KP 2024 year end review.

KP continues to putt-putt along as a tiny niche blog that offers a NZ perspective on international affairs with a few observations about NZ domestic politics thrown in. In 2024 there was also some personal posts given that my son was in the last four months of a nine month medical odyssey that involved two major open chest surgeries (six hours each) and three keyhole surgeries, all involving a lot of time spent in Starship children’s hospital in Auckland (including Xmas) and more pain than any child deserves. The good news is that the boy is fully recovered and given a clean bill of health, so thanks to all who offered their good wishes.

I wrote 56 posts, an increase over 2023. The lowest monthly total was two (twice) and the highest was ten, with the average monthly output being +/- 5.5 posts. By far the most viewed post was the January 2024 post titled “The New Zealand Junta,” which even caught the negative attention of a cut and paste political commentator in Wellington who used it as evidence of “Luxon Derangement Syndrome” because in it I described the approach to governance of the Coalition of Chaos. As it turns out, I was pretty prescient about what was going to happen on the policy front, and I would rather be accused of having some sort of mythical syndrome that being known in fact for being a sycophantic boot-licker of the powers that be.

Other posts about Te Pati Maori and NZ identity took three of the top five viewed posts and NZ-focused posts occupied nine of the top ten viewed (including posts about boot camps and about the different media and legal treatment of former MP Golriz Ghahraman versus the still named-suppressed teen rapist former rightwing political party pakeha male president), so the audience bias in favour of NZ-focused essays is quite clear and follows a long-term trend of KP readers preferring to read about their domestic politics. After that, posts about NZ foreign and security policy, especially those about AUKUS Pillar 2, NZ security/intelligence and NZ support for Israel and the campaign against the Houthis in Yemen, garnered the most foreign affairs-based attention, followed by various international relations and security-intelligence-focused posts and posts about the US political scene. If KP views are any small measure of NZ political attention spans, then it is clear why foreign affairs, military relations and intelligence matters do not occupy much bandwidth on the local news. People just seem largely uninterested. That may be a small country syndrome, or a distance-from-the-fray syndrome or just a “could care less in this age of social media narcissism” syndrome, but as far as I can see on KP understanding of the impact of “global” (where global and local meet) and “intermestic” (where the international overlaps with the domestic) phenomena are the province of a very select few.

The posts that got the least attention tended to be the more theoretical and academic types. The excerpts from my long-dormant book project received close to no attention, with other more complex discussions, say, about the limits of realism as an analytic construct, voting as a multi-order process of choice and the misuse of the term “fascism” to describe any form of authoritarianism receiving only cursory treatment. Interestingly, the posts about my son’s medical journey had more views than the theoretical/academic discussions, and the links to the “A View from Afar” podcast series that I do with Selwyn Manning occupied the lower middle strata of views. Also in that general category was my post about being “honoured” by the Russian government by its banning me from stepping on Russian soil, presumably because of something that I have said or wrote. Luckily, I did not have to change my travel plans as a result of the ban.

Overall KP received 22.4 thousand views and 305 comments (a fair few of which were my replies and many others were return visitors) from 92 countries. This represents an increase over 2023. KP received the most views in February (3971) and the least in September (888). Overall, KP averaged around 40-50 views per day. Besides search engines, the most common referrers were Kiwiblog, The Standard and Twitter/X. The vast majority of KP viewers come from NZ, followed by the US, Australia, the PRC, UK and India. I see a healthy contingent from Singapore (presumably due to my past connections in that country) but very little from Latin America, where I grew up and about which I have researched, taught, written, consulted and served in relevant government policy-making positions over the last four decades (Argentina provided the most views from Latin America with just 37). Perhaps that is due to not writing that much about Latin America, the link to an external article about South America’s strategic situation notwithstanding.

The same general profile goes for commentators. NZ-based people replied the most, followed by Ozzies and Yanks, and some have become welcome interlocutors on these pages (the two Barbaras, Anne and Di Trower especially). As one might expect, most people from overseas comment on posts that address topics close to them, and a few of these are trolls who get blacklisted pretty quickly (most from the PRC but some from NZ as well). Although most readers seem to come from Left perspectives, we have at few who come from the Right as well, and if I might say so, a couple have treated me with considerable empathy and decorum during a trying year (you know who you are). So thanks for that.

All in all, it was a a status quo year at KP in spite of the personal dramas. I still wish that someone would join this team of one to write about issues that I am not competent to address, with former KP luminary Lew remaining as the gold standard when it comes to being a blogging colleague. KP could use a bit more diversity in topics addressed, although the social democratic or left-leaning perspective of the blog likely invites more trouble than it is worth because of the internecine arguments on the Left about what it is to be a “progressive” in the post-industrial, post-post-modern age.

For the time being I will continue plugging along since writing (even in this short form) provides a vehicle of release for me. By agreement amongst the original KP collective members (Anita, Peter, Lew and myself) back in 2008, the blog does not have advertising and does not actively seek sponsors or subscriptions. It has therefore become somewhat of a labor of love, or some might say vanity project for myself. Whatever it is, it provides me with an outlet so I willingly defray the costs of operating the site.

All that having been said, I wish all KP resides a healthy, happy and productive New Year. Un abrazo a todos!