You've probably seen the video of Te Pāti Māori leading a haka in New Zealand's Parliament by now. It's close to a billion views combined at this point, and reactionary media has been quick to jump on it as some sort of "stone age" display, as if protest has never been a part of parliamentary politics before. You might even hear people say that this is about shutting down "equal rights", and what this current government wants is just an honest discussion about what the treaty means. This is all a smokescreen for what this bill is actually about: rewriting history to protect extractive capital.
Next Tuesday is election day in the United States of America, the land of democracy — where billionaires buy elections, where the President is not elected by popular vote, and where the nominee of the Republican Party attempted to overturn the results after he was voted out of office four years ago. Somehow, despite every crime Donald Trump has been tried and convicted for, the former President is a coin-toss away from taking back the White House.
It is foul fascist nonsense, this victim-blaming fiction of war. There are no half-measures left to us in response. We need to drive the genocide supporters and genocide deniers off the air and out of office. Moreover, the genocide will not end until Palestine is free.
A year on from the 2023 general election, David Seymour responded to the latest One News-Verian poll, showing a 5% lead for the government, by gloating. "The coalition is working so much better than our enemies hoped!" Sad to say, but the ACT leader is not wrong.
Israel’s assault on Gaza is still seen by most Western politicians and the vast majority of the media as the inevitable, if somewhat regrettable, response to the horrors of October 7. Perhaps that response has been a little over the top, some might say. Perhaps there have been a “few too many civilian deaths” but Palestinian death doesn’t carry the same emotional charge as Israeli death so … ‘meh’. At the most we might get numbers of the dead now permanently frozen at 40,000 - but no emotion, no real human pain.
This did not start on October 7 last year. Israeli ethnic cleansing and apartheid has been taking place for decades, since the Nakba of 1948. It has been 76 years of Palestinians being violently separated from their land by Israel, this colonial regime that denies basic human rights to millions of Arabs under its occupation.
A month ago I emailed my manager and his manager and told them that I was resigning. I didn’t give a reason, just the minimum amount of notice required. Now my notice period is up and I need to start writing.
My decision to quit may have been reckless but it wasn’t completely spontaneous. Things had gotten pretty unpleasant in the office and, although I found pleasure in organising alongside my colleagues, I wasn’t necessarily going to be able to continue sending impish all-staff emails forever.
The US's pivot to the greater Asia-Pacific region, away from the Middle East, has been the subject of much focus. Increasingly, Washington and its allies are asserting themselves again in the region as China seeks to gain more geopolitical influence. Over the past few years, the US has been re-establishing embassies, soft power organisations, and inking security agreements with countries that haven't seen much attention from the US since the Cold War wound down.
At the same time as we are forced to make these sacrifices the government has invested billions into ideological pet projects. There's $1.9 billion going into building a mega prison. $15 billion in tax cuts to the wealthiest few. There’s money to spend on roads and boot camps. This isn’t hypocrisy however. It’s a plan.
Israel is using its acts of brutality to wage psychological war on Palestinians and those who oppose the violence and oppression visited upon them. These acts work on different levels and it is clear to see that currently Israel seeks to avoid publicising its acts in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, but allows acts perpetrated in Gaza and on Palestinians taken from Gaza to be seen widely. In doing so they show how little they fear losing support among the international general public. They do this all knowing that a significant minority of Westerners, mostly due to racist views about Palestinians, will never waver in their support for Israeli violence even at its most inhumane and extreme.
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.
We post-mortem the US election and discuss the impact on media, information and NZ politics.
Pmax discusses the NZ History curriculum and the impact on students.
We’re joined by Tech Won’t Save Us host Paris Marx to talk Canadian politics and NZ parallels. We discuss the rise of right-wing ideology and PR as well as the influence of tech venture capital and western alignment around “security partnerships” like AUKUS.
We’re joined by Vijay Prashad to round up world events. We discuss the realignment starting to take shape via BRICS, the escalation of violence and imperialism in Palestine, and how organising for anti-imperialism is desperately needed in the Pacific.
We discuss the escalating genocide, war crimes and atrocities of the US and Israel in the Middle East with particular focus on the new front opened up with Lebanon and the counterstrike by Iran.
Episode 100 of Season 2 has hit us far too quickly, but there’s just too much news! We give an overview of the current state of NZ politics - what we’ve got an eye on and possible solutions for the left.
We speak with long covid advocate Hayley Wolters about the current state of public health policy for the ongoing pandemic. In a few days the NZ government will be removing free RAT tests and there is no consolidated plan for action in the event that NZ faces a similar summer wave to the US.
