Good day Gents:
Well, that was surely entertaining fellas! This passing election cycle , in which New Zealand publicly voted to their deepening silos of political and social division , demonstrably by way of a triple-coalition government taking 43 calendar days to foment an agreement between a self-loathing right wing Māori in David Seymour , a megalomaniacal, free-press hating, paleolithic political fossil in Winston Peters, and yourself, Prime Minister, an empty suit schooled in the primacy of crony corporate Capitalism by way of your time as CEO with Unliver in London, Chi-town and Toronto, eventually moving on to Air New Zealand so that you could squash any racket made about living wage amongst the front-line workers of that world-renowned airline. Equally entertaining is the current slaughter of all Labour policies that the Coalition is embarking on- many of which were ineffective, unrealistic, or just plain window dressing. Addition by subtraction: the appearance of progressive action and strength . It's great theatre, indeed, but is about as vital in substance as candy floss.
Nice work!
To The Right Honourable Hipkins, your leadership was nothing short of complete milquetoast and maladroit ministry that you continued from your benefactor and predecessor Jacinda Ardern, a pseudo social democrat. Labour's impudence was in full effect for 6 years, and did nothing that is worth really raving about policy-wise. You let the wolves in the parlour: giving access to the monolithic corporate criminal syndicate of BlackRock to take root in Aotearoa. You let affordable housing and low-income builds throughout New Zealand slow to a crawl during Labour's entire time in office, and demand has sharply risen, creating wait lists for people who are in desperate need of public housing. Lack of public housing means a steady increase in homeless Mr. Hipkins, lest you are unaware.
Labour did little to help resettle migrants during and after CoViD, and were more than happy to send 'em back where they came from, rather than allow historical access to MSD emergency benefits, of which your party had actually sanctioned. Your agencies placed in charge of the temporary benefit program Manaaki Manuhiri, which was enacted for 3 months in 2020 ran through the Red Cross , with DIA Foreign Visitors Centre acting as the final line of approval, was land-mined with snipers using vague requirements and rules that could be made ultra-flexible in context, giving room for harsh declination and rendering a deliberately difficult path for redress and appeal . I know this personally, for as a migrant, I experienced this verbatim. Unlike a lot of my compatriots who were dealt with the same way by DIA and had surrendered their fight, I was able to traverse and battle through the slippery and unethical grievance process, being belittled, bullied, disenfranchised and overtly lied to by several agency staff members employed by the DIA along the way . I ultimately won appeal on the very last day of the program -30th November. This nearly two month fight led to mine being in arrears in rent, electric and water, aggravating my attempts in attaining work after being laid off.
That's not public assistance, Mr. Hipkins, that's game-playing political expediency rendering the facade of compassion for public consumption . Ardern , yourself and Labour did all you could to hide your disdain of migrants, as the party brought into the fable of there being a vast expanse of able-bodied kiwis ready, willing and available to step up and move the economy back into its pre-pandemic heights. Ardern's inability to acknowledge the kiwi latitude and cultural antipathy toward work as a whole was sheer comedy. Out of all industrial nations worldwide, New Zealand has the smallest average work week , at 37 hours . It was migrants that drove New Zealand's GDP up through productivity and innovation in the preceding years. Post Covid, Labour did nothing to stop the en masse exodus of skilled labour that occurred, whilst at the other end doing exactly zero meaningful stewardship for a talented migrant and skilled kiwi labour pool that had been forcibly returned to the island from overseas during the pandemic. Only being moved to meaningful action by artifice when forced by petition did Labour's inept immigration czar Kris Faafoi allow amnesty for migrants caught in protocol and visa limbo hell, and a pathway to residency.
Labour was the party with the mandate in 2021, and did nothing but steady the ship after Covid, and made no true action on the coming onslaught of exacerbated class inequality . A truly centrist government beholden to its core lobbyists and special interest and nothing more. Labour has learned nothing from its latent hue of policy mediocrity . The proof of its immense self-inflicted disability by the legacy of your party's pseodo-progressive governance , is the very allowance of Labour letting you lead the opposition against the same elected government you allowed to set Labour alight like a cheap polyester shirt left in the dryer for too long.
Burnt ,shrunk , and left in the stench of toxic melt.
Now you cackle and crow in defiance of PM Luxon and the Shutdown Twinz and their goonish languidity , oafish self-aggrandizement and empty , codified xenophobic hubris masquerading as a "strong government" coalition. Your expansive verbiage and debate mastery to heckle these sallow henchmen you will impart, indeed. It will be the empty space you will inhabit in that liminal melancholy which is most tragic, Mr. Hipkins. There was an opportunity you could have fend off these dark arbiters that keep the middle and lower classes fighting amongst themselves , now entrenched into their silos for the next three years. You did nothing. Your pragmatic idling allowed the danger of mulit-national infiltrators of corporate hegemony to take root. You didn't rise to it. They, the Corporate paranoids of the right, after exposing your incredible lack of street smarts, punched you and Labour in the mouth, and sent you to the back of the bus.
All you can now do is cowl and virtue-signal as the minority in Parliament, Labour reduced to no more than a theatre troupe vainly seeking an audience.
And you, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, now your coalition in full forward motion with the anti-intellectual ACT and NZ First glitterati, a modular dysfunctional vehicle
Everyone who looks like you, acts like you, and is monied like you.
The real estate class, the property owners. The paper-chasing humanoids of the financial sector who are into expanding profit, mass consumption of resources, and personal gain at the expense and death of people and cultures, all while nations burn to the ground. The 'WEF invitee class' who cannot wait to subjugate the lower classes and bring them to heal, all while telling them what they can and cannot say.
There's alot to unpack here..and to unload on you.
First off: Your intent on banning gang patches, as if to suggest by merely covering up or removing a piece of stitched insignia apparat ,you can eliminate the gangs themselves via penalties, forfeitures and the eschew of other instruments of state-sponsored fiduciary terrorism . This act of censorship (and it is censorship in its intent to quash free expression) not only is a core demonstration of your pervasive lack of imagination, but speaks firmly how you really view those who come from poverty, recidivism, domestic violence, homelessness, drug abuse, rape, failing and fading resources, suppressed wages, stunted upward mobility and higher death rates overall, and haven't any income source meaningful beyond interstate drug dealing and territorial control
They're all just criminals.
No longer human beings in the vox populi campaign you ran as some kind of pseudo champion of the people a la Donald Trump. They are merely animals that need to be interred at the zoo. This aligns with your current rush to remove te reo Māori from public services, publications and spaces forthwith.. It is wanton dehumanizing of primarily ethnic groups at both ends of this censorship spectrum: on one end shutting down free expression that is cauterized as socially and publicly 'offensive' and 'criminal', and at the other end, diminishing indigenous language as 'unnecessary' and 'irrelevant', relegating its cultural importance to general marginalization is obtusely authoritarian , and historically, a colonial act of deliberate cultural disenfranchisement . Native Americans, Aboriginals, Moriori, and countless other native cultures have had their language stripped, were violently displaced and destroyed by European colonial conquest worldwide. During the Māori 'activation' protest which ascended on Wellington on 5 December , when asked about it by the press during your new government rollout, you claimed ignorance as to why they were protesting initially , reinstating the artifice of bringing together New Zealand as 'one people' What you meant was white people, Prime Minister.
A nation strictly for those who look like you, act like you, and are monied like you.
And you proudly represent the Professional Managerial Class. which excludes poor whites as well. Sure, you tailored your campaign to draw their vote , particularly in the rural areas and farming communities. You made your prerequisite pit stops and campaign stumps at areas where the working white poor were made even poorer by natural disasters in the past year. What expresses contempt toward the most vulnerable is the very construct you and National's willingness to pull down and away the very benefits keeping them afloat. It's the politics of class assault: dissolve the social compact, shatter the windows of the public space, revert the monies and safety nets so as to deliver back to your compatriots who are members of the global 1%. Your apparent dream is to hear champagne glasses clicking in the skyscraper penthouses and salons of power, whilst down in the dirge and filth of the cities below, law enforcement swarm and trap homeless families like sewer rats to carrion, as to be taken away, to incarceration, so as to disappear from your view, not to cause you discomfort as you partake in the festivities..
ACTs pronouncement about increasing the construction of prisons and the relaxing of stringent gun laws further supports this divisive environment by creating a circus of distraction and violence among the classes, whilst the upper 10% continue profiting through tax loopholes snuck through Parliament at the behest of you donors., of which Winston Peters is already in their back pockets, in putrid cynical fashion.
How to figure this assumption of this being your intent as Prime Minister, Mr Luxon? I'm an American Kiwi. I have seen the result of the deliberate disleveraging parlayed on my people, the working class poor. I watched my city , Los Angeles- pummel 70, 000 people into the streets all across L.A. county proper , 40% of which are families . Across freeway overpasses and footpaths littered with tents, hunger, police harassment , stress, bile and insomnia. At one time I was one of them: No games, Prime Minister, you can read it here.and here . I haven't forgotten that feeling of being less-than, being judged, and being criminalised for trying to recover from circumstances I did not create, but was created by a system of inequity used to benefit the upper 1%. No workers rights meant I lost not one, but two jobs without discernible reason. I was working an average of 60 hours a week to support my family, then, suddenly parsed public assistance that did not cover basic living and breathing, then further down the line- eviction, then: out in the streets for the next 4 months.
I was defined as a low life. A loser. A criminal. Language your class uses to describe us on the streets and shelters , living out of cars, camper vans and caravans, Mr. Luxon., the 'whiners' and 'losers' among us. I wonder how many homeless people that came across your purview that you scoffed at on your way to the office in Chicago. I wonder about the presence of your fellow pasty-faced American corporate homeboys you rolled with who barked and bellowed about "these low-life niggers" running the streets on the south side.
You have never wont for anything, never been destitute, and have had full access to upward mobility. In that, I wonder what you would have done if you had been working as a hotel security agent in a 5 star luxury Hotel situated at the landmark Hollywood and Vine intersection in the heart of Tinsel Town at 2am on a frothy and sleepy November eve, , when a seeminigly homeles man , self-proclaiming to be a Marine veteran who had just returned from Afghanistan rocks up, his head fully consumed in his combat PTSD , in your establishment's lobby with a .45 caliber pistol pressed firmly through the bottom of his empty backpack, begins arguing with front desk staff, and when you approach him to ask him what is going on, he openly confers to you directly his contemplation of murder-suicide of all those present and you having no weapon on your person except your wits. Curious if you would managed to craftly and adeptly show compassion to the gentlemen, and talk him down, even though your terrified your one-off attempt might find you in a coffin, or would you defecate in your trousers, say something blindingly impish with a high squeal of terror at the top of your larynx, and manage to get yourself, and everyone on shift with you in the somber early morning some toe tags tied fitted to each of your dead feet as your carted off in a meat wagon to the morgue. Just another American Mass shooting statistic for the next news cycle.
It's a true story. I actually managed to get the poor bastard to put away his weapon and, after he verified his active duty status when he voluntarily presented his military ID card, I gave him a hotline number to the very veterans assistance which I had used myself when I ended up homeless. Being a vet myself, I understood the futration he felt of feeling discarded and forgotten after my service. He was a combat marine: a trained killer who needed deprogramming. I bring this forward not as braggadocio. The point is that the class you represent creates and manufactures conflict to covet more resources, materials and land for your collective enterprises globally. Your class kills us in large numbers through your wars of corporate profit expansion. It is disgusting, Prime Minister Luxon, that you haven't any issue with being the custodian of the corporate monoliths who want to eventually have us all killed if we don't 'comply', and get out of their way.
You're not ignorant of this either, Prime Minister. You are fully aware of this in fact, and don't give a damn, and for the simplest of reasons.You don't have to.
Many New Zealand voters missed this aspect of your progeny, including your wealth being built on investment , particularly in property management and as a tenured CEO of multiple corporations. This has solidified your bias of advancing Capitalism to profit from both personally, professionally as well as to benefit your other corporate criminal contemporaries in three-piece suits. You speak in the language of 'American gangster' capitalism , utilising the deceptive double-speak sloganeering of 'creating better outcomes for New Zealanders through expanding business' , giving tax deferment to Property managers and landlords which in itself solidifies inequality and corners the working poor, which you will further throw battery acid on them via oppressed wages and neuter any ability for workers to negotiate for better pay and elevation in their status and station.
And you have gotten over so far, with the entirety of New Zealand 's news media (both state-run and independant) having completely taken their eye off the ball and letting you off the hook, having never challenged you on the fact the PMC you rep deliberately contribute to divisive xenophobia , fear mongering, policy inversion, encouragement of social violence so as to use laws to curtail personal freedoms such as free speech and privacy. You have essentially modeled your policies to be textbook American policy via lobbyism from mulit-national corporations such as BlackRock, Vanguard, the fossil fuel industry and Big Pharma.
You don't care, Prime Minister. You just want a seat at that table. And another 3 , maybe four years in power to expand your CV and line your coffers and pockets . You don't have to care personally, as you know you are shielded from any consequences of your intended policies of pure rot and grift for the elites. They will aid in your protection from the rest of us.
There is one little problem for both of you, and for varying reasons of concern, gentlemen. Because of your collective self-interest, incompetence of progressive policy making and narcissism , you are bringing Aotearoa closer to the sunken place: that ride up to the edge of the waterfall of ultra- violence , media and government collusion in censorship and propaganda, militarised policing killing unarmed poor whites and people of color, extreme class inequality left over from Capitalism which has left it a living graveyard of calcified institutions enshrined and stained with the rust and filth of corruption, just like a place 11,000 kilometeres from our location....
Can I make it any clearer?
KC Shoen
