out in a recent Substack, Hamas announced back in November 2023 that they were killed by an Israeli airstrike and offered to return their bodies but Israel said no. It is now becoming abundantly clear why.
On a political level, Hipkins is a pathetic loser. On a personal level, I hate him.
As long as Israel continues to insist on being a majority Jewish state controlling the majority of the former Mandatory Palestine they will be inimical to Palestinians. This has nothing to do with conflict, nor any action of resistance by Palestinian groups. Palestinians are enemies of the state of Israel merely by existing.
The sooner we mobilise against these acts of “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction”, the fewer people will die. If it is not stopped then ultimately this phase of genocide will take more lives than the Holocaust that has just ended.
A ceasefire in Gaza does not mean the end of genocide and it does not mean the end of mass killing. The ceasefire is bringing in a new phase.
While there are many concerns that need to be addressed with PSNA’s campaign, why has the conversation stopped there? Why has the core issue of this campaign been ignored? Namely, that IDF soldiers who have committed war crimes in Gaza have been allowed into New Zealand?
Why has any discussion about Israel, its violations of international law, and the international legal expectations for third party states to hold IDF soldiers accountable not been addressed?
As the Omicron wave wanes worldwide, countries have been quick to declare COVID-19 officially endemic- the pandemic we are told is over.
In the 53 years since the term entered the lexicon, the social terrain of politics has radically changed. The median voter today is very different from the median voter of 1969.
As we settle into the current Red Light setting and as the cases of Omicron climb each day, the hospitality sector in Auckland has had its life support switched off.
The centre-left will fail to deliver for working-class people if it doesn't embrace universal basic services. We can only tackle the housing, inflation and inequality crises by decommodifying and guaranteeing the essentials of life for all.
Here are the ways working-class people fought back in 2021. There are many examples, I've only picked my favourites; the thing about something like a global pandemic is it exposes how the system works and whose labour makes the world go round
I think it is fair to say that 2021, like 2020, was an awful year globally, and sadly there is no reason to believe that 2022 will be any better.
Fair Pay Agreements (FPAs) offer Labour the chance to live up to their promise of being a transformational government. It is vital they forge ahead with FPAs in spite of bad faith criticism from the right and business interests.
Listening to Christopher Luxon’s maiden speech I got the impression I had somehow discovered time travel. It appeared I had managed to go back to the halcyon days of 2007. This 2007 was very similar to the one I remembered, it was a period of business as usual.
A Common sensibility is something we’ve been thinking about since a couple years back when a group of us in the left media space met to discuss communication and direction of the broader left project.
New Zealand's success at eliminating COVID in 2020 saw the Sixth Labour government receive international praise and fanfare. In the early stages of the pandemic, our small island nation demonstrated the virtues of evidence-based governance and of listening to the science on issues.
1 /200 doesn't usually get former US State Department officers as guests, but Dr. Annelle Sheline is no ordinary former State Department officer. Having famously quit her job in protest at the Biden administration's unequivocal backing for Israel's war on Gaza, she recently sat down with Branko Marcetic to talk about how a US foreign policy that puts military power over human rights hurts everyone - including the United States itself.
We discuss the failed Treaty Principles Bill and potential for a geopolitical restructuring in the political economy instigated by Trump's tariffs. Where to from here? How can we make the most of the moment?
We guest Paris Marx for thoughts about the upcoming Canadian Election with parallels to the electoral situations across the rest of the west.
We discuss the continuing atrocities in Gaza, the blackbagging of activists across the west and declining US hegemony accelerated by an absurd tariffs regime. Closer to home we touch on the Treaty Bill submissions and the horrific hit job on a Green MP by far right muckrakers and politicians.
We spoke with Kate from Justice for Palestine and Lulu from Stop Arming Israel about the ongoing genocide and apartheid in Palestine. They took us through the strategy and purpose of their current BDS Divestment campaign targeting ASB Bank for its investments in Motorola.
This episode was originally published on our old platform, and alongside many others didn’t survive the migration. But with RocketLab and US military concerns again on the agenda, we’ve decided to republish.
In a flashback episode from season 1, this is an interview with Philip and Branko spoke with Oliver Neas in 2019 about RocketLab launches and the precedents being set for NZ-US surveillance and military co-operation.
Waning trust in media alongside a failure to uphold standards and whitewashed investigations has NZ outlets in a bad spot. We discuss the examples of negative framing for Tamatha Paul’s comments about police, and the direct engagement between media leadership and far-right astro-turf groups. When will NZ political and media leadership pull in line with the electorate and reject the accelerating fascism in the US under Trump?
We start with a school lunch update. The NZ Govt is trying to take back control of the economic narrative with an Infrastructure Summit, amid global trade uncertainty. The UK Labour Party is abolishing 'NHS England' and making life harder for disabled people.
As Callaghan Innovation prepares to shut up shop it’s making one last pitch - a hackathon to design a “NZ DOGE”. What the fuck does that even mean? And what is happening with the transplant of US tech culture and propaganda into the NZ discourse?
We get the chance to swing at Labour for their latest fumbled PR and what looks like a signal of further centrism. School lunches remain on the agenda as one student gets second degree burns. And multiple high profile political roles are on the way out.
