Written By: - Date published: 7:58 am, April 27th, 2024 - 10 comments
What is really going on in the minds of
Written By: - Date published: 12:09 pm, April 25th, 2024 - 20 comments
Who will defend us when the military chaos now expanding in the world finally hits hard in our region, because that is what is really happening.
Written By: - Date published: 1:56 am, April 22nd, 2024 - 23 comments
Former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark – the safest pair of hands this country has had in living memory – gave a masterclass on the importance of maintaining an independent foreign policy when she spoke at an AUKUS symposium held in Parliament’s old Legislative Chambers on April 18.
Written By: - Date published: 9:43 am, April 21st, 2024 - 35 comments
Liz Truss’s short reign as UK Prime Minister foundered after her budget requiring borrowing to fund tax cuts was released. The budget tanked the UK economy and caused Truss’s resignation. This week amongst announcements of massive cuts it has emerged that the Government is also planning borrowing for tax cuts.
Written By: - Date published: 4:18 am, April 15th, 2024 - 15 comments
Israel should not have bombed the Iranian consulate buildings in Damascus. Iran should not have fired 300 missiles at Israel in response. Neither of these actions should have happened, but they now have. The world now watches to see if there is further retaliation and escalation of violence, or if calmer and wiser heads prevail.
Written By: - Date published: 9:18 am, April 10th, 2024 - 47 comments
James Shaw’s attempt to create a right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment is expected to be voted down soon by Parliament. But the New Zealand Supreme Court as well as the European Court of Human Rights have shown a willingness to recognise a right to a sustainable environment that some politicians refuse to.
Written By: - Date published: 10:15 am, April 6th, 2024 - 60 comments
In the past week it has been disclosed that Israel’s Artificial Intelligence driven security system was responsible for the killing of seven international aid workers. And there are reports that Israel directed a missile attack on the Iraqi embassy in Syria.
Written By: - Date published: 10:09 am, April 2nd, 2024 - 55 comments
It appears almost inevitable that Keir Starmer will be the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. But his taking the party to the right and an active drive to rid the party of left wingers raises the spectre that his Goverment would be a pale immitation of its predecessors.
Written By: - Date published: 10:37 am, March 24th, 2024 - 24 comments
RNZ has reported that a foreign agency collected signals intelligence out of the GCSB for years without ministers knowing. And the collection only stopped after the equipment broke down.
Written By: - Date published: 10:38 am, March 9th, 2024 - 18 comments
in a war over Taiwan” is the title of an Atlantic Council paper produced last September. They mean nuclear weapons. These are serious people; Undersecretary Bonnie Jenkins addressed them last year about AUKUS.
Written By: - Date published: 8:21 pm, March 3rd, 2024 - 32 comments
US Undersecretary of State Bonnie Jenkins is in Wellington this week with a hard sell for us on AUKUS Pillar 2 wunderwaffen maybes. We should say tai hoa.
Written By: - Date published: 8:37 am, March 3rd, 2024 - 7 comments
What if life followed fiction and Gaza was explained by Dune 2? Sigh. It isn’t.
Written By: - Date published: 9:28 pm, February 17th, 2024 - 38 comments
Testifying to the Defence Select Committee last week, Air Marshal Short said Australia was “reshaping” its Defence Force for “a singular threat from a singular direction.” This was described as being an obvious reference to China.
Written By: - Date published: 10:39 am, February 17th, 2024 - 124 comments
The National Government’s repeal of the Three Waters Legislation and its pursuit of “new forms of infrastructure funding and financing” suggests that privatisation of water is on the drawing board.
Written By: - Date published: 10:39 pm, February 13th, 2024 - 103 comments
Attacking leftists attempts to expose the Atlas Network of right-wing think tanks, Chris Trotter offers this gem “Morally speaking, is taking money from oil companies really all that distinguishable from giving money to oil companies every time we fill up our petrol tank?”
Written By: - Date published: 7:30 am, February 13th, 2024 - 37 comments
Just as he did in 2017, Trump is clear in 2023 that the United States should withdraw from NATO.
Written By: - Date published: 11:28 am, February 11th, 2024 - 9 comments
In March 2023, former Australian prime minister Paul Keating attracted significant media attention when he described AUKUS as a manifestation of the United States’s campaign to encircle China with hostile military allies and partners.
Written By: - Date published: 9:58 am, February 11th, 2024 - 30 comments
Robert Hur, the Republican prosecutor investigating President Biden’s retention of classified documents has concluded he should not face trial because he was “well-intentioned, but sometimes hapless and forgetful”.
Written By: - Date published: 6:54 am, February 5th, 2024 - 12 comments
Originally published on Nick Kelly’s blog Many question the value of the performing arts and drama. At the start of 2024, the ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office did what journalists, politicians and broader civil society have failed to do over the last 25 years. It raised public awareness of the injustice faced […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:13 am, February 1st, 2024 - 48 comments
Yesterday in Parliament Christopher Luxon showed that he is struggling on the job.
Written By: - Date published: 3:43 pm, January 30th, 2024 - 17 comments
Western Nations including New Zealand have suspended urgently needed aid for Palestine after revelations that a tiny minority of UNRHA workers may have been involved in Hamas raids and despite the UNHRA taking immediate action to address issues arising.
Written By: - Date published: 12:38 pm, January 25th, 2024 - 31 comments
CNN reports that the US has named the ongoing operation against Houthi in Yemen “Operation Poseidon Archer, suggesting a more organized and potentially long-term approach.” New Zealand has joined it – cue the slippery slope.
Written By: - Date published: 9:34 am, January 20th, 2024 - 64 comments
Both the US Democrats and NZ Labour need to take hard looks at themselves. Failure is not inevitable. But there is now only one English-speaking centre-left democracy left in the world: that is the state of where we are now.
Written By: - Date published: 9:25 am, January 14th, 2024 - 65 comments
New Zealand has gained prosperity over 40 years within a free flow of trade under peacetime supported by minor attacks to shipping and planes, low international trade costs such as tariffs, and confidence that international trade disputes will be settled by law rather than by might is at risk: all of that required a United States President prepared to support that.
Written By: - Date published: 1:13 pm, January 13th, 2024 - 14 comments
But the ones that run US foreign policy are. Matthew Hooton in a typical smear wants to label Helen Clark as anti-American because she warned that involving us in attacking Houthis was a ”slippery slope.” She’s not and he’s wrong.
Written By: - Date published: 9:21 am, January 13th, 2024 - 21 comments
An expanding Middle East war that puts the Red Sea and Suez tanker route at risk is a major risk to us because it could hit the global price of oil.
Written By: - Date published: 8:49 pm, January 7th, 2024 - 57 comments
South Africa has taken a case that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza to the International Court of Justice. A group of prominent New Zealand lawyers have asked the New Zealand Government to join South Africa in support of their application. I think we should.
Written By: - Date published: 10:51 am, January 5th, 2024 - 39 comments
Can Israel lose a moral battle in Gaza and yet still win?
Written By: - Date published: 10:44 am, January 3rd, 2024 - 106 comments
In the United Kingdom Keir Starmer’s refusal to call for a cease fire in Gaza and his claim that holding back food and water for Gaza was justified has put him increasingly at odds with Labour members and MPs. Meanwhile Jeremy Corbyn’s expulsion as a Labour MP is puzzling, particularly given that his stance on Palestine is increasingly justified.
Written By: - Date published: 8:43 am, January 2nd, 2024 - 8 comments
A bright star in the firmament of justice has gone out. One of the greatest journalists of our era has passed away. John Pilger was always on the side of the oppressed.
Written By: - Date published: 10:18 pm, December 23rd, 2023 - 118 comments
Unlike Mike Smith and other noisy members of the imperialist cohort, I applaud that NZ foreign policy has remained consistent in upholding UN and ICC policies against invasions and forced annexations. Ardern, Hipkins and now Luxon have all said the same thing.Supporting the UN charter has massively reduced war casualties over the last 70 years. Clearly the Russian Federation finds this constraining.
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