In which Karyn Taylor-Moore makes a complaint to the head of NZ's public broadcaster for giving the Israeli Ambassador - 6 months into a genocidal war - free reign to lie, obfuscate and smear the Palestinian people.
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When the ‘toxic debate’ about trans rights is discussed, it’s not just billionaire authors making extremely unpleasant social media posts or local “researchers” claiming “...I feel the kindest thing I can do is to remain sceptical that transitioning is ever a solution or that anyone is actually transgender” which is a very polite way of saying something extremely unpleasant about trans people.
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On 5 April 2024, thousands of school children and supporters across the country took to the street to march for climate justice, a free Palestine and te Tiriti. The students spoke with moral clarity, issuing a wero to the adults who are ‘not doing their job'. Rangatahi can see we’re hurtling towards planetary extinction and no one in the halls of power is doing anything about it.
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In creating Israel the British were following a policy of divide-and-rule to create an outpost as a way of projecting power into the Arab world and its oilfields. In practical terms British power could only be projected through the maintenance of immanent or actual armed hostility. The success of this strategy, as the baton was passed to the US empire, has caused the region to suffer 100 years of instability and strife while the Palestinians have suffered a long slow genocide of everyday brutality punctuated by massacres and outbreaks of resistance.
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Four months into my new Covid-based heart problems, I went for a walk and had one drink of alcohol, and the next day was unable to stand up without my heart rate going up to 110 BPM, at one point exceeding 140. This phenomenon is called postural tachycardial syndrome, or POTS, and is pretty common for Long Covid sufferers. I’m writing this from a reclining position, and am not sure when I’ll get up again.
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In recent years I’ve become weary of demonstrations; rallies, specifically. Some of the problem is standing around for eight or ten often-repetitive speeches, or the cringe of half-hearted chants. But mostly it’s the feeling that these rallies are not part of a bigger strategy or theory of social change. The rallies are the theory of social change—except they plainly aren’t working.
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The year is 2003.
The US President is unbending in his determination to wreak as much destruction as possible upon civilians in the Middle East. People around the world take to the streets to protest the bloodlust of the American military machine but it’s hard to stop when it’s already in motion.
More importantly, though, it’s also the night of Hollywood’s biggest celebration!!!
The revenant of Austerity Britain looms over Aotearoa New Zealand today as the current Government insists that they can cut their way to surplus, provide tax cuts, and promise recovery.
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The mask I wear leaves lines cut into my face after I take it off; 12 hours after stepping outside, getting onto a bus, working an 8-hour shift at a daycare, getting some groceries, going home to the one 3 by 4m bedroom where I know I can safely breathe
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The film festival has been a highlight of each year since I moved to Te Whānganui-a-Tara well over a decade ago. A love for, and knowledge of, cinema and a respect for audiences underpinned its decisions during this time. This was driven by its programmers and the late, great Bill Gosden who had been Director of the festival for 40 years.
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I didn’t write this essay because I don’t like Barbie. I wrote this essay because it’s clear many people felt Barbie with almost reverent fanaticism. They didn’t just like Barbie because it was fun to dress up and get drunk with the girls at. They didn’t like Barbie for its design or cinematography or direction. They attached to Barbie as a feminist symbol instead.
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As the tide goes out on New Zealand election season after the traditional post-election conference debrief and Hipkins having presented himself for a round of what-me-worry interviews, there’s been a little circuit of right wing discussion in local media about Labour’s loss, praising the Taxpayer’s Union and New Zealand Initiative for consistently putting out press releases, white papers and manipulating media narratives. It’s all out in the open now.
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In 2024, the “no ethical consumption under capitalism” argument has extended far beyond the fact that not all of us can easily buy organic carrots. These days it’s trotted out to justify things like buying the Hogwarts Legacy game, despite knowing that J.K. Rowling will use a portion of those funds to torment trans people.
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Consensus is great. And citizens' assemblies are great. The Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand are pretty hot on both.
But I think citizens' assemblies work for very different reasons, and those reasons matter, and shutting down this wilfully apolitical, "we can all get along if we just stop shouting" narrative is important.
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In this series, Jimmy Lanyard explores the relationship between 2023 film releases and what happened in real life that year. Part 3 looks at the way cinema in 2023 reflected the epistemological crisis that everyone seems to have recently started paying attention to.
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In this series, Jimmy Lanyard explores the relationship between 2023 film releases¹ and what happened in real life that year. Part 2 looks at films about racism released in 2023 while Hollywood solidarity proved to be a finite resource that ran out before it could reach Palestine.
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In this series, Jimmy Lanyard explores the relationship between 2023 film releases¹ and what happened in real life that year. Part 1 looks at the way that filmmakers confronted technology on and offscreen.
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Trans women are women, trans men are men, and non-binary people are valid. The last slogan is probably because “non-binary people are non-binary” sounds more like a lolcats meme than a statement about human life, but speaking as a non-bino, our designated validity feels condescending. Sometimes it comes across a bit like “your kooky gender is ok by me!” with a thumbs-up. The more enthusiastic the thumbs-up, the more comfortable the cis ally will feel.
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A few years ago, my American high school held a die-in to protest police murders of Black people. A die-in is a public protest where people lie down like they’re dead to disrupt activity and call attention to political violence. Conservative critics predictably called the protest “performative” but one of my favorite teachers, Mercy Carbonell, defended the students in a way that stuck with me. She said something to the effect of: “Even if these protests don’t immediately change material circumstances, you change yourself by doing them.”
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Gerwig has been an indie-darling long before the critically acclaimed Lady Bird and Little Women. Given its considerable budget, A-list actors and merchandise tie-ins, Barbie couldn’t afford to simply be a cult-classic. Hollywood is famously unforgiving of women directors so for Gerwig to continue her track record, she needed to make a film that was impossible to misunderstand.
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