Image is of the Te Pati Maori (Maori Party) cofounders, Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. They have 6 of the 123 seats in the New Zealand parliament.
Officially confirming that the Republican primaries were a gigantic waste of time for everybody involved, Trump has massively beat everybody else in Iowa, and will very obviously be the Republican candidate for 2024. Given the abysmal state of the US economy (for everybody who isn't in the top 1-10%, which is mainly what national statistics reflect when they aren't telling blatant falsehoods), it's more plausible than ever that Trump may indeed once again become President - though I personally refuse to predict one way or another due to how volatile politics and geopolitics currently are. Project 2025 is coming, folks - either as the official Republican governance program, or as what the Democrats will do in 2026 after the midterms, stating that they have no other choice and have to reach across the aisle as they are the Adults In The Room™.
In other news...
Late last year, New Zealand voted in a new and very right-wing government, composed of the center-right National Party, the libertarian ACT Party (ACT stands for the "Association of Consumers and Taxpayers", good lord), and the fascist New Zealand First party. By what I can tell, this was the well-trodden path of "Vaguely center-left party does neoliberal austerity and causes a recession and workers fucking hated it and voted in a different party out of desperation," though the flooding and cyclones did add challenges to Chris Hipkins' short reign after Jacinda Ardern resigned.
It's worth noting that Hipkins was at least fairly China-friendly, meeting up with Xi Jinping on a five-day visit in the summer. They still do the whole "We have concerns about human rights" thing, but of all the countries of the imperial core, New Zealand is - or, perhaps, was - one of the most amicable. In 2021, China was New Zealand's single largest trading partner, with a third of exports going to China (more than Australia, the US, Japan, and South Korea combined), and they receive 22% of their imports from China too, more than any other single country.
Christopher Luxon, the new Prime Minister and sentient thumb, has said that he is exploring a closer relationship with AUKUS:
Luxon said New Zealand was interested in becoming involved in AUKUS Pillar 2: a commitment between the three partners to develop and share advanced military capabilities, including artificial intelligence, electronic warfare and hypersonics.
“We’ll work our way through that over the course of next year as we understand it more and think about what the opportunities may be for us,” Luxon said. “AUKUS is a very important element in ensuring we’ve got stability and peace in the region.”
This is not to say that Hipkins wanted nothing to do with AUKUS or Western organizations aimed generally against China - in fact, pre election, "he was open to conversations about joining Pillar II of AUKUS". But the current government is pushing down on the accelerator pedal.
The left-wing Maori party, Te Pati Maori, has stated that they want New Zealand to remain non-aligned, as joining AUKUS would erode the sovereignty of the country:
As Maori we cannot allow our sovereignty to be determined by others, whether they are in Canberra or Washington. Aotearoa should not act as Pacific spy base in the wars of imperial powers. Joining AUKUS will severely undermine our country’s sovereignty, constitution, and ability to remain nuclear free. There is too much at stake for our government to make a commitment of this magnitude without a democratic process.
In general, the party leaders of Te Pati Maori want New Zealand to be the "Switzerland of the Pacific", which is perhaps not the greatest analogy given all the problems Switzerland had and has, but we understand the intended meaning of desiring neutrality.
The Country of the Week is New Zealand! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
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Last week's thread is here.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
As workers struggle to contain the toxic landslide of more than three million cubic meters of polluted dirt from a storage facility that is threatening the village of Ølst as well as a nearby stream, the battle of who is going to pay for the cleanup is beginning.
Environmental authorities issued a mandate last night, directing Nordic Waste, the company accountable for the calamity, to undertake the cleanup and furnish an economic guarantee of DKK 205 million to cover associated costs. The company only had an equity of DKK 15 million and had already filed for bankruptcy. Today a local court formally declared the company bankrupt. Two executors were appointed – one by the local council overseeing mitigation efforts and another by Nordic Waste. The court overruled objections from the national government's legal counsel that it would be irresponsible to allow the company to appoint an executor. Among other things, the executors will investigate the possibility of civil liability suits against the management.
Remaining funds within the bankrupt company will be allocated to creditors, including workers who face a protracted process to claim wages and pensions, guaranteed by the state. Many workers will have to borrow from unions to offset income losses during the waiting period. The primary creditors include the local council actively engaged in cleanup efforts for over a month and the company owning the Nordic Waste site. That company happens to be owned by Nordic Waste's owner, the elusive oil oligarch Torben Østergaard-Nielsen who can now look forward to getting a share of the funds from the bankruptcy.
And while the waste management company is bankrupt, Østergaard-Nielsen keeps making money off the polluted soil as he owns one of the companies transporting the soil away from the site and storing it.
Today the nation's prime minister, the headstrong succdem hardliner Mette Frederiksen visited the site and the village for a carefully staged photo-op flanked by the also-succdem Magnus Heunicke, her minister of the environment. She railed against Nordic Waste's oligarch owner, scolded him for leaving bill to public coffers and repeatedly stated her commitment to a "the polluter pays" principle. The minister of the environment condemned the oligarch for not spending some of his estimated DKK 42 billions of hoarded wealth to pay the salaries of employees and the costs of the cleanup.
The fiery words and emotional language employed by Frederiksen and her sidekick stands in stark contrast to the realities of corporate bankruptcy law. The rules were made exactly to shield owners from liability for the damage done by their companies and they are working as intended. Frederiksen, in power since 2019 has had ample opportunity to change the law if she had wanted to. It is only now that the public is angry at the oligarch she expresses these sentiments.
The minister of the environment has pledged to amend legislation to make it easier to hold owners like Østergaard-Nielsen responsible but these changes will only apply to future disasters and it remains to be seen how much Frederiksen's right-wing government really wants to pick a fight with the powerful business elite once the public attention dies down.
Meanwhile, a report by the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland contradicts Nordic Waste's initial claims that heavy rainfall caused the disaster. Visible cracks in the polluted soil date back to 2021, with four-meter deep crevices observed in the spring of 2023. Satellite imagery reveals soil movement during this period, categorizing the disaster as man-made and implicating the improper placement of excessive amounts of soil on a sloping surface of impermeable clay—contrary to Nordic Waste's narrative.
In response to the crisis, the CEO of Nordic Waste has taken sick leave and voluntarily stepped down from her minister of transportation-appointed position on the board of the infrastructure company operating bridges over the Great Belt and the Sound. Østergaard-Nielsen has faced consequences of some sort as well, being stripped of his honorary title as "ambassador" of the picturesque coastal town of Skagen, a popular high society vacation destination.