Tag Archives: kiwipolitico

Happy New Year.

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I have been pretty dormant as of late because the lead up to the end of 2022 involved household Covid, some work demands on me and stresses on my wife (she was caught up in that cluster-F of academic “reorganisation” at a certain NZ university) and the usual holiday preparations. Plus I have been dealing with some health issues, including a somewhat slow recovery from knee replacement surgery. It has been a strange, unhappy year in world affairs for the most part, which gave me this feeling of impending doom for most of it even though we, as a small family with one young child, have weathered things pretty well. We shall see if things get better in 2023.

KP has become a bit of a vanity project of mine, which is a pity. I am the administrator and sole financial supporter of the blog. Lew has decamped to short-format analysis and opinionating, which is a KP loss. I have yet to find anyone who will join KP as a co-blogger who does things like feminism, identity politics, modern Left dynamics in NZ and abroad, etc. Perhaps people are warned off by the experiences of others who came and went but I am happy to consider anyone who can write intelligibly on these type of topics and who does an ego-check before standing on the KP soapbox.

KP have seen its readership numbers slowly descend since Lew left, averaging < 100 views per day. We are now a micro-niche platform, if that. In order to supplement my increasingly scarce posts I have added some of the “A View from Afar” podcasts that I do with Selwyn Manning. Many of the topics are what I would address here anyway, with the added benefit of having Selwyn as an intelligent interlocutor with whom to exchange ideas and opinions.

We did pass the million view mark sometime this year. I did 40 posts, about half of which were AVFA links along with a couple of public notices. We are up to 16,557 comments, of which 2,336 are mine. Since its inception in 2009 KP has published 1, 242 posts, of which 704 are mine. This year the majority of posts received comments although as in previous years those that were NZ-centric got the most attention. Sometimes I feel that I could write about a nuke going off somewhere north of NZ and the response would be “but there was a nice green glow in the evening sky that day and surely the pavlova crisis needs our more immediate attention.” Just kidding.

KP does have a loyal cadre of readers and commentators, for which I am grateful. I say that I part because I have seen a proliferation of “experts” on things that have been addressed here over the years, including violent extremism and terrorism. It is good to have more coverage of political violence in all of its guises and motivations even if there is a sort of reinventing the wheel aspect to all of these new analyses. I say this because I was involved in dealing with the root causes of violent extremism while in US government service in the 1990s and because I have professionally written for 35 years on various aspects of political violence. In any event, 2022 was certainly a year to broaden focus on rightwing extremism in all of its seditious and subversive manifestations, so the expansion of public attention on the subject in general is very much warranted.

This year the focus of most KP posts were international relations and security, including the Ruso-Ukrainian War and PRC machinations in the South Pacific as well as the response to them in the region and beyond. I wrote on a few other things (including the rise of an indigenous socialist president in Chile early in the year) but the trend was to cement the KP as a foreign policy-oriented blog with a NZ perspective.

In any event, KP will continue to chug along for the time being. If anyone has the time, inclination and chutzpah to propose to join me in the endeavour, I am all ears. You will not get rich by doing so but you can get things off your chest and even engage with our small community of dedicated readers on a regular basis as a type of network broadening exercise.

I wish all KP readers a healthy, happy and productive New Year. As for me, I am starting it by outlining my first essay of 2023 titled the Era of Continuous War, which is about how the erosion of international rules, rise of intolerant authoritarian politics that transcend formal government structures both within and across national borders, the advent of sophisticated weapons and new tactics (say, in the use of drones) and the (economic, political, social) dislocations caused by Covid and subsequent pandemics will lead to the 2020s and perhaps beyond being in a state of continuous war involving States, proxies and non-State actors in what will largely be low intensity conflicts of open-ended duration but which have the potential to escalate and widen into something much worse.

And on that optimistic note, I say Cheers to you all!

Seasons Greetings and Happy New Year.

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I hope that all readers have had a good festive season and are headed into a healthy, happy and productive New Year. 2019 was a relatively consistent and quiet year at KP, as befits a niche political blog. 39 posts this year, including three by Lew on the gun buy back (some the most informed commentary on the post 15/3 gun law reforms has come from Lew). Some months were slow, with just one post, while most months averaged between two and four posts, the high being seven in February (in other words, just over three posts per month). We averaged around 2500 page views per month and got a pretty steady flow of comments from regular and new readers, having now passed the 2,800 comment mark from over 930,000 page views.

Since I do most of the posting the topics reflect my interest in international relations, comparative politics and international security and intelligence. I did write about more domestic-focused subjects such as the NZDF, the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Christchurch terrorist attacks, the misogyny of the NZ Right, the implications of Rocket Lab’s military payloads, Simon Bridge’s silliness, Mark Taylor’s desire to return to NZ, Anne Marie Brady’s problems with the PRC, Huawei as a potential arm of PRC intelligence, the Christchurch attacks and backlash to it from rightists, the cloaking of hate speech in the mantle of free speech, and the decline of small-d democracy in NZ and elsewhere. I also celebrated the ten year anniversary of KP’s first post in January 2009.

As for foreign affairs, I wrote about the Venezuela crisis (twice), the US (and its relations with various places), Argentina (on the use of torture there) Hong Kong (protests as collective action), Israel (as a limited democracy), Iran (as a regional power) and Sri Lanka (terrorist attacks). I wrote about the global protest movement, coming resource wars, the fallacy of the so-called “proximity” argument, xenophobia and racism, legacy versus speculative investments, trade versus security (with regard to NZ-PRC-US relations), and the “post-truth” moment that we are living. Underprinning all of these posts was an orientation towards democratic theory, strategic analysis and comparative research methodology, as one would expect from someone with my training, background and interests.

Most of KP readers know the rules of engagement and respected them. A lot of the comments made by were thoughtful, well-grounded and informed, for which I am thankful. There were the usual cranks (hat tip to Paul Scott) but in the main things were kept pretty civil. I did get visited by a pro-PRC troll when I wrote about the PRC and Anne Marie Brady, and he is the fellow who (I will say likely just to be polite) tried to undermine my citizenship application by making false allegations about me to the Department of Internal Affairs. No worries for me, but potentially big worries for him since there are ways that even I can track people who write to this blog (that includes those who use so-called “masking” sites), and government agencies do not take kindly to having their resources wasted by false allegations made by people with dubious foreign connections themselves.

All in all it was a good year for KP. We shall see if it keeps rolling along. I have some health matters to attend to in 2020 that may take me out of circulation for a while and there is no one to pick up the slack. Assuming that all goes well on the health front I will potter along as I can, as there will be no shortage of topics to discuss.

One thing that I can guarantee, though, is that I will not engage in the type of intergenerational warfare (“OK Boomer”) and reactionary/woke nonsense (recently associated with some pathetic old white guys turning magazine and books upside down because they have a powerful woman’s face on them). In a world where refugees are dying in droves trying to reach safe haven, only to be caged upon arrival (be it in Samos or San Antonio), and where the gap between rich and poor widens while global temperatures rise, protests rage and ongoing wars of convenience and opportunity demonstrate the powerlessness of international norm enforcement, I have better things to do in a blogpost than write about petty trivialities.

Feliz Ano Nuevo and Happy New Year to all! See you next decade.

Year End Summary.

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Kiwipolitico continues to chug along in its niche space in the NZ political blogosphere. We published 41 posts this past year, all but three of which I wrote. Kate guest posted in May (on universal human rights) and Lew wrote posts in July and August (on Labour’s inept pronouncements on race and the Auckland housing market, and tasers). We averaged around 4 posts per month, with April being the high mark (5 posts) and February and November being low points (2 posts).  Our readership continues its gradual decline, slipping to around 3500 views per month. In a sign that readership is indeed content driven, the biggest month for views was February (4900) even though it was a month when only two posts were published. That included the most viewed post (on NZ’s role in the anti-Daesh coalition), which was followed in views by the recently published post on the Police search for Rawshark as part of the sequels to the Dirty Politics saga. The third most viewed post was Lew’s July post on Labour’s clumsy attempt to layer race into the debate about Auckland’s housing market.

Most of what I wrote focused on comparative politics, foreign policy, international relations, intelligence matters and security. I did a couple of “lighter” posts (on Donald Trump and cricket sledging) and  a few on NZ politics (including the post about the NZDF’s defamatory treatment of Jon Stephenson), but in the main it was my usual repertoire of subjects.

Most of our traffic comes directly from search engines and other NZ Left-leaning blogs. Twitter and Facebook also provide significant traffic and were instrumental in sending viewers to the most read posts. Mention of a post by larger blogs such as The Standard or Kiwiblog also sends more viewers than usual our way.

We have a dedicated core of readers and commentators who help inform discussion of selected topics. One area of success has been the significant reduction in the number of trolls even though we have not had to ban anyone this year. The pests from the past have not returned and the new ones–especially the NZ government employee writing from his work computer and feebly trying to cover his IP tracks with common misdirection techniques that are easily overcome with reverse tracking technologies–have come to realise that there is no point in trolling because all they do is get slapped silly. I must admit I do miss “peter quixote”/”lolita’s brother”/Paul Scott, who voluntarily stopped posting his reactionary diatribes for reasons unknown to me.

An ongoing source of concern is the lack of diversity in our contributors and the one man show aspects of the blog. Lew is busy with life balance issues, Kate was and perhaps will be a very occasional visitor, and the last remaining member of the original cadre, Anita, has all but disappeared. I write on KP as an outlet for more ideological toned and personal missives, since my business writing has to be non-partisan, neutral and ideology-free. My hope is that the other members will return to writing more regularly and/or that we pick up another member willing to contribute regularly. That is important because we need to expand the range of subjects we write about and I cannot do that on my own given the limitations of my “expertise” and interests.  Having said that, I will endeavour to do my bit to keep KP rolling as an alternative source of analysis and interpretation of social dynamics, both foreign and domestic.

In any event I would like to wish our readers the best for a productive and happy 2016.  Cheers!

Wishing you the best for the upcoming year.

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Another year has come and gone and KP idles along in its small corner of the blogosphere.  For a year in which social media was touted as emerging as a significant competitor to the corporate press as framers of political discourse and debate in NZ, we had little impact outside of a dedicated core of readers.

KP published 55 posts in 2014. All but ten were written by me. Anita did not contribute this year and Lew wrote the ten that I did not (including all of June’s posts). His posts covered important domestic issues and were, as is always the case, the most read and had the most impact in terms of generating larger debate. I spent a bit more time on domestic related issues than I usually do and started adding links to other commentary that I have done, mostly in the fields of intelligence, security and NZ foreign policy. As has been the trend from the beginning, these received less attention than “purely” domestic or party politics related posts, and my posts on global affairs and international relations received the least amount of hits (and in some cases no comments). Having said that, my posts on the dire state of the NZ Left in January, May and September did generate some interesting responses in the comments and a couple of ripostes from Chris Trotter, and proved to be sadly prophetic in the wake of the election. They also elicited some gleeful coverage among Right leaning blogs, which was unfortunate.

We received around 3500 reads per month, with the high being 12000+ in September. The number of comments varied considerably but consistently averaged between 10-15 per post. No one was banned although one individual was warned off (see below). Other than the latter’s, most commentary was intelligent and civilised.

Most of our referrals came from other social media, especially twitter, although any mention in the Herald or NBR brought a relative flood of readers.  We also received traffic from other NZ political blogs, mostly on the Left. The cross-pollination is regular and welcome.

Traffic came predominantly from NZ, although there is a dedicated group of readers from overseas. I had a problem with trolling on a couple of my posts (primarily about Eastern Europe), including some ad hominum attacks from a NZ based clown who works for a NZ government agency and who used deliberately misdirected email servers to cover his tracks. To say the least he is not welcome here and if he persists I will be forced to out him by name. Let’s just say that we know each other from a past life.

Otherwise it was business as usual. KP is not out to make a splash or turn its authors into notorieties. We do not toe a party line, try not to be hysterical and although very critical of those in power most definitely reject the very concept of “attack” blogging. We leave that for others with darker inclinations. I cannot speak for Anita and Lew, but for me blogging on KP fills a space that is somewhere between academic writing, editorial writing, business analysis and personal reflection. In that measure it serves its purpose.

We shall see how this year goes. Without countervailing input from my other colleagues and with the press of my business commitments growing while I share parenting duties of a toddler (at an age normally associated with grandparenting), I foresee less time to write for KP and consequently a diminished number of posts. But one never knows what the future may bring, so I shall use the theme of embracing uncertainty as my motto for the next 12 months.

All the best to our readers for a healthy and happy 2015.

Yearly Summary.

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As 2013 draws to a close I thought I’d summarize how it went on KP.

It was a quiet year, with only 53 posts. The blog has increasingly become a one trick pony show, as Lew and Anita have greatly diminished their presence on it. Lew wrote nine posts during the year, most before June, and Anita contributed one. Work and family commitments clearly play a part in that, and I could well follow the diminished presence trend should the consultancy and my infant son demand more time than I can currently afford. Lew maintains an active presence on Twitter (LewSOS), so his impact on the NZ commentariat continues albeit in pithy form.

We are very much a niche blog, averaging 100-200 views per day (less on weekends), or around 500-600 per week. Most are returning readers. Since I do not post about things that I do not know about, the bulk of the posts have been about international relations, espionage and intelligence, military-strategic affairs and NZ foreign policy, interspersed with some personal observations about more immediate things. That leaves big gaps in the areas in which Anita and Lew have expertise (which is broad and much more NZ focused), hence the lesser number of views compared to previous years when they were more active.

The search terms leading to KP are varied, although “Auckland haka incident” and “Wendy Petrie breasts” are among the most frequent.

There is a stable core of readers and commentators. Most of our links come from other NZ blogs, search engines, Twitter and Facebook. One person, Paul Scott (aka “peterquixote” or “lolitasbrother”) was briefly banned for abusive comments but later reinstated. Another, Hugh, chose to stop commenting because of my irritated responses to remarks of his that I found to be off the subject or obviously uninformed, thread-jacks or useless nitpicking. His decision followed a private email exchange in which we could not resolve our differences.

I was called out on my more pointed remarks to Hugh by others, and have taken on board the need to return to civility even when dealing with trolls (which I accept Hugh is not). Having said that, most of the regular commentators are thoughtful, insightful and knowledgable about what they are writing about, so the task of being civil is easy most of the time.

On a more positive note, KP has avoided involvement in the internecine quarreling and back-biting amongst the NZ Left blogging community, and is treated with a modicum of respect by all but the most rabid blogging Right.

In general, KP is percolating along at a subdued but steady rate.

Not much else to report. I enjoy the fact that I can use the blog to write shorter, more informal and/or ideological essays in a non-academic style yet on subjects that are within or related to my professional and personal interests. It allows me to ruminate on those non-professional concerns as well as link to various media appearances and some of the analyses offered at the consultancy. It is a bit indulgent, to be sure, but I guess that the very nature of blogging is conducive to that.

In any event I would like to wish all readers the best of New Year’s and my hopes that it turns out to be happy and productive for all. I look forward to continuing my second fatherhood (I have two adult children in the US) and to watching my Kiwi son develop during his first year. I very much hope that we will see more of Anita and Lew in 2014 (and perhaps even the reclusive jafapete!), and that whatever happens we manage to continue to satisfactorily fill that small niche that we occupy in the blogging world.

Prospero Ano Nuevo a todos!

End of Year Review.

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Since it is the season to take stock and make predictions, I will join the self-absorbed blogging hordes in summarizing KP’s year (as opposed to pontificating about the 2012 universe or what will happen next year).

This was a year of slow retrenchment, which is a nice way of saying that we wrote many fewer posts and as a result have lost readers. We now average 200 or so a day (about 615,000 total unique views), with episodic upsurges when things get topical. For various very justified reasons my two blogging colleagues could not keep the pace of previous years (we are now approaching our fourth year anniversary). That left the bulk of posting to me, which given my interests and press of other business greatly reduced the scope of topics covered. As a result, we did not cover gender, Maori or NZ domestic political issues in the measure that we have before, so I presume that is where we lost the readership. My most fervent desire when it comes to blogging is that Anita and Lew will rejoin the fray. Their combined talents are too precious to remain unheard, although I completely understand why they need to tend to other things.

On the bright side we appear to have a dedicated cadre of serious and smart (and seriously smart) readers that keep us on our toes.

We banned one individual with very clear, uh, “issues” (and no, it is not redbaiter) for continually abusive trolling, and there is another person on final warning for what can be called nuisance trolling–the act of making a comment just to be snarky, flippant, or to wind people up. That is not helpful and violates the comments policy, so the person has been given a final warning before being banned.

Otherwise it was a year without highs or lows. There were no serious slanging matches like on the infamous Mutu thread last year, but other than Lew’s GC post, there were no major breakthroughs in the MSM or linked to other blogs (although mention should be made of Bryce Edwards’ occasional reference to this blog in his MSM “link-and-comment” articles as well as at his own blog, Liberation). We still get most of our traffic from NZ, with OZ and the US following. Our major referrers are Bowaley Road (thanks Chris), No Right Turn (thanks Malcom), Kiwiblog (thanks David), The Standard (thanks Lynn), Lew’s twitter feed, Facebook and the NZ Herald when Bryce mentions us. We get a fair bit of links from right-oriented blogs, so I take that as a sign that we may be small but are worth the opposition’s attention.

I could tell you a lot about the search terms that lead to us, but let’s just say that “Wendy Petrie’s breasts,” “your ass in jail” and “pink and blue things” are a constant. Go figure, but I am gonna blame Lew for that.

There is plenty of other data to mine but that would be overly self-indulgent.  So let me first wish my co-bloggers the best of the New Year in all aspects of their lives. Let me wish the readers just as much but without the personal interest. And let’s hope that KP can rebound and reinvigorate the political debates in Aotearoa in the lead-up to the 2014 elections.

Saudades pra o ano novo!

 

Two year review.

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A little over two years ago KP was launched. It started as the brainchild of Anita and Jafapete, who then invited me to join. The idea was to have a non-partisan, avowedly “intellectual” moderate Left outlet (I use the word “intellectual” carefully these days in light of recent debates about that term). Jafa subsequently had to leave due to other concerns, but we got lucky and Lew came on board. There have been others briefly attached to the blog and Anita has had to take a long hiatus, but KP keeps rolling along in its small niche in the blogosphere. Lew and I do the posting these days, and we are always on the lookout for someone to join us in the event that Anita cannot return (or even if she does).  We remain committed to civilised debate, which is why swear words are censored and trolling and personal attacks largely deleted. Only one person has been blacklisted, and that was because I accidentally hit the “blacklist” rather than “delete” button when dealing with a personal attack comment from an otherwise passionate but sane regular reader (his comments now go directly to the spam filter where we fish them out).  And no, the individual in question is not that rabid anti-communist ranter Russell. In general, other than some quarrels with commentators and my occasional bouts of grumpiness or frustration, I think that we have kept the discourse pretty civil.

The stats show a decent progression. We have made 568 posts and received 8,676 comments. We have had over 336,500 unique page views. Most of our linkages come from other New Zealand political blogs, although Facebook and Twitter referrals are increasing. We have elicited some interesting responses, both in public and in private, from members of the NZ policy community.

I do not have access to our demographic profile but judging from regular commentator’s profiles reckon that the readers are largely NZ resident male Pakeha with university degrees and Left inclinations. I hope that there is a significant number of women and Maori readers, but am concerned that with Anita absent the female readership may have dropped (hence our interest in soliciting the participation of someone whose primary interests involve gender, environmental, health and welfare politics). There seems to be fair bit of RSS feeds to the KP site, and our overseas readership shows signs of growth. All in all, we are small but comfortable given what we are in terms of content and where we are in terms of the ideological spectrum represented in the blogosphere.

I cannot speak for Anita or Lew by I find that blogging offers me an outlet that complements my editorial and scholarly writing. In particular it allows me to address current events as they happen, and provides a daily dose of mental exercise in the form of the commentary and debate. Although I have been told in this forum that I am a conservative security and international affairs commentator, a check of my posts will reveal that there is more to my interests than guns, war and power politics. Among other things I have posted, with a Left focus, on comparative labour politics, done a 5 part series on democracy (focusing on NZ), covered regime characteristic and cultural dynamics in a variety of places, thrown in some game-theoretic and rational choice-inspired essays, and even made a few attempts at humor or NZ focused social commentary. That range is much harder to cover in scholarly publications, and editorial writing tends to be more episodic and medium- to long-term in its focus. Thus I am thankful for the opportunity to use KP as an outlet for expressing views on a number of issues of contemporary import (at least to me).

I look forward to more writing and more readership growth in 2011, as well as to my return to NZ after a few years abroad. It will be interesting to see if that shift effects my choice of subjects, but whatever the case it will be good to be physically closer to my KP colleagues (who I know personally and have high regard for) as well as any new contributor(s) who may volunteer for the project of keeping another informed NZ-based non-partisan Left perspective alive and well on the internet. And, of course, much thanks to you readers for coming back and sharing your thoughts with us. We may not agree on most things but it is comforting and invigorating to have you as interlocutors with whom to hash out ideas and opinions.

A voces, muito obrigado.