Via

much better footage of the haka that shut down parliament today

@endless-demon thank you so much for asking! it's a little complicated but I think simplification does a disservice to the issue and is exactly what people like David Seymour rely on to spread lies about historical context and current consequences. I'm putting this in a reblog because it's long, and I'm putting it on this post because I'd rather this video be the one to get seen. as always I'm pakeha and also not an expert, so I'm very open to corrections on details but im confident of the broad strokes.

so when the English first arrived to build settlements in aotearoa, they formed a treaty with Māori (te Tiriti o Waitangi), the people already living there, that the English can govern their own settlements, as long as they allowed for continued māori sovereignty (tino rangatiratanga). there exist two versions of the text, English and te reo Māori, which do not perfectly match. after this, the English settlers began acquiring massive swathes of land by legally questionable means, and asserting absolute sovereignty over these areas. these culminated in the land wars, which then lead to massive land confiscation as a form of both political punishment and colonization. the end result is that now the crown own nearly all land in aotearoa and claim absolute sovereignty over it.

now, the Māori text does not claim sovereignty over the property that the crown recognizes Māori own. the text promises, among other things, self determination for Māori, which is essentially impossible under a westminster system of government because they are currently a demographic minority. it's only very recent in our history that the crown has acknowledged the legitimacy of the te reo Māori text, and even more recently that we began to actually implement any of its principles. one of the biggest ways the treaty is used in modern day is to guarantee Māori have an opportunity at the table for major national decisions (particular those of environmental significance), and to defer organizational power for Māori issues to Māori communities.

the treaty principles bill seeks to water down these promises by allowing these rights to all new zealanders, "democratising" the treaty and removing those guarantees that have been so hard fought for by Māori. but, more importantly, it seeks to seed division and racism within this country to gather more support for the ACT party who are sponsoring this bill.

this bill was part of the coalition agreement by our current 3 party right wing government. the national party agreed to sponsor this bill to first reading (allowing public submission on the bill) but no further. I personally believe, along with many others, that when the time comes to vote for the second reading the act party will threaten to pull out of the coalition if the bill is not passed again, and our prime minister will not have the strength of character to stand up to his deputy. regardless, the relationship between the crown and Māori has already been damaged, both by the simple introduction of the bill as well as all the changes our current government has implemented.

as Paul Goldsmith, Minister for Treaty Negotiations outlined in his speech during the bill, the National party believe that te Tiriti must be killed, not in a single action, but by a thousand cuts, like the removal of references to the treaty from our legislation and curriculums, and the disestablishment of agencies like the Māori Health Authority, cuts to Māori advisors to govt departments, removing māori seats from local government, etc.

there's so much more to this issue, like the centuries of abuse and mistreatment of Māori by the crown authorities, how this abuse is ongoing to Māori children and adults today in state care, how iwi voices are our last line of defence against environmental and ecological damage by industry, the unilateral natural of the treaty reparation settlement process... but this is why this protest was staged in parliament today.

(in fact, there is a much larger protest taking place nationwide, scheduled to arrive the day the bill was supposed to be introduced. the bill was in fact introduced a week earlier, in a move many suspect was done to prevent exactly this kind of protest.)

as far as I'm concerned though? I think te pāti Māori achieved exactly what they wanted by this protest. they forced the government to drop the mask of civility, and force the protestors out of the building. and they showed their supporters that their protests are working - they felt threatened enough by this that they lashed out, felt a need to retaliate by suspending hana-rawhiti maipi-clarke from the house for 24 hours. the coalition are getting nervous

"Ethiopian Jewish woman wearing chai necklace" (1985) & "Ethiopian Jewish girl with star of David necklace and crown," photos courtesy of the AAEJ Archives

Please note. The orange one is not included because A. He isn’t a billionaire. And B. Calling him obnoxious is too kind for him.

Shoutout to the two coworkers today who casually announced that they were voting for Trump, then asked me who I was voting for. I told them "I did early voting, and I voted for the candidate who isn't going to make it harder for me to exist as a trans person" and both of these women had to awkwardly try and assure me that it wasn't personal, and it's not like they hated Harris or anything, they actually do like some things about her, and they definitely don't hate me, of course not, it's just that, you know, well, it's like, well, you know, it's just, like, and no matter how many times they tried to pass the shovel off to me, I just let them hold onto it

What. (and I mean this from the bottom of my enraged heart) the FUCK

Sadly, a lot of my co-workers are under-informed Trump supporters.

You know the kind, they just have a very surface level understanding of him as a candidate or person. They don't really care about the actual concepts of policies he's suggesting or the overt racism/sexism/everythingism he flaunts. They've just decided there's something they like about him that makes him worthy of their vote and they choose to ignore anything they don't like.

Not indoctrinated, just poorly informed. Not brainwashed, just kind of uncaring. Not part of the cult, just following it from the sidelines.

A conversation I had with one of these women today:

"Jonah, do you know how a tariff works?"

"In, like, very broad, general terms, yes. Why? Do you need it explained?"

"I was reading something yesterday about it, and I'm not sure if it was right. The article was saying we pay it?"

"Yes, that's how a tariff works. It's a tax on imported goods."

"Okay, but that's a good thing, right?"

"If you're trying to discourage foreign trade, yeah. Or pull in more money for the government."

"But how do we pay for it?"

"Uh. We don't pay for it directly. The company that imports pays the tariff, and then they usually raise the prices on their own shit to make up for the loss."

"But that's going to make shit more expensive. Tariffs are supposed to make shit cheaper."

"They're not. They're supposed to make imported shit more expensive. They're supposed to discourage imports."

"I don't understand this. This was gonna help the economy."

"Well, it might help some parts of the economy, but I don't think you're involved in any of them, so you may not see any of the benefits of the tariffs."

"Okay so. I thought China was supposed to pay them."

"Remember during his first term, when there was all that talk about a big, beautiful wall that Mexico was gonna--"

"Okay, look--"

"No no, hear me out. Remember how there was going to be a big beautiful wall that Mexico was going to pay for? China is going to pay the tariffs in the same way that Mexico paid for the border wall."

While the Onion buying InfoWars is indeed extremely funny, very few of the posts I've seen commenting on the sale have mentioned that the families of the Sandy Hook victims apparently agreed to voluntarily reduce their lawsuit payout as part of a deal to ensure that the Onion would acquire InfoWars wholesale, rather than having the company broken up and auctioned off piecemeal, as the latter course could potentially have allowed some of those pieces to end up back in the hands of Alex Jones' cronies.

Like, yes, it is in fact very funny that InfoWars is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Clickhole, but the real props go out to the Sandy Hook families who saw the opportunity and willingly gave up the additional millions of dollars that could have been realised by stripping InfoWars for parts in order to make that happen.

Full Newsletter from Global Tetrahedron Here

He also did this one

I’m having trouble linking the video, but this guy can legit breakdance

Every photo of Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan together looks like a a respectable mafia boss father named Giovanni and his weird son who bites sometimes

Yeahhhh, you're right

(Source)

Alex Jones, the ultra-right-wing conspiracy-theorist, was forced to sell InfoWars in a bankruptcy lawsuit.

This is really funny on dark mode

On dark mode this is like a clown trying to hide behind a light pole.

A very useful thread on Bluesky:

(There is a lot more. Rather than give you all the images, I've copied the full text below.)

Saw a tiktok of a boy in Gaza eating Nesquick and someone in the comments was like “that’s a bad brand but you have limited options so it’s okay” HELLO?

Do people ,,,,, think

People forget they can just not speak.

Ah yes, that kid totally needed the permission of some rando a world away on whether it is moral for him to have Nesquick during a fucking crisis.

I hope he was able to enjoy it and that it brought some joy to him.

here is the boy's video by the way.

and the comment for details sake

Ok but even considering the moralistic, condescending nonsense that is this comment from instagram user she_who_lives_, it shows a complete lack of critical thinking and basic understanding of life in a war zone. My dude, Gazans surviving however they can is not going to impact the global sales and profit margins of Nestle. The point of boycotting companies isn't to posture your personal morality to others, it's to impact profits and use the collective bargaining power of the consumer to alter corporate or political policies.

And when you're THIS focused on projecting your personal morals to the world, all it tells me is that

1. you're more worried about how you're perceived, than you are happy for a literal child who's suffered through an unjust, inhumane war who gets to have a treat for once. A treat. One. He got ONE fucking treat and you're worried that people are going to judge you for your personal opinions on Nestle? Then don't comment. It's not a requirement. Your silence is not only permitted, sometimes it's preferable.

2. You're so convinced that everyone is interested in you and paying attention to you that you can't help but make this kid's instagram - which documents how hard life is in Gaza right now, like literally his other recent video talks about how he had to stand in line for 2 hours to buy olive oil just to make breakfast and literally couldn't even find falafel IN GAZA - about yourself.

saw the video of the ukrainian soldier who asked the bus headed to the battlefront to stop for a moment so that he could hug his family one more time and now i wanna sob.

don’t forget about ukraine. do not forget what ukrainians are going through to keep their families safe.

we need to make using chatgpt embarrassing bc sorry it really is. what do you mean you can’t write an email