AGAINST THE CURRENT

ABBY MARTIN: CONFRONTING EMPIRE

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 03:40:12 +0000

Abby Martin says that the climate crisis cannot be overcome without confronting the U.S. military. Abby is touring Australia in July, at a time when both Australia and New Zealand are being drawn deeper into U.S. military strategy.

ABBY MARTIN'S new documentary Earth’s Greatest Enemy is a blistering, meticulously researched indictment of the United States military as the planet’s most destructive institutional polluter. At a time when governments and corporations loudly proclaim their climate credentials, Martin’s film cuts through the green-washed noise with a simple, devastating thesis: you cannot solve the climate crisis without confronting the world’s largest war machine.

The film, produced through Abby's independent project The Empire Files, took more than five years to complete. It follows Martin across military bases, weapons expos, frontline communities, and the vast Pacific theatre where the U.S. conducts many of its most environmentally catastrophic operations. What emerges is a portrait of an institution whose ecological footprint dwarfs that of most nations. The Pentagon consumes more oil than any other institution on Earth, emits more greenhouse gases than 150 countries, and leaves behind a toxic trail of contamination from Okinawa to Hawai‘i to the deserts of the American Southwest.

Martin has been blunt about the scale of the crisis. “When you combine all of this,” she said in an interview, “it is completely undeniable that this force that is upheld by extreme violence is the greatest threat to all living things on Earth.” Her film backs that claim with evidence: poisoned aquifers, depleted uranium, jet fuel leaks, PFAS contamination, scorched landscapes, and the carbon footprint of endless war. One of the film’s most striking comparisons comes when Martin notes that a single refuelling flight of a Boeing KC-135 tanker burns more fuel in a few hours than an average American driver uses in decades. “The U.S. flies more than 600 of these tankers,” she says, letting the scale speak for itself.

But Earth’s Greatest Enemy is not just a catalogue of environmental crimes. It is a political argument. Martin insists that militarism is not an unfortunate side-issue in the climate debate but its central, unspoken pillar. The U.S. military exists to secure fossil fuel supply chains, enforce geopolitical dominance, and protect the corporate order that profits from extraction. “You have to look at the military as the institution that’s actually keeping the fossil fuel infrastructure in place through brutality and violence,” she says. The film makes clear that the climate crisis is not simply a matter of emissions; it is a matter of empire.

Martin’s own trajectory as a journalist has prepared her for this confrontation. Born in California in 1984, she first gained prominence as the host of Breaking the Set where she became known for her fierce critiques of U.S. foreign policy. After leaving cable television, she founded The Empire Files, an independent media project dedicated to exposing the human and environmental costs of U.S. power. Her 2019 documentary Gaza Fights for Freedom established her as a filmmaker capable of combining investigative depth with moral clarity. Earth’s Greatest Enemy expands that scope to a planetary level, tracing the ecological consequences of empire across continents and oceans.

Although Martin has no formal biographical ties to New Zealand, her work resonates strongly here. New Zealand’s nuclear-free identity, its history of anti-militarist activism, and its position within the Five Eyes intelligence alliance all intersect with the themes of the film. The Pacific is central to Earth’s Greatest Enemy and New Zealand is a Pacific nation. The RIMPAC war games — a major focus of the documentary — involve Pacific states and take place in waters that carry deep cultural and ecological significance for the region. For New Zealanders concerned about militarisation in the Pacific, the environmental legacy of foreign bases, or the country’s strategic alignment with the United States, Martin’s film lands with particular force.

The documentary is also arriving at a moment when Australia and New Zealand are being drawn deeper into U.S. military strategy through AUKUS and expanding base access agreements. Martin’s argument — that militarism is the missing piece of the climate conversation — challenges the political consensus in both countries. It asks whether nations that claim climate leadership can continue to support the world’s largest polluter.

Martin will tour Australia in July 2026 to screen Earth’s Greatest Enemy and speak directly with audiences. The tour includes events in Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Wollongong, and Sydney, hosted by the Independent and Peaceful Australia Network and the Progressive International Pacific. Each stop will feature a screening and a discussion with Martin about the film’s findings, the environmental cost of U.S. militarism, and the growing movement demanding demilitarisation as a climate imperative. For many Australians — and for New Zealanders watching closely from across the Tasman — the tour offers a rare opportunity to engage with one of the most uncompromising voices in contemporary anti-imperialist journalism.

Earth’s Greatest Enemy is not a comforting film. It does not offer easy solutions or technocratic fixes. Instead, it demands a reckoning with the structures of power driving ecological collapse. Martin’s message is stark: the climate crisis cannot be solved without confronting the U.S. military. The world’s most powerful institution is also its most destructive environmental force, and any movement serious about planetary survival must be willing to name that truth.

HEATHER DU-PLESSIS ALLAN: GIVING HER AUDIENCE WHAT IT WANTS

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 03:34:53 +0000

Last week Newstalk ZB's Heather du Plessis was named Broadcaster of the Year at the New Zealand Radio Awards. But her weekday drivetime show is a steady stream of government-friendly framing, selective outrage, and carefully curated indignation.

NEWSTALK ZB’s triumph at the New Zealand Radio Awards last week was as predictable as the sunrise. Heather du Plessis-Allan once again walked away with the Sir Paul Holmes Broadcaster of the Year trophy, her second consecutive win, while Newstalk ZB itself was crowned Best Station for the fifth year running. The self-congratulation was so thick you could spread it on toast. But when a station enjoys a near-monopoly in the talkback market, victory is less a sign of excellence than the inevitable result of having no meaningful competition. Everyone’s a winner at Newstalk ZB — especially Newstalk ZB.

The awards function less as a celebration of journalistic merit and more as a brand-building exercise for NZME, ZB’s parent company. The NZ Herald dutifully trumpeted the network’s success, as if the accolades were proof of its editorial superiority rather than the predictable outcome of a structurally lopsided media landscape. Outside NZME’s own promotional ecosystem, the reaction was muted. Few seemed genuinely impressed. Many barely noticed. And why would they? The awards have become a ritualised pat-on-the-back for a station whose influence rests not on innovation or public service, but on its ability to reliably channel a particular political worldview.

Newstalk ZB has long abandoned any pretence of ideological neutrality. It is, and has been for years, an unapologetic amplifier of right-wing interests. Along with breakfast host Mike Hosking, Du Plessis-Allan is the network’s most polished exponent of this line. Her weekday drivetime show is a steady stream of government-friendly framing, selective outrage, and carefully curated indignation. When the coalition government stumbles, she cushions the fall. When Labour or the Greens so much as breathe, she reaches for the blowtorch. Her interviews with government ministers are warm, collegial, and often deferential. Her interviews with opposition MPs are combative, impatient, and dripping with suspicion. This is not a secret; it is the show’s defining feature.

She has even said on air that a Labour government returning to power this year would be a “disaster”. That is not analysis. That is campaigning. And it is campaigning delivered from the country’s largest commercial radio platform, under the guise of journalism. When Labour whip Kevin McAnulty described NZME as a “National Party proxy”, du Plessis-Allan reacted with wounded indignation, insisting she is fair and impartial. But impartiality is not a feeling one has about oneself. It is a standard demonstrated through practice. And the practice at Newstalk ZB is unmistakable.

Yet the station is not shaping the nation so much as preaching to its own choir. The demographics tell the story: a largely male, largely conservative, largely 55-plus audience that has hovered around 13 percent of the total radio market for years. It is a stable, loyal, and ideologically aligned listenership. The callers who populate ZB’s airwaves reflect this — resistant to social change, suspicious of progressive politics, and deeply invested in the preservation of the status quo. Du Plessis-Allan does not challenge these instincts; she affirms them. She packages conservative orthodoxy as common sense, dresses partisan talking points as objective truth, and delivers it all with the confidence of someone who knows her audience will applaud rather than interrogate.

This is what now passes for “Broadcaster of the Year”.

The deeper problem is not that Newstalk ZB is right-wing. Media outlets are entitled to editorial positions. The problem is the pretence — the insistence that ZB is simply reflecting public sentiment rather than shaping it, that its hosts are neutral arbiters rather than ideological actors, that its awards are earned through journalistic rigour rather than market dominance and brand synergy. The awards help maintain this illusion. They provide a veneer of credibility, a sense that ZB’s dominance is the result of merit rather than structural advantage and political alignment.

Meanwhile, the broader media environment continues to shrink. Public broadcasting is under political pressure. Independent outlets struggle for funding. Newsrooms are thinning. In this context, Newstalk ZB’s awards haul is less a celebration of excellence than a symptom of a media ecosystem where commercial talkback — loud, partisan, and predictable — fills the vacuum left by weakened public-interest journalism.

Du Plessis-Allan’s success is not mysterious. She gives her audience what they want: certainty, simplicity, and a worldview in which their grievances are always justified and their political preferences always correct. It is a formula that works. It protects ratings. It wins awards. But it does not serve the public interest. It narrows debate, entrenches division, and elevates partisan advocacy over genuine inquiry.

Newstalk ZB will continue to celebrate itself. NZME will continue to promote its stars. And du Plessis-Allan will continue to present her political preferences as objective truth. But none of this should be mistaken for journalistic excellence. It is branding, not broadcasting. It is influence, not insight. And it is long past time we stopped confusing popularity with merit.

If this is the best our commercial radio landscape can offer, the problem is not that Newstalk ZB keeps winning. The problem is that no one else is left to compete.

WHEN VERITY MET GERRY

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 05:29:15 +0000

Stuff columnist Verity Johnson got a call from the Speaker of the House, Gerry Brownlee. He's worried about some of the things that Verity has been saying…

VERITY JOHNSON has become, almost accidentally, one of the few mainstream commentators, to say out loud what most New Zealanders mutter under their breath. Her columns for Stuff have struck a nerve not because she offers a grand ideological alternative, or a fully-fledged critique of late-stage capitalism but because she articulates—plainly, impatiently, sometimes caustically, the sense that the country is drifting, leaderless, and exhausted. She has caught the mood of a public that no longer believes the political class has any idea what it is doing.

Her liberal instincts haven’t prevented her from reaching a conclusion that many on the left arrived at long ago: Labour has nothing to offer. Not nothing new—just nothing at all. After six years in government and two years in opposition, the party that once claimed to represent working people has managed to present itself as a slightly more apologetic manager of the same economic model that has failed those people for decades. Johnson’s frustration is not abstract. She lists the symptoms of a country in decline with the bluntness of someone who has run out of patience: a fuel crisis, one in three Kiwis facing food insecurity, 200 people leaving the country every day, hardship withdrawals from KiwiSaver at record highs, and a social fabric so thin it tears at the slightest pressure. And Labour, she writes, has spent “two years out back having a blueberry vape.”

It is not the language of a socialist, but it is the language of someone who has stopped believing in the fairy tale that swapping one set of managers for another will fix anything. Johnson, a small business owner, is not offering a structural critique of capitalism, but she is refusing to indulge the fantasy that the system is fundamentally sound and merely requires a different pilot. Her argument is simpler: the machine is broken, and none of the parties operating it seem to know what to do about it.

That, apparently, was enough to alarm Gerry Brownlee. The former National cabinet minister and current Speaker of the House has been reading Johnson’s columns closely enough to pick up the phone. His concern, he told her, was that young people were becoming disillusioned—not just with the parties, but with the system itself. He worried that this disillusionment could lead to “extremism.” It is telling that what finally jolted a senior figure of the political establishment into action was not poverty, not inequality, not the exodus of New Zealanders, but the possibility that people might stop believing in the legitimacy of the political order.

Brownlee invited Johnson to Parliament for Budget week, hoping that a behind-the-scenes look at the machinery of government might restore her faith. It is a curious assumption: that proximity to the cogs and levers of the system would somehow make its failures more forgivable. Johnson’s complaint is not that she doesn’t understand how Parliament works; it is that she understands all too well that it no longer works for most people.

Predictably, the visit did not have the rehabilitative effect Brownlee hoped for. If anything, it confirmed Johnson's worst suspicions. She describes the spectacle with a mixture of disbelief and despair: the bickering, the petty insults, the absence of serious economic debate, the venting of feelings in place of analysis, and the total lack of any heavyweight critique of why the country is in crisis or how to get out of it.

Johnson is generous enough to acknowledge Brownlee’s civility and his willingness to engage with someone who disagrees with him. But politeness does not compensate for political bankruptcy. Brownlee remains a representative of a political order that most New Zealanders—Johnson included—no longer believe can deliver anything resembling a better future. His appeal for faith in the system is precisely the problem. Faith is what politicians ask for when they have run out of arguments.

The deeper issue Johnson identifies, even if she does not frame it in ideological terms, is that New Zealand’s political system has reached the end of its imaginative capacity. The parties are not merely uninspiring; they are intellectually spent. They tinker with the settings of an economic model that has produced inequality, insecurity, and stagnation, and then express surprise when the public grows cynical. They warn of “extremism” whenever people question the status quo, as though the real danger lies not in the crises themselves but in the refusal to politely endure them.

What Johnson’s columns reveal—perhaps unintentionally—is that the crisis is not just economic or political but existential. People no longer believe that the system can fix the problems it created. They no longer believe that the parties are capable of offering anything beyond managerialism. And they no longer believe that voting for “the other lot” will make any meaningful difference to their lives.

Brownlee’s invitation to Parliament was meant to reassure Johnson. Instead, it probably confirmed for her that the political class is trapped in its own rituals, unable to grasp the scale of the disillusionment outside the chamber. The answer to that disillusionment, of course, is not to restore faith in a system that lurches from crisis to crisis, but to recognise that systems are human creations—and therefore can be changed.

Verity Johnson may not be offering a socialist analysis, but she is articulating something that resonates far beyond her own ideological boundaries: the sense that New Zealand cannot keep doing what it has been doing. The public is not turning away from politics; politics has turned away from the public. And the first step toward renewal is not faith in the old machinery, but faith in our collective ability to build something better.

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY'S NEXT PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 04:38:51 +0000

The Democratic National Committee may not like it, but Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may be preparing to make a bid for the Democratic Party presidential nomination.

THE CENTRIST cabal that continues to dominate the political direction of the Democratic Party must take its considerable share of blame for foisting Donald Trump on the United States not once, but twice.

Their aversion to progressive politics, their terror at the prospect of losing their grip on the party, led them to spurn the popular Bernie Sanders—who many of his supporters argue would have defeated Trump—in favour of deeply unpopular corporate Democrats. First Hillary Clinton, then Kamala Harris, after an increasingly fragile Joe Biden was forced to bow out. The pattern is unmistakable: when confronted with a choice between energising the electorate or protecting their own internal hierarchy, the Democratic establishment chooses itself every time.

What is most worrying is that they seem to have learned nothing from these failures. Instead, they appear determined to repeat the same mistakes in the next presidential cycle. The Democratic National Committee recently released a 200-page report that was supposed to provide a full and frank assessment of what went wrong in 2024. Except it doesn’t. It reads less like an honest reckoning and more like an exercise in historical revisionism designed to absolve the party’s leadership of responsibility.

The report declares that Hillary Clinton failed to beat Trump not because she was an unappealing centrist defending a deeply unpopular status quo, but because of a “series of dramatic events, massive election interference, and poor strategy.” No details are provided. No evidence is offered. It is a convenient narrative that allows the establishment to avoid confronting the obvious: Clinton’s campaign failed because it offered nothing transformative to a country in crisis. It failed because millions of Americans were desperate for change and were not willing to settle for a candidate who promised continuity.

Along the way, the report even praises Bill Clinton for supposedly reclaiming “the vital centre of American discourse,” which it still claims—absurdly—is “where most Americans live.” This is the same “vital centre” that delivered mass incarceration, deregulation, welfare cuts, and the ideological groundwork for the inequality crisis that now defines American life. To pretend that this political formula still resonates is to ignore the last decade of political upheaval.

And yet it was Kamala Harris’s campaign—cautious, centrist, and straight out of the Bill Clinton playbook—that the DNC rallied behind in 2024. Offering nothing more than more of the same, it was entirely predictable that many working-class Americans would be seduced by Trump’s claims that he would bring down the hated status quo and deliver economic salvation. Whether those claims were credible is beside the point. What mattered was that Harris offered no competing vision. She ran on managerial competence at a time when voters were demanding structural change.

And her failure to condemn Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza proved to be disastrous. The Muslim community, as well as many progressive voters, simply turned their backs on Harris.

The DNC still seems determined to prevent the party from moving left. Their strategy, such as it is, appears to rest on the hope that after Trump, the Republican nominee will be an easy beat. Where have we heard that one before? The establishment said the same thing in 2016. They said it again in 2020. They said it again in 2024. Each time, they underestimated the depth of public anger and overestimated the appeal of centrist technocracy.

The problem for the DNC is that they are increasingly out of step with the mood of the country. They will have a damaging fight on their hands if they think they can easily foist another corporate-backed centrist on the Democratic Party rank and file. The electorate has changed. The crises facing the United States—economic inequality, climate breakdown, unaffordable housing, collapsing public services—are not issues that can be solved with incrementalism. Voters know this. The DNC pretends not to.

And of course, the DNC knows exactly who the rank and file want: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Recent polling among Democratic voters shows her as their preferred presidential candidate. Although she has yet to formally state her intentions, her actions speak loudly. She has been zigzagging across the country, stopping in key swing states, giving speeches, rallying alongside Democratic colleagues, and meeting with party insiders. These are not the movements of a passive bystander. These are the movements of someone preparing the ground.

Her recent endorsement by the Democratic Socialists of America—the country’s largest socialist organisation, and one AOC has been a member of since her university days—only strengthens her position. The DSA brings organisational muscle, volunteer networks, and a grassroots infrastructure that no centrist candidate can match. It is precisely the kind of force that can turn enthusiasm into turnout, and turnout into victory.

If AOC does decide to seek the Democratic nomination, she will ignite a wave of popular support that the DNC may not be able to contain. The establishment can manipulate debate schedules, lean on donors, and deploy its usual procedural tricks, but there is a limit to how much pressure they can exert when the base is moving in the opposite direction. The last decade has shown that the American electorate is hungry for bold ideas, not triangulation. They want candidates who speak to the scale of the crises they face, not politicians who promise to manage decline more efficiently.

The Democratic Party stands at a crossroads. It can continue clinging to a centrist ideology that has repeatedly failed to inspire voters and repeatedly failed to defeat Trump. Or it can embrace the energy, vision, and grassroots power that figures like AOC represent. The DNC seems determined to choose the former. The country is increasingly demanding the latter. If the establishment insists on fighting the future, it may soon discover that the future is prepared to fight back.

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BUDGET 2026: WHERE'S THE OPPOSITION TO AUSTERITY?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 29 May 2026 05:36:17 +0000

Because you didn't ask for it, Budget 2026 announced another dose of austerity. It'll hurt you more than it hurts Nicola..

BUDGET 2026 has confirmed what many already knew: the Government’s austerity agenda is not a temporary detour but the central organising principle of its economic project. The burden of “fiscal responsibility” — that endlessly recycled euphemism — is once again being dumped on those least able to bear it. Ministers can dress it up in the language of prudence, discipline, or “living within our means,” but the substance is unchanged. Austerity by any other name still guts public services, still shifts wealth upward, still punishes the poor for an economic crisis they did not create.

Finance Minister Nicola Willis delivered her Budget speech with the usual ritualised empathy. She spoke of struggling families, rising hardship, and the pressures facing ordinary New Zealanders. Then, with the next breath, she raised rents for some of the poorest state housing tenants in the country. The crocodile tears dried quickly. For all the rhetoric about compassion, the Budget offered nothing that would materially improve the lives of most New Zealanders. In fact, for many, it will make things worse: higher costs, fewer services, and a government proudly committed to shrinking the very institutions that hold society together.

What is perhaps even more alarming is the near-total inability — or unwillingness — of the Labour opposition to call austerity for what it is. In the Budget debate, Labour MPs danced around the term as if it were radioactive. They criticised the Government’s “choices,” its “priorities,” its “cuts,” but they refused to name the ideology driving those cuts. That silence is not accidental. Austerity is woven into the fabric of the neoliberal orthodoxy that Labour itself embraced decades ago and has never meaningfully abandoned. To condemn austerity outright would require Labour to confront its own record, its own complicity, its own refusal to challenge the economic model that has produced crisis after crisis.

At least one parliamentary voice was willing to break the spell. Green co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick stood in the House and said plainly what Labour would not: “Austerity. It’s how you break a country in slow motion.” In a speech that cut through the fog of euphemism, she laid out the consequences of the Government’s programme — the hollowing out of public services, the deepening of inequality, the slow erosion of social cohesion. It was a rare moment of clarity in a Parliament that too often treats economic ideology as a natural law rather than a political choice.

But even this moment of truth is undermined by the Greens’ own strategic choices. For all Swarbrick’s rhetorical fire, her party remains tethered to Labour — a Labour Party that refuses to name austerity, let alone fight it. The Greens urge New Zealanders to “fight for each other,” yet they will not fight the party that has spent years defending the very neoliberal framework that makes austerity inevitable. Where is the leadership in that? Where is the courage to break with a partner that has repeatedly chosen managerialism over transformation, orthodoxy over imagination?

The tragedy of New Zealand politics in 2026 is not simply that the Government is pursuing austerity. It is that no parliamentary party is prepared to articulate, let alone champion, a genuine economic alternative. The National-led Government is committed to shrinking the state, weakening labour protections, and shifting wealth upward — all under the banner of “responsibility.” Labour, having internalised the logic of the market decades ago, offers only a softer, more apologetic version of the same programme. The Greens, despite flashes of radicalism, remain unwilling to confront their larger partner or break from the gravitational pull of Labourism.

Yet an alternative does exist. It exists in the recognition that austerity is not an economic necessity but a political choice. It exists in the understanding that public investment is not a burden but a foundation for shared prosperity. It exists in the simple truth that inequality is not an accident, but the predictable outcome of policies designed to favour capital over people. Around the world, movements are emerging that reject the old orthodoxies — movements that demand housing as a right, public services as a collective good, and economic planning that serves human need rather than private profit.

New Zealand is not exempt from these possibilities. What we lack is not ideas but political will. We lack parties willing to challenge the Reserve Bank’s narrow mandate, to tax wealth rather than wages, to rebuild public housing at scale, to treat climate action as a public investment rather than a market opportunity. We lack leaders willing to say that the economic model of the last forty years has failed — and to act accordingly. We look around in vain for our own Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's and Zohran Mamdani's.

Budget 2026 is a reminder of what happens when no one in Parliament is prepared to break with the past. Austerity marches on, dressed up in new language but delivering the same old outcomes. The Government cuts, Labour equivocates, the Greens protest but remain tied to a partner that refuses to change. And ordinary New Zealanders are told, once again, that there is no alternative.

But there is. The question is who will fight for it.

PROTECTING THE POLLUTERS

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 27 May 2026 04:26:35 +0000

In an era of climate crisis, the Government has chosen to protect the polluters. The question now is not whether this Government serves the people. It is whether our political system, as currently structured, is even capable of doing so.

THE GOVERNMENT'S decision to amend climate laws so that major emitters cannot be sued for the damage caused by their greenhouse gas emissions is more than a legal manoeuvre. It is a declaration of allegiance. And it is not to the public, nor to the land, nor to the future. It is to the corporations whose business model depends on treating the atmosphere as a dumping ground and the public as collateral damage.

What makes this episode so stark is not simply the substance of the decision, but the process behind it. Officials advised the Government not to intervene. A June 2025 briefing was explicit: keep the status quo, let the common law develop, and do not interfere while a landmark Supreme Court case is underway. “We recommend that no action be taken on the reform of the tort of public nuisance at this stage,” officials wrote, warning that premature intervention would distort the legal process and undermine the courts’ ability to clarify the responsibilities of major emitters.

The Government ignored that advice. It did not hesitate, it did not deliberate, and it certainly did not wait for the courts. Instead, it embraced the lobbying papers of Fonterra and Z Energy—two of the country’s largest emitters—who argued that they should be shielded from any attempt to hold them accountable for environmental harm. Their message was clear: let us pollute without consequence. And the Government’s response was just as clear: of course.

This is not policymaking. This is protectionism—corporate protectionism dressed up as legislative reform. It is the state stepping in to ensure that powerful industries remain insulated from the consequences of their own actions, even as the climate crisis accelerates and communities across New Zealand face rising seas, extreme weather, and ecological collapse.

The Supreme Court case that triggered this political panic was historic. For the first time, major emitters were being challenged in court for their contribution to climate change. It was an attempt—modest, overdue, and entirely reasonable—to test whether the law could recognise the harm caused by decades of emissions. The plaintiffs were not asking for the impossible. They were asking for accountability. They were asking whether those who profit from pollution should bear some responsibility for the damage it causes.

The Government’s intervention shuts that door. It tells the courts: you will not be allowed to decide. It tells the public: you will not be allowed to challenge. And it tells corporations: you will not be held to account.

Climate Activist Mike Smith, who took the case to court says: 'The core argument behind my case has always been straightforward. If corporations knowingly contribute to dangerous climate harm, then surely there must be some legal mechanism through which accountability can be tested. This isn’t a radical proposition. Courts exist precisely to examine difficult questions where public harm and private power intersect.'

But we are living in the era of late-stage capitalism. We have a political system so entangled with corporate interests that it no longer even pretends to serve the public good. We have a government that treats democratic institutions—courts, public submissions, official advice—as obstacles to be bypassed when they inconvenience the powerful. And we have a state that responds to climate breakdown not by regulating emissions, but by regulating the public’s ability to seek justice.

Representative democracy, we are told, is designed to ensure that governments act on behalf of the people. But this incident exposes the fiction at the heart of that claim. When officials advise caution, and corporations demand protection, it is not the public whose voice prevails. It is the lobbyists. It is the boardrooms. It is the industries whose profits depend on delaying climate action for as long as possible.

The Government’s decision is not an isolated misstep. It is part of a broader pattern in which climate policy is shaped not by science, not by public interest, and not by the lived reality of communities already facing climate impacts. It is shaped by the demands of industries that fear legal accountability more than they fear ecological collapse. These companies know that the tide is turning globally. Around the world, courts are increasingly willing to recognise climate harm and assign responsibility. Lawsuits are emerging in Europe, the United States, and the Pacific. The legal landscape is shifting, and major emitters are nervous.

In New Zealand, they need not be. The Government has stepped in to protect them before the courts could even speak.

This is not neutrality. It is not balance. It is not “regulatory certainty.” It is the state choosing sides—and choosing the side of those who contribute most to the crisis we all must live through.

The irony is that the Government’s own officials understood the stakes. They recognised that the courts have a crucial role in clarifying the responsibilities of emitters. They understood that intervening mid-case would undermine the integrity of the legal system. Furthermore, they saw the danger in pre-emptively shutting down a pathway to accountability. But their advice was discarded in favour of corporate lobbying.

If representative democracy means anything, it should mean that elected governments act in the interests of the public, not the industries that fund their campaigns or whisper in their ear. But this episode shows how hollow that promise has become. When the interests of the public collide with the interests of powerful corporations, it is the public who are told to wait, to compromise, to accept incrementalism. Corporations, meanwhile, receive immediate legislative protection.

The climate crisis is not a distant threat. It is here. It is reshaping our coasts, our weather, our economy, and our future. As Mike Smith writes:

'Over the past six months alone, communities across Aotearoa have been hammered by severe weather events, including flooding, slips, cyclones, and storms of increasing intensity. Cyclone Vaianu caused widespread flooding and destruction across the North Island. Northland communities were cut off by torrential rain and slips. Waikato, Bay of Plenty, Tairawhiti and Hawke’s Bay all experienced severe flooding, prompting state of emergency declarations. Mount Maunganui suffered catastrophic landslides after record rainfall. Wellington and Canterbury communities faced flooding damage to homes and infrastructure. Insurance claims from storms have surged as extreme weather becomes more frequent and more destructive. These incidents are becoming part of the new reality of life in this country.'

And yet, when confronted with a chance to allow the courts to test whether major emitters should bear responsibility for the harm they cause, the Government chose to intervene—not to protect the public, but to protect the polluters.

This is late-stage capitalism: a system in which the state no longer even pretends to be neutral, where the law bends not toward justice but toward power, and where the public is expected to absorb the costs of a crisis created by industries that remain shielded from accountability.

The question now is not whether this Government serves the people. It is whether our political system, as currently structured, is even capable of doing so.

THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE, BUT NOT ON THE FRONT PAGE OF THE NZ HERALD

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 25 May 2026 03:35:20 +0000

Argentina has recently been convulsed by enormous anti-austerity protests while in Bolivia the US-backed Government continues to face a wave of protests and is on the point of collapse. But this resistance against austerity and US-aligned elites has barely registered in the New Zealand corporate media.

THE NEW ZEALAND corporate media, like its counterparts across the Western world, remains fixated on the actions, anxieties and geopolitical theatre of the declining American empire. Every tremor in Washington is treated as a global earthquake; every manoeuvre of US foreign policy is framed as the natural centre of world affairs. Yet the resistance to that same imperial order—the uprisings, the mass movements, the democratic revolts against austerity and US-aligned elites—barely registers. It is a silence so consistent, so patterned, that it can only be understood as ideological. The media does not merely fail to report these struggles; it actively filters them out, ensuring that the public sees only the world through the eyes of power.

Take Argentina. If you relied solely on the corporate press, you would have no idea that the country has been convulsed by enormous anti-austerity protests, sparked by President Javier Milei’s plan to slash funding to the public university system. Hundreds of thousands of students, workers, and academics have taken to the streets in defence of one of Latin America’s most important public institutions. These are not fringe demonstrations. They are mass mobilisations against a government openly committed to dismantling the social state and subordinating national life to the whims of the market. Yet in New Zealand, the coverage has been minimal.

The irony is that ACT leader David Seymour has openly praised Milei’s hardline austerity programme. You would think that a foreign leader whose policies are admired by a senior member of New Zealand’s governing coalition might warrant some scrutiny. But that would require the media to acknowledge the global backlash against neoliberalism, and that is a narrative it has no interest in amplifying.

Bolivia is an even starker example. The US-backed government of President Rodrigo Paz is facing a wave of protests so large and so sustained that it is teetering on the edge of collapse. Demonstrators have mobilised against policies that have enriched the country’s elites while pushing ordinary people back into poverty. They are also protesting Paz’s decision to restore diplomatic relations with the United States and Israel—moves widely seen as capitulations to foreign interests at the expense of national sovereignty.

Former president Evo Morales and the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), who governed from 2006 to 2019, have condemned the Paz administration in unambiguous terms. Morales has described it as a government that “protects business owners, bankers and agro-industrial elites while ordinary people once again stand in lines, go into debt and endure hunger.” His critique reflects a widespread sentiment among Bolivians who feel betrayed by a government that promised stability but delivered inequality and repression.

And yet, in the New Zealand media, Bolivia barely exists. There is no sustained reporting, no analysis, no attempt to explain why a country of 12 million people is in open revolt. Instead, far more attention is devoted to the latest US accusations against Cuba—a country that Washington has spent decades trying to isolate and destabilise. The pattern is unmistakable: movements that challenge US hegemony are ignored, minimised or framed as threats, while governments aligned with US interests are treated as legitimate, stable and uncontroversial, no matter how unpopular or repressive they may be.

This is not simply a failure of journalism. It is a structural feature of corporate media, which takes its cues from the geopolitical priorities of the United States and its allies. When Washington signals that a government is “friendly,” coverage becomes deferential. When Washington signals that a government is “hostile,” coverage becomes adversarial. And when people rise up against US-aligned regimes, the media looks away.

New Zealand’s media ecosystem is not unique in this regard, but it is particularly vulnerable to these distortions because it lacks independent foreign bureaus and relies heavily on international wire services—most of which are based in the US or Europe. The result is a worldview in which the struggles of the Global South are filtered through the lens of Western power. The uprisings in Argentina and Bolivia are not invisible because they are unimportant; they are invisible because they challenge the narrative that US-style capitalism is the natural order of the world.

This silence has consequences. It narrows the political imagination. It prevents the public from seeing that alternatives exist, that people across the world are fighting back against austerity, privatisation and imperial domination. It reinforces the idea that resistance is futile and that the only political movements worth paying attention to are those sanctioned by Washington.

But the world is changing, whether the media acknowledges it or not. The American empire is in decline, and its ability to dictate the political trajectory of other nations is weakening. The uprisings in Argentina and Bolivia are part of a broader global realignment—a rejection of the neoliberal order that has dominated the last four decades. These movements deserve attention not only because they are newsworthy, but because they reveal the cracks in a system that has long been presented as inevitable.

If you want to understand the world as it actually is, you will not find it in the corporate press. You will have to look elsewhere—alternative media, independent journalists, social movements, and the voices of those who refuse to accept the narratives handed down by empire. The truth is out there, but you will not find it on the front page of the New Zealand Herald.

THE SELECTIVE SYMPATHY OF JULIET MOSES

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 20 May 2026 23:36:05 +0000

Juliet Moses has expressed her sympathy for the three people killed at a San Diego mosque on Monday. But the New Zealand Zionist has shown no such sympathy for the tens of thousands of innocent people killed in Gaza by the Israeli military.

FOR MORE than two years Juliet Moses, President of the Zionist-controlled New Zealand Jewish Council, has acted as one of the most unflinching New Zealand defenders of Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza. No matter how grotesque the violence, no matter how many bodies pile up beneath the rubble, Moses has found a way to justify it. Her public interventions have followed a predictable pattern: deny, minimise, deflect, and when all else fails, smear critics as 'antisemitic.' It is a strategy as tired as it is cynical, and it has worn thin with a public that has watched, in real time, the devastation of an entire people.

Moses has not merely defended Israel’s military actions; she has actively worked to delegitimise anyone — including many Jewish New Zealanders — who oppose them. Her extremism has become so entrenched that she now treats dissent within the Jewish community as a kind of heresy. Those who refuse to align themselves with Israel’s war are dismissed, patronised, or accused of betraying their own people. It is a grotesque inversion of reality: the people calling for an end to mass killing are painted as the problem, while those defending it claim the mantle of moral authority.

And yet, when three people were killed at a mosque in San Diego — reportedly influenced by the Christchurch terrorist — Moses took to X to express her sympathy. “Dreadful news,” she wrote. “And thinking of our Muslim community here, for whom this will bring back the worst memories and trauma.”

The hypocrisy is staggering. It apparently has not occurred to Moses that the Muslim community here is traumatised not only by the Christchurch massacre, but by the daily images of Gaza’s destruction — the very destruction she has spent two years defending. The same community she claims to be "thinking of” is watching, in horror, as tens of thousands of Palestinians are killed, maimed, starved, or buried alive. Their grief is not abstract. It is personal, immediate, and relentless. Yet Moses has shown no empathy for that suffering. Instead, she has rationalised it, sanitised it, and in some cases outright denied it.

We have to be clear: Juliet Moses and those who follow her Zionist ideology are no friends of Muslims. Moses sudden expression of sympathy rings hollow when placed alongside her unwavering support for a military campaign that has killed more than 75,000 Palestinians and injured over a 100,000. You cannot cheer on a war that has obliterated entire neighbourhoods, wiped out families, and left children orphaned, and then expect to be taken seriously when you claim to care about Muslim trauma. It is moral incoherence, to put it mildly, dressed up as compassion.

Moses’s record speaks for itself. In 2021, at He Whenua Taurikura — a conference supposedly dedicated to countering terrorism and violent extremism — she used her platform not to address the rise of white supremacist violence, but to launch yet another attack on supporters of Palestinian rights. She repeated her claim that a 2018 Auckland rally was “pro-Hezbollah” and “pro-Hamas,” despite offering no evidence. She had just described both organisations as terrorist groups, a framing that was met with shouts of “Free Palestine!” from the audience. The message was clear: people were tired of her attempts to conflate solidarity with terrorism.

Azad Khan of the Foundation Against Islamophobia and Racism put it bluntly: his group was “not going to sit there with dignity and listen to her say that.” And why should they? Moses’s comments were not only inflammatory; they were part of a long-running pattern of using the label “terrorism” to delegitimise any expression of Palestinian identity, resistance, or grief. It is a tactic that mirrors the worst excesses of the global “war on terror,” where entire populations were criminalised for daring to exist under occupation.

What Moses does not understand — and is probably incapable of understanding — is that defending genocide disqualifies you from claiming to stand for human rights, democracy, or community safety. You cannot throw up your hands in horror at an atrocity in San Diego while applauding a military campaign that has produced atrocity on an industrial scale. You cannot mourn the victims of one act of violence while excusing the victims of another simply because the perpetrators are your political allies.

This is not a matter of political disagreement. It is a matter of moral consistency. If you believe that the deliberate killing of civilians is wrong, then it is wrong whether it happens in a mosque in California or in a refugee camp in Gaza. If you believe that communities deserve safety, dignity, and freedom from fear, then that principle must apply to Palestinians as much as it applies to anyone else. Moses’s worldview cannot accommodate this basic truth, because her ideological commitments require her to see Palestinian suffering as either justified or irrelevant.

The result is a politics devoid of empathy, honesty, or accountability. It is a politics that weaponises trauma when convenient and dismisses it when it challenges the narrative. It is a politics that demands silence from those who have lost the most. And it is a politics that has no place in a society that claims to value justice.

Juliet Moses has made her position clear. She has chosen to defend the indefensible. She has chosen to attack those who stand against mass killing. She has chosen to align herself with a project of domination and dispossession. That's up to her. But she does not get to do so while pretending to speak for all Jewish people, and she does not get to cloak herself in the language of compassion when it suits her.

The rest of us have a responsibility to call this out. Because if we cannot name hypocrisy when it stares us in the face, then we have surrendered the very moral ground that allows us to oppose violence in all its forms.

AUSTERITY IS A POLITICAL CHOICE

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 19 May 2026 05:15:44 +0000

In pursuit of its austerity agenda, the Government has announced that thousands of public service jobs will be slashed. While it is defending the job cuts as 'fiscally responsible', it is a deliberate political choice that will deepen unemployment, undermine essential public services and inflict real harm on thousands of families already struggling in an era of rising economic insecurity. But there is an alternative to austerity. So why aren't we hearing more about it?

THE GOVERNMENT'S austerity agenda has always been an act of political theatre, but the latest announcement from Finance Minister Nicola Willis pushes that theatre into outright farce. Today’s declaration that thousands of public service jobs will be slashed—an estimated 8,700 roles in total—is being sold as fiscal responsibility. In reality, it is a deliberate political choice that will deepen unemployment, undermine essential public services, and inflict real harm on thousands of families already struggling in a period of rising economic insecurity. Behind every 'efficiency saving' is a person who will lose their livelihood, a household that will lose stability, and a community that will lose capacity.

The Government insists its hands are tied. It claims that the previous Labour Government left the books in such disarray that swinging cuts are the only option. This narrative is repeated endlessly: New Zealand is 'flat broke', the cupboard is bare, and the only responsible path is to shrink the state. But this is a myth—one that collapses under even the most basic scrutiny.

Economist Susan St John has been a clear voice exposing the intellectual dishonesty at the heart of the Government’s argument. The supposed 'fiscal black hole' only appears when the Government conveniently excludes the assets of the New Zealand Super Fund from its preferred measure of net debt. Those assets are projected to reach $104 billion by 2028/29 and grow to around 40 percent of GDP by 2036. Internationally, the IMF does include NZ Super Fund assets when assessing net debt, and under that measure New Zealand is not a high-debt country at all. It is, in fact, one of the lowest public-debt countries in the developed world.

St John asks the obvious question: how can excluding the NZ Super Fund from net debt calculations possibly be justified? For a time, Labour used the correct measure. National abandoned it. Was this simply to manufacture a sense of crisis and justify lower public spending? It is difficult to avoid that conclusion. When you remove tens of billions of dollars from the balance sheet, of course the numbers look worse. But that is not economic reality—it is political manipulation.

Commentator Bernard Hickey has made similar points in conversation with Stuff columnist Verity Johnson, noting that the Government’s narrative of scarcity is a political construction, not an economic inevitability. The insistence that 'there is no alternative' to austerity is not a neutral assessment of fiscal conditions. It is a defence of entrenched interests. It protects wealth at the top while shifting the burden onto those least able to bear it.

Because the truth is simple: austerity is always a choice. It is never an inevitability. A government that wanted to maintain public services, invest in people, and strengthen the social infrastructure of the country could do so. It could raise taxes on the wealthy and on large corporations. It could close loopholes, regulate financial institutions properly, and ensure that those who profit most from the economy contribute proportionately to its upkeep. It could invest in job creation rather than job destruction. It could choose a different path.

But this Government will not. And the uncomfortable reality is that a Labour-led Government would almost certainly not select that path either. The grip of neoliberal orthodoxy on parliamentary politics remains iron-tight. It is not so long ago that the Ardern-led Labour Government pursued its own version of austerity—freezing public sector wages, underfunding essential services, and refusing to consider meaningful tax reform. The Green Party, despite its rhetoric, ultimately acquiesced. There is no reason to believe that a future Labour-Green arrangement would behave differently. The boundaries of 'acceptable' economic policy remain policed by the same assumptions that have dominated since the 1980s: low taxes, small government, and the belief that the market knows best.

This is why the current moment feels so bleak. The Government is inflicting deep cuts on the public service at the very moment when unemployment is rising, when families are struggling with the cost of living, and when public services—from health to education to welfare—are already stretched to breaking point. Yet the official opposition offers little more than a gentler version of the same framework. The political class debates the pace of austerity, not its legitimacy. They argue over the size of the state, not its purpose. They quibble over fiscal rules while ignoring the human consequences of those rules.

Meanwhile, the public is told to accept the unacceptable. We are told that job losses are unfortunate but necessary. We are told that public services must shrink because 'the country can’t afford them'. And we are told that inequality is regrettable but unavoidable. But none of this is true. These are political decisions dressed up as economic inevitabilities.

The tragedy is that New Zealand is not a poor country. It is a country with immense wealth—just not shared wealth. It is a country with the fiscal capacity to invest in its people—just not the political will. It is a country where the economic debate has been narrowed to such an extent that even modest alternatives are treated as radical.

The Government’s austerity programme is not about balancing the books. It is about reshaping the state to serve the interests of the wealthy and powerful. It is about weakening the public sector, undermining collective provision, and entrenching a model that has already failed generations of New Zealanders. And unless there is a political force willing to challenge that model—not just rhetorically, but structurally—the cycle will continue.

Austerity is not a necessity. It is a choice. And it is the wrong one.

VOTE LABOUR FOR A LABOUR-NATIONAL ALLIANCE!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 16 May 2026 02:47:00 +0000

This week Labour leader Chris Hipkins signalled that Labour's priority is not to challenge National but to work with it.

NEW ZEALAND is heading toward yet another grim general election, and the mood of the country reflects it. After years of economic stagnation, rising hardship, and a political class that seems incapable of imagining anything beyond the narrow confines of the market, voters are once again being told that their only choice is between two parties who differ more in tone than in substance. The economic status quo has failed working people, yet Labour’s pitch is not to overturn it, challenge it, or even question it. Instead, Labour is offering to 'manage' the same failing system slightly better than National. That is the full extent of its ambition.

This week, Labour leader Chris Hipkins made that reality even clearer. Hipkins openly floated the idea of forging a bipartisan arrangement with National after the election. His words were revealing: 'So what I’m offering now … is a very competitive election campaign but then an ability to say, ‘Okay, the election result has been delivered, the voters have had their say, for the next few years let’s work together to figure out how to actually move forward.'

There it is, laid out plainly. No talk of offering an economic alternative. No recognition that the neoliberal framework of the past four decades is the source of the crisis. No willingness to confront the structural failures that have produced soaring inequality, a cost-of-living crisis, and a generation locked out of secure housing. Instead, Hipkins is signalling that Labour’s priority is not to challenge National but to work with it. The message to voters is unmistakable: a vote for Labour is a vote for a Labour–National alliance in everything but name.

This is extraordinary even by Labour’s standards. For years the party has drifted steadily rightward, shedding any pretence of being a vehicle for transformative change. But Hipkins’ comments mark a new stage in that evolution. Or should that be devolution? Labour is no longer simply timid or risk-averse; it is now openly positioning itself as a partner to National in the management of the very system that is immiserating its own base. The differences between the two parties on economic policy have shrunk to the point of near-irrelevance. What separates them is not ideology but emphasis: Labour promises to feel your pain while National promises to ignore it. But both promise to keep the system exactly as it is.

This leaves voters with a bleak choice. On the one hand, a National Party committed to deepening the market-driven policies that have already failed. On the other, a Labour Party that has abandoned even the pretence of offering an alternative. The result is a political landscape in which the major parties are converging, not diverging. And Hipkins’ bipartisan overture only accelerates that convergence. If Labour is already signalling its willingness to work hand-in-glove with National, then what exactly is the point of voting Labour at all?

This also exposes, in the starkest possible terms, the failure of the Green Party’s election strategy. For years the Greens have tied themselves to Labour, insisting that their influence within a Labour-led government is the best path to progressive change. But if Labour is now openly contemplating cooperation with National, where does that leave the Greens? If Labour is willing to work with National, then by extension the Greens—who have tethered themselves to Labour—could find themselves indirectly propping up a Labour–National arrangement. Is that what Chloe Swarbrick and her colleagues intend to tell voters on the campaign trail? That a vote for the Greens could end up supporting a government that includes National?

The Greens have spent years insisting that their role is to 'pull Labour left.' But Labour has made it abundantly clear that it has no intention of being pulled anywhere. It is not being dragged to the right; it is sprinting there. And the Greens, by refusing to break with Labour or articulate an independent political identity, have trapped themselves in a position where their fate is tied to a party that has abandoned the very idea of systemic change.

The tragedy is that the country is crying out for an alternative. People know the system is broken. They know that tinkering around the edges will not fix the housing crisis, the cost-of-living crisis, or the climate crisis. They know that the political establishment has run out of ideas. Yet the parties that claim to represent progressive politics are offering nothing but more of the same. Labour is promising to manage the crisis; the Greens are promising to manage Labour.

And so we head into an election where the political imagination is narrower than ever. Where the major parties differ only in rhetoric. Where the prospect of a Labour–National alliance is floated as a sensible, even responsible, option. And voters are told that real change is impossible, unrealistic, or undesirable. It is a politics of resignation, not hope.

If Labour wants to campaign on being the better manager of a broken system, that is its choice. But voters deserve to know what that choice really means. A vote for Labour is increasingly indistinguishable from a vote for National. And if Labour is already preparing to work with National after the election, then the slogan writes itself: vote Labour for a Labour–National alliance.

MAIKI SHERMAN: THE VICTIM OF A POLITICAL HIT JOB

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 14 May 2026 09:09:42 +0000

Maiki Sherman's forced resignation as TVNZ's Political Editor is a warning that New Zealand’s media environment is becoming increasingly hostile to journalists who challenge the political right.

THE RESIGNATION of TVNZ Political Editor Maiki Sherman was, officially, a personal decision. Sherman said that, after days of public scrutiny and comment, her position had become 'untenable'.

Unofficially though, it has the unmistakable scent of a political hit job—one carried out not through a single coordinated conspiracy, but through a loose, opportunistic network of right-wing actors who share the same target and the same ideological instincts. In this case, the target was a high-profile Maori journalist whose reporting style and political framing were never going to be tolerated by those who believe the public broadcaster should reflect their worldview.

To be clear, there is no evidence of a smoke-filled room where right wing bloggers, lobbyists, and politicians plotted Sherman’s downfall. But New Zealand politics has never needed formal conspiracies to produce coordinated outcomes. What we have instead is a shadow ecosystem—an informal alliance of partisan bloggers, pressure groups, and sympathetic politicians—who amplify each other’s narratives, feed off each other’s outrage, and collectively generate enough noise to destabilise individuals they perceive as ideological threats. Sherman appears to be the latest casualty of this ecosystem.

This is the conclusion that Green MP Steve Abel has also arrived at. He commented on X: '…don't be distracted by the slur but pay attention to who is behind the witch-hunt to get rid of her. Something is rotten in the State of New Zealand, and it is right wing politicians targeting journalists and the public media, because who controls the media controls the mind, and they know too well that six months out from an election that is too close to call. If they can get rid of the senior political editor for TVNZ, it is to their advantage. The targeting of Maiki Sherman had the taint of a witch hunt from the get-go. Nicola Willis lined up with a far right blogger to explicitly break Chatham House rules and reveal a cherry-picked detail of an interaction between Sherman and Lloyd Burr, a fellow journalist, that happened at a booze-up in her own office.'

The pattern is familiar. First comes the blog-driven outrage, often framed as 'concern' about bias or professionalism. In this case, blogger Ani O’Brien played a conspicuous role, pushing the idea that Sherman’s reporting was compromised or politically slanted. O'Brien is the General Manager of the right-wing agitprop group The Campaign Company. It was founded by Jordan Williams of the Taxpayers Union.

In 2025 The Campaign Company was hired by the Sensible Sentencing Trust to orchestrate a campaign against the Green Party, aimed at discrediting and ridiculing its views on prison reform. Bryce Edwards of the Democracy Project noted: 'The entire episode had a strong whiff of the “Dirty Politics” era – anonymous smear campaigns and unscrupulous political hit-jobs conducted at arm’s length from the politicians who benefit.'

It was Ani O'Brien who was also central to driving a smear campaign against Green MP Benjamin Doyle, which eventually drove him out of Parliament. The allegations, made by O'Brien and repeated by others, were proven to be entirely without foundation.

O'Brien is also on the council of the right wing Free Speech Union, widely considered to be a Zionist front group. In 2024 O'Brien joined fellow Zionists Juliet Moses and David Cumin in an attempt to smear Green Party co-leader Chloe Swarbrick as 'anti-Semitic' for opposing Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza.

O’Brien’s commentary on Maiki Sherman, predictably, was picked up and circulated by the usual constellation of right-wing social media accounts. The framing was simple: Sherman was not just wrong, but untrustworthy and she lacked integrity. O'Brien, in her column, made no mention of the racist slur that Lloyd Burr directed at Sherman.

Then comes the amplification from groups like the Taxpayers’ Union. For years, the Union has operated as a de facto political messaging arm for the right, using its platform to attack public institutions, public servants, and public broadcasters. Its interventions are always framed as 'accountability', but the targets are remarkably consistent: anyone who challenges the ideological preferences of the political right. Sherman’s reporting, especially on issues involving Maori politics, public spending, or the coalition’s internal tensions, made her an obvious target.

Finally, the political wing entered the picture. The ACT Party, which has long cultivated a symbiotic relationship with both the Taxpayers’ Union and right-leaning online commentators, seized on the narrative. ACT MP's have repeatedly accused public broadcasters of left-wing bias, despite offering little evidence beyond their own ideological discomfort. When Sherman became the subject of online attacks, ACT figures were quick to echo the criticisms, reinforcing the idea that she was part of a broader problem within TVNZ. The message was unmistakable: journalists who do not align with ACT’s worldview should expect scrutiny, pressure, and political consequences. Not uncoincidentally, ACT leader, David Seymour, has also attacked Radio New Zealand for hiring a left-leaning journalist, John Campbell, to co-host its flagship breakfast show, Morning Report.

Individually, none of these actions prove coordination. But collectively, they form a pattern—a pattern that has become increasingly common in New Zealand politics. A blogger lights the match, a lobby group fans the flames, and a political party pours accelerant on the fire. The result is a manufactured scandal, a public pile-on, and a journalist left isolated, undermined, and ultimately pushed out.

Labour MP Willie Jackson says Sherman was 'hounded' out of her job simply for responding to racist abuse directed at her during an argument that occurred well over a year ago:

'… Maiki gets ripped to pieces particularly by the right wing with comparisons of her being made to sex deviant and monster Jimmy Saville and Adolf Hitler, that’s how crazy and bloody ridiculous this has become. We had Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour going after her and the Platform's Sean Plunket consistently berating and condemning her. The attacks on a political editor in this country were unprecedented. '

Sherman’s resignation must also be understood within the broader context of a media environment under extraordinary strain. TVNZ is bleeding staff, funding, and institutional confidence. Public broadcasting is being reshaped by a government that has made no secret of its hostility toward what it perceives as 'liberal elites' in the media. In such an environment, journalists who become the focus of political attacks are left with little protection. Management, fearful of further controversy, often opts for silence. Colleagues, worried about their own job security, keep their heads down. The result is a chilling effect that extends far beyond any single resignation. In the case of Maiki Sherman, Willie Jackson says that 'TVNZ let her down so badly, deciding obviously with pressure from this government, that her position was untenable.'

What makes Sherman’s case particularly troubling is the racial dimension. Maori journalists have long faced disproportionate scrutiny, accusations of bias, and targeted harassment. When a Maori political editor becomes the subject of a right-wing pressure campaign, it is impossible to ignore the historical and structural forces at play. The attacks on Sherman were not just about her reporting—they were about who is allowed to hold power in the media, whose perspectives are considered legitimate, and whose presence is treated as inherently political.

The shadow network that contributed to Sherman’s departure thrives on plausible deniability. Each actor can claim independence. Each can insist they were merely 'raising concerns'. Each can point to the others and say, 'We didn’t coordinate.' And technically, they may be right. But the effect is indistinguishable from coordination. The ecosystem functions as a single organism, even if its parts never meet.

Sherman’s resignation is not just a loss for TVNZ. It is a warning that New Zealand’s media environment is becoming increasingly hostile to journalists who challenge the political right. It's a warning that public broadcasters are vulnerable to orchestrated pressure campaigns. And it's a warning that the country’s democratic discourse is being shaped not by open debate, but by shadow networks that operate in the grey zones of influence.

If this is the new normal, then the cost will not just be borne by journalists like Maiki Sherman. It will be borne by the public, who deserve a media landscape free from intimidation, manipulation, and ideological sabotage.

BRITISH LOCAL ELECTIONS: LABOUR VOTE COLLAPSES, GREEN SUPPORT SURGES

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 10 May 2026 08:45:00 +0000

Surging electoral support for Zack Polanski and the UK Green Party.

Will the New Zealand Green Party learn any lessons from the electoral success of the UK Green Party? Or will it continue to tag along behind a Labour Party offering nothing but more of the same?

KEIR STARMER looks like a man staggering through the wreckage of his own project, insisting everything is fine while the ground crumbles beneath him. After Labour’s vote collapsed in the UK local elections, any leader with a grip on political reality might have paused, reflected, or at least pretended to hear the message sent by millions of voters. Instead, Starmer doubled down on centrism — the very centrism that has drained Labour of purpose, hollowed out its support, and left working-class communities colder and poorer than before.

The British electorate hasn’t merely drifted away from Labour; they have abandoned it. Losing nearly 1,500 council seats is not a mid-term wobble. It is a political indictment. And it is not difficult to understand why. Labour has done little more than defend an economic status quo that has failed working people for decades. Wages stagnate, public services crumble, and inequality widens — yet Labour’s leadership clings to the fantasy that technocratic tinkering will somehow deliver transformation. Add to that Labour’s active support for Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza — a stance that has alienated huge swathes of its own base — and the collapse becomes even easier to explain.

Inside Labour, the knives are out for Starmer. But the idea that replacing him with another centrist functionary will fix anything is delusional. The problem is not the man; it is the politics he represents. Starmer is simply the most polished representative of a Labour establishment that spent years sabotaging Jeremy Corbyn — a leader who did offer real change, who did articulate a break with neoliberalism, and who did inspire millions. Those who undermined Corbyn now reap the consequences of their own cowardice. They hollowed out the party’s soul, and now the shell is collapsing.

Rachel Reeves, the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, herself once understood the scale of the crisis. In 2018, she wrote that Britain was divided, that people had lost faith in politics, and that Labour needed a new economic settlement rooted in the everyday lives of ordinary people. Yet in government, Reeves and Starmer have delivered none of this. Instead of a new settlement, they have offered warmed-over market orthodoxy. Instead of rebuilding trust, they have deepened disillusionment. And into that vacuum steps Nigel Farage and Reform — the predictable, dangerous consequence of a political class that refuses to confront the failures of the economic model it worships.

But while Labour sinks, something else is happening. The Green Party has surged — not by pandering to the centre, but by speaking directly to the everyday concerns of ordinary people and offering a platform that can reasonably be described as ecosocialist. Under Zack Polanski’s leadership, the Greens have achieved extraordinary things in under a year: membership surpassing 230,000, a historic by-election victory, and now 587 local council seats — a gain of 441. This is not a protest vote. It is a realignment. It is evidence that when a party speaks clearly, boldly, and with conviction, people respond.

The Greens have not frightened voters away. Quite the opposite. It is the dismal centrism of Starmer’s Labour that voters are fleeing. The British electorate is not allergic to radicalism; it is allergic to stagnation, managerialism, and the suffocating politics of there 'is no alternative' and 'lesser evilism'.

And here in New Zealand, we should pay attention. Our own centrist duopoly stumbles on, with both major parties unable to inspire even a third of the electorate that still bothers to vote. We live in a country where the Deputy Prime Minister leads a party polling under 10 percent — a symptom of a political system running on fumes. Yet the Green Party here has failed to capitalise on the same mood for change that is reshaping politics abroad.

Commentator Bryce Edwards warned last November that compared to figures like Polanski in the UK or Zohran Mamdani in New York, the New Zealand left is timid, stuck in the past, and unwilling to embrace the anti-establishment radicalism that speaks to people living through a broken economic system. Six months later, with a general election looming, nothing has changed. Instead of becoming the advocate for transformative politics, the Greens have tethered themselves to Labour — a Labour Party that long ago abandoned any pretence of challenging neoliberalism. By doing so, the Greens are not offering an alternative; they are helping to prop up the very status quo their voters want to escape. Its leadership should be ashamed of themselves.

The lesson from Britain is not subtle. When the centre collapses, people look for parties that offer clarity, courage, and a break with the failed economic consensus. Labour refused — and was punished. The Greens stepped forward — and were rewarded. New Zealand’s Greens face the same choice. They can continue to orbit Labour, hoping for scraps of influence in a government committed to managing decline. Or they can seize the political moment, articulate a bold ecosocialist alternative, and speak to the many, many people who know the system is broken and want something better.

History is not kind to parties that mistake caution for wisdom. The British Labour Party is learning that the hard way. The question now is whether the New Zealand Greens will learn from Labour’s collapse — or repeat it.

DAVID SEYMOUR IS SEEKING TO UNDERMINE PUBLIC BROADCASTING

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 07 May 2026 10:25:00 +0000

Act leader David Seymour's attack on Radio New Zealand and Morning Report co-presenter John Campbell, is an attempt to intimidate the state broadcaster at a time when the coalition government is politically vulnerable and increasingly desperate.

THE COALITION government’s polling collapse has produced many strange political contortions, but David Seymour’s latest outburst against Radio New Zealand is remarkable even by his standards. With the government staring down the barrel of a possible election defeat, Seymour has chosen to launch an extraordinary attack on the state broadcaster for the apparent crime of hiring a journalist he doesn’t like. The appointment of John Campbell as co-presenter of Morning Report should be unremarkable in any functioning democracy. Instead, it has become the latest front in Seymour’s ongoing war against public broadcasting.

Seymour is not just any critic. As a shareholding minister in both RNZ and TVNZ, he sits in a position of direct influence over the very institutions he is now publicly berating. That alone should give New Zealanders pause. But Seymour has gone further, declaring that Campbell’s appointment should have been 'out of the question' because of 'the kinds of things' he has previously written. The implication is unmistakable: journalists who have criticised the ACT Party should be disqualified from senior roles in public media. For a politician who endlessly postures as a defender of free speech, the hypocrisy is almost too obvious to point out.

Campbell’s supposed offence is that he has, in the past, written critically about ACT and suggested its leadership was 'out of ideas'. In any healthy media environment, such commentary would be considered routine political analysis. But Seymour’s reaction reveals something deeper: he is not interested in free speech as a principle, only as a weapon. When ACT supporters or right-wing commentators attack their political opponents, Seymour celebrates it as robust democratic debate. When a liberal journalist expresses an opinion he dislikes, Seymour suddenly discovers a need for political intervention.

His threat to change the composition of the RNZ board 'with the aim of changing RNZ’s direction' is not subtle. It is a declaration that the government intends to reshape public broadcasting to better reflect its own ideological preferences. This is precisely the kind of political interference that public service media around the world are struggling to resist. From the BBC to NPR to the ABC, governments have increasingly sought to starve public broadcasters of funding, intimidate them into compliance, or stack their boards with loyalists. Seymour’s comments place New Zealand squarely within that global trend.

What makes this attack even more absurd is that RNZ has hardly been a bastion of radical dissent in recent years. If anything, it has become more cautious, more conservative, more deferential to the government of the day. Its coverage of Israel’s assault on Gaza is a case in point. While international human rights organisations, UN experts, and much of the global South have described Israel’s actions as genocide, RNZ has largely avoided the term. It has often appeared to be looking over its shoulder, anxious not to offend official sensibilities. Yet even this level of timidity is apparently too much for Seymour, who cannot tolerate the presence of a single liberal journalist in a prominent role.

The irony is almost too rich: Seymour chose to launch his tirade on The Platform, a right-wing online station founded by former Morning Report presenter Sean Plunket. The Platform makes no secret of its political loyalties. It is openly partisan, proudly ideological, and consistently sympathetic to the coalition government and the ACT Party. This, it seems, is the kind of media environment Seymour prefers—one where journalists cheerlead for the government rather than scrutinise it.

He has also never expressed concern about Newstalk ZB’s reliably favourable coverage of the coalition, nor about the broader right-wing media ecosystem that amplifies ACT’s talking points daily. Bias is only a problem, it seems, when it leans left.

Seymour’s attack also serves as a convenient distraction from the government’s mounting failures. While New Zealanders grapple with a cost-of-living crisis, rising inequality, and the accelerating impacts of climate change, the coalition has offered little beyond austerity, deregulation, and culture-war theatrics. Instead of addressing the structural issues driving hardship, Seymour has fixated on RNZ and TVNZ as though public broadcasting were the country’s most urgent issue. It is a classic political manoeuvre: when you cannot solve the real crises, manufacture a fake one.

Public broadcasting is not perfect, and RNZ certainly deserves criticism for its timidity and its reluctance to challenge entrenched power. But the solution is not to turn it into a government propaganda arm. A publicly funded broadcaster must be independent precisely because the state funds it. Its legitimacy depends on its ability to hold governments to account, not to flatter them. Seymour’s vision—an RNZ whose board is reshaped to ensure ideological compliance—would destroy the very purpose of public media.

New Zealanders should be clear-eyed about what is happening. This is not a debate about one journalist. It is an attempt to intimidate a public institution at a moment when the government is politically vulnerable and increasingly desperate. Seymour’s message is unmistakable: dissent will be punished, criticism will be policed, and public broadcasting will be brought to heel.

RNZ may be funded by the state, but it does not belong to the government. It belongs to the public. And the public should reject any attempt—by Seymour or anyone else—to turn it into the megaphone of the coalition government.

THE ECONOMIC CRISIS IS A POLITICAL CRISIS

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 04 May 2026 08:17:00 +0000

New Zealand’s economic crisis is well-documented: rising living costs, stagnant wages, collapsing public services, and a generation locked out of stability. Commentators have spilled oceans of ink diagnosing the symptoms. But far less attention has been paid to the political crisis that sits beneath it. Verity Johnson has captured that contradiction with unusual bluntness.

POLL AFTER poll keeps circling back to the same bleak conclusion: most New Zealanders believe the country is heading in the wrong direction. The latest Stuff online survey, where more than 70 percent of respondents said they don’t believe either major party can make the country any better after the election, simply crystallises what has been simmering for years. It’s not just dissatisfaction with a government or frustration with an opposition, rather it’s a deeper, more corrosive sense that the political system itself has run out of answers.

Stuff columnist Verity Johnson has captured that mood with unusual bluntness. She writes that New Zealand is in the worst shape it has been 'in living memory', yet she sees no sign that Labour is prepared to offer anything resembling an economic alternative. Her indictment is stark: fuel insecurity, food insecurity, mass emigration, record hardship withdrawals from KiwiSaver, and a social fabric fraying into 'tissue paper'. And, she writes, after two years of crisis, Labour still has 'nothing to say'.

That silence is not accidental. It reflects a party that long ago abandoned any ambition to challenge the economic model it inherited. When Labour finally releases its election policies, they will be modest, technocratic, and framed around the same managerial logic that has dominated the party for decades. The pitch will be familiar: Labour, not National, is the safer pair of hands to run the market economy. But that is not a vision of a better future, it is simply a plea for continuity dressed up as competence.

For many (including this writer), the hope was that the Green Party might step into the vacuum. Chloe Swarbrick has been one of the few high-profile politicians willing to name neoliberalism as the root of the crisis. But, unfortunately, the party’s direction has not been shaped by her views but by the centrist instincts of her fellow co-leader Marama Davidson, who has consistently signalled comfort with aligning the Greens to Labour. That alignment, tested during the Ardern years, produced little more than incrementalism and a handful of policy concessions. It did not produce structural change. It did not produce a break with the economic orthodoxy. And it did not produce the political alternative so many voters are now searching for. But Marama Davidson, apparently, is more than happy to drag the Green Party down this road again.

New Zealand’s economic crisis is well-documented: rising living costs, stagnant wages, collapsing public services, and a generation locked out of stability. Commentators have spilled oceans of ink diagnosing the symptoms. But far less attention has been paid to the political crisis that sits beneath it. The crisis is not simply that governments are failing to fix the economy. It is that the political class has lost the capacity—or the will—to imagine anything beyond the narrow parameters of the system that created the crisis in the first place.

The parliamentary parties are locked into a competition over who can better administer a failing model. National promises discipline and efficiency. Labour promises compassion and competence. The Greens promise influence at the Cabinet table. But none of them are offering a way out of the structural conditions that have produced inequality, insecurity, and stagnation. None of them are proposing to redistribute power or wealth. None of them are challenging the dominance of markets over public life. Instead, they offer tweaks, adjustments, and minor recalibrations—tinkering with the settings of a machine that is already broken.

This is why the electorate is so deeply disillusioned. It is not apathy. It is not ignorance but recognition. People can see that the system is not working for them, and they can see that the parties vying for their votes are not prepared to confront the reasons why. The media, meanwhile, continues to frame politics as a series of personality clashes, leadership dramas, and tactical manoeuvres. But beneath the noise, the centre of the political spectrum has collapsed. Voters are not drifting aimlessly. They are looking for an alternative that does not exist within the current parliamentary landscape.

The danger is that this vacuum becomes fertile ground for reactionary populism. When mainstream parties refuse to challenge the status quo, others will step forward to exploit the anger and frustration. But populism, too, offers no structural alternative. It channels discontent without transforming its causes. It promises disruption but delivers only a different flavour of the same economic orthodoxy.

New Zealand is not suffering from a lack of ideas. It is suffering from a lack of political courage. The crises we face—economic, social, ecological—are not inevitable. They are the result of political choices made over decades. And they can be undone by political choices made now. But that requires parties willing to break with the orthodoxy, not manage it. It requires leaders willing to articulate a vision of a different kind of economy, not a more compassionate version of the same one. It requires a political movement rooted in the lived realities of ordinary people, not the comfort of the political centre.

Until such a movement emerges, the polls will continue to show what they show now: a country that knows something is fundamentally wrong, but sees no one in Parliament prepared to do anything about it. The economic crisis is real. But the political crisis—the crisis of imagination, of courage, of alternatives—is what keeps us trapped. And unless that crisis is confronted, the next election will offer little more than a choice between two managers of the same failing system.

PETER GABRIEL: WE WON'T STAND DOWN

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 03 May 2026 12:56:00 +0000

This is not the way we want to live

It's not the way it has to be
This is not the way we want to live

It's not the way it has to be

[Chorus]
But we won't stand down
Until there's something better showing on the ground
No, we won't stand down
Until the job is done

'We Won't Stand Down' (Bright side mix) was released on May 1 and is the fifth song from Gabriel's forthcoming album o/i. Gabriel hopes the song will inspire people to take action toward justice and democracy.

'It's really a song to encourage some form of activism,' he says. 'I think people generally respond much better to positive pictures of what’s coming than they do when they are bombarded and scared by negative ones. We are much more likely to engage if we feel hope. Right now, we don't see so many positive visions of the future, at least they're not being projected so strongly as the negative, so I think it's really important that we start looking for visions to which we can aspire and looking for people who can provide that.'

MAY 1: THERE IS STILL A WORLD TO WIN

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 12:20:00 +0000

May 1, International Workers' Day, reminds us that there is still a world to win.

MAY DAY, International Workers' Day, has always been more than a date on the calendar. For socialists, it is a celebration of struggle, sacrifice, and internationalism—a reminder that the rights working people take for granted were not gifted by benevolent elites but won through confrontation, organisation, and collective courage. Yet in most of the mainstream media, May 1 passes with barely a whisper, or ignored altogether. Even some so-called 'progressives', who have made their peace with the status quo, prefer not to talk about it. That silence is not accidental. It reflects a political culture that prefers to forget the radical origins of the day and the ongoing relevance of the struggles it symbolises.

May Day was born in the fires of the 1886 Haymarket uprising in Chicago, when workers demanding the eight-hour day were met with police repression, mass arrests, and the execution of labour organisers. It became a global day of resistance precisely because it exposed a universal truth: the ruling class will always defend its power, and working people will always have to fight to reclaim their dignity. Rosa Luxemburg, one of the most influential socialist thinkers of the early twentieth century, understood this deeply. For her, May Day was not a ritual but a rehearsal for revolution—a moment when the working class recognised itself as a force capable of reshaping the world. Luxemburg insisted that the struggle for liberation could never be confined to parliaments or polite debate. It required mass action, solidarity across borders, and a refusal to accept the inevitability of exploitation.

That spirit is urgently needed today. The world is living through a period of profound crisis: widening inequality, ecological breakdown, authoritarian resurgence, and wars that expose the brutal logic of imperial power. Nowhere is this clearer than in Gaza and Lebanon. Israel has committed genocide in Gaza and humanitarian organisations, journalists, and international bodies have documented massive civilian casualties, the destruction of homes and infrastructure, and severe shortages of food, water, and medical supplies. Communities in southern Lebanon have also faced deadly strikes, displacement, and the destruction of civilian areas, with local and international media reporting significant casualties, including children.

For many people around the world, these events are not distant tragedies but part of a shared struggle against domination, militarism, and the devaluation of human life. May Day, in its original meaning, insists that the fight for justice is indivisible. The same structures that exploit workers in factories and warehouses are often intertwined with the geopolitical systems that fuel conflict, occupation, and displacement. The same logic that treats labour as disposable treats civilian lives as collateral damage. The same concentration of wealth and power that undermines democracy at home supports militarised policies abroad.

This is why May Day matters now more than ever. It reminds us that solidarity is not selective. It cannot stop at national borders or be limited to those whose suffering is politically convenient. The socialist tradition has always insisted that the liberation of one people is bound up with the liberation of all. Luxemburg herself warned against the nationalism and militarism of her time, arguing that working people had no interest in wars waged for the benefit of empires. Her critique resonates today in the calls from activists, trade unionists, and ordinary citizens who demand an end to violence and a commitment to justice for all communities affected by conflict.

May Day also speaks to the power of collective action. Around the world, workers continue to organise for fair wages, safe conditions, and democratic control over their workplaces. Teachers, nurses, transport workers, and countless others have taken strike action in recent years, often in the face of political hostility and media indifference. Their struggles echo the demands of the Haymarket workers: the right to live with dignity, to have a voice in shaping society, and to resist exploitation. These movements are not separate from the global calls for peace and justice. They are part of the same fight against systems that prioritise profit and power over human life.

The mainstream media’s neglect of May Day is therefore telling. It reflects a discomfort with the idea that ordinary people can challenge entrenched power. It reflects a preference for narratives that celebrate individual success rather than collective resistance. And it reflects an unwillingness to confront the connections between domestic inequality and international injustice. But the absence of coverage does not diminish the significance of the day. If anything, it underscores the need to reclaim its meaning.

May Day endures because it speaks to a universal aspiration: a world where people are not crushed by poverty, war, or exploitation; a world where solidarity is more than a slogan; a world where the powerful are held accountable. The struggles of workers in the nineteenth century, the writings of Rosa Luxemburg, and the contemporary movements for justice in places like Gaza and Lebanon all point to the same conclusion. Liberation is never handed down from above. It is built from below, through collective action, courage, and an unwavering commitment to human dignity.

That is why May Day still matters. It is not a commemoration of the past but a call to action for the present. It reminds us that the fight for justice is ongoing, interconnected, and global. And it challenges us to stand with all those who resist oppression, wherever they are, and to imagine a future shaped not by domination but by solidarity. There is still a world to win.

BOTH LUXON AND PETERS ARE UNITED IN THEIR LOYALTY TO THE UNITED STATES

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 23:15:00 +0000

The latest squabble between Christopher Luxon and Winston Peters only reveals a disagreement about how best to remain subservient to the United States.

IT MUST be an election year, because New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has reached for one of the oldest tools in his arsenal: destabilise your own government partner to strengthen your hand. His decision to release internal emails revealing that Prime Minister Christopher Luxon initially favoured 'more explicit public support of the US action' in the opening days of the United States and Israel’s attack on Iran is not just a political embarrassment for Luxon. It is a window into a government that has abandoned any pretence of an independent foreign policy and is now reduced to bickering over how loudly it should echo Washington.

Former Prime Minister Helen Clark has already cut through the spin. Luxon, she said, 'clearly' wanted to publicly back the attack, but he couldn’t because his foreign minister said, ‘you can’t do that’. The documents Peters has now aired show exactly that: Luxon’s instinct was to align New Zealand openly with the United States and Israel, while Peters and his advisers pushed for a more cautious line that stopped short of endorsing the strike. Peters’ position prevailed — but only in the narrowest, most technical sense. What emerged was not a principled stance, not a defence of international law, but a posture of silent inaction. A refusal to condemn the attack, paired with a refusal to admit support for it.

Silence, however, is not neutrality. In the face of the unprovoked and illegal strike on Iran — a strike that escalated a regional crisis and deepened the suffering of civilians across the Middle East — silence is complicity. It signals to Washington and Tel Aviv that New Zealand can be counted on to fall in line, whether explicitly or tacitly. Luxon may have been prevented from issuing the endorsement he wanted, but the government’s refusal to condemn the attack speaks just as loudly.

Under Peters’ tenure as foreign minister, New Zealand has consistently avoided criticising Israel, even as international bodies, human rights organisations, and legal experts describe the devastation in Gaza as genocidal. Peters is well known for his sympathies toward Israel, and the government’s record reflects that alignment. New Zealand has not joined the growing list of countries supporting proceedings against Israel at the International Criminal Court. It has not condemned the invasion of Lebanon. It has not spoken out against the United States and Israel’s strike on Iran. Instead, it has chosen the safety of silence — a silence that shields the powerful and abandons the victims.

The release of these emails also exposes the deeper fracture lines within the coalition as the election draws nearer. Luxon wants to present himself as a steady, statesmanlike leader, but the correspondence shows a prime minister willing to follow Washington’s lead even when his own foreign minister warns against it. Peters, for his part, is attempting to reassert his relevance by positioning himself as the guardian of caution and restraint — even though his broader record shows unwavering alignment with US strategic interests. The clash is not between independence and subservience, but between two different styles of managing the same underlying loyalty to American imperialism.

What the public sees is a government divided not over principle, but over presentation. Luxon wanted to say the quiet part out loud. Peters preferred to keep it quiet. But both approaches lead to the same destination: a foreign policy that bends toward the United States, that treats Israel as beyond reproach, and that abandons New Zealand’s long-standing commitment to international law when it becomes inconvenient.

New Zealand once prided itself on an independent foreign policy — a stance rooted in the belief that small states survive by upholding international law, not by attaching themselves to empires. That tradition has been steadily eroded. Under Luxon and Peters, it has been abandoned altogether. The government’s response to the US-Israel attack on Iran is only the latest example. Its silence on Gaza and Lebanon, its refusal to support international legal action, its unwillingness to criticise Washington even when American actions violate the very norms New Zealand claims to defend — all of it points to a country that has traded independence for alignment.

The irony is that the coalition’s internal squabbling only underscores this reality. The emails do not reveal a principled debate about New Zealand’s role in the world. They reveal a government arguing over how best to manage its subservience. Luxon wanted to be explicit. Peters wanted to be discreet. Neither wanted to challenge the United States. Neither wanted to defend international law. Neither wanted to stand with the victims of the strikes.

As the election approaches, the fractures within the coalition will widen. But on the question that matters most — whether New Zealand should remain a faithful supporter of US Empire — there is no fracture at all. Luxon and Peters may disagree on tone, but they agree on substance. And that substance is the abandonment of New Zealand’s independent foreign policy in favour of a quiet, compliant, and increasingly hollow imitation of sovereignty.

A HIERARCHY OF HUMAN WORTH

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 03:59:00 +0000

The latest attempt to assassinate Donald Trump was so feeble that it bordered on slapstick. But the American media still went into overdrive, providing saturation coverage. Meanwhile, real mass death — the kind occurring in Gaza and Lebanon — barely registers.

THE LATEST supposed attempt to assassinate President Donald Trump was so feeble it bordered on slapstick. The alleged attacker never got within sight of him. He didn’t even breach the ballroom where the annual White House Correspondents dinner was being held. Trump himself said the would-be assassin was stopped by security some fifty yards away. In truth, it was a security scare, not an assassination attempt — yet it was instantly elevated to the status of a national trauma.

And so the American media did what it does best: inflate spectacle into significance. CNN, Fox News, and the rest rolled out 24-hour coverage, filling airtime with hosts and pundits who had nothing new to say once the initial adrenaline wore off. The story became a self-licking ice cream cone — endlessly consumed, endlessly reproduced, endlessly empty. I suspect it left many Americans vaguely unsatisfied and has probably helped to encourage the speculation that the whole incident was staged to benefit the unpopular Trump administration.

Meanwhile, real mass death — the kind that doesn’t fit neatly into America’s political theatre — barely registers.

According to the Associated Press, more than 2,100 people have been killed in Lebanon in the past six weeks, including 172 children. These children were not caught on front lines. Many were killed inside their own homes, in strikes that hit apartment buildings where families were together at night or during daily routines.

The AP has described children crushed beneath the rubble of their own houses, as in the case of Taline Shehab, who was asleep when missiles collapsed the building above her, killing her and her father instantly. It has recounted the death of 11-year-old Jawad Younes, killed while playing football with his cousins, the missile striking his uncle’s home without warning. It has documented the killing of 10-year-old Zeinab al-Jabali, whose father had already lost a brother — also aged ten — to an Israeli missile in 1982.

These are not abstractions. These are named children, with families, histories, and futures that no longer exist.

Israel rarely names the target of these strikes, even as it acknowledges that children are being killed. The Israeli military claims it is hitting Hezbollah militants, but has provided little evidence to support its assertions about killing 'hundreds' of operatives. International law experts say it is impossible to assess proportionality — a core requirement of the laws of war — because Israel does not disclose who or what it is targeting.

Yet this sustained killing of civilians — including children asleep in their beds — receives only cursory mention in the Western press.

Gaza, for its part, has vanished almost entirely from mainstream coverage. Israel has barred international journalists from entering since October 2023, leaving Palestinian reporters to document what human rights groups and UN experts have labelled as genocide. Their reporting rarely appears on American television. It circulates instead on social media and on independent outlets, or not at all.

At least 235 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza in the past two years, deliberately targeted by the Israeli military.

The humanitarian collapse continues. UNICEF recently reported the killing of two drivers delivering clean water — attacks that worsen an already severe water shortage and fuel the spread of preventable disease in Gaza. But this, too, barely breaks through into the western mainstream media.

The contrast is obscene. A failed 'assassination attempt' that never came close to succeeding becomes a media obsession, but the killing of children in Lebanon — children crushed in their homes, children playing football — is treated as background noise.

This is not just a failure of western journalism. It is a hierarchy of human worth. The Western media has decided that these deaths do not matter. That Arab children do not matter. That the destruction of homes, families, and entire neighbourhoods is less important than a political spectacle in Washington.

The result is a public consciousness shaped not by reality, but by selective visibility.This is a world in which some lives are grievable and others disposable. A world in which the deaths of children in Lebanon and Gaza are treated as unfortunate but unimportant — tragedies that cannot be allowed to disrupt the narrative flow.

An AP report ends with a mother visiting her son’s grave, listening to warplanes overhead. 'The most precious thing, my heart, is gone' she says. 'What more can they do?'

The American media has already answered that question: they can pretend he never existed.

ISRAEL'S SYSTEMATIC TARGETING OF JOURNALISTS: THE WESTERN MEDIA REMAINS SILENT

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 04:08:00 +0000

This week Israel killed Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil. She was the ninth Lebanese journalist killed by the Israeli military this year. Israel has been engaged in the systematic targeting of journalists both in Gaza and Lebanon. But the western mainstream media has remained largely silent. New Zealand’s mainstream media has been no different. Television New Zealand and Radio New Zealand have avoided even acknowledging the mounting international legal findings that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute genocide. Their silence on the killing of journalists mirrors their silence on the wider devastation.

ISRAEL'S KILLING of Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil, a 43-year-old reporter for al-Akhbar, marks another grim milestone in a war that has turned journalism itself into a frontline. According to The Guardian Khalil died after what colleagues described as a 'sustained Israeli attack', with rescuers prevented from reaching her as she lay trapped beneath rubble. Before her death, she had spoken publicly about receiving threats from an Israeli phone number warning her to leave southern Lebanon or be killed. She refused to abandon her post.

Khalil was the ninth journalist killed in Lebanon this year. Just weeks earlier, three more were killed in a double-tap strike — a method long associated with deliberate targeting. These deaths are not isolated incidents. They form part of a pattern that has become impossible to ignore.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Israel has killed 259 media workers since October 7, 2023 — including 210 Palestinian journalists in Gaza. No other conflict since CPJ began tracking deaths in 1992 comes close to this scale. The numbers are so extreme that they reshape the meaning of journalism in wartime. In Gaza and Lebanon, reporting is not merely a profession; it is an act of survival. The bravery of these journalists has been extraordinary.

Israel insists it does not target journalists. Some of its defenders in Western media and political circles have gone further, claiming — without evidence — that many of the dead were 'Hamas fighters in disguise.' This narrative has been repeated in New Zealand by Juliet Moses, President of the Zionist-controlled New Zealand Jewish Council. She has echoed the claim that journalists killed in Gaza were militants. As with many of her other assertions, no proof has been offered.

International law is unambiguous. Article 79 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions states that journalists on dangerous professional missions 'shall be considered as civilians' and must be protected as such. Targeting them is a war crime. Yet in Gaza and now Lebanon, press vests and cameras have become markers of risk rather than protection.

The systematic killing of journalists serves a clear strategic purpose: to stop information from leaving the war zone. When reporters are silenced, atrocities unfold in the dark. When media workers are killed at a rate unprecedented in modern conflict, it becomes impossible to dismiss the pattern as accidental. Many analysts and human rights organisations argue that the assault on journalists fits within a broader framework of genocidal intent — not only the destruction of a people, but the destruction of their narrative, their witnesses, their chroniclers.

And yet, despite the scale of the killings, the Western mainstream media has remained largely silent. Outlets that loudly condemn attacks on journalists in Russia, China, or Iran have shown a striking reluctance to criticise Israel. There have been no major campaigns, no sustained coverage, no front-page editorials demanding accountability. The double standard is glaring.

New Zealand’s mainstream media has been no different. Neither commercial outlets nor public broadcasters have mounted any meaningful defence of Palestinian or Lebanese journalists. Organisations such as Television New Zealand and Radio New Zealand have avoided even acknowledging the mounting international legal findings that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute genocide. Their silence on the killing of journalists mirrors their silence on the wider devastation.

This absence of solidarity is not a minor oversight. It is a failure of the very institutions that claim to defend press freedom. When journalists are killed in record numbers and the profession’s supposed guardians look away, the message is unmistakable: some reporters’ lives matter more than others. Some deaths are tragedies; others are inconveniences.

Amal Khalil’s killing is not just another casualty in another war. It is part of a deliberate campaign to extinguish the eyes and ears of the world. When journalists are targeted, the truth is targeted. When the truth is targeted, the public is disarmed.

The question now is not whether Israel is killing journalists — the evidence is overwhelming. The question is why so many in the West, including here in New Zealand, refuse to speak when the very foundations of press freedom are under attack. Silence, in this context, is not neutrality. It is complicity.

THE STATE OF THE GREEN PARTY

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 07:54:00 +0000

The Green Party cannot pretend to be a progressive force for change while remaining tethered to a Labour Party that has shown no interest in systemic change.

DURING THEIR 'State of the Planet' speeches, the closest either Green Party co-leader came to offering anything resembling criticism of their likely coalition partner was Marama Davidson’s vague remark that New Zealand’s problems stem from 'successive governments'. It was a line so broad it dissolved into meaninglessness. And yet, if taken seriously, it would have to include the Ardern-led Labour government that Davidson herself defended with near-religious loyalty during her time as a minister outside Cabinet. That contradiction sits at the heart of the Greens’ ongoing strategic failure: they want the credibility of being a progressive force while refusing to confront the party that has every intention of doing nothing more than manage and protect the neoliberal status quo.

This is the problem the Greens cannot escape. They can announce a 'national electrification plan', they can talk about climate justice, they can gesture toward inequality, but the moment the election is over and Labour wins, they will inevitably find themselves in a Labour-led government where every meaningful policy is either diluted, delayed, or discarded. The Greens know this. Labour knows this. And voters—especially the disillusioned, the economically squeezed, the politically homeless—know this too.

Davidson’s comment about 'successive governments' was meant to sound bold, but it was carefully crafted to avoid naming Labour. It was a line designed to create the illusion of distance without risking the relationship. But the public can see the choreography. They can see that the Greens are already positioning themselves for another term of supply-and-confidence, another term of being the junior partner expected to smile politely while Labour governs from the centre. The Greens’ platform may be progressive on paper, but the party’s strategic posture ensures that its policies will always be subject to Labour’s veto.

This dynamic has played out repeatedly. The Greens campaign as if they are independent, transformative, and uncompromising. But once the coalition negotiations begin, the party’s leadership shifts into a mode of deference. The language becomes cautious. The criticisms evaporate. The urgency disappears. The Greens become the party of 'constructive engagement', which in practice means accepting Labour’s boundaries as immovable. The result is a cycle in which the Greens’ most ambitious ideas are treated as branding rather than commitments. This writer was hopeful these days were over under co-leader Chloe Swarbrick, but apparently not. Was it significant that Marama Davidson spoke first and made a speech that was notably longer than Swarbrick's?

What makes this even more striking is the contrast with the UK Green Party, which has recently experienced significant polling surges. In some polls, the UK Greens have even overtaken Labour. Commentators have noted that the UK Greens have not been shy about criticising the Labour Party, especially when Labour has embraced austerity narratives or retreated from climate commitments. The UK Greens have positioned themselves as a genuine alternative, not a satellite orbiting a larger party. They have built credibility by refusing to be absorbed into Labour’s gravitational pull.

Yet the New Zealand Greens, in referencing the UK Greens’ success, have avoided acknowledging this crucial difference. They want the glow of association without the substance of the strategy. They want to point to the UK Greens’ rise while refusing to adopt the political independence that made that rise possible. The New Zealand Greens cannot replicate the UK Greens’ momentum while remaining tethered to a Labour Party that has shown no interest in systemic change.

The Greens’ reluctance to challenge Labour is not simply a tactical error; it is a structural one. The party’s leadership has internalised the belief that Labour is the only viable partner, the only path to influence, the only route to relevance. This belief has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. By refusing to criticise Labour, the Greens reinforce Labour’s dominance. By reinforcing Labour’s dominance, they limit their own leverage. And by limiting their own leverage, they ensure that their policies remain negotiable rather than non-negotiable.

This is why Marama Davidson’s comment matters. It reveals the Greens’ unwillingness to confront the political reality that Labour is not a neutral actor but a party committed to managing capitalism, not transforming it. When Davidson speaks of 'successive governments', she collapses all administrations into a single blur, avoiding the uncomfortable truth that Labour has been a central architect of the very problems the Greens claim to oppose. Housing inequality, privatisation by stealth, underfunded public services, climate inaction—these are not abstract failures. They are the legacy of governments the Greens have repeatedly supported.

The Greens’ platform may not go far enough, but even the policies they do propose will be filtered through Labour’s ideological lens. And that lens has not shifted. Labour remains committed to fiscal orthodoxy, market-driven solutions, and incrementalism. The Greens can talk about transformative change, but as long as they refuse to challenge Labour directly, their policies will remain aspirational rather than achievable.

The party faces a choice. It can continue its current path—campaigning as a progressive force while governing as Labour’s compliant partner—or it can embrace the independence that has allowed the UK Greens to grow. But independence requires confrontation. It requires naming the problem. It requires acknowledging that Labour is not a vehicle for transformation but a barrier to it.

Until the Greens are willing to say that out loud, they will remain trapped in a cycle of self-limitation. And voters looking for a real alternative will continue to look elsewhere or simply give up on parliamentary politics altogether.

SHOOTING THE MESSENGER WON'T HELP NATIONAL

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 02:20:00 +0000

The problem for National is not Chris Luxon's personality or communication style. The problem is the government policies he promotes.

The LATEST POLL has simply confirmed what anyone paying attention could already see: the National-Party is haemorrhaging public support, sliding under thirty percent, and losing the confidence of its own MP's. This is not a mystery, nor is it a story about personalities or messaging failures. It is the entirely predictable consequence of an austerity agenda that has deepened the cost-of-living crisis, pushed more people into unemployment and homelessness, and left essential public services unable to function. A government that promised competence has delivered cuts; a government that promised stability has delivered insecurity. And now, as the political ground shifts beneath them, National MPs are once again whispering about leadership change, as if swapping out Chris Luxon for another face could reverse the consequences of their own economic programme. Christopher Bishop to the rescue? Er, no.

The problem for National is not Luxon’s personality or communication style. The problem is the substance of the project he leads. The Government has chosen to funnel resources upward, prioritising tax relief for the wealthiest while insisting that everyone else must tighten their belts. It has slashed budgets in health, education, welfare, and housing—sectors already stretched to breaking point—while insisting that 'efficiencies' will somehow compensate for the loss of funding. The result has been exactly what critics warned: longer hospital wait times, schools cutting staff, community organisations collapsing, and families pushed into desperation. When a government’s core economic philosophy is built on the belief that public investment is a burden rather than a necessity, the social fabric inevitably frays.

So it is hardly surprising that National is polling where it is. What is surprising—at least to the commentariat—is that the party’s MP's seem to believe that replacing Luxon would fix anything. Leadership speculation is a ritual in New Zealand politics, but in this case it is little more than panic dressed up as strategy. If the ship is sinking because of the holes drilled into its hull, changing the captain does not stop the water rushing in. National remains committed to the same neoliberal framework that has failed New Zealanders for decades. A new leader would still be offering the same old policies, the same cuts, the same trickle-down fantasies. It would be nothing more than rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.

Yet the real tragedy of this moment is not National’s decline. It is what fills the vacuum. Labour, despite offering little in the way of bold policy or ideological direction, has benefited from National’s troubles. But there is no real enthusiasm for Labour. The party is attracting barely a third of voters, and even those supporters are hardly energised. Labour’s pitch amounts to little more than 'we are not National', a message that may be enough to win disillusioned voters but does nothing to address the structural crises facing the country. Labour has shown no willingness to break with the neoliberal consensus it helped entrench. It is not offering a transformative vision, only a softer version of the status quo — and a few 'woke' social policies to placate the Wellington liberal intelligentsia.

This is the part of the story the media prefers to ignore: the centre of New Zealand politics has collapsed. Voters are not drifting left or right; they are drifting away from a political establishment that refuses to acknowledge the failures of the economic model it continues to defend. People are not apathetic—they are exhausted by a system that offers no real alternatives. The cost-of-living crisis, the housing crisis, the climate crisis, the crisis in public services—these are not natural disasters. They are the consequences of political choices made by successive governments, red and blue alike. At the upcoming general election, if recent history is any guide, more than 800,000 disillusioned folk will simply not vote.

In a functioning democracy, this moment would be fertile ground for a genuine alternative. The Green Party could have been that alternative and, for a while, co-leader Chloe Swarbrick was indicating that it would be. While its policies do show it wants a clear break with the neoliberal order, the problem is that it has tethered itself to Labour, adopting the role of junior partner rather than as an independent force. And Labour has no intention of breaking with the neoliberal status quo. The result is predictable: the Greens have slumped in the polls, falling below ten percent, unable to convince voters that they represent anything fundamentally different. When a party’s strategy is to help a right wing Labour Party get back into power, it should not be surprised when it begins to lose support.

And so, into the void steps New Zealand First, a party that thrives on discontent but offers no structural solutions. Its populism is loud, but its economic programme is little more than a defence of the existing order wrapped in nationalist rhetoric. It channels frustration without addressing its causes. It promises disruption but delivers continuity. For voters desperate for change, it is a political dead-end.

What this moment reveals is not simply the weakness of individual parties but the bankruptcy of the political centre itself. New Zealanders are living through a period of profound economic insecurity, and the parties that have governed for the past thirty years have no answers beyond the same policies that created the crisis. The electorate is signalling, loudly, that it wants something different. But the political system, as currently constituted, is incapable of providing it.

The question, then, is not who will lead National, or how Labour can maintain its polling advantage, or whether New Zealand First will siphon off protest votes. The question is who will articulate a real alternative—one that rejects austerity, rebuilds public services, confronts inequality, and invests in a future that works for the many rather than the few. Until such an alternative emerges, New Zealand’s political landscape will remain defined by disillusionment, drift, and the slow decay of a consensus that no longer commands public confidence.

ZIONISM IS THE NEW FASCISM

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 22:49:00 +0000

The world is seeing, in real time, what happens when an ethno-nationalist ideology is given unchecked military power.

ZIONISM'S DEFENDERS invariably claim it is a benign national movement, a simple expression of Jewish self-determination. But against the backdrop of Israel’s continuing assault on Gaza and Lebanon, the flattening of entire neighbourhoods, the mass displacement of civilians, and the mounting international legal findings that Israel has, and is, committing genocide, the ideological core of Zionism is being exposed with a clarity that can no longer be ignored. What is emerging is not the image of a democratic project gone astray, but the unmistakable contours of a modern ethno-nationalist movement that mirrors the logic, structure, and moral architecture of twentieth-century fascism.

This comparison is not made lightly. Fascism is one of the most charged words in political vocabulary. But it has a definition: a political ideology that fuses ethnic supremacy, militarism, expansionism, and the dehumanisation of an out-group into a single organising principle of the state. When examined through this lens, Zionism—particularly in its dominant political form—fits the pattern with disturbing precision.

At the heart of Zionism lies the belief that one ethnic group has a superior, exclusive claim to a land already inhabited by another people. This is not a fringe interpretation; it is the foundational premise of the movement. The idea that Jewish sovereignty must override the rights, presence, and political aspirations of Palestinians is not an aberration but a structural feature. From the earliest Zionist writings to the present-day statements of Israeli leaders, the same logic recurs: the land belongs to one people, and the other must be removed, contained, subordinated, or eliminated.

This is the ideological seed from which the current catastrophe in Gaza grows. When a state is built on the premise that one group’s supremacy is non-negotiable, the machinery of violence becomes not an emergency measure but a permanent necessity. The siege of Gaza, the repeated bombardments, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, the tens of thousands of innocent people killed, the displacement of millions—these are not deviations from Zionism but its logical expression. A political project that requires demographic domination will always resort to force when confronted with the presence and resistance of those it seeks to displace.

The parallels with classical fascism become even clearer when examining the rhetoric used to justify this violence. Fascist movements have always relied on the dehumanisation of the targeted group, portraying them as existential threats whose elimination is necessary for national survival. In the Israeli political mainstream, Palestinians are routinely described as 'human animals,' 'terrorists,' or a 'demographic threat.' Entire populations are treated as legitimate military targets. Civilian casualties are dismissed as unavoidable or, worse, as the responsibility of the victims themselves. This is the language of fascism: the erasure of moral distinction between combatant and child, between resistance and existence.

Militarism is another hallmark. Israel is not merely a state with a powerful military; it is a society organised around military supremacy. The army is central to national identity, political leadership, and economic power. Military solutions are privileged over diplomatic ones, and dissent—whether from Palestinians, Jewish Israelis, or international critics—is framed as treasonous. The fusion of state, military, and ideology is precisely what defined the fascist regimes of the twentieth century.

The expansionist dimension is equally undeniable. From the occupation of the West Bank to the repeated invasions of Gaza and Lebanon, the Israeli state has pursued territorial control through force for decades. Each new assault is justified as defensive, yet each results in further land seizure, further displacement, further entrenchment of domination. This is not self-defence; it is expansion under the guise of security, a pattern familiar to every student of fascist history.

What makes the present moment so stark is that the mask has slipped. For years, Zionism’s defenders could rely on the language of democracy, security, and historical trauma to shield the ideology from scrutiny. But the scale of destruction in Gaza, the open calls by Israeli officials for 'erasing” neighbourhoods, the documented targeting of civilians, journalists, and aid workers, and the International Court of Justice’s finding that Israel may plausibly be committing genocide have shattered that protective narrative. The world is seeing, in real time, what happens when an ethno-nationalist ideology is given unchecked military power.

None of this implicates Jewish identity itself. Jewish communities around the world include some of the most courageous critics of Zionism, people who reject the idea that their heritage should be used to justify domination or mass violence. The problem is not Judaism; it is a political ideology that claims to speak in its name while violating the ethical traditions many Jews hold dear.

To call Zionism a form of modern fascism is not rhetorical excess. It is an attempt to name a reality that has become impossible to ignore. When a state asserts ethnic supremacy, dehumanises an entire population, uses overwhelming military force to maintain domination, and treats international law as an inconvenience, the world has a responsibility to recognise the pattern. The stakes are not academic. They are measured in lives lost, families shattered, and a region pushed to the brink of permanent catastrophe.

The question now is whether the international community—and those within Israel who still believe in justice—are willing to confront the ideology driving this violence. Because if Zionism continues down its current path, the world will not only be witnessing a humanitarian disaster. It will be watching the consolidation of a twenty-first-century fascism, armed with nuclear weapons, backed by global powers, and convinced of its own moral infallibility.

NUCLEAR ANNIHILATION: THE FEAR IS REAL, BUT ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 04:34:00 +0000

Donald Trump's apocalyptic threat to obliterate Iran’s infrastructure and a 'whole civilisation', has only increased fears about nuclear war. The British philosopher Mark Fisher observed in his 2009 book Capitalist Realism that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. That observation feels painfully relevant now.

THE LAST SEVERAL days have shown how quickly the world can slide toward the unthinkable. When President Donald Trump threatened to bomb Iran 'back to the Stone Age,' the comment was not treated as a fringe outburst but as a plausible step in a spiralling geopolitical crisis. The situation escalated further when both China and Russia signalled that they would respond with nuclear force if Israel launched a nuclear strike on Iran. In a matter of days, the global conversation lurched from diplomatic tension to open speculation about nuclear war. For many ordinary people, including here in New Zealand, this has not been an abstract debate. Lifeline in New Zealand has reportedly heard from callers anxious about the possibility of a world-ending conflict. The fear is real, and it is widespread.

What has been equally striking is the way mainstream commentary has absorbed this possibility with a kind of grim pragmatism. On the business channel CNBC, a panel discussed the hypothetical annihilation of Iran not in terms of human loss or moral catastrophe but in terms of economic impact. The tone was clinical, even casual. The destruction of a nation was framed as a market event. It was a moment that captured something unsettling about the current political imagination: the ease with which the end of the world can be contemplated, and the difficulty of imagining anything beyond the economic system we inhabit.

The British philosopher Mark Fisher is often paraphrased as saying that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. That observation feels painfully relevant now. The liberal left, once a source of alternative visions, has largely retreated from the idea that another economic order is possible. The result is a political landscape where apocalyptic scenarios are easier to articulate than systemic change. We can picture nuclear fire, but not a different way of organising society.

This narrowing of imagination has consequences. When people cannot envision alternatives, they become resigned to the status quo, even when that status quo is driving the world toward catastrophe. Climate change, widening inequality, geopolitical instability—these are not isolated problems but symptoms of a system that prioritises profit over human survival. Yet the dominant political discourse treats these crises as unfortunate but inevitable, rather than as evidence that the system itself is failing.

The recent nuclear rhetoric exposes this contradiction in stark terms. The idea that global powers might trade nuclear threats—and that media commentators might analyse such threats through the lens of market performance—reveals a worldview in which human life is secondary to economic calculation. It is a worldview that treats civilisation as collateral in the pursuit of strategic or financial advantage. But it is a worldview that many people instinctively reject, even if they struggle to articulate an alternative.

This is where the words of Rosa Luxemburg, written more than a century ago, resonate with renewed urgency. Her stark formulation—'socialism or barbarism'—was not a slogan but a warning. She argued that societies facing deep crisis must choose between democratic, collective solutions or a descent into violence, authoritarianism, and destruction. The choice she described was not metaphorical. It was a recognition that systems built on exploitation and competition eventually reach breaking points.

Today, the phrase feels less like historical rhetoric and more like a description of our moment. The threats of nuclear war, the casualness with which they are discussed, and the inability of mainstream politics to offer transformative alternatives all point to a world drifting toward barbarism—not because people desire it, but because the structures guiding global decision-making are incapable of preventing it.

Yet the situation is not hopeless. The very anxiety people feel—the calls to Lifeline, the unease in workplaces and homes, the sense that something is fundamentally wrong—signals that the public is not indifferent. People recognise that the stakes are existential. They sense that the current trajectory is unsustainable. What is missing is a political project capable of channelling that concern into collective action and systemic change.

Imagining an alternative is not naïve; it is necessary. A society organised around human need rather than profit would approach global crises differently. It would treat nuclear threats as intolerable, not negotiable. It would prioritise diplomacy, cooperation, and demilitarisation over brinkmanship. It would recognise that the survival of any nation depends on the survival of all. And it would understand that economic systems are human creations, not natural laws.

The challenge is not simply to critique capitalism but to articulate and build a viable alternative—one grounded in democratic control of resources, equitable distribution of wealth, and a commitment to peace. Such a vision may seem distant, but history shows that systems change when people demand it. The first step is refusing to accept that the current order is the only possible one.

The world may feel closer to catastrophe than at any time in recent memory. But the choice Rosa Luxemburg described remains. Either societies move toward greater cooperation, equality, and collective responsibility, or they continue down a path marked by conflict, instability, and the ever-present threat of annihilation. The future is not predetermined. It depends on whether people believe that another world is possible—and whether they are willing to fight for it.

ABBY MARTIN: "ZIONISM IS ON ITS LAST LEGS"

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 22:44:00 +0000

THE UK GREEN PARTY: UNLIKE THE NZ GREENS, IT WANTS POLITICAL POWER ON ITS TERMS

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 08:35:00 +0000

With the general election just eight months away, the latest Roy Morgan poll has the Green Party slumping 2.7 points to just 7.8 percent. In complete contrast the UK Green Party is surging in the polls and, in some cases, overtaking Labour. Are there lessons to be learnt for a New Zealand Green Party struggling to connect with the electorate?

THE UK GREEN Party’s popularity surge is not a fluke, nor is it simply the product of a chaotic political environment. It reflects a deeper structural realignment in British politics—one that exposes just how timid and directionless the New Zealand Greens have become by comparison. In the UK, the Greens are rising because they have seized the political space abandoned by Labour, articulated a clear anti-establishment message, and benefited from a generational revolt against centrist managerialism. In New Zealand, by contrast, the Greens are stuck at 7.8 percent in the latest Roy Morgan poll because they refuse to break from Labour. They refuse to speak to class, and refuse to look like a party that wants power on its own terms.

The UK data is stark. Multiple polls now place the Greens at historic highs and, in some cases, outflanking the Labour Party. One YouGov poll put the Greens at 21 percent, ahead of Labour. This is not a minor fluctuation; it is a structural shift in a multi-party landscape where Labour’s vote is collapsing, and younger voters are abandoning the old parties in droves.

The so-called 'Polanski effect'—named after Green leader Zack Polanski—captures the essence of the shift. Since his election in 2025, the Greens have risen by an average of four points, with some polls placing them as high as 17 percent or more. Polanski has given the party visibility, coherence, and a sense of insurgent purpose. Young voters in particular have swung dramatically: YouGov data shows Green support among 18- to 24-year-olds rising from 26 percent to 45 percent in just a few months. That is not normal political drift; it is a generational revolt.

The broader context matters. The UK’s two-party system is collapsing. The combined Labour–Conservative vote is now barely 37 percent, down from 57 percent in 2024. The Greens’ 15–20 percent polling range is the highest monthly average in their history. They are benefiting from fragmentation, but they are also driving it by offering a clear alternative.

And here is the key lesson for the New Zealand Green Party: the UK Greens are rising because they look like a party that wants to win—not a party that wants to be Labour’s conscience.

In the UK, the Greens have:

- A leader who is visible, articulate, and unafraid to challenge Labour directly.
- A message centred on economic justice, climate urgency, and democratic reform, not technocratic tinkering.
- A willingness to capitalise on Labour’s failures, rather than apologise for them.
- A base of young voters who see the Greens as the only party speaking to their future.

Meanwhile, in New Zealand, the Greens behave like a timid adjunct to Labour. Their leadership projects caution, not insurgency. Their messaging is muddled, split between identity-focused rhetoric and vague environmentalism. And their candidate list is dominated by professionals rather than working-class organisers. And crucially, they have spent years signalling that they will always choose Labour, no matter how uninspiring or conservative Labour becomes.

The UK Greens have surged because they have broken from Labour. The New Zealand Greens stagnate because they cling to Labour.

The Roy Morgan poll placing the NZ Greens at just 7.8 percent is not an anomaly—it is the predictable outcome of a party that refuses to differentiate itself and break with Labour. While the UK Greens are eating into Labour’s vote, the NZ Greens are terrified of upsetting Labour. While the UK Greens are capturing the anger of young voters priced out of housing and locked out of the future, the NZ Greens are still trying to triangulate between class politics and the comfort of Wellington liberalism.

The UK Greens also benefit from a political culture where voters are increasingly willing to abandon the major parties. New Zealanders, by contrast, are still conditioned by decades of Labour–National duopoly, and the Greens have done nothing to break that psychological barrier. They have never run a campaign that says: 'We can lead.' They have never built a narrative of rupture, and they have never really embraced the anger that exists in the electorate.

If the NZ Greens want to learn from the UK Green Party surge, they must stop behaving like a support party and start behaving like a movement. That means:

- Breaking publicly and decisively from Labour’s neoliberal orthodoxy.
- Putting class politics at the centre, not as an afterthought.
- Elevating working-class candidates, not policy analysts and NGO professionals.
- Speaking to the crisis of housing, wages, and inequality with moral clarity and not tailoring their position to suit Labour.
- Positioning themselves as the party of the future, not the party of coalition negotiations.

The UK Greens are rising because they dared to become a threat. The NZ Greens are stagnating because they are terrified of becoming one.

Until the New Zealand Greens stop treating Labour as a political parent and start treating them as a rival, they will remain trapped in single-digit polling. The UK Greens show what is possible when a Green party embraces insurgency, generational anger, and political courage. The question is whether the NZ Greens have the will—or the leadership—to do the same.