New Zealand

The Christchurch Shooting And The Normalization Of Anti-Muslim Terrorism

March 18, 2019 By Whitney Webb, Mintpressnews.com Educate! Islamophobia, Mass Shootings, New Zealand, Racism, Shooting, Terrorism

CHRISTCHURCH, NEW ZEALAND — What is without question the worst mass shooting in New Zealand’s history took place on Friday when shooters, 28-year-old Australian Brenton Tarrant among them, opened fire at two Christchurch mosques. Four, including Tarrant, have been arrested for the heinous act, which claimed at least 49 innocent lives. Tarrant was responsible for killing more than 40 victims, among them several children, in a rampage he live-streamed on Facebook, sending chills throughout the Muslim community, particularly Muslims living in Western countries.

U. S. Sale Of War Planes To New Zealand Faces Resistance

February 25, 2019 David Swanson, Worldbeyondwar.org Resist! New Zealand, US Imperialism, Weapons Sales

The U.S. State Department uses public funds and public employees to market private products designed for mass killing to foreign governments. Few corporations have benefitted more from this socialism for the oligarchs than Boeing. In one recent example, the U.S. government has persuaded the New Zealand government to buy four “Poseidon” planes from Boeing that are designed for working with submarines, of which New Zealand possesses zero. The purchase price of $2.3 billion in New Zealand dollars, $1.6 billion in U.S. dollars, may be too small for White House occupant Donald Trump to hold an illustration-enhanced media event about.

To The Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern, Prime Minister Of New Zealand: Please Call A National referendum On The CPTPP Treaty

October 25, 2018 Bruce King, Medium.com Resist! Legislation, New Zealand, Trade Deal

Now it’s your decision on whether or not to forward the Bill to the Governor-General with a recommendation to sign it into law. In practice, that decides whether or not NZ commits to join the CPTPP treaty. Before that happens, it’s certainly within your powers to ask for a national referendum so New Zealanders can finally get to vote on the controversial treaty. In 2015 and 2016, when the treaty was still called the TPPA, town hall meetings were held up and down the country to express concerns around the treaty.

New Zealand Company To Make 4 Day Week Permanent After Trial Success

July 28, 2018 Sean Fahey, Buzz.ie Create! New Economy, New Zealand

Perpetual Guardian, a company is New Zealand that helps people with wills, trusts, and estate plans, employs 240 people and pinned the success of the trial down to employee attitudes. After testing out a four-day work week, the company found that employees reported a 7% stress reduction, a 24% increase in work-life balance, and a 20% increase in team engagement. While staff worked a four day week, they were still paid for five days. They also continued to work eight hour days. Company CEO Andrew Barnes announced the experiment in February, and gave his employees time to improve efficiency across departments - putting it in their hands how a four day week could be done without a loss to productivity.

Activists Cement Their Feet In Concrete To Protest CPTPP Signing

March 13, 2018 Dan Satherley, Bilaterals.org Resist! New Zealand, Protests, TPP

A last-ditch effort to stop the CPTPP has seen protesters cement themselves in concrete as well as dumping pillows and soft toys outside MP’s offices. The CPTPP (Comprehensive and Progressive Trans Pacific Partnership) deal will be signed in Chile on Thursday (Chile time), but activists aren’t giving up the fight. Christchurch Direct Action Group members stood in a wooden box cementing their feet into concrete outside Labour MP Ruth Dyson’s office in Christchurch on Thursday afternoon. Earlier in the day pillows and soft toys were dumped outisde Jacinda Ardern’s electorate office in Auckland. The Auckland TPP Action Group dumped dozens of pillows, soft dog toys and homemade rats outside the Prime Minister’s office in Mt Albert, Auckland. Messages written on the pillows include ’Aotearoa is not for sale’, ’Protect Aotearoa and our ecological assets’ and ’It’s our children’s future! We must protect it!’

New Zealand Considers Creating Climate Change Refugee Visas

November 1, 2017 Charles Anderson, theguardian.com Create! Climate Change, New Zealand, Refugees

By Charles Anderson for The Guardian - New Zealand’s new government is considering creating a visa category to help relocate Pacific peoples displaced by climate change. The new category would make official the Green party’s pre-election policy which promised 100 visas for those affected by climate change. As part of the new Labour-led coalition government, the Green party leader James Shaw was given the role of climate change minister. He told Radio New Zealand on Tuesday that “an experimental humanitarian visa category” could be implemented for people from the Pacific who are displaced by rising seas resulting from climate change. “It is a piece of work that we intend to do in partnership with the Pacific islands,” Shaw said. Before the election, the Greens also proposed increasing New Zealand’s overall refugee quota from 750 each year to 4,000 places over six years. Shaw’s announcement comes after the New Zealand immigration and protection tribunal rejected two families from Tuvalu who applied to become refugees in New Zealand due to the impact of climate change. The families argued rising sea levels, lack of access to clean and sanitary drinking water and Tuvalu’s high unemployment rate as reasons for seeking asylum. The tribunal ruled they did not risk being persecuted by race, religion, nationality or by membership of a political or religious group under the 1951 refugee convention.

Direct Action Against Arms Fairs In New Zealand And South Korea

October 31, 2017 Staff, wri-irg.org Resist! Direct Action, New Zealand, South Korea, weapons

By Staff of War Resisters' International - In New Zealand, Peace Action Wellington organised groups from across New Zealand to resist the annual New Zealand Defence Industry Association's (NZDIA) “weapons expo”. From 7am on 10th October, around 200 people were onsite to protest the event, with the entrances to the Westpac Stadium blocked by protesters sat in the roads and hanging from banners. Jessie Dennis, a spokesperson for Peace Action Wellington said: “We’re here to stay. We think it’s totally unethical that New Zealand plays host to a Weapons Expo, and we’re not leaving until the weapons dealers do. The Weapons Expo is a trade fair for some of the biggest arms companies in the world. The delegates attending would have us believe that the products on sale and the deals being done at the Expo are somehow benign. But make no mistake, these are weapons and military hardware that play their part in the global war machine.” The protest was heavily policed, with a number of arrests and protesters accusing the police of violence. The coalition taking action included Auckland Peace Action, Peace Action Hamilton, People Against Prisons Aotearoa, Palestine Solidarity Network, Whanganui Positive Activists, It’s Our Future Manawatu, Oil Free Wellington, Unions Wellington, Pacific Panthers, Quakers, Catholic Workers and many other individual activists.

Planet Loses Tree Cover Size Of New Zealand In One Year

October 27, 2017 Morgan Erickson-Davis, www.stopgetrees.org Educate! Environment, GE Trees, New Zealand, Trees

By Morgan Erickson-Davis for The Campaign to Stop GE Trees - Last year the world lost an area of tree cover the size of New Zealand, according to satellite data. That’s around 29.7 million hectares (297,000 square kilometers) – and was a 51 percent jump over 2015. The tree cover loss data came from the University of Maryland (UMD) and were analyzed by World Resources Institute (WRI). While the data don’t just represent deforestation (they also lump in tree plantation harvesting), the analysts attribute most of the tree cover loss to human impacts affecting forests such agriculture, logging and mining. But why the big jump in tree cover loss from 2015 to 2016? The analysis points specifically to fire as the primary culprit. The data indicate big upticks in fires around the world, both in areas where fire naturally occurs — like northern Alberta, Canada — and wetter areas of the tropics where fire is (or perhaps more accurately, used to be) a rare phenomenon. One of these latter areas is the Brazilian Amazon. Rainforest is, by definition, rainy and moist, and the Amazon rainforest is no exception. Rainforest shouldn’t burn on its own — and yet, WRI’s analysis found understory fires contributed to a tripling of tree cover loss in the Brazilian Amazon (3.3 million hectares) over that time.

New Zealand’s New Prime Minister Calls Capitalism A ‘Blatant Failure’

October 23, 2017 Chris Baynes, www.independent.co.uk Educate! Capitalism, Electoral Politics, New Zealand

By Chris Baynes for Independent - New Zealand's new prime minister called capitalism a "blatant failure", before citing levels of homelessness and low wages as evidence that "the market has failed" her country's poor. Jacinda Ardern, who is to become the nation's youngest leader since 1856, said measures used to gauge economic success "have to change" to take into account "people's ability to actually have a meaningful life". The 37-year-old will take office next month after the populist New Zealand First party agreed to form a centre-left coalition with her Labour Party. They will be supported by the liberal Greens. New Zealanders had been waiting since 23 September to find out who would govern their country after national elections ended without a clear winner. Ms Ardern has pledged her government will increase the minimum wage, write child poverty reduction targets into law, and build thousands of affordable homes. In her first full interview since becoming prime minister-elect, she told current affairs programme The Nation that capitalism had "failed our people". "If you have hundreds of thousands of children living in homes without enough to survive, that's a blatant failure," she said. "What else could you describe it as?" Incumbent prime minister Bill English, whose National Party has held power for nine years, has said his party grew the economy and produced increasing budget surpluses which benefited the nation.

Government’s ‘Ministry Of Oil’ Charges Greenpeace Swimmers

April 12, 2017 Staff, www.greenpeace.org.nz Resist! New Zealand, Oil

By Staff of Green Peace - “Three of us who got in the water yesterday in front of a climate-destroying oil ship have been charged. We have been charged, not by the police, but by “The Ministry of Oil” (the petroleum division of MBIE) - the Government's ministry responsible for supporting, subsidising and propping up the oil industry here in New Zealand, using public money. The science of climate change is unequivocal. It tells us that if we are to avoid catastrophic climate change we cannot burn even known fossil fuel reserves, let alone new oil - which is exactly what The Amazon Warrior is looking for. The oil industry is the most powerful industry in the history of humanity and they have huge influence on governments. Ours is no different.

Military To Be Used Against NZ Peace Flotilla

October 1, 2016 Staff , www.scoop.co.nz Resist! Anti-War, Military, New Zealand

By Staff of Auckland Peace Action - The government has indicated it plans to deploy the NZ military against a peaceful flotilla opposing the entry of warships into Auckland Harbour in November. “This is a major crackdown on protests. It even bans swimming in parts of the Harbour while these warships are around,” said Auckland Peace Action member Valerie Morse. The NZ Navy is hosting wargames with a US warship in mid-November in the Hauraki Gulf. Auckland Peace Action is organising a flotilla to demonstrate New Zealanders’ opposition to war and weapons.

Protesters Force Auckland Standstill As TPP Is Signed

February 4, 2016 Staff, www.newstalkzb.co.nz Resist! New Zealand, Nonviolent Action, TPP, Trade

By Newstalk ZB. Auckland, NZ - A contingent of protesters numbering around 1000 gathered at Aotea Square early this morning before marching to the Centre on Federal Street and confronting police with chanted slogans and hakas. The group then split up, blockading several major intersections in central Auckland with sit-ins. Organisers had been told to act peacefully and not to resist arrest. Their aim was to disrupt the area around SkyCity to prevent officials at the signing ceremony from leaving. One group, including veteran activist Sue Bradford, managed to temporarily block access to the Harbour Bridge, though it has since re-opened. Other groups of protesters blocked on- and off-ramps to the southern and northwestern motorways. More people occupied intersections on Wellesley Street and Hobson Street.

The Trans-Pacific Free-Trade Charade

October 3, 2015 Joseph E. Stiglitz and Adam S. Hersh, www.project-syndicate.org Educate! New Zealand, TPP

By Joseph E. Stiglitz and Adam S. Hersh for Project Syndicate NEW YORK – As negotiators and ministers from the United States and 11 other Pacific Rim countries meet in Atlanta in an effort to finalize the details of the sweeping new Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), some sober analysis is warranted. The biggest regional trade and investment agreement in history is not what it seems. You will hear much about the importance of the TPP for “free trade.” The reality is that this is an agreement to manage its members’ trade and investment relations – and to do so on behalf of each country’s most powerful business lobbies. Make no mistake: It is evident from the main outstanding issues, over which negotiators are still haggling, that the TPP is not about “free” trade.

TPP Opponents Protest NZ Prime Minister Fundraiser

August 29, 2015 Eileen Goodwin, www.odt.co.nz Resist! New Zealand, TPP

By Eileen Goodwin for Otago Daily Times - Protesters jostled with police last night as they tried to disrupt a National Party fundraising event in Dunedin. Trans Pacific Partnership opponents hoped Prime Minister John Key would enter through the Savoy restaurant's public entrance, but it is understood he used another door. Mr Key had earlier been guest of honour at the Otago Daily Times Class Act event at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery in the Octagon. The protest started outside the art gallery, before moving around the corner to the Savoy, in Princes St. Up to 100 protesters attended, split between the venue's Moray Pl and Princes St entrances. Protesters linked arms in an attempt to keep National Party supporters out of the restaurant. Some supporters pushed their way in.

Thousands Of Anti-TPP Protesters Rally In New Zealand

August 16, 2015 Staff, www.rt.com Resist! New Zealand, TPP

By Staff for RT - Thousands of demonstrators gathered throughout New Zealand to speak out against the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal on Saturday. Extra police were called in as protesters pushed through barriers in front of the country's parliament building. Large turnouts were also reported in Christchurch, Hamilton and Dunedin. Demonstrations took place in 21 cities and towns throughout the country, according to Radio New Zealand. Auckland saw the biggest turnout, with an estimated 5,000 people calling on the New Zealand government to “walk away” from the TPP agreement. Many held placards reading “Don't trade our needs for corporate greed,” and “Enough is enough.” Opponents in New Zealand say that many of the provisions will undermine the country's sovereignty, giving transnational corporations huge influence over the nation's laws and regulations.

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