Kereru [he/him]
The COTW, NZ has deployed 6 soldiers to the Red Sea: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/507356/new-zealand-to-deploy-defence-force-to-red-sea
Need a :nz-cool: emote
Hey it’s my little corner of settler-colonialism in the South Pacific. I can throw out a few thoughts here, although take everything with a grain of salt.
Many of the points can be looked at through a familiar settler-colonial lens. Think the Canada of the Pacific. Maori arrive about 500 years ago, with the Brits beginning colonisation about 200 years ago. Familiar story of decimation of the Māori population through introduced disease, violence and land dispossession. The nuance here is some of the concessions Māori were able to get from the British, most notably Te Tiriti (note: it’s a very short text, worth reading if you’re interested). This has helped to get: dedicated Māori seats in parliament, some reparations for stolen land, co-governance of some land and assets, etc.
This goes along with significant racism towards Māori (and Pasifica) that has always been a major part of our politics but is currently being leveraged in a more American style culture war approach by the right. E.g. demanding government departments to use English names
In terms of foreign relations and economy: Our economy consists of exporting milk powder and trees to China (a mostly lactose intolerant country?), Tourism (don’t look too closely at how fucked the land is from all the dairy cows), consultants sending emails, service workers serving the consultants, and majorly: investing in houses.
Economically we are completely reliant on China, but culturally aligned with the UK and more recently the US. Which is going to make the next decade… Interesting.
I’m somewhat dubious conservatives have the forethought to actually plan a future economy like this though. Based on my local context it seems like a pretty classic case of wanting to eliminate a big line item on the govt budget and a “fuck you I’ll be fine, I can afford private schooling”. With any gains due to a low wage workforce a by-product, but maybe I’m not giving them enough credit.
This seems like a decent bullet point history, but it doesn’t cover the last two months:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/9/whats-the-israel-palestine-conflict-about-a-simple-guide
Walking (or biking) to get around town is the most underrated fitness trick. Walk to and from work and you can get 10k steps in without much time or financial cost, mentally feels good, and gets you noticeably fitter.
Convinced my mum to read Ilan Pappe, she’s now on the right side of history