#  @SikotiHamiltonR Scott Hamilton RTM Scott Hamilton RTM posts on X about tonga, vanuatu, niue, samoa the most. They currently have [-------] followers and [----] posts still getting attention that total [---] engagements in the last [--] hours. ### Engagements: [---] [#](/creator/twitter::2558839177/interactions)  - [--] Week [-----] -46% - [--] Month [------] +157% - [--] Months [-------] -49% - [--] Year [-------] -94% ### Mentions: [--] [#](/creator/twitter::2558839177/posts_active)  - [--] Month [--] no change - [--] Months [---] +18% - [--] Year [---] -16% ### Followers: [-------] [#](/creator/twitter::2558839177/followers)  - [--] Week [-----] +0.05% - [--] Month [-----] -0.13% - [--] Months [-----] -1% - [--] Year [-----] -0.18% ### CreatorRank: [---------] [#](/creator/twitter::2558839177/influencer_rank)  ### Social Influence **Social category influence** [countries](/list/countries) [travel destinations](/list/travel-destinations) [finance](/list/finance) [technology brands](/list/technology-brands) [social networks](/list/social-networks) [us election](/list/us-election) [celebrities](/list/celebrities) [automotive brands](/list/automotive-brands) [stocks](/list/stocks) [currencies](/list/currencies) **Social topic influence** [tonga](/topic/tonga) #148, [vanuatu](/topic/vanuatu) #48, [niue](/topic/niue), [samoa](/topic/samoa), [has been](/topic/has-been), [in the](/topic/in-the), [fiji](/topic/fiji) #467, [australia](/topic/australia), [china](/topic/china), [history](/topic/history) **Top accounts mentioned or mentioned by** [@daphlawless](/creator/undefined) [@joshuatayl68525](/creator/undefined) [@michaelfieldnz](/creator/undefined) [@pacificraft](/creator/undefined) [@qbetterscope](/creator/undefined) [@firehorsemia](/creator/undefined) [@secondzeit](/creator/undefined) [@jameskjx](/creator/undefined) [@graesullivan](/creator/undefined) [@nzherald](/creator/undefined) [@mauriceward2](/creator/undefined) [@publicaddress](/creator/undefined) [@nigelfarage](/creator/undefined) [@seculardefence](/creator/undefined) [@stfnbl](/creator/undefined) [@japantracul](/creator/undefined) [@geoffreykeey](/creator/undefined) [@mrbarnabyb](/creator/undefined) [@hoareytwits](/creator/undefined) [@tomarak](/creator/undefined) **Top assets mentioned** [Kava (KAVA)](/topic/kava) [Phoenixcoin (PXC)](/topic/phoenix) ### Top Social Posts Top posts by engagements in the last [--] hours "16/18 I'd love to find out how widespread Bima's viewpoint is amongst protesters in Indonesia. I've felt for years that egalitarian Pacific societies - I've talked about Rekohu Niue Tokelau & parts of Vanuatu as examples - have much to teach socialists" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1988189616751694169) 2025-11-11T10:18Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "1/3 Trump is demanding Greenland again. In [----] he could turn his gaze southwest. Tokelau is part of the Realm of NZ & the US has an unsettled claim to its atolls which they regard as properly a part of American Samoa. Then there's the Cooks. Trump: "We need Greenland for national protection. They have a very small population. They say Denmark but Denmark has spent no money. They have no military protection. They say Denmark was there [---] years ago or something with a boat. Well we were there with boats too I'm https://t.co/lRR8BGFz9w Trump: "We need Greenland for national protection. They" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2003273893281431653) 2025-12-23T01:18Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "2/2 Trump & his minions have repeatedly talked about exercising control over the western hemisphere a region that goes well beyond the Americas taking in vast parts of the Pacific. It includes Tokelau which is part of the Realm of NZ but has long been claimed by the US" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2009473706276606422) 2026-01-09T03:54Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "1/4 This flag has been circulated by Minnesotans opposed to the invasion of their state by ICE. Am I wrong in thinking it shows the influence of the 'laser Kiwi' flag which was created by a child after the call for new designs in [----] & which many NZers fell in love with" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2015315166200778879) 2026-01-25T06:45Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "1/4 Minneapolis protesters are following ICE agents & blowing whistles to alert their potential targets. Similar tactics were used when men were hunted by the NZ state during World War One & in the 1860s" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2015953902957691370) 2026-01-27T01:03Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@yegormethod @FrancisPSantora I think twitter's reached peak ignorance" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2017033252004106249) 2026-01-30T00:32Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "1/5 Winston Peters is engaged in his ancient election year ritual of demonising a non-Pakeha migrant group. This year he's chosen Indians. But Indians have been part of NZ's history for as long as Pakeha. In Webs of Empire Tony Ballantyne tells the fascinating story of Te Anu" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2017035480244887557) 2026-01-30T00:41Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "2/5 Te Anu was a 'lascar' - an Indian sailor employed on a British ship. Like hundreds of other sailors - British Irish Azorean American African American - he fled the tyranny of his vessel & made a freer life amongst Aotearoans. Te Anu married into the iwi Kai Tahu" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2017036525821972685) 2026-01-30T00:45Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "6/10 Te Anu is only one of many lascars whose descendants live across Aotearoa today. The right-wing Pakeha who want to categorise Indians as alien to NZ have an insuperable problem because they also want to insist on their British ancestors belonging here" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2017039376904311268) 2026-01-30T00:57Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "7/10 But because of the British colonisation of India & the intertwining of the two countries' economies the British presence in Aotearoa always involved an Indian presence. Ballantyne compares the British Empire to a web across which peoples as well as goods & ideas moved" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2017039929503863120) 2026-01-30T00:59Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "8/12 The Treaty of Waitangi offers a good example of movement across this web. As Ned Fletcher & other scholars have explained the treaty was influenced by the deals the British had been cutting for decades with Indian peoples" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2017040698885956007) 2026-01-30T01:02Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "9/12 These deals often involved multiple sovereignties. An Indian ruler might secure continued control over their city of region but lose power over British inhabitants in that realm or over aspects of international relations. Our Treaty can't be understood without India" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2017041617753166135) 2026-01-30T01:06Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "10/15 As the stones in a score of country cemeteries in Aotearoa show many of the British soldiers who fought against Maori in the NZ Wars had earlier fought under the Union Jack in India. Strategy & tactics as well as soldiers were transferred from one place to another" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2017042618556035236) 2026-01-30T01:10Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "11/15 But webs could be traversed by subalterns as well as by the instruments & elite of the empire. From the 19thC onwards groups like Indians & Fenians used the mobility the empire had given them to assert their own interests & subvert the elite" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2017046164605190275) 2026-01-30T01:24Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "12/15 Manilal Doctor traversed the web of empire. Gandhi sent him to Fiji to represent the Indian population there & to campaign for their emancipation from indentured labour. Doctor was deported to NZ where he worked with local Indian communities" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2017050834899706334) 2026-01-30T01:42Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "13/15 After they won their freedom with the help of Gandhi & Doctor Indo-Fijians began to migrate to NZ taking advantage of the fact that both Fiji & NZ were part of the same vast British realm. In small towns like Kihikihi & Carterton racist Pakeha staged anti-Indian riots" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2017052190867919204) 2026-01-30T01:48Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "15/16 The government attempted to use language tests to keep Indians out of NZ. Indo-Fijians may have been British subjects the government conceded but if they didn't know English then they couldn't live in NZ. But Indo-Fijians found a way around Massey's obstacle" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2017053225288159274) 2026-01-30T01:52Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "16/17 Cramming schools opened in Fiji giving locals enough knowledge of English to pass their exams & enter NZ. It was not only conservative Pakeha who wanted to keep Indians & other 'Asiatics' out of NZ" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2017054214556647774) 2026-01-30T01:56Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "17/19 In the 1920s Apirana Ngata began to speak out about 'Asiatic' migration to Aotearoa to complain about the growth of inter-racial r'ships between Maori & 'aliens'. Ngata cooperated with the White NZ League after its formation in 1926" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2017054919757541543) 2026-01-30T01:59Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "18/20 Ngata helped organise parliamentary inquiry into the Asiatic 'problem'. When he railed against the alleged 'corruption' of wahine by Chinese & Indians Ngata implicitly denied Te Anu & Kai Tahu whakapapa" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2017055616490205225) 2026-01-30T02:01Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "19/20 Ngata was caught in the same contradiction as his conservative Pakeha colleagues. He wanted to present Maori as a people deserving of equality in Aotearoa because of their positive r'ships with Britian & the British - he liked to talk of the sacrifice of Maori in WW1" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2017056223414407269) 2026-01-30T02:04Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "20/21 Ngata argued that Britain represented one noble civilisation & Aotearoa another. But if Maori became associated with Indians a 'race' with a lower place in the hierarchy Ngata & conservative Pakeha believed in then Ngata's argument for Maori equality would fall apart" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2017057592238113141) 2026-01-30T02:09Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "21/21 But there's no way of telling the story of the British presence in Aotearoa without talking about India. Tony Ballantyne's essay about Te Anu has been uploaded to substack: Te Anus Story: A Forgotten Chapter of New Zealands Colonial Past" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2017058049035505889) 2026-01-30T02:11Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "5/10 The devils were associated with hunger & disease. Like many materially poor peoples in Oceania - the atoll dwellers of Tokelau Takuu & Tuvalu the Moriori on windy Rekohu - Wape have developed a very egalitarian society. Limited resources are shared" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1992398667979047329) 2025-11-23T01:03Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "3/5 Ballantyne pursues Te Anu through the archives finding him in the reports of visitors to NZ's far south. He is described as a senior & trusted member of a Kai Tahu hapu involved in trade with visiting vessels. Today Te Anu has hundreds of descendants" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2017037365957841156) 2026-01-30T00:49Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "4/10 As more & more sailors abandoned ship for their rohe Kai Tahu set aside the island Whenua Hou - New World - for them. Former sailors settled on the island with their Kai Tahu wives. Archaeologists have excavated the motu & made some fascinating finds" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2017038250117124181) 2026-01-30T00:52Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "1/4 Lorenz Gonschor came up to Warkworth to see me yesterday. He teaches in Fiji but has been roaming Te Ika a Maui looking at artefacts associated with the Kingitanga. Lorenz's hair is very long. He will never cut it again. It symbolises not only his scholarship but his faith" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2017712675942535202) 2026-01-31T21:32Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "2/4 Lorenz was born in Germany but like generations of European scholars & artists he felt called to Oceania. He spent [--] years in Hawai'i learning that nation's language participating in its independence movement & writing the thesis that became this fine book" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2017713221369794635) 2026-01-31T21:34Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "3/5 Then came periods in Tahiti & Tonga. He sat at the kava bowl of 'Atenisi the impoverished Tongan university where the legendary scholar Futa Helu trained a generation of pro-democracy activists. On a marae recovered from Tahitian jungle Lorenz had an epiphany" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2017714523353059541) 2026-01-31T21:40Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "4/8 He had been studying the work of Moana'ura Walker the anti-imperialist activist who had reestablished Tahiti's pre-Christian religion. As he witnessed a ceremony in that jungle marae Lorenz realised that this Pacific faith meant more to him than his homeland's Lutheranism" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2017715298548519288) 2026-01-31T21:43Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "5/8He continued to study Walker's movement but became in the parlance of sociology a 'participant-observer'. I see Lorenz as part of a tradition that goes back to rogue missionary to Tonga George Vason & NZ's Thomas Kendall. But religion is only one of Lorenz's myriad subjects" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2017716204950225193) 2026-01-31T21:46Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "7/8 Yat-sen spent much of his youth in Hawai'i where his biographers like to say he encountered Western ideas. But Gonschor makes it clear that Yat-sen was also attracted to independent Hawai'i with its progressive constitution & multiculturalism" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2017717949755490522) 2026-01-31T21:53Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "8/10 Yesterday Lorenz told me about a new interest of his: Norf'k Island. He's been studying the resistance there to direct rule from Australia. He described the revitalisation of the island's language & the reestablishment of old connections to Tahiti" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2017719887029014834) 2026-01-31T22:01Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "10/11 Lorenz talked about how Tikopians & other peoples of Outlier Polynesia - those of Rennell & Bellona for example - were once again tattooing themselves & growing their hair long as the influence of Christian dogma waned" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2017721236168839185) 2026-01-31T22:06Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "I'm doing an interview with Lorenz for Reef Shark the online & print journal that's launching in a couple of months. It'll be an overview of his large & diverse body of work" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2017722571022864396) 2026-01-31T22:12Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "3/10 The territory's independent approach to immigration reflects its unusual status. The US government acquired this chunk of Samoa in [----] but since then its inhabitants have repeatedly rejected offers of closer ties with the imperial homeland" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2018480640879153579) 2026-02-03T00:24Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "7/10 American Samoans have been remarkably successful in defending their traditional order. Today most of the land in the territory is still owned by aiga or extended families or by villages. Some land can be sold or inherited by individuals but non-Samoans cannot hold it" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2018484316104479120) 2026-02-03T00:38Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "12/20 Steinmetz shows how the different paths three different German colonies took depending on the needs of the imperial power the forces arrayed against it & the personality of imperial functionaries like Solf" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2018487416370425891) 2026-02-03T00:51Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "13/20 The sheer weight of demographics meant that the Germans judged there was little point in trying to Europeanise the inhabitants of their Chinese colony. Namibia was a mineral-rich & strategically located colony so revolt of the Herero was seen as a major threat" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2018488064734277690) 2026-02-03T00:53Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "14/20 Samoa by contrast was considered very remote & lacked mineral wealth or much strategic value. Solf was left alone by Berlin to indulge in his Orientalist fantasies. How can we relate American Samoan history to Steinmetz's narratives" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2018488957915549921) 2026-02-03T00:57Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "15/20 The territory is very small even in comparison to the rest of Samoa & the Mau made it clear that the US government would face resistance if it tried to break up traditional lands & bring in capitalists & settlers. But another factor was important" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2018489412779430152) 2026-02-03T00:59Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "17/20 It was US opposition that stopped the Anglo-French invasion of Egypt in its tracks in [----]. The US owned much of Britain's huge debt & Eisenhower made it clear to London that the era of European imperial adventures was over. The US had good reasons for its stance" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2018490686006546745) 2026-02-03T01:04Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "18/25 The US wanted to break into the closed markets of the European colonies. As Britain & other powers withdrew from Africa & Asia US companies moved in. The US created a new 'soft' empire in place of the old ones. This empire is only now beginning to crumble" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2018491612574470265) 2026-02-03T01:07Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "19/25 Breaking up traditional society & planting settlers in Samoa would have contradicted the US's postwar stance against European colonialism & would have served little purpose. Samoa was tiny & far from the flashpoints of the postwar world" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2018492505659187281) 2026-02-03T01:11Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "20/25Colonialism is never a good thing & attempts by 21stC revisionists like Niall Ferguson to make excuses for empires should be resisted. But it's important to recognise that indigenous peoples have engaged with colonialism in diverse ways some of which may seem contradictory" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2018493343467012333) 2026-02-03T01:14Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "25/27 This apparently pro-imperialist stance was really an effort to safeguard local autonomy. Mangaians had resisted the colonisation of their island & the rest of the Cooks by NZ in the early 1900s. Unhappy with the racist NZ commissioner Gudgeon they'd called for British" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2018497422364954666) 2026-02-03T01:31Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@MorosKostas @gregcameback In what sense is the Odyssey a 'European' myth The term used for Homer's age is anachronistic. The Odyssey emerges from oral tradition in the eastern Mediterranean a region that included Asia minor & Egypt as well as Greek. The name Odysseus is not even Greek but Pelagasian" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2018808720160149651) 2026-02-03T22:08Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@shawnathen55121 @FindXSnowflakes @UbermenschMind She was described that way by Sappho centuries after Homer wrote the Odyssey. Homer called her 'many-coloured'. She's a supernatural being born from an egg not a character drawn from history" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2018814326707282042) 2026-02-03T22:30Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@ChrisWa16949549 @JMatrix20266053 @models_by_Russ Yes the Odyssey emerges from oral history in the eastern Mediterranean a region that included Africa and Asia minor. It has Nubian (Ethiopian) and Egyptian names. Helen herself is a supernatural being described by Homer as 'many-coloured'" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2018815367670636841) 2026-02-03T22:34Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@secondzeit @BobbyMiller202 Rodney Hide is another one who idolises tariff-setting TPPA-rejecting Trump. I looked around and it was really interesting to see who on the NZ right had embraced Trump & who had rejected him (Brash for eg). A test of character" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2018842530591506570) 2026-02-04T00:22Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "4/10 At that seminar back in the early 2000s a couple of speakers had argued that Marx's method & categories could help people in the South Pacific understand their history & present. They'd talked of social formations modes of production capital accumulation" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2019532637006885202) 2026-02-05T22:04Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "5/10 Tony normally spoke quietly & carefully. I'd heard him describe his interviews with Rastas on the east coast of Te Ika a Maui & the way they'd connected Marley with anti-colonial fighters like Te Kooti to create a unique & eschatological view of history" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2019533209672032475) 2026-02-05T22:06Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "12/20 .anticipated world music & the ambient & techno genres & more. In the same sort of way Marx began his research when concepts like modernity & capitalism were new & developed a series of brilliant but contradictory perspectives on them" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2019538747348643942) 2026-02-05T22:28Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "13/20 There's the Marx of the Paris manuscripts with his concern for the alienation of modern humans the Marx of the Communist Manifesto drunk on capitalism's ability to make 'all that is solid melt into air' & expecting its creative destruction to usher in socialism" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2019539374233514091) 2026-02-05T22:31Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "20/25 It was not for years that I found a solution to the problem Tony had posed. I wish I could say that I found the solution myself & that I found it during some dramatic experience: a journey to a strange country or a massive protest march. But I found it in a library" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2019545640750182590) 2026-02-05T22:56Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "21/27 I found it in a book of interview with Hans-Georg Gadamer. Gadamer is not a name that will impress left-wing intellectuals. He was a German philosopher whose politics were centrist & who chose to hide in an ivory tower rather than resist Nazi rule" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2019546407720685678) 2026-02-05T22:59Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "28/30 .unwilling to examine how those same ideas might have influenced Marx. I reread the Communist Manifesto & could suddenly see the ugliness in the text's paean to the destructive powers of capitalism. When Marx praised capitalism for destroying the 'idiocy & backwardness" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2019553762839568447) 2026-02-05T23:28Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "29/30 .of rural life' I could see Parihaka burning & my ancestors on the Isle of Skye loading their belongings into a wagon after the enclosure of their village by clan leaders who had turned capitalists who wanted to run sheep over their land" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2019554283562385727) 2026-02-05T23:30Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "36/37 In the 2020s tho I've met young 'tankies' who are prepared to defend Stalin's show trials or Mao's cultural revolution. This photo shows the founding conference of a new Communist Party of NZ. Note the old teleology on the wall from Marx to Stalin" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2019559858350223847) 2026-02-05T23:52Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "37/38 The late Frederic Jameson who did so much to bring Marx's thought into the era of postmodernism once remarked that capitalism had gotten so bad in the 21stC that even an old crude authoritarian version of Marxism might make a comeback" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2019560800546091333) 2026-02-05T23:56Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "1/5 National Party pollster David Farrar has argued on his blog that February the 6th should be considered NZ's Emancipation Day because the Treaty of Waitangi s'posedly brought British civilisation & the end of slavery to NZ. I wonder what this man would make of that claim" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2020282717494300728) 2026-02-07T23:45Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "11/15 Thousands of Pakeha NZers are descended from men who were abducted & forced to join Britain's armed forces. After the wreck of the troopship Orpheus at Manukau Heads in [----] some of these men came ashore adopted new identities & made new lives in hiding" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2020291104017641906) 2026-02-08T00:18Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "12/15 David Farrar might argue that blackbirded islanders prisoners forced to work & pressganged military men were not 'real' slaves because they often had finite terms of labour. But the same can be said for many slaves in traditional Maori society as Hazel Petrie shows" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2020292029692145832) 2026-02-08T00:22Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "16/20 The result was a genocide. But the British civilisation Farrar lauds did nothing to end that genocide. In [----] Moriori were compensated by the Crown because the NZ state not only failed to save them from slavery but sided with the slavers" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2020294781331759534) 2026-02-08T00:33Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "25/27 Ranginui Walker once remarked on how the decline of the British Empire has left many conservative Pakeha feeling 'marooned' in Aotearoa. The old symbols of their identity - the British Crown & flag the generals & politicians who built the empire - have become hollow" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2020300734299009070) 2026-02-08T00:56Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "26/27 It's not unreasonable that Pakeha like David Farrar want to find something to be proud of in the 19thC & ancestors to empathise with. To find such models tho we have to turn from the powerful to the minority of Pakeha who took stances against evils like slavery" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2020301606349382118) 2026-02-08T01:00Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "28/29 Slavers impersonated Patteson putting on vicars' robes & waving bibles from the decks of their ships in an attempt to lure islanders aboard. After he was slain on Nukapu Island Patteson's followers blamed the slave trade. Huge anti-slavery meetings were held across NZ" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2020303070367002966) 2026-02-08T01:06Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "29/29 Patteson's cause were largely forgotten in NZ but in Vanuatu's Banks Islands & in the Solomons his death is still commemorated every year" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2020304634544550326) 2026-02-08T01:12Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "1/2 Guillermo May was already my favourite Auckland FC player. I like him even more knowing he spent [--] minutes on the pitch after yesterday's game signing autographs for kids. One of those kids was my youngest who also got to hold Marcel Tisserand's hand yesterday" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2020400035595473261) 2026-02-08T07:31Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "2/2 Marlowe & some other Warkworth FC kids got to walk onto the pitch beside the players. He was paired with Tisserand who plays for Sydney FC. May is a Uruguayan while Tisserand has played for his native Congo. Football is a great way to teach kids geography" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2020401319182537042) 2026-02-08T07:36Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "3/3 Here's Tisserand. 'He was very bald Dad' Marlowe told me breathlessly. As a cricket-mad kid I learned about countries like Guyana & Antigua through their players; today Marlowe equates countries with football. Argentina is Messi Brazil Neymar Uruguay Guillermo May" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2020402242294329362) 2026-02-08T07:40Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "16/17 Bima's book Anarchy in Alifuru argues that some Maluku Islands societies had the sort of egalitarian features that anarchists & socialists seek. Swedish academic Hans Hagerdal has made a similar point about the Aru archipelago which is part of the Malukus" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1988188868248777083) 2025-11-11T10:15Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "11/11 Tahiti's 'paiens' also keep their hair long" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2017721800231424314) 2026-01-31T22:08Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "1/5 Travellers are steering clear of the US after hearing stories of cellphone searches & detention by ICE thugs installed at air & sea ports. But there's one piece of America that is safe to visit. The locals administer their own borders & keep ICE far away" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2018478228793679967) 2026-02-03T00:14Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "2/5 Unlike the fifty states or Puerto Rico or Guam American Samoa does not automatically apply federal US immigration laws. The territory makes its own immigration laws & the officials at its borders apply them without oversight from US counterparts" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2018479595264278947) 2026-02-03T00:20Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "4/10 In [----] Samoans rejected incorporation into the US. They have repeatedly declined to establish a federal district court in their islands & have turned down the chance to become US citizens. In [----] the territory's parliament unanimously rejected birthright citizenship" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2018481798792253808) 2026-02-03T00:28Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "5/10 Many NZers know about the Mau movement which waged an epic & sometimes bloody struggle for the independence of Western Samoa from Wellington. But few know the Mau also flourished in American Samoa. The movement there was motivated by the same desires" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2018482496757997668) 2026-02-03T00:31Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "8/12 Pre-capitalist patterns of land ownership thus exist in a territory of the world's pre-eminent capitalist power. There's a lesson in the history of American Samoa. Imperialism can take a very different course in different places" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2018485346573660409) 2026-02-03T00:43Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "9/15 George Steinmetz's book The Devil's Handwriting is a superb account of the very different paths German colonialism took in Namibia China & Samoa. In Namibia the Germans genocided the defiant Herero people; in China they did little to affect local culture;" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2018485874783330510) 2026-02-03T00:45Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "10/15 .; in Samoa the German governor Wilhelm Solf ruled with a mixture of paternalism & repression & often sought to preserve rather than eradicate traditional society. Solf saw Samoa as a sort of open-air museum & Samoans as exhibits" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2018486655297200601) 2026-02-03T00:48Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "21/25 Despite pressure from the UN Niue moved only slowly towards independence from NZ. Before I visited the island last year I had assumed that this slow progress reflected its tiny population & a lack of political awareness. I was very wrong" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2018493940916539568) 2026-02-03T01:17Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "22/25 I learned last year that Niueans delayed independence because of the deeply egalitarian nature of their society. They have no king or chiefs & their villages were traditionally autonomous. The notion of a central government disturbed many Niueans" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2018494957791904048) 2026-02-03T01:21Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "23/25 It took time to develop a state structure that reflected Niue's decentralised society. In the meantime the prospect of a foreign administrator seemed less worrisome to many Niueans" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2018495880245235806) 2026-02-03T01:24Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "24/25 Mangaia is another society where imperialism & local autonomy have interacted interestingly. When the Cook Islands became independent some Mangaians flew Union Jacks & demanded that their island become a British possession" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2018496602143326709) 2026-02-03T01:27Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "If you can't beat them on the field at least you can win the aesthetic contest This is the proposed new uniform for Niue's soccer team which has only played a couple of times back in the '80s & was thrashed by island neighbours. I need one" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2018846941673861626) 2026-02-04T00:39Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "3/10 The case of the Efateans was debated in papers & in parliament. Pakeha NZers were forced to face the fact of their country's deep involvement in the Pacific slave trade. By [----] dozens of NZ ships were being operated by 'blackbirders' - men who stole labour from the islands" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2020284755481358472) 2026-02-07T23:53Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "17/20 As Ned Fletcher & other scholars have shown & as David Farrar's friend Matthew Hooton noted in an intelligent column last year the Treaty of Waitangi was modelled on agreements made by the British with local rulers in places like India. It divided sovereignty" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2020295320425701492) 2026-02-08T00:35Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "18/20 The British had no interest in imposing laws on rangatira running their own rohe. That's why Governor Fitzroy introduced ordinances in [----] recognising tribal law & allowing Maori to avoid imprisonment in Pakeha jails. The Constitution Act Britain created for NZ in 1852" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2020295812354576858) 2026-02-08T00:37Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@QBetterscope There's evidence for long-distance two-way voyaging for instance in the presence of the kumara a South American crop in places like NZ. These petroglyphs in Tonga are carved in a style that developed in Hawai'i around the 1300s" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2022808483641594086) 2026-02-14T23:01Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "8/8 By replacing fealty to the UK with dependence on the US during WW2 NZ postponed the reckoning with its place in the world. But now with Trump junking old alliances Pakeha can no longer look to the northern hemisphere for security & identity" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1890887088762937460) 2025-02-15T22:13Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@MichaelFieldNZ @realDonaldTrump Thanks for that Michael. What do you think the chances are that under Trump renews its interest in Tokelau and the northern Cooks" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2009476605664743775) 2026-01-09T04:05Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "6/10 There is evidence that slaves continued to arrive in NZ in the early 20thC. In [----] the Auckland branch of the Union of Domestic Servants complained about wealthy residents of that city importing unpaid labourers from Niue" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2020287271208169745) 2026-02-08T00:03Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "7/10 I wrote about some of NZ's slaving history in the book The Stolen Island. Other scholars have helped document Pacific slavery. It was Christine Liava'a who found Mundy's images of the Efatean labourers. There's increased awareness in the 2stC of this part of our history" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2020287556106219772) 2026-02-08T00:04Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "8/15 For Pasifika NZers of course blackbirding has never been forgotten. Jasmin Togo-Brisby is the descendant of a girl stolen from Vanuatu's Pentecost Island & put to work in Australia. Her art remembers the Pacific slave trade" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2020288480040087709) 2026-02-08T00:08Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "4/7 The American occupation of Tonga during WW2 subjected the kingdom's people to segregation & racist violence but also introduced many to the cash economy & to all sorts of consumer goods. Salote saw cooperatives as an alternate route to development" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2022122810550981084) 2026-02-13T01:37Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "7/10 By the 1970s Tonga had at least [--] cooperatives. But King Tupou IV had an economic vision that differed radically from that of his mother. He dreamed of making Tonga into a 'second Singapore'" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2022124401370824735) 2026-02-13T01:43Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "9/12 In Tonga money & goods are circulated through kin networks. Wages and salaries as well as the income from businesses are typically shared rather than saved by individuals. The corner shops' owners felt obliged to offer free or heavily discounted goods to family members" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2022125479965458927) 2026-02-13T01:47Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "10/12 Capital accumulation was impossible. Chinese retailers took over abandoned Tongan stores. But Salote's vision of cooperative-driven development may be realised in other Pacific societies like Vanuatu" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2022126028572021035) 2026-02-13T01:49Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "11/14 Thousands of cooperatives had been formed in Vanuatu with the support of governments & some foreign aid organisations. Like Salote ni-Vanuatu see the cooperative as better suited to the collectivism of Pacific cultures" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2022126488532005161) 2026-02-13T01:51Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@Hezbolsonaro @JustATestbed But what the War of Attrition It featured irregular actions raids etc. Possibly Nasser influenced by this advice after all" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2022258315510816970) 2026-02-13T10:35Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@bdl1080 Following your standard there's no way of knowing the history of North America before [----] and no way of knowing the Europeans who created the Lascaux Caves & Stonehenge. In the real world we know a whole lot about these societies due to the disciplines you call myths" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1717799190204694663) 2023-10-27T07:03Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "4/10 The Wape live on the inland side of the Toricelli Mountains where soils are bad. The nutrient-poor sago palm has traditionally supplied much of their food. Mosquitos thrive & spread a variety of diseases. Mitchell recorded a series of dances designed to ward off devils" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1992398134895611919) 2025-11-23T01:01Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "1/2 This map's inspired by Orwell's [----] where [--] superpowers divided the world into spheres of influence. There's an uncanny parallel with Trump's vision of the 21stC world split into US Chinese & Russian spheres of influence. NZers need to ponder Trump's rhetoric" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2009473027504001161) 2026-01-09T03:51Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@NightskyKeith @MalcolmNance @RepFine 1/2 It's a good summary. As someone who lives in Aotearoa New Zealand I can confirm that anti-Trump feeling's strong here. I'd be interested to hear what you guys in the northern hemisphere think about possible Trump actions in the Pacific. The US still claims a part of NZ" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2010878452740788351) 2026-01-13T00:55Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "@NightskyKeith @MalcolmNance @RepFine 2/2 Tokelau is in the western hemisphere that Trump raves on about controlling and historically the US has claimed it as part of American Samoa. The US also historically claimed the northern Cooks. Rare earth minerals have been identified in the seas round the Cooks" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2010878793867817288) 2026-01-13T00:57Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@garyday682 @aniobrien The US had longstanding claims to the northern Cooks and Tokelau claims that were settled by treaties during the Carter administration. A dispute remains over Swains Atoll. Trump's said he rejects Carter's Panama treaty. The Cooks SEZ includes rich rare earth mineral deposits" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2013065566534148125) 2026-01-19T01:46Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@jameskjx @PouTepou Keep an eye on Osega/Swain Atoll tho hopefully Trump will never realise Tokelau exists and that through it NZ and the US have an unresolved border dispute" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2015190544595730889) 2026-01-24T22:30Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "1/10In the early 2000s Tony Fala was writing a PhD thesis on NZ's Rastafarian movement. He was a charismatic & deeply intelligent man & one day at a seminar on Marxism he planted a ticking bomb in my brain. When the explosion eventually came it cleared my mind. I was liberated" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2019530286191767934) 2026-02-05T21:55Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "2/10 I thought I'd post about Tony's critique of Marxism because there's so little intelligent discussion about that subject on social media. In the era of Trumpism terms like Marxist have became vague but vehement curses. That's bad for both the left & the right" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2019531273082138886) 2026-02-05T21:59Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "2/3 After Kerry Howe's mother died the historian found a notebook full of esoteric words and equations amongst her things. She'd been a gunner on Motutapu Island in [----] when a Japanese fleet seemed about to steam over the horizons" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2022108474512224491) 2026-02-13T00:40Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "3/4 The guns on Motutapu had a range of thirty kilometres & could send a shell higher than Mount Everest. Howe's mother told him that she & her comrades were once asked to aim at an empty barge floating near Rakino Island" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2022108990587777394) 2026-02-13T00:42Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "2/5 Tonga's first modern king Tupou I was shocked to see people sleeping rough in Hyde Park when he visited Sydney. He created a constitution that guaranteed land for all Tongan men & banned its alienation. Capitalist development was largely forestalled in Tonga" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2022120822677360744) 2026-02-13T01:29Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "3/7 Tongans were never forced off their land into towns as their counterparts had been in Europe. They remained peasants rather than proletarians. Salote ruled Tonga from [----] to [----] & grappled with the problem of how to develop the economy without following the West's path" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2022121973728653569) 2026-02-13T01:33Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "5/7 The Langafonua cooperative ran a shop in Nuku'alofa that sold work produced in sometimes faraway villages. It was intended to provide villagers with cash without disrupting their lives. In other parts of the Pacific cooperatives emerged as part of anti-colonial protests" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2022123395660566612) 2026-02-13T01:39Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "8/10 But many of the businesses set up in Tonga under Tupou IV's reign failed. Anthropologist Niko Besnier's research explains why. Besnier shows how the Tongan-owned 'corner shops' set up after the country's entry into the WTO quickly went bankrupt" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2022125052238737874) 2026-02-13T01:45Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "12/14 Tui & Sulieti are superb ngatu artists & with the support of Tonga's queen they have been holding free workshops for women interested in the artform. But it's not clear whether the Langafonua Cooperative will be able to market new ngatu" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2022126940413669770) 2026-02-13T01:53Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "13/14 The cooperative has been in decline for many years. The overall quality of the ngatu & carvings in its Nuku'alofa shop has been getting steadily worse over the [--] years I have been visiting Tonga. Many women choose to bypass the cooperative" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2022127449744744683) 2026-02-13T01:55Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "6/10 In places like Samoa Fiji & the Cooks islanders pooled their resources to run their own shops & export their own produce. The Mau Movement in Samoa & the Cook Islands Progressive Association challenged palangi businesses as well as colonial administrators" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2022123968967455197) 2026-02-13T01:41Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "4/10 Men & women kidnapped by blackbirders built the Queensland's sugar industry & supplied labour to cotton & coffee farmers in Fiji Tahiti & half a dozen other islands. Pioneer photographer Daniel Mundy encountered the Efateans when they were working in a Hokianga flax mill" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2020285706833424640) 2026-02-07T23:57Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "5/10 It was NZ blackbirders who destroyed the unique society on 'Ata Tonga's southernmost island. After they stole half the island's population Tonga's King Tupou I evacuated the rest of the 'Atans fearing more raids. The island has never been reoccupied" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2020286242970325148) 2026-02-07T23:59Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "1/5 My friend Tui Emma Gillies has been working with her mother Sulieti to encourage Tongan women to create new ngatu or barkcloth paintings for Langafonua Cooperative. The cooperative was part of Queen Salote's plan to find non-capitalist ways of developing Tonga" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2022119891931971736) 2026-02-13T01:25Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "I found this image which was made somewhere in northen Vanuatu aka the New Hebrides in a missionary collection. It had a terse but perhaps revealing caption: 'Non-Christian hair style'" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/2022866290868691216) 2026-02-15T02:51Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "NZ's media says international travel is forbidden. Not so. This bridge crosses the Puniu River into Te Rohe Potae the Country of the Hat the state defended by Rewi Maniapoto. Until the 1880s Pakeha could not cross the Puniu. Later bootleggers floated barrels across the water" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1260907024432263168) 2020-05-14T12:17Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@morecoffeemike @Chris___Wilson @JoshVanVeen Fair enough Chris but there's a long history behind the recent protests. If we look back at the Waikato War & its aftermath we find the same hysteria & xenophobia. This is part of Pakeha NZ DNA so to speak & has to be considered when we assess today's events" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1458610862931865604) 2021-11-11T01:41Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "1/32 Brenton Tarrant's murder of Christchurch Muslims is infamous but the massacre at Surafend is little-known. [---] years ago today Anzacs killed between [--] and [---] Muslims in that Palestinian village" [X Link](https://x.com/anyuser/status/1469137107683737605) 2021-12-10T02:49Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "You can follow the news from Tonga on indigenous as well as foreign media. Newspapers may be struggling in Western nations like NZ but in Tonga they are thriving. & are two online papers providing detailed eyewitness reports. https://www.kanivatonga.nz/ https://matangitonga.to/ https://www.kanivatonga.nz/ https://matangitonga.to/" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1482302426246168576) 2022-01-15T10:43Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@1NRSmith We drove past the airbase where I helped organise a demo in [----] the other day and I said to my wife I was feeling less ashamed of the NZDF than usual owing their sterling work in Tonga. I'd become positively patriotic if we gave our Javelins to fight fascism" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1497319324708589568) 2022-02-25T21:15Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@seanphelan8 Salesa's a scab and should be blackballed by other scholars. I shared a stage with him at a book festival a couple of years back; no more. What a pity that someone with such a fine mind has become an executioner for the ruling class" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1588470571016519681) 2022-11-04T09:57Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "6/7 Last year I visited Mangaia in the Cooks. The island has never been surveyed. It has its own land court that handles all questions of ownership & use. Local leaders settle many disputes. & yet Mangaia remains a part of the Cooks & accesses central govt services like schools" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1598196836409360384) 2022-12-01T06:06Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "7/7 The covid crisis gave us glimpses of what the iwi autonomy promised in [----] might look like. Iwi set up roadblocks to defend their rohe. In Kawhia marae & hapu united in a sophisticated way to implement anti-covid measures in concert w/the state. TR means decentralisation" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1598197631489974272) 2022-12-01T06:09Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@seculardefence 1/2 There are already strong organisations in most iwi as a result of the Treaty process. There is a census there is an electoral role there are HQ. What I'm suggesting is that these iwi are given autonomy in various ways within their rohe. I'll give one example" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1598201660622262272) 2022-12-01T06:25Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "2/7 Every Aotearoan knows the Treaty but few know about section [--] of the [----] Constitution Act which Britain drew up as it prepared to hand power to a NZ parliament. Section [--] reflects the 'two peoples two systems' policies that Britain had generally followed since 1840" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1598207928418590720) 2022-12-01T06:50Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "3/7 Contrary to what many conservative Pakeha think Britain did not introduce 'one law for all' to NZ. London knew that would require a major war & a huge wave of settlers. It preferred to allow Maori chiefs to exercise a very wide degree of autonomy in their rohe" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1598208342165716993) 2022-12-01T06:52Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@DiackChris I'm not necessarily disagreeing with what you're saying but what do you mean by voting with their feet I agree that iwi would not be exercising coercive power over non-iwi NZers" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1598257076811153408) 2022-12-01T10:05Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "17/17 The irony here is so obvious it hardly needs mention. An identification with Jews that began as part of resistance to colonisation has now been coopted by a colonial state. If Te Kooti were alive he'd surely parallels between the situation of Palestinians & his people" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1736603528330928212) 2023-12-18T04:25Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "1/7 The debate about the meaning of the Treaty shouldn't be settled by partisan politics or polls. It should be settled by historical evidence. Here are [--] reasons why I believe David Seymour's wrong when he claims the Maori who signed the Treaty [----] gave away all sovereignty" [X Link](https://x.com/anyuser/status/1748254308020437049) 2024-01-19T08:01Z [----] followers, 32K engagements "1/8 In a thread last week I offered five bits of historical evidence that count against Act's view of the Treaty. Matthew Hooton's new column offers three different points against Act's historiography. One of them is particularly devastating. The most valuable insight in Hooton's very fine column isn't the history lesson (though it is good) or the observations about Luxo being a tiny wide-eyed political baby (which is obvious) it's about the escalation dynamics between the three govt parties https://t.co/uq13Ys9X1S The most valuable insight in Hooton's very fine column isn't the history" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1750820940341186913) 2024-01-26T10:00Z [----] followers, 15.5K engagements "1/3 I still see people arguing on twitter that it's no good learning te reo Maori as the language is not understood outside NZ. They seem to think Maori is a linguistic isolate a Pacific version of Basque. This is Kerry Howe's map of the Austronesian languages" [X Link](https://x.com/anyuser/status/1757996273385570345) 2024-02-15T05:12Z [----] followers, 17.6K engagements "A few years ago I wrote about Ma'afu Palu the Tongan Wesleyan pastor whose God First Party was campaigning against women in shorts & recreational sex in the kingdom. Trump's key backers the Heritage Foundation now seem to have taken over Palu's platform. "It seems to me that a good place to start would be a feminist movement against the pill & for. returning the consequentiality to sex." Conservatives have to lead the way in restoring sex to its true purpose & ending recreational sex & senseless use of birth control pills. https://t.co/yq5uxJN0WJ "It seems to me that a good place to start" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1762702855486709965) 2024-02-28T04:54Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "1/4 Ngaruawahia has been the focus of national attention as thousands have gathered at its marae to farewell King Tuheitia. But in the second half of the 1860s Pakeha settlers tried to make the town disappear. They renamed it Queenstown. Can you spot the pattern on this map" [X Link](https://x.com/anyuser/status/1831990380302410170) 2024-09-06T09:38Z [----] followers, 13.1K engagements "1/5 In [----] unemployed workers fought police outside NZ's parliament. Some of the workers carried red flags & one of them told reporters that the sickle & hammer banner of the USSR should fly over our parliament. His wish would come true" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1858762830557900920) 2024-11-19T06:42Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "5/7 Class against class helped bring Hitler to power because it made Germany's powerful Communist Party reject the notion of a coalition with the more moderate Social Democratic Party. The German communists used the idiotic slogan 'First Hitler then us'" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1858767764338733547) 2024-11-19T07:02Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "6/7 Stalin eventually junked Class against Class & went to the opposite extreme making his satellite parties adopt a 'Popular Front' strategy that saw them embracing nationalism & wrapping themselves in national flags. But in [----] the sickle & hammer rose over NZ's parliament" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1858768458730926102) 2024-11-19T07:05Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "8/9 The collaboration between Hitler & Stalin early in the war was quickly forgotten after the German invasion of the USSR in '41. The success of the Red Army in stopping the hitherto unbeatable Wehrmacht made the Soviet Union & its local allies very popular in NZ" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1858770365549584677) 2024-11-19T07:12Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "9/9 [--] years later the Cold War began. The RSA was back to expelling communists from its membership newspapers were again denouncing communist influence in schools & the PM was answering questions about Soviet subs off Piha. A sickle & hammer over parliament was unimaginable" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1858771898563174682) 2024-11-19T07:18Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@jahbottle The US is our third biggest export market and Trump wants to put a 10% tariff on all imports. That's a huge economic impact. & US across the board tariffs will spark retaliation; protection ism will be back. NZ's post-1984 free trade ideology may become untenable quickly" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1861542592531546349) 2024-11-26T22:48Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "2/4 Papa'i draws on rongorongo the undeciphered script of Rapa Nui. Knowledge of rongorongo was lost after the decimation of the island by slave raids in the 1860s" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1888915425540636680) 2025-02-10T11:38Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "Here is another painting by Tui Emma Gillies one of a generation of Tongan artists reinventing the ngatu (barkcloth) tradition. I see Hokusai's waves meeting Lo'au the Tongan educator who sailed to the world's edge. Futa Helu said that all culture-rivers flow to a single sea" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1888919582137790585) 2025-02-10T11:54Z [----] followers, [----] engagements "7/8 On these rakau momori or carved memorial trees the old ones grin & dance & fly as birds. Even here far from Rekohu I cannot stop myself searching karaka trunks for faces" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1889250550811922667) 2025-02-11T09:50Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "8/8 A grove of Maori carvings have been found on the shore of the Parangarahu Lakes. I have seen Pakeha carvings too: lovers' initials listing hearts & a bat ascending a trunk as tho it were a moonbeam" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1889252122702807198) 2025-02-11T09:56Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@CraigMokhiber Amen" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1889936145104207970) 2025-02-13T07:14Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "2/2 Low was born in Dunedin but became famous in wartime London. His anti-Nazi cartoons meant he was on a death list compiled as Hitler planned the invasion of the UK. This was Low's unforgettable response to the Hitler-Ribbentrop pact & joint German-USSR invasion of Poland" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1889942635621834951) 2025-02-13T07:40Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "9/15 In the 21st C the global financial crisis of 2007-2008 & the economic crisis caused by covid have shown the fragility of the repair job done to capitalism since the '70s. These crises have broken the two stabilising pillars of post-'70s capitalism" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1890188535732605240) 2025-02-13T23:57Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "10/15 Those pillars were public debt & cheap imported goods. It is now clear that the US & many other Western nations have unsustainable levels of debt. They can't keep borrowing indefinitely to compensate for reduced tax revenues & to avoid steep cuts in public spending" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1890189257635197348) 2025-02-14T00:00Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "11/15 & the inflation caused by the covid has greatly increased the cost of living in West. The cheap imported goods that were globalisation's compensation for static or declining wages are not cheap anymore. It's no wonder that politics in the West have become turbulent" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1890190742267785563) 2025-02-14T00:06Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "12/20 Globalisation has fragmented & demoralised Western working classes. People who might once have belonged to unions & identified as workers now think & act as consumers. They also vote like consumers. Dissatisfied with the old products they look for new ones" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1890191927699718623) 2025-02-14T00:10Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "13/20 From Corbyn to Trump to Farage to Melenchon figures from the political fringes have been able to attract the attention of voters. Electoral politics have become unstable with parties winning landslide victories only to be thrown out of office at the next poll" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1890193209185419456) 2025-02-14T00:15Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "14/20 Trump faces the same basic problems as most other Western leaders: unsustainable public debt & a rapidly declining standard of living caused by inflation. Instead of trying to solve these problems he has retreated into increasingly elaborate fantasies" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1890194684288594048) 2025-02-14T00:21Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "15/20 Lowering US debt would require either a major increase in taxes on the wealthy & businesses massive cuts to social programmes like medicare or massive cuts in military spending. Each of these measures would in its own way be very controversial & destabilising" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1890195421903089870) 2025-02-14T00:24Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "17/20 Tariffs are another of Trump's magical spells. He's pretended that they can somehow reduce the US's debt & even offset tax cuts. But Trump's most spectacular attempts at magic involve foreign policy" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1890197115844042883) 2025-02-14T00:31Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "18/25 The US's level of debt & economic dependence on China are beginning to threaten the hegemony of its dollar. The anti-US BRICS bloc of nations is attempting to reorganise global trade by cutting out Uncle Sam. Trump's response is to simulate acts of American might" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1890198985283088548) 2025-02-14T00:38Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "2/3 Trump's abandonment of NATO would be welcomed by Thompson despite the short term problems it causes. America used its dominant position in NATO to hold back vital aid to Ukraine. It was Europeans not the US that finally gave Zelensky F16s & leopard tanks" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1890254605378023671) 2025-02-14T04:19Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "3/4 Thompson fought fascism in Italy driving a tank during the assault on Cassino. After the war he joined a pan-European labour army that built a railway in Bosnia. In the '80s he built an anti-nuke movement that spanned the Iron Curtain" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1890256983758106697) 2025-02-14T04:29Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "5/6 Trump has toyed with a 10% tariff on all imports. That would devastate some NZ export industries. Most of our wine goes to the US. Trump's betrayal of Gaza & Ukraine will appall many NZers & our conservatives are disturbed by his contempt for alliances they've long valued" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1890311581516370412) 2025-02-14T08:06Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "6/6 The open racism & imperialism of the Trump regime will certainly encourage the fascist right around the world. But Trump's aggressive unilateralism may well turn non-Americans off the mass populist parties that have seen him as an exemplar" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1890312337589932274) 2025-02-14T08:09Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@Raffiatim 1/2 'NATO trundling Eastwards relentlessly since 1989' I'm not a fan of NATO but this like your other claims simply isn't true. NATO hasn't expanded east since [----] when the Baltic states joined. So for [--] years before the war NATO's eastern border was static" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1890350652250857893) 2025-02-14T10:41Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@Raffiatim 3/3 There's no document of any kind however informal let alone a Treaty where NATO promises. I agree that the US took a triumphalist attitude after the end of the Cold War & also that US has dominated NATO distorting the true defence needs of Europe. But Putin's indefensible" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1890353313775804529) 2025-02-14T10:52Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@Raffiatim 1/2 The other argument you make is that Putin was drawn into Ukraine by genuine popular uprisings in the east in [----]. But Russia invaded Crimea in February [----] before the armed uprisings in Luhansk & Donetsk. There was not an armed conflict in Crimea when Putin invaded" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1890355287208460793) 2025-02-14T10:59Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "For anyone interested in developing 'Oceanic consciousness' Epeli Hau'ofa's 'Our Sea of Islands' is indispensable: https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/77265cd6-ddfd-469d-a96b-04ace31ea67c/content https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/77265cd6-ddfd-469d-a96b-04ace31ea67c/content" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1890866721524682795) 2025-02-15T20:52Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "1/2 In in the 19th & early 20thC Pakeha had many more connections economically & mentally with the Pacific. Not all our these were positive: we were deeply involved in the blackbirding trade for example & the oppressive Presbyterianisation of Vanuatu relied heavily on Otago" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1890880386361614388) 2025-02-15T21:46Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@exkiwiforces Would love to have a chat about this stuff sometime with a knowledgeable person like yourself" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1890955135712469015) 2025-02-16T02:43Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@stfnbl 1/3 I was really impressed by Stefan Eldred-Grigg's account of what he saw a profound shift from the UK to the US in WW2 in this book. I think the '51 lockout & the '49 carpenters' dispute are good egs of the US pushing the Cold War on NZ (so is the epic Cooks strike of '47)" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1890991280584290800) 2025-02-16T05:07Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@stfnbl 2/3I did a thread about the crisis of [----] and the option of a radically different foreign policy that briefly seemed to open up in that year But I don't want to imply that this is straightforward or settled history. The issue you raise about NZ attitudes https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1885972206519517657 https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1885972206519517657" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1890992227830071329) 2025-02-16T05:10Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@stfnbl 3/4 is one I find fascinating. There was rampant anti-semitism in NZ that the Savage govt seemed to condone and that seemed to peak with the RSA's call for deportations in '45. In [----] there was huge anger over the killing of Brit soldiers in Palestine & also xenophobia about" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1890992651052179886) 2025-02-16T05:12Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@stfnbl 4/4 the boatloads of post-war Jewish refugees landing in Oz. I was stunned to find that some NZers volunteered to be part of a UN peacekeeping force in post-Britain Israel/Palestine & that their reason seemed to be hostility to Irgun & co. Be good to talk more abt all this" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1890993067303342472) 2025-02-16T05:14Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "'He is winning a momentous & just war against gravity. Jump away jumping boy; the boy I was shouts go' - Geoffrey Hill" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1891075042445803792) 2025-02-16T10:39Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@therealbigjonno @berlin_bridge Fair points but the Baltic states are uniquely easy for him. Very easy to over run with relatively small forces because of their tiny size and armies and no land borders with the rest of NATO. An amphibious invasion to kick the occupier out would be extremely difficult" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1891076483973562555) 2025-02-16T10:45Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@EssexLin @nigelknight_uk @anandcheam @BorisJohnson Linda as a NZer I can tell you you're wrong - NZ and Australia suspended elections during WW2. And the UK suspended them til Hitler was beaten. The [----] poll came when the war was all but over. By your standards Churchill was a dictator" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1891081440965620056) 2025-02-16T11:05Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "@jameskjx 3/3 What Mikaere says in that lecture is that Pakeha identity must be rooted in an acknowledgement rather than avoidance of colonialism & in a giving up attempts to control Maori. Again I agree" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1891282395162091884) 2025-02-17T00:23Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "2/4 Thompson wanted an independent Europe - but he was also aware Europe's big powers colonised the world. He opposed Britain's entry into the EU because he thought it would be dominated by these big powers & their capitalists" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1891284005904933287) 2025-02-17T00:30Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "3/5 Consider France which has for decades imposed neo-colonialism on Africa. How can it square a commitment to Ukrainian autonomy with its military interventions in the Sahel Could a European army become an instrument of neo-colony policy in Africa" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1891284812247302467) 2025-02-17T00:33Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "4/5 But Thompson might draw comfort from a couple of things. The smaller states of Europe many of which have a history of being colonised rather than colonising could together wield considerable influence in a new European alliance" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1891285424472986044) 2025-02-17T00:35Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "5/5 & there has been flow of solidarity from Ukraine from non-state actors like trade unions & fronts organised by mostly progressive groups. Thousands of volunteers both military & civilian have gone there. This flow could become a flood & influence state policies" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1891286459207782819) 2025-02-17T00:40Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@jameskjx 4/5 It seems to me there's a partial example of what Mikaere advocates in our nearest neighbour. The German Tongans have origins in 19thC colonial expansion but have long since rejected that history & live in Tonga without dominating anyone practising Tongan culture while" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1891298159319527748) 2025-02-17T01:26Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "2/10 I first encountered Vea in [----]. I'd just returned from a year living in Tonga & was already missing the extraordinary art scene there. I wandered into Papakura's small gallery after shopping at the supermarket across the road & was confronted by a field of urban taro" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1891663642187223354) 2025-02-18T01:38Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "3/10 Vea had named the strange triangular sculptures on the gallery floor urban taro because he wanted to both link & contrast migrant Pacific labour in NZ & work in the old country. Most Tongans still live in country on small farms" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1891664715853467960) 2025-02-18T01:43Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "4/10 Tonga's constitution promises adult males a small parcel of land. Farmers who grow kava or taro or squash on their eight acres can see the fruits of their labour & often control its distribution. In NZ's capitalist economy tho workers are often alienated from their labour" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1891665704790737166) 2025-02-18T01:47Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "2/5 Sikaiana atoll is part of Outlier Polynesia. Like the Ifirans of Vanuatu & the Nukuoroese of Micronesia the Sikaianans speak a Polynesian language & tell stories about Maui despite being isolated from the Polynesian triangle & surrounded by islands with different cultures" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1893817587672174920) 2025-02-24T00:17Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "3/5 Sikaiana is considered part of the Solomon Islands but in the '90s its people argued that they have US citizenship because of an old link to the Kingdom of Hawai'i which sought in the 19thC to expand its territory in opposition to European & American imperialism" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1893818460901130634) 2025-02-24T00:21Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "4/6 In [----] Tahiti's king agreed to federate with Hawai'i but France deposed him & foiled the plan. Sikaianans claimed that King Kamehana IV accepted them into Hawai'i in [----] & that they therefore later became citizens of both the republic & state of Hawai'i" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1893820807001825779) 2025-02-24T00:30Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "5/6 The cover of my friend Lorenz Gonschor's study of Hawai'ian foreign policy features the medal that was awarded to activists for the proposed anti-imperial federation. Hawai'i sought labour as well as land. In [----] a Hawai'ian emissary to Aotearoa invited Maori to migrate" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1893821664049123374) 2025-02-24T00:34Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "6/6 William Donner is an anthropologist who has studied Sikaiana for decades spending long periods on the island & paying particular attention to its songs. He's created an online archive of texts images & sounds: http://www.sikaianaarchives.com http://www.sikaianaarchives.com" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1893822699186581815) 2025-02-24T00:38Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "@cannibality 1/2 I agree with you abt neutrality for NZ. For me the big issue is the way Chinese capital is putting indigenous lifeways under pressure in several Pacific nations. Tonga is the most extreme example. Vanuatu's resisting a Tonga-style takeover of retail by Chinese capitalists" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1894170969113334156) 2025-02-24T23:42Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "8/20 These men were members of the Riverton Rifles which was formed to repel a Russian attack in [----] when Britain & Moscow looked like they might go to war over Afghanistan. The fear of communist invasion began long before the Soviet Union" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1894197674444034463) 2025-02-25T01:28Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "9/20 After destroying the Paris Commune in [----] France sent thousands of Communards to New Caledonia. Some escaped by small boat to Queensland; others settled in NZ after completing their sentences. This cartoonist wanted to shoot Communard & Fenian migrants" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1894198467834384577) 2025-02-25T01:31Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "1/2 In the 1960s a Zambian science teacher named Edward Nkoloso led an unofficial but popular space programme in the newly independent country. NZers were less ambitious but in the '60s & '70s our festivals & parades showed a fascination with space exploration" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1894330564641182112) 2025-02-25T10:16Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "1/4 When Donald Tusk announced Warsaw would be seeking nukes my mind wandered off to [----]. In that year a nuclear blast destroyed Poland along with London Paris & Banana. They were all villages on Kiribati's Kiritimati Island" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1898523993449357684) 2025-03-08T23:59Z [----] followers, [--] engagements "4/6 South Sea Islanders are the Australian descendants of blackbirded Melanesians. In [----] they were finally recognised as a distinct ethnic group. They fly this flag at community events in towns like Mackay" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1904029750475243696) 2025-03-24T04:37Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "5/6 My kids prefer Kiribati's flag with its frigate bird flying serenely over above a rising sun & rolling sea but I love Niue's banner which joyously defaces a Union Jack & turns the NZ flag's austere blue field into a psychedelic expanse of yellow" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1904031010460930135) 2025-03-24T04:42Z [----] followers, [---] engagements "1/10 NZ Geographic sent James Frankham to a far-flung part of the Realm of NZ. There he found something that surprised him: a thriving socialist society. Frankham seems to have struggled to understand it" [X Link](https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1943650043908780320) 2025-07-11T12:34Z [----] followers, [----] engagements Limited data mode. Full metrics available with subscription: lunarcrush.com/pricing
@SikotiHamiltonR Scott Hamilton RTM
Scott Hamilton RTM posts on X about tonga, vanuatu, niue, samoa the most. They currently have [-------] followers and [----] posts still getting attention that total [---] engagements in the last [--] hours.
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Social Influence
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Social topic influence tonga #148, vanuatu #48, niue, samoa, has been, in the, fiji #467, australia, china, history
Top accounts mentioned or mentioned by @daphlawless @joshuatayl68525 @michaelfieldnz @pacificraft @qbetterscope @firehorsemia @secondzeit @jameskjx @graesullivan @nzherald @mauriceward2 @publicaddress @nigelfarage @seculardefence @stfnbl @japantracul @geoffreykeey @mrbarnabyb @hoareytwits @tomarak
Top assets mentioned Kava (KAVA) Phoenixcoin (PXC)
Top Social Posts
Top posts by engagements in the last [--] hours
"16/18 I'd love to find out how widespread Bima's viewpoint is amongst protesters in Indonesia. I've felt for years that egalitarian Pacific societies - I've talked about Rekohu Niue Tokelau & parts of Vanuatu as examples - have much to teach socialists"
X Link 2025-11-11T10:18Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"1/3 Trump is demanding Greenland again. In [----] he could turn his gaze southwest. Tokelau is part of the Realm of NZ & the US has an unsettled claim to its atolls which they regard as properly a part of American Samoa. Then there's the Cooks. Trump: "We need Greenland for national protection. They have a very small population. They say Denmark but Denmark has spent no money. They have no military protection. They say Denmark was there [---] years ago or something with a boat. Well we were there with boats too I'm https://t.co/lRR8BGFz9w Trump: "We need Greenland for national protection. They"
X Link 2025-12-23T01:18Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"2/2 Trump & his minions have repeatedly talked about exercising control over the western hemisphere a region that goes well beyond the Americas taking in vast parts of the Pacific. It includes Tokelau which is part of the Realm of NZ but has long been claimed by the US"
X Link 2026-01-09T03:54Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"1/4 This flag has been circulated by Minnesotans opposed to the invasion of their state by ICE. Am I wrong in thinking it shows the influence of the 'laser Kiwi' flag which was created by a child after the call for new designs in [----] & which many NZers fell in love with"
X Link 2026-01-25T06:45Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"1/4 Minneapolis protesters are following ICE agents & blowing whistles to alert their potential targets. Similar tactics were used when men were hunted by the NZ state during World War One & in the 1860s"
X Link 2026-01-27T01:03Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@yegormethod @FrancisPSantora I think twitter's reached peak ignorance"
X Link 2026-01-30T00:32Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"1/5 Winston Peters is engaged in his ancient election year ritual of demonising a non-Pakeha migrant group. This year he's chosen Indians. But Indians have been part of NZ's history for as long as Pakeha. In Webs of Empire Tony Ballantyne tells the fascinating story of Te Anu"
X Link 2026-01-30T00:41Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"2/5 Te Anu was a 'lascar' - an Indian sailor employed on a British ship. Like hundreds of other sailors - British Irish Azorean American African American - he fled the tyranny of his vessel & made a freer life amongst Aotearoans. Te Anu married into the iwi Kai Tahu"
X Link 2026-01-30T00:45Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"6/10 Te Anu is only one of many lascars whose descendants live across Aotearoa today. The right-wing Pakeha who want to categorise Indians as alien to NZ have an insuperable problem because they also want to insist on their British ancestors belonging here"
X Link 2026-01-30T00:57Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"7/10 But because of the British colonisation of India & the intertwining of the two countries' economies the British presence in Aotearoa always involved an Indian presence. Ballantyne compares the British Empire to a web across which peoples as well as goods & ideas moved"
X Link 2026-01-30T00:59Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"8/12 The Treaty of Waitangi offers a good example of movement across this web. As Ned Fletcher & other scholars have explained the treaty was influenced by the deals the British had been cutting for decades with Indian peoples"
X Link 2026-01-30T01:02Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"9/12 These deals often involved multiple sovereignties. An Indian ruler might secure continued control over their city of region but lose power over British inhabitants in that realm or over aspects of international relations. Our Treaty can't be understood without India"
X Link 2026-01-30T01:06Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"10/15 As the stones in a score of country cemeteries in Aotearoa show many of the British soldiers who fought against Maori in the NZ Wars had earlier fought under the Union Jack in India. Strategy & tactics as well as soldiers were transferred from one place to another"
X Link 2026-01-30T01:10Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"11/15 But webs could be traversed by subalterns as well as by the instruments & elite of the empire. From the 19thC onwards groups like Indians & Fenians used the mobility the empire had given them to assert their own interests & subvert the elite"
X Link 2026-01-30T01:24Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"12/15 Manilal Doctor traversed the web of empire. Gandhi sent him to Fiji to represent the Indian population there & to campaign for their emancipation from indentured labour. Doctor was deported to NZ where he worked with local Indian communities"
X Link 2026-01-30T01:42Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"13/15 After they won their freedom with the help of Gandhi & Doctor Indo-Fijians began to migrate to NZ taking advantage of the fact that both Fiji & NZ were part of the same vast British realm. In small towns like Kihikihi & Carterton racist Pakeha staged anti-Indian riots"
X Link 2026-01-30T01:48Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"15/16 The government attempted to use language tests to keep Indians out of NZ. Indo-Fijians may have been British subjects the government conceded but if they didn't know English then they couldn't live in NZ. But Indo-Fijians found a way around Massey's obstacle"
X Link 2026-01-30T01:52Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"16/17 Cramming schools opened in Fiji giving locals enough knowledge of English to pass their exams & enter NZ. It was not only conservative Pakeha who wanted to keep Indians & other 'Asiatics' out of NZ"
X Link 2026-01-30T01:56Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"17/19 In the 1920s Apirana Ngata began to speak out about 'Asiatic' migration to Aotearoa to complain about the growth of inter-racial r'ships between Maori & 'aliens'. Ngata cooperated with the White NZ League after its formation in 1926"
X Link 2026-01-30T01:59Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"18/20 Ngata helped organise parliamentary inquiry into the Asiatic 'problem'. When he railed against the alleged 'corruption' of wahine by Chinese & Indians Ngata implicitly denied Te Anu & Kai Tahu whakapapa"
X Link 2026-01-30T02:01Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"19/20 Ngata was caught in the same contradiction as his conservative Pakeha colleagues. He wanted to present Maori as a people deserving of equality in Aotearoa because of their positive r'ships with Britian & the British - he liked to talk of the sacrifice of Maori in WW1"
X Link 2026-01-30T02:04Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"20/21 Ngata argued that Britain represented one noble civilisation & Aotearoa another. But if Maori became associated with Indians a 'race' with a lower place in the hierarchy Ngata & conservative Pakeha believed in then Ngata's argument for Maori equality would fall apart"
X Link 2026-01-30T02:09Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"21/21 But there's no way of telling the story of the British presence in Aotearoa without talking about India. Tony Ballantyne's essay about Te Anu has been uploaded to substack: Te Anus Story: A Forgotten Chapter of New Zealands Colonial Past"
X Link 2026-01-30T02:11Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"5/10 The devils were associated with hunger & disease. Like many materially poor peoples in Oceania - the atoll dwellers of Tokelau Takuu & Tuvalu the Moriori on windy Rekohu - Wape have developed a very egalitarian society. Limited resources are shared"
X Link 2025-11-23T01:03Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"3/5 Ballantyne pursues Te Anu through the archives finding him in the reports of visitors to NZ's far south. He is described as a senior & trusted member of a Kai Tahu hapu involved in trade with visiting vessels. Today Te Anu has hundreds of descendants"
X Link 2026-01-30T00:49Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"4/10 As more & more sailors abandoned ship for their rohe Kai Tahu set aside the island Whenua Hou - New World - for them. Former sailors settled on the island with their Kai Tahu wives. Archaeologists have excavated the motu & made some fascinating finds"
X Link 2026-01-30T00:52Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"1/4 Lorenz Gonschor came up to Warkworth to see me yesterday. He teaches in Fiji but has been roaming Te Ika a Maui looking at artefacts associated with the Kingitanga. Lorenz's hair is very long. He will never cut it again. It symbolises not only his scholarship but his faith"
X Link 2026-01-31T21:32Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"2/4 Lorenz was born in Germany but like generations of European scholars & artists he felt called to Oceania. He spent [--] years in Hawai'i learning that nation's language participating in its independence movement & writing the thesis that became this fine book"
X Link 2026-01-31T21:34Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"3/5 Then came periods in Tahiti & Tonga. He sat at the kava bowl of 'Atenisi the impoverished Tongan university where the legendary scholar Futa Helu trained a generation of pro-democracy activists. On a marae recovered from Tahitian jungle Lorenz had an epiphany"
X Link 2026-01-31T21:40Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"4/8 He had been studying the work of Moana'ura Walker the anti-imperialist activist who had reestablished Tahiti's pre-Christian religion. As he witnessed a ceremony in that jungle marae Lorenz realised that this Pacific faith meant more to him than his homeland's Lutheranism"
X Link 2026-01-31T21:43Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"5/8He continued to study Walker's movement but became in the parlance of sociology a 'participant-observer'. I see Lorenz as part of a tradition that goes back to rogue missionary to Tonga George Vason & NZ's Thomas Kendall. But religion is only one of Lorenz's myriad subjects"
X Link 2026-01-31T21:46Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"7/8 Yat-sen spent much of his youth in Hawai'i where his biographers like to say he encountered Western ideas. But Gonschor makes it clear that Yat-sen was also attracted to independent Hawai'i with its progressive constitution & multiculturalism"
X Link 2026-01-31T21:53Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"8/10 Yesterday Lorenz told me about a new interest of his: Norf'k Island. He's been studying the resistance there to direct rule from Australia. He described the revitalisation of the island's language & the reestablishment of old connections to Tahiti"
X Link 2026-01-31T22:01Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"10/11 Lorenz talked about how Tikopians & other peoples of Outlier Polynesia - those of Rennell & Bellona for example - were once again tattooing themselves & growing their hair long as the influence of Christian dogma waned"
X Link 2026-01-31T22:06Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"I'm doing an interview with Lorenz for Reef Shark the online & print journal that's launching in a couple of months. It'll be an overview of his large & diverse body of work"
X Link 2026-01-31T22:12Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"3/10 The territory's independent approach to immigration reflects its unusual status. The US government acquired this chunk of Samoa in [----] but since then its inhabitants have repeatedly rejected offers of closer ties with the imperial homeland"
X Link 2026-02-03T00:24Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"7/10 American Samoans have been remarkably successful in defending their traditional order. Today most of the land in the territory is still owned by aiga or extended families or by villages. Some land can be sold or inherited by individuals but non-Samoans cannot hold it"
X Link 2026-02-03T00:38Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"12/20 Steinmetz shows how the different paths three different German colonies took depending on the needs of the imperial power the forces arrayed against it & the personality of imperial functionaries like Solf"
X Link 2026-02-03T00:51Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"13/20 The sheer weight of demographics meant that the Germans judged there was little point in trying to Europeanise the inhabitants of their Chinese colony. Namibia was a mineral-rich & strategically located colony so revolt of the Herero was seen as a major threat"
X Link 2026-02-03T00:53Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"14/20 Samoa by contrast was considered very remote & lacked mineral wealth or much strategic value. Solf was left alone by Berlin to indulge in his Orientalist fantasies. How can we relate American Samoan history to Steinmetz's narratives"
X Link 2026-02-03T00:57Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"15/20 The territory is very small even in comparison to the rest of Samoa & the Mau made it clear that the US government would face resistance if it tried to break up traditional lands & bring in capitalists & settlers. But another factor was important"
X Link 2026-02-03T00:59Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"17/20 It was US opposition that stopped the Anglo-French invasion of Egypt in its tracks in [----]. The US owned much of Britain's huge debt & Eisenhower made it clear to London that the era of European imperial adventures was over. The US had good reasons for its stance"
X Link 2026-02-03T01:04Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"18/25 The US wanted to break into the closed markets of the European colonies. As Britain & other powers withdrew from Africa & Asia US companies moved in. The US created a new 'soft' empire in place of the old ones. This empire is only now beginning to crumble"
X Link 2026-02-03T01:07Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"19/25 Breaking up traditional society & planting settlers in Samoa would have contradicted the US's postwar stance against European colonialism & would have served little purpose. Samoa was tiny & far from the flashpoints of the postwar world"
X Link 2026-02-03T01:11Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"20/25Colonialism is never a good thing & attempts by 21stC revisionists like Niall Ferguson to make excuses for empires should be resisted. But it's important to recognise that indigenous peoples have engaged with colonialism in diverse ways some of which may seem contradictory"
X Link 2026-02-03T01:14Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"25/27 This apparently pro-imperialist stance was really an effort to safeguard local autonomy. Mangaians had resisted the colonisation of their island & the rest of the Cooks by NZ in the early 1900s. Unhappy with the racist NZ commissioner Gudgeon they'd called for British"
X Link 2026-02-03T01:31Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@MorosKostas @gregcameback In what sense is the Odyssey a 'European' myth The term used for Homer's age is anachronistic. The Odyssey emerges from oral tradition in the eastern Mediterranean a region that included Asia minor & Egypt as well as Greek. The name Odysseus is not even Greek but Pelagasian"
X Link 2026-02-03T22:08Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@shawnathen55121 @FindXSnowflakes @UbermenschMind She was described that way by Sappho centuries after Homer wrote the Odyssey. Homer called her 'many-coloured'. She's a supernatural being born from an egg not a character drawn from history"
X Link 2026-02-03T22:30Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@ChrisWa16949549 @JMatrix20266053 @models_by_Russ Yes the Odyssey emerges from oral history in the eastern Mediterranean a region that included Africa and Asia minor. It has Nubian (Ethiopian) and Egyptian names. Helen herself is a supernatural being described by Homer as 'many-coloured'"
X Link 2026-02-03T22:34Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@secondzeit @BobbyMiller202 Rodney Hide is another one who idolises tariff-setting TPPA-rejecting Trump. I looked around and it was really interesting to see who on the NZ right had embraced Trump & who had rejected him (Brash for eg). A test of character"
X Link 2026-02-04T00:22Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"4/10 At that seminar back in the early 2000s a couple of speakers had argued that Marx's method & categories could help people in the South Pacific understand their history & present. They'd talked of social formations modes of production capital accumulation"
X Link 2026-02-05T22:04Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"5/10 Tony normally spoke quietly & carefully. I'd heard him describe his interviews with Rastas on the east coast of Te Ika a Maui & the way they'd connected Marley with anti-colonial fighters like Te Kooti to create a unique & eschatological view of history"
X Link 2026-02-05T22:06Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"12/20 .anticipated world music & the ambient & techno genres & more. In the same sort of way Marx began his research when concepts like modernity & capitalism were new & developed a series of brilliant but contradictory perspectives on them"
X Link 2026-02-05T22:28Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"13/20 There's the Marx of the Paris manuscripts with his concern for the alienation of modern humans the Marx of the Communist Manifesto drunk on capitalism's ability to make 'all that is solid melt into air' & expecting its creative destruction to usher in socialism"
X Link 2026-02-05T22:31Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"20/25 It was not for years that I found a solution to the problem Tony had posed. I wish I could say that I found the solution myself & that I found it during some dramatic experience: a journey to a strange country or a massive protest march. But I found it in a library"
X Link 2026-02-05T22:56Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"21/27 I found it in a book of interview with Hans-Georg Gadamer. Gadamer is not a name that will impress left-wing intellectuals. He was a German philosopher whose politics were centrist & who chose to hide in an ivory tower rather than resist Nazi rule"
X Link 2026-02-05T22:59Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"28/30 .unwilling to examine how those same ideas might have influenced Marx. I reread the Communist Manifesto & could suddenly see the ugliness in the text's paean to the destructive powers of capitalism. When Marx praised capitalism for destroying the 'idiocy & backwardness"
X Link 2026-02-05T23:28Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"29/30 .of rural life' I could see Parihaka burning & my ancestors on the Isle of Skye loading their belongings into a wagon after the enclosure of their village by clan leaders who had turned capitalists who wanted to run sheep over their land"
X Link 2026-02-05T23:30Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"36/37 In the 2020s tho I've met young 'tankies' who are prepared to defend Stalin's show trials or Mao's cultural revolution. This photo shows the founding conference of a new Communist Party of NZ. Note the old teleology on the wall from Marx to Stalin"
X Link 2026-02-05T23:52Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"37/38 The late Frederic Jameson who did so much to bring Marx's thought into the era of postmodernism once remarked that capitalism had gotten so bad in the 21stC that even an old crude authoritarian version of Marxism might make a comeback"
X Link 2026-02-05T23:56Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"1/5 National Party pollster David Farrar has argued on his blog that February the 6th should be considered NZ's Emancipation Day because the Treaty of Waitangi s'posedly brought British civilisation & the end of slavery to NZ. I wonder what this man would make of that claim"
X Link 2026-02-07T23:45Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"11/15 Thousands of Pakeha NZers are descended from men who were abducted & forced to join Britain's armed forces. After the wreck of the troopship Orpheus at Manukau Heads in [----] some of these men came ashore adopted new identities & made new lives in hiding"
X Link 2026-02-08T00:18Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"12/15 David Farrar might argue that blackbirded islanders prisoners forced to work & pressganged military men were not 'real' slaves because they often had finite terms of labour. But the same can be said for many slaves in traditional Maori society as Hazel Petrie shows"
X Link 2026-02-08T00:22Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"16/20 The result was a genocide. But the British civilisation Farrar lauds did nothing to end that genocide. In [----] Moriori were compensated by the Crown because the NZ state not only failed to save them from slavery but sided with the slavers"
X Link 2026-02-08T00:33Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"25/27 Ranginui Walker once remarked on how the decline of the British Empire has left many conservative Pakeha feeling 'marooned' in Aotearoa. The old symbols of their identity - the British Crown & flag the generals & politicians who built the empire - have become hollow"
X Link 2026-02-08T00:56Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"26/27 It's not unreasonable that Pakeha like David Farrar want to find something to be proud of in the 19thC & ancestors to empathise with. To find such models tho we have to turn from the powerful to the minority of Pakeha who took stances against evils like slavery"
X Link 2026-02-08T01:00Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"28/29 Slavers impersonated Patteson putting on vicars' robes & waving bibles from the decks of their ships in an attempt to lure islanders aboard. After he was slain on Nukapu Island Patteson's followers blamed the slave trade. Huge anti-slavery meetings were held across NZ"
X Link 2026-02-08T01:06Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"29/29 Patteson's cause were largely forgotten in NZ but in Vanuatu's Banks Islands & in the Solomons his death is still commemorated every year"
X Link 2026-02-08T01:12Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"1/2 Guillermo May was already my favourite Auckland FC player. I like him even more knowing he spent [--] minutes on the pitch after yesterday's game signing autographs for kids. One of those kids was my youngest who also got to hold Marcel Tisserand's hand yesterday"
X Link 2026-02-08T07:31Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"2/2 Marlowe & some other Warkworth FC kids got to walk onto the pitch beside the players. He was paired with Tisserand who plays for Sydney FC. May is a Uruguayan while Tisserand has played for his native Congo. Football is a great way to teach kids geography"
X Link 2026-02-08T07:36Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"3/3 Here's Tisserand. 'He was very bald Dad' Marlowe told me breathlessly. As a cricket-mad kid I learned about countries like Guyana & Antigua through their players; today Marlowe equates countries with football. Argentina is Messi Brazil Neymar Uruguay Guillermo May"
X Link 2026-02-08T07:40Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"16/17 Bima's book Anarchy in Alifuru argues that some Maluku Islands societies had the sort of egalitarian features that anarchists & socialists seek. Swedish academic Hans Hagerdal has made a similar point about the Aru archipelago which is part of the Malukus"
X Link 2025-11-11T10:15Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"11/11 Tahiti's 'paiens' also keep their hair long"
X Link 2026-01-31T22:08Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"1/5 Travellers are steering clear of the US after hearing stories of cellphone searches & detention by ICE thugs installed at air & sea ports. But there's one piece of America that is safe to visit. The locals administer their own borders & keep ICE far away"
X Link 2026-02-03T00:14Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"2/5 Unlike the fifty states or Puerto Rico or Guam American Samoa does not automatically apply federal US immigration laws. The territory makes its own immigration laws & the officials at its borders apply them without oversight from US counterparts"
X Link 2026-02-03T00:20Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"4/10 In [----] Samoans rejected incorporation into the US. They have repeatedly declined to establish a federal district court in their islands & have turned down the chance to become US citizens. In [----] the territory's parliament unanimously rejected birthright citizenship"
X Link 2026-02-03T00:28Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"5/10 Many NZers know about the Mau movement which waged an epic & sometimes bloody struggle for the independence of Western Samoa from Wellington. But few know the Mau also flourished in American Samoa. The movement there was motivated by the same desires"
X Link 2026-02-03T00:31Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"8/12 Pre-capitalist patterns of land ownership thus exist in a territory of the world's pre-eminent capitalist power. There's a lesson in the history of American Samoa. Imperialism can take a very different course in different places"
X Link 2026-02-03T00:43Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"9/15 George Steinmetz's book The Devil's Handwriting is a superb account of the very different paths German colonialism took in Namibia China & Samoa. In Namibia the Germans genocided the defiant Herero people; in China they did little to affect local culture;"
X Link 2026-02-03T00:45Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"10/15 .; in Samoa the German governor Wilhelm Solf ruled with a mixture of paternalism & repression & often sought to preserve rather than eradicate traditional society. Solf saw Samoa as a sort of open-air museum & Samoans as exhibits"
X Link 2026-02-03T00:48Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"21/25 Despite pressure from the UN Niue moved only slowly towards independence from NZ. Before I visited the island last year I had assumed that this slow progress reflected its tiny population & a lack of political awareness. I was very wrong"
X Link 2026-02-03T01:17Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"22/25 I learned last year that Niueans delayed independence because of the deeply egalitarian nature of their society. They have no king or chiefs & their villages were traditionally autonomous. The notion of a central government disturbed many Niueans"
X Link 2026-02-03T01:21Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"23/25 It took time to develop a state structure that reflected Niue's decentralised society. In the meantime the prospect of a foreign administrator seemed less worrisome to many Niueans"
X Link 2026-02-03T01:24Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"24/25 Mangaia is another society where imperialism & local autonomy have interacted interestingly. When the Cook Islands became independent some Mangaians flew Union Jacks & demanded that their island become a British possession"
X Link 2026-02-03T01:27Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"If you can't beat them on the field at least you can win the aesthetic contest This is the proposed new uniform for Niue's soccer team which has only played a couple of times back in the '80s & was thrashed by island neighbours. I need one"
X Link 2026-02-04T00:39Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"3/10 The case of the Efateans was debated in papers & in parliament. Pakeha NZers were forced to face the fact of their country's deep involvement in the Pacific slave trade. By [----] dozens of NZ ships were being operated by 'blackbirders' - men who stole labour from the islands"
X Link 2026-02-07T23:53Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"17/20 As Ned Fletcher & other scholars have shown & as David Farrar's friend Matthew Hooton noted in an intelligent column last year the Treaty of Waitangi was modelled on agreements made by the British with local rulers in places like India. It divided sovereignty"
X Link 2026-02-08T00:35Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"18/20 The British had no interest in imposing laws on rangatira running their own rohe. That's why Governor Fitzroy introduced ordinances in [----] recognising tribal law & allowing Maori to avoid imprisonment in Pakeha jails. The Constitution Act Britain created for NZ in 1852"
X Link 2026-02-08T00:37Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@QBetterscope There's evidence for long-distance two-way voyaging for instance in the presence of the kumara a South American crop in places like NZ. These petroglyphs in Tonga are carved in a style that developed in Hawai'i around the 1300s"
X Link 2026-02-14T23:01Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"8/8 By replacing fealty to the UK with dependence on the US during WW2 NZ postponed the reckoning with its place in the world. But now with Trump junking old alliances Pakeha can no longer look to the northern hemisphere for security & identity"
X Link 2025-02-15T22:13Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@MichaelFieldNZ @realDonaldTrump Thanks for that Michael. What do you think the chances are that under Trump renews its interest in Tokelau and the northern Cooks"
X Link 2026-01-09T04:05Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"6/10 There is evidence that slaves continued to arrive in NZ in the early 20thC. In [----] the Auckland branch of the Union of Domestic Servants complained about wealthy residents of that city importing unpaid labourers from Niue"
X Link 2026-02-08T00:03Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"7/10 I wrote about some of NZ's slaving history in the book The Stolen Island. Other scholars have helped document Pacific slavery. It was Christine Liava'a who found Mundy's images of the Efatean labourers. There's increased awareness in the 2stC of this part of our history"
X Link 2026-02-08T00:04Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"8/15 For Pasifika NZers of course blackbirding has never been forgotten. Jasmin Togo-Brisby is the descendant of a girl stolen from Vanuatu's Pentecost Island & put to work in Australia. Her art remembers the Pacific slave trade"
X Link 2026-02-08T00:08Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"4/7 The American occupation of Tonga during WW2 subjected the kingdom's people to segregation & racist violence but also introduced many to the cash economy & to all sorts of consumer goods. Salote saw cooperatives as an alternate route to development"
X Link 2026-02-13T01:37Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"7/10 By the 1970s Tonga had at least [--] cooperatives. But King Tupou IV had an economic vision that differed radically from that of his mother. He dreamed of making Tonga into a 'second Singapore'"
X Link 2026-02-13T01:43Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"9/12 In Tonga money & goods are circulated through kin networks. Wages and salaries as well as the income from businesses are typically shared rather than saved by individuals. The corner shops' owners felt obliged to offer free or heavily discounted goods to family members"
X Link 2026-02-13T01:47Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"10/12 Capital accumulation was impossible. Chinese retailers took over abandoned Tongan stores. But Salote's vision of cooperative-driven development may be realised in other Pacific societies like Vanuatu"
X Link 2026-02-13T01:49Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"11/14 Thousands of cooperatives had been formed in Vanuatu with the support of governments & some foreign aid organisations. Like Salote ni-Vanuatu see the cooperative as better suited to the collectivism of Pacific cultures"
X Link 2026-02-13T01:51Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@Hezbolsonaro @JustATestbed But what the War of Attrition It featured irregular actions raids etc. Possibly Nasser influenced by this advice after all"
X Link 2026-02-13T10:35Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@bdl1080 Following your standard there's no way of knowing the history of North America before [----] and no way of knowing the Europeans who created the Lascaux Caves & Stonehenge. In the real world we know a whole lot about these societies due to the disciplines you call myths"
X Link 2023-10-27T07:03Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"4/10 The Wape live on the inland side of the Toricelli Mountains where soils are bad. The nutrient-poor sago palm has traditionally supplied much of their food. Mosquitos thrive & spread a variety of diseases. Mitchell recorded a series of dances designed to ward off devils"
X Link 2025-11-23T01:01Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"1/2 This map's inspired by Orwell's [----] where [--] superpowers divided the world into spheres of influence. There's an uncanny parallel with Trump's vision of the 21stC world split into US Chinese & Russian spheres of influence. NZers need to ponder Trump's rhetoric"
X Link 2026-01-09T03:51Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@NightskyKeith @MalcolmNance @RepFine 1/2 It's a good summary. As someone who lives in Aotearoa New Zealand I can confirm that anti-Trump feeling's strong here. I'd be interested to hear what you guys in the northern hemisphere think about possible Trump actions in the Pacific. The US still claims a part of NZ"
X Link 2026-01-13T00:55Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"@NightskyKeith @MalcolmNance @RepFine 2/2 Tokelau is in the western hemisphere that Trump raves on about controlling and historically the US has claimed it as part of American Samoa. The US also historically claimed the northern Cooks. Rare earth minerals have been identified in the seas round the Cooks"
X Link 2026-01-13T00:57Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@garyday682 @aniobrien The US had longstanding claims to the northern Cooks and Tokelau claims that were settled by treaties during the Carter administration. A dispute remains over Swains Atoll. Trump's said he rejects Carter's Panama treaty. The Cooks SEZ includes rich rare earth mineral deposits"
X Link 2026-01-19T01:46Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@jameskjx @PouTepou Keep an eye on Osega/Swain Atoll tho hopefully Trump will never realise Tokelau exists and that through it NZ and the US have an unresolved border dispute"
X Link 2026-01-24T22:30Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"1/10In the early 2000s Tony Fala was writing a PhD thesis on NZ's Rastafarian movement. He was a charismatic & deeply intelligent man & one day at a seminar on Marxism he planted a ticking bomb in my brain. When the explosion eventually came it cleared my mind. I was liberated"
X Link 2026-02-05T21:55Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"2/10 I thought I'd post about Tony's critique of Marxism because there's so little intelligent discussion about that subject on social media. In the era of Trumpism terms like Marxist have became vague but vehement curses. That's bad for both the left & the right"
X Link 2026-02-05T21:59Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"2/3 After Kerry Howe's mother died the historian found a notebook full of esoteric words and equations amongst her things. She'd been a gunner on Motutapu Island in [----] when a Japanese fleet seemed about to steam over the horizons"
X Link 2026-02-13T00:40Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"3/4 The guns on Motutapu had a range of thirty kilometres & could send a shell higher than Mount Everest. Howe's mother told him that she & her comrades were once asked to aim at an empty barge floating near Rakino Island"
X Link 2026-02-13T00:42Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"2/5 Tonga's first modern king Tupou I was shocked to see people sleeping rough in Hyde Park when he visited Sydney. He created a constitution that guaranteed land for all Tongan men & banned its alienation. Capitalist development was largely forestalled in Tonga"
X Link 2026-02-13T01:29Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"3/7 Tongans were never forced off their land into towns as their counterparts had been in Europe. They remained peasants rather than proletarians. Salote ruled Tonga from [----] to [----] & grappled with the problem of how to develop the economy without following the West's path"
X Link 2026-02-13T01:33Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"5/7 The Langafonua cooperative ran a shop in Nuku'alofa that sold work produced in sometimes faraway villages. It was intended to provide villagers with cash without disrupting their lives. In other parts of the Pacific cooperatives emerged as part of anti-colonial protests"
X Link 2026-02-13T01:39Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"8/10 But many of the businesses set up in Tonga under Tupou IV's reign failed. Anthropologist Niko Besnier's research explains why. Besnier shows how the Tongan-owned 'corner shops' set up after the country's entry into the WTO quickly went bankrupt"
X Link 2026-02-13T01:45Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"12/14 Tui & Sulieti are superb ngatu artists & with the support of Tonga's queen they have been holding free workshops for women interested in the artform. But it's not clear whether the Langafonua Cooperative will be able to market new ngatu"
X Link 2026-02-13T01:53Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"13/14 The cooperative has been in decline for many years. The overall quality of the ngatu & carvings in its Nuku'alofa shop has been getting steadily worse over the [--] years I have been visiting Tonga. Many women choose to bypass the cooperative"
X Link 2026-02-13T01:55Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"6/10 In places like Samoa Fiji & the Cooks islanders pooled their resources to run their own shops & export their own produce. The Mau Movement in Samoa & the Cook Islands Progressive Association challenged palangi businesses as well as colonial administrators"
X Link 2026-02-13T01:41Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"4/10 Men & women kidnapped by blackbirders built the Queensland's sugar industry & supplied labour to cotton & coffee farmers in Fiji Tahiti & half a dozen other islands. Pioneer photographer Daniel Mundy encountered the Efateans when they were working in a Hokianga flax mill"
X Link 2026-02-07T23:57Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"5/10 It was NZ blackbirders who destroyed the unique society on 'Ata Tonga's southernmost island. After they stole half the island's population Tonga's King Tupou I evacuated the rest of the 'Atans fearing more raids. The island has never been reoccupied"
X Link 2026-02-07T23:59Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"1/5 My friend Tui Emma Gillies has been working with her mother Sulieti to encourage Tongan women to create new ngatu or barkcloth paintings for Langafonua Cooperative. The cooperative was part of Queen Salote's plan to find non-capitalist ways of developing Tonga"
X Link 2026-02-13T01:25Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"I found this image which was made somewhere in northen Vanuatu aka the New Hebrides in a missionary collection. It had a terse but perhaps revealing caption: 'Non-Christian hair style'"
X Link 2026-02-15T02:51Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"NZ's media says international travel is forbidden. Not so. This bridge crosses the Puniu River into Te Rohe Potae the Country of the Hat the state defended by Rewi Maniapoto. Until the 1880s Pakeha could not cross the Puniu. Later bootleggers floated barrels across the water"
X Link 2020-05-14T12:17Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@morecoffeemike @Chris___Wilson @JoshVanVeen Fair enough Chris but there's a long history behind the recent protests. If we look back at the Waikato War & its aftermath we find the same hysteria & xenophobia. This is part of Pakeha NZ DNA so to speak & has to be considered when we assess today's events"
X Link 2021-11-11T01:41Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"1/32 Brenton Tarrant's murder of Christchurch Muslims is infamous but the massacre at Surafend is little-known. [---] years ago today Anzacs killed between [--] and [---] Muslims in that Palestinian village"
X Link 2021-12-10T02:49Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"You can follow the news from Tonga on indigenous as well as foreign media. Newspapers may be struggling in Western nations like NZ but in Tonga they are thriving. & are two online papers providing detailed eyewitness reports. https://www.kanivatonga.nz/ https://matangitonga.to/ https://www.kanivatonga.nz/ https://matangitonga.to/"
X Link 2022-01-15T10:43Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@1NRSmith We drove past the airbase where I helped organise a demo in [----] the other day and I said to my wife I was feeling less ashamed of the NZDF than usual owing their sterling work in Tonga. I'd become positively patriotic if we gave our Javelins to fight fascism"
X Link 2022-02-25T21:15Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@seanphelan8 Salesa's a scab and should be blackballed by other scholars. I shared a stage with him at a book festival a couple of years back; no more. What a pity that someone with such a fine mind has become an executioner for the ruling class"
X Link 2022-11-04T09:57Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"6/7 Last year I visited Mangaia in the Cooks. The island has never been surveyed. It has its own land court that handles all questions of ownership & use. Local leaders settle many disputes. & yet Mangaia remains a part of the Cooks & accesses central govt services like schools"
X Link 2022-12-01T06:06Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"7/7 The covid crisis gave us glimpses of what the iwi autonomy promised in [----] might look like. Iwi set up roadblocks to defend their rohe. In Kawhia marae & hapu united in a sophisticated way to implement anti-covid measures in concert w/the state. TR means decentralisation"
X Link 2022-12-01T06:09Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@seculardefence 1/2 There are already strong organisations in most iwi as a result of the Treaty process. There is a census there is an electoral role there are HQ. What I'm suggesting is that these iwi are given autonomy in various ways within their rohe. I'll give one example"
X Link 2022-12-01T06:25Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"2/7 Every Aotearoan knows the Treaty but few know about section [--] of the [----] Constitution Act which Britain drew up as it prepared to hand power to a NZ parliament. Section [--] reflects the 'two peoples two systems' policies that Britain had generally followed since 1840"
X Link 2022-12-01T06:50Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"3/7 Contrary to what many conservative Pakeha think Britain did not introduce 'one law for all' to NZ. London knew that would require a major war & a huge wave of settlers. It preferred to allow Maori chiefs to exercise a very wide degree of autonomy in their rohe"
X Link 2022-12-01T06:52Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@DiackChris I'm not necessarily disagreeing with what you're saying but what do you mean by voting with their feet I agree that iwi would not be exercising coercive power over non-iwi NZers"
X Link 2022-12-01T10:05Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"17/17 The irony here is so obvious it hardly needs mention. An identification with Jews that began as part of resistance to colonisation has now been coopted by a colonial state. If Te Kooti were alive he'd surely parallels between the situation of Palestinians & his people"
X Link 2023-12-18T04:25Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"1/7 The debate about the meaning of the Treaty shouldn't be settled by partisan politics or polls. It should be settled by historical evidence. Here are [--] reasons why I believe David Seymour's wrong when he claims the Maori who signed the Treaty [----] gave away all sovereignty"
X Link 2024-01-19T08:01Z [----] followers, 32K engagements
"1/8 In a thread last week I offered five bits of historical evidence that count against Act's view of the Treaty. Matthew Hooton's new column offers three different points against Act's historiography. One of them is particularly devastating. The most valuable insight in Hooton's very fine column isn't the history lesson (though it is good) or the observations about Luxo being a tiny wide-eyed political baby (which is obvious) it's about the escalation dynamics between the three govt parties https://t.co/uq13Ys9X1S The most valuable insight in Hooton's very fine column isn't the history"
X Link 2024-01-26T10:00Z [----] followers, 15.5K engagements
"1/3 I still see people arguing on twitter that it's no good learning te reo Maori as the language is not understood outside NZ. They seem to think Maori is a linguistic isolate a Pacific version of Basque. This is Kerry Howe's map of the Austronesian languages"
X Link 2024-02-15T05:12Z [----] followers, 17.6K engagements
"A few years ago I wrote about Ma'afu Palu the Tongan Wesleyan pastor whose God First Party was campaigning against women in shorts & recreational sex in the kingdom. Trump's key backers the Heritage Foundation now seem to have taken over Palu's platform. "It seems to me that a good place to start would be a feminist movement against the pill & for. returning the consequentiality to sex." Conservatives have to lead the way in restoring sex to its true purpose & ending recreational sex & senseless use of birth control pills. https://t.co/yq5uxJN0WJ "It seems to me that a good place to start"
X Link 2024-02-28T04:54Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"1/4 Ngaruawahia has been the focus of national attention as thousands have gathered at its marae to farewell King Tuheitia. But in the second half of the 1860s Pakeha settlers tried to make the town disappear. They renamed it Queenstown. Can you spot the pattern on this map"
X Link 2024-09-06T09:38Z [----] followers, 13.1K engagements
"1/5 In [----] unemployed workers fought police outside NZ's parliament. Some of the workers carried red flags & one of them told reporters that the sickle & hammer banner of the USSR should fly over our parliament. His wish would come true"
X Link 2024-11-19T06:42Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"5/7 Class against class helped bring Hitler to power because it made Germany's powerful Communist Party reject the notion of a coalition with the more moderate Social Democratic Party. The German communists used the idiotic slogan 'First Hitler then us'"
X Link 2024-11-19T07:02Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"6/7 Stalin eventually junked Class against Class & went to the opposite extreme making his satellite parties adopt a 'Popular Front' strategy that saw them embracing nationalism & wrapping themselves in national flags. But in [----] the sickle & hammer rose over NZ's parliament"
X Link 2024-11-19T07:05Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"8/9 The collaboration between Hitler & Stalin early in the war was quickly forgotten after the German invasion of the USSR in '41. The success of the Red Army in stopping the hitherto unbeatable Wehrmacht made the Soviet Union & its local allies very popular in NZ"
X Link 2024-11-19T07:12Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"9/9 [--] years later the Cold War began. The RSA was back to expelling communists from its membership newspapers were again denouncing communist influence in schools & the PM was answering questions about Soviet subs off Piha. A sickle & hammer over parliament was unimaginable"
X Link 2024-11-19T07:18Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@jahbottle The US is our third biggest export market and Trump wants to put a 10% tariff on all imports. That's a huge economic impact. & US across the board tariffs will spark retaliation; protection ism will be back. NZ's post-1984 free trade ideology may become untenable quickly"
X Link 2024-11-26T22:48Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"2/4 Papa'i draws on rongorongo the undeciphered script of Rapa Nui. Knowledge of rongorongo was lost after the decimation of the island by slave raids in the 1860s"
X Link 2025-02-10T11:38Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"Here is another painting by Tui Emma Gillies one of a generation of Tongan artists reinventing the ngatu (barkcloth) tradition. I see Hokusai's waves meeting Lo'au the Tongan educator who sailed to the world's edge. Futa Helu said that all culture-rivers flow to a single sea"
X Link 2025-02-10T11:54Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
"7/8 On these rakau momori or carved memorial trees the old ones grin & dance & fly as birds. Even here far from Rekohu I cannot stop myself searching karaka trunks for faces"
X Link 2025-02-11T09:50Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"8/8 A grove of Maori carvings have been found on the shore of the Parangarahu Lakes. I have seen Pakeha carvings too: lovers' initials listing hearts & a bat ascending a trunk as tho it were a moonbeam"
X Link 2025-02-11T09:56Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@CraigMokhiber Amen"
X Link 2025-02-13T07:14Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"2/2 Low was born in Dunedin but became famous in wartime London. His anti-Nazi cartoons meant he was on a death list compiled as Hitler planned the invasion of the UK. This was Low's unforgettable response to the Hitler-Ribbentrop pact & joint German-USSR invasion of Poland"
X Link 2025-02-13T07:40Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"9/15 In the 21st C the global financial crisis of 2007-2008 & the economic crisis caused by covid have shown the fragility of the repair job done to capitalism since the '70s. These crises have broken the two stabilising pillars of post-'70s capitalism"
X Link 2025-02-13T23:57Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"10/15 Those pillars were public debt & cheap imported goods. It is now clear that the US & many other Western nations have unsustainable levels of debt. They can't keep borrowing indefinitely to compensate for reduced tax revenues & to avoid steep cuts in public spending"
X Link 2025-02-14T00:00Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"11/15 & the inflation caused by the covid has greatly increased the cost of living in West. The cheap imported goods that were globalisation's compensation for static or declining wages are not cheap anymore. It's no wonder that politics in the West have become turbulent"
X Link 2025-02-14T00:06Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"12/20 Globalisation has fragmented & demoralised Western working classes. People who might once have belonged to unions & identified as workers now think & act as consumers. They also vote like consumers. Dissatisfied with the old products they look for new ones"
X Link 2025-02-14T00:10Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"13/20 From Corbyn to Trump to Farage to Melenchon figures from the political fringes have been able to attract the attention of voters. Electoral politics have become unstable with parties winning landslide victories only to be thrown out of office at the next poll"
X Link 2025-02-14T00:15Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"14/20 Trump faces the same basic problems as most other Western leaders: unsustainable public debt & a rapidly declining standard of living caused by inflation. Instead of trying to solve these problems he has retreated into increasingly elaborate fantasies"
X Link 2025-02-14T00:21Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"15/20 Lowering US debt would require either a major increase in taxes on the wealthy & businesses massive cuts to social programmes like medicare or massive cuts in military spending. Each of these measures would in its own way be very controversial & destabilising"
X Link 2025-02-14T00:24Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"17/20 Tariffs are another of Trump's magical spells. He's pretended that they can somehow reduce the US's debt & even offset tax cuts. But Trump's most spectacular attempts at magic involve foreign policy"
X Link 2025-02-14T00:31Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"18/25 The US's level of debt & economic dependence on China are beginning to threaten the hegemony of its dollar. The anti-US BRICS bloc of nations is attempting to reorganise global trade by cutting out Uncle Sam. Trump's response is to simulate acts of American might"
X Link 2025-02-14T00:38Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"2/3 Trump's abandonment of NATO would be welcomed by Thompson despite the short term problems it causes. America used its dominant position in NATO to hold back vital aid to Ukraine. It was Europeans not the US that finally gave Zelensky F16s & leopard tanks"
X Link 2025-02-14T04:19Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"3/4 Thompson fought fascism in Italy driving a tank during the assault on Cassino. After the war he joined a pan-European labour army that built a railway in Bosnia. In the '80s he built an anti-nuke movement that spanned the Iron Curtain"
X Link 2025-02-14T04:29Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"5/6 Trump has toyed with a 10% tariff on all imports. That would devastate some NZ export industries. Most of our wine goes to the US. Trump's betrayal of Gaza & Ukraine will appall many NZers & our conservatives are disturbed by his contempt for alliances they've long valued"
X Link 2025-02-14T08:06Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"6/6 The open racism & imperialism of the Trump regime will certainly encourage the fascist right around the world. But Trump's aggressive unilateralism may well turn non-Americans off the mass populist parties that have seen him as an exemplar"
X Link 2025-02-14T08:09Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@Raffiatim 1/2 'NATO trundling Eastwards relentlessly since 1989' I'm not a fan of NATO but this like your other claims simply isn't true. NATO hasn't expanded east since [----] when the Baltic states joined. So for [--] years before the war NATO's eastern border was static"
X Link 2025-02-14T10:41Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@Raffiatim 3/3 There's no document of any kind however informal let alone a Treaty where NATO promises. I agree that the US took a triumphalist attitude after the end of the Cold War & also that US has dominated NATO distorting the true defence needs of Europe. But Putin's indefensible"
X Link 2025-02-14T10:52Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@Raffiatim 1/2 The other argument you make is that Putin was drawn into Ukraine by genuine popular uprisings in the east in [----]. But Russia invaded Crimea in February [----] before the armed uprisings in Luhansk & Donetsk. There was not an armed conflict in Crimea when Putin invaded"
X Link 2025-02-14T10:59Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"For anyone interested in developing 'Oceanic consciousness' Epeli Hau'ofa's 'Our Sea of Islands' is indispensable: https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/77265cd6-ddfd-469d-a96b-04ace31ea67c/content https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/77265cd6-ddfd-469d-a96b-04ace31ea67c/content"
X Link 2025-02-15T20:52Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"1/2 In in the 19th & early 20thC Pakeha had many more connections economically & mentally with the Pacific. Not all our these were positive: we were deeply involved in the blackbirding trade for example & the oppressive Presbyterianisation of Vanuatu relied heavily on Otago"
X Link 2025-02-15T21:46Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@exkiwiforces Would love to have a chat about this stuff sometime with a knowledgeable person like yourself"
X Link 2025-02-16T02:43Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@stfnbl 1/3 I was really impressed by Stefan Eldred-Grigg's account of what he saw a profound shift from the UK to the US in WW2 in this book. I think the '51 lockout & the '49 carpenters' dispute are good egs of the US pushing the Cold War on NZ (so is the epic Cooks strike of '47)"
X Link 2025-02-16T05:07Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@stfnbl 2/3I did a thread about the crisis of [----] and the option of a radically different foreign policy that briefly seemed to open up in that year But I don't want to imply that this is straightforward or settled history. The issue you raise about NZ attitudes https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1885972206519517657 https://x.com/SikotiHamiltonR/status/1885972206519517657"
X Link 2025-02-16T05:10Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@stfnbl 3/4 is one I find fascinating. There was rampant anti-semitism in NZ that the Savage govt seemed to condone and that seemed to peak with the RSA's call for deportations in '45. In [----] there was huge anger over the killing of Brit soldiers in Palestine & also xenophobia about"
X Link 2025-02-16T05:12Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@stfnbl 4/4 the boatloads of post-war Jewish refugees landing in Oz. I was stunned to find that some NZers volunteered to be part of a UN peacekeeping force in post-Britain Israel/Palestine & that their reason seemed to be hostility to Irgun & co. Be good to talk more abt all this"
X Link 2025-02-16T05:14Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"'He is winning a momentous & just war against gravity. Jump away jumping boy; the boy I was shouts go' - Geoffrey Hill"
X Link 2025-02-16T10:39Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@therealbigjonno @berlin_bridge Fair points but the Baltic states are uniquely easy for him. Very easy to over run with relatively small forces because of their tiny size and armies and no land borders with the rest of NATO. An amphibious invasion to kick the occupier out would be extremely difficult"
X Link 2025-02-16T10:45Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@EssexLin @nigelknight_uk @anandcheam @BorisJohnson Linda as a NZer I can tell you you're wrong - NZ and Australia suspended elections during WW2. And the UK suspended them til Hitler was beaten. The [----] poll came when the war was all but over. By your standards Churchill was a dictator"
X Link 2025-02-16T11:05Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"@jameskjx 3/3 What Mikaere says in that lecture is that Pakeha identity must be rooted in an acknowledgement rather than avoidance of colonialism & in a giving up attempts to control Maori. Again I agree"
X Link 2025-02-17T00:23Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"2/4 Thompson wanted an independent Europe - but he was also aware Europe's big powers colonised the world. He opposed Britain's entry into the EU because he thought it would be dominated by these big powers & their capitalists"
X Link 2025-02-17T00:30Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"3/5 Consider France which has for decades imposed neo-colonialism on Africa. How can it square a commitment to Ukrainian autonomy with its military interventions in the Sahel Could a European army become an instrument of neo-colony policy in Africa"
X Link 2025-02-17T00:33Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"4/5 But Thompson might draw comfort from a couple of things. The smaller states of Europe many of which have a history of being colonised rather than colonising could together wield considerable influence in a new European alliance"
X Link 2025-02-17T00:35Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"5/5 & there has been flow of solidarity from Ukraine from non-state actors like trade unions & fronts organised by mostly progressive groups. Thousands of volunteers both military & civilian have gone there. This flow could become a flood & influence state policies"
X Link 2025-02-17T00:40Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@jameskjx 4/5 It seems to me there's a partial example of what Mikaere advocates in our nearest neighbour. The German Tongans have origins in 19thC colonial expansion but have long since rejected that history & live in Tonga without dominating anyone practising Tongan culture while"
X Link 2025-02-17T01:26Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"2/10 I first encountered Vea in [----]. I'd just returned from a year living in Tonga & was already missing the extraordinary art scene there. I wandered into Papakura's small gallery after shopping at the supermarket across the road & was confronted by a field of urban taro"
X Link 2025-02-18T01:38Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"3/10 Vea had named the strange triangular sculptures on the gallery floor urban taro because he wanted to both link & contrast migrant Pacific labour in NZ & work in the old country. Most Tongans still live in country on small farms"
X Link 2025-02-18T01:43Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"4/10 Tonga's constitution promises adult males a small parcel of land. Farmers who grow kava or taro or squash on their eight acres can see the fruits of their labour & often control its distribution. In NZ's capitalist economy tho workers are often alienated from their labour"
X Link 2025-02-18T01:47Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"2/5 Sikaiana atoll is part of Outlier Polynesia. Like the Ifirans of Vanuatu & the Nukuoroese of Micronesia the Sikaianans speak a Polynesian language & tell stories about Maui despite being isolated from the Polynesian triangle & surrounded by islands with different cultures"
X Link 2025-02-24T00:17Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"3/5 Sikaiana is considered part of the Solomon Islands but in the '90s its people argued that they have US citizenship because of an old link to the Kingdom of Hawai'i which sought in the 19thC to expand its territory in opposition to European & American imperialism"
X Link 2025-02-24T00:21Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"4/6 In [----] Tahiti's king agreed to federate with Hawai'i but France deposed him & foiled the plan. Sikaianans claimed that King Kamehana IV accepted them into Hawai'i in [----] & that they therefore later became citizens of both the republic & state of Hawai'i"
X Link 2025-02-24T00:30Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"5/6 The cover of my friend Lorenz Gonschor's study of Hawai'ian foreign policy features the medal that was awarded to activists for the proposed anti-imperial federation. Hawai'i sought labour as well as land. In [----] a Hawai'ian emissary to Aotearoa invited Maori to migrate"
X Link 2025-02-24T00:34Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"6/6 William Donner is an anthropologist who has studied Sikaiana for decades spending long periods on the island & paying particular attention to its songs. He's created an online archive of texts images & sounds: http://www.sikaianaarchives.com http://www.sikaianaarchives.com"
X Link 2025-02-24T00:38Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"@cannibality 1/2 I agree with you abt neutrality for NZ. For me the big issue is the way Chinese capital is putting indigenous lifeways under pressure in several Pacific nations. Tonga is the most extreme example. Vanuatu's resisting a Tonga-style takeover of retail by Chinese capitalists"
X Link 2025-02-24T23:42Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"8/20 These men were members of the Riverton Rifles which was formed to repel a Russian attack in [----] when Britain & Moscow looked like they might go to war over Afghanistan. The fear of communist invasion began long before the Soviet Union"
X Link 2025-02-25T01:28Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"9/20 After destroying the Paris Commune in [----] France sent thousands of Communards to New Caledonia. Some escaped by small boat to Queensland; others settled in NZ after completing their sentences. This cartoonist wanted to shoot Communard & Fenian migrants"
X Link 2025-02-25T01:31Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"1/2 In the 1960s a Zambian science teacher named Edward Nkoloso led an unofficial but popular space programme in the newly independent country. NZers were less ambitious but in the '60s & '70s our festivals & parades showed a fascination with space exploration"
X Link 2025-02-25T10:16Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"1/4 When Donald Tusk announced Warsaw would be seeking nukes my mind wandered off to [----]. In that year a nuclear blast destroyed Poland along with London Paris & Banana. They were all villages on Kiribati's Kiritimati Island"
X Link 2025-03-08T23:59Z [----] followers, [--] engagements
"4/6 South Sea Islanders are the Australian descendants of blackbirded Melanesians. In [----] they were finally recognised as a distinct ethnic group. They fly this flag at community events in towns like Mackay"
X Link 2025-03-24T04:37Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"5/6 My kids prefer Kiribati's flag with its frigate bird flying serenely over above a rising sun & rolling sea but I love Niue's banner which joyously defaces a Union Jack & turns the NZ flag's austere blue field into a psychedelic expanse of yellow"
X Link 2025-03-24T04:42Z [----] followers, [---] engagements
"1/10 NZ Geographic sent James Frankham to a far-flung part of the Realm of NZ. There he found something that surprised him: a thriving socialist society. Frankham seems to have struggled to understand it"
X Link 2025-07-11T12:34Z [----] followers, [----] engagements
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