International

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Women, the Taliban and sex based rights

Written By: - Date published: 10:38 am, August 16th, 2021 - 66 comments

What is being done to women in Afghanistan by the Taliban is sex-based oppression.

The United States Retreat from Afghanistan

Written By: - Date published: 6:30 am, August 16th, 2021 - 140 comments

President Biden is about to get a Jimmy Carter-scale shellacking with tv footage coming of Afghani Taleban going through Kabul and in short days rifling through the U.S. Embassy as they finally take over the entire country. You don’t win re-election with defeats and withdrawals, and you won’t be thanked for it in the mid-term Senatorial races either.

The Churchill picture

Written By: - Date published: 8:13 am, August 12th, 2021 - 165 comments

National, the party that claims to be focussed on the issues that matter decided to get upset when the Greens requested the replacement of a picture of a former UK leader who had a reputation for engaging in crimes against humanity.

Advice from Oz for the anti-China media

Written By: - Date published: 11:44 am, August 10th, 2021 - 23 comments

There’s so many of them here – Guyon Espiner, Anna Fifield, Lucy Craymer, Sam Sachdeva, Laura Walters, John Daniell, Emile Donovan, Paula Penfold, reef fish with the same few sources. Australian Paul Strutynski provides the textbook in his “Guide for budding foreign policy journalists wanting to work for the Nine Network or Newscorp.”

Youtube punishes Murdoch’s Sky News for pedalling Covid misinformation

Written By: - Date published: 7:44 am, August 3rd, 2021 - 38 comments

This will have the conspiracy theorists spinning.  Youtube have stopped Murdoch’s Sky News Australia from uploading videos for the next seven days after the channel uploaded videos questioning Covid and advocating for the use of alternative medicines including Donald Trump’s favourite hydroxychloroquine

Are we really ready to escalate to war with China over Taiwan?

Written By: - Date published: 6:47 pm, July 29th, 2021 - 38 comments

“What will the role of New Zealand be should China invade Taiwan?” was by far the  most popular question for Jacinda Ardern after she spoke at a NZIIA seminar last week. Promising to be benign, Ardern said we are “very predictable,” cited alleged human rights abuses in Hong Kong, and went on to say we […]

Citizenship is a human right

Written By: - Date published: 9:40 am, July 29th, 2021 - 81 comments

National has responded to the impending return to New Zealand of Suhayra Aden by hinting that they may follow Australia and breach human rights by bringing in laws allowing countries to arbitrarily remove rights of citizenship.

Letting private enterprise handle Covid quarantine is a really stupid idea

Written By: - Date published: 11:55 am, July 27th, 2021 - 31 comments

Leader of the Opposition David Seymour has proposed that private enterprise should provide quarantine services.  The recent experience of Melbourne where private security firms failed dramatically to properly managed quarantine facilities suggests that this is a really stupid idea.

Our modern Olympics

Written By: - Date published: 7:46 am, July 26th, 2021 - 7 comments

The Olympics is an opera that runs on one orchestrated symbol after another, and this Tokyo Olympics is a superabundant tragedy.

What If Boris Is Right?

Written By: - Date published: 11:51 am, July 24th, 2021 - 80 comments

Now that UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has “opened up” the United Kingdom from many of the Covid19 strictures that it had undergone, there is a lot at stake to his reputation and indeed to the lives and livelihoods of its citizens.

The bubble pops

Written By: - Date published: 11:32 am, July 24th, 2021 - 32 comments

The appearance of community spread Delta variant Covid in Australia has caused New Zealand to suspend the trans Tasman travel bubble.

Freedom day

Written By: - Date published: 7:55 am, July 19th, 2021 - 58 comments

As infection rates of Covid in the United Kingdom surge Boris Johnson has announced that today will be the UK’s Freedom day and will be removing pretty well all mandatory Covid restrictions, even the wearing of masks and social distancing.

Trump and Russia

Written By: - Date published: 9:15 am, July 18th, 2021 - 41 comments

The Guardian has reported on claims of a leaked Russian Government paper which on the face of it confirms Russian support for the Trump 2016 election at the highest level.

The problem with English Soccer

Written By: - Date published: 7:38 am, July 16th, 2021 - 13 comments

Last week’s final between England and Italy showed that there is still an ugly racist underside to what should be a beautiful game.

The Covid Crisis – the perils of half hearted responses

Written By: - Date published: 4:59 pm, July 11th, 2021 - 40 comments

The New South Wales’ half hearted response to community outbreak has seen infected numbers increase while in the UK Boris Johnson is planning to remove all restrictions something top scientists describe as “dangerous and premature”.

About the Hate Speech law changes

Written By: - Date published: 12:06 pm, July 6th, 2021 - 94 comments

The debate about the Government’s consultation on proposed changes to hate speech laws continues, with the level of heat increasing, but the level of actual understanding of what is being proposed in critical shortage.

America’s Democratic Decline Really Matters

Written By: - Date published: 11:57 am, July 4th, 2021 - 48 comments

With the United States Supreme Court allowing individual states to choke voting rights into bare consciousness, that country is accelerating its democratic decline. That matters for every democracy including ours.

RNZ’s Chinese Spies story doesn’t add up

Written By: - Date published: 10:00 am, July 2nd, 2021 - 47 comments

On Monday, RNZ reported that “Chinese Communist Party spies are infiltrating New Zealand universities”. Our guest poster views this thin and anecdotal ‘investigative’ reporting with deep suspicion. Was any of this activity was reported to the proper authorities. Or is it just the usual paranoia / racist dog-whistling or a paid story?

Communist Party of China turns 100

Written By: - Date published: 11:59 pm, June 30th, 2021 - 59 comments

July 1st this year marks the 100th anniversary of the foundation of the Communist Party of China in Shanghai in 1921. It is a date worth commemorating as while the Party is not well understood, its positive achievements have been outstanding.

Hate speech wide-eyed scaremongering

Written By: - Date published: 11:13 am, June 30th, 2021 - 111 comments

A guest post by Clint Smith who has actually analysed the effect of the proposed changes and makes comment on the detail of what is proposed.

The Pausing of the Travel Bubble

Written By: - Date published: 9:11 am, June 28th, 2021 - 81 comments

So far there have been no discovered cases of community spread of the Covid delta variant in Wellington following the recent visit by an Australian tourist who was infected with the variant.  Meanwhile in Australia the authorities are trying to stamp out community flareups that are appearing in different parts of the country.

Oppose this new hate speech bill

Written By: - Date published: 9:43 am, June 26th, 2021 - 206 comments

Hate speech is about to get a lot more criminalised with much stronger penalties. It’s worth going back to what the Royal Commission actually considered, since that’s the basis of proposing this law. The Royal Commission in fact found that trying to protect religion from very strong opinions is simply not a good idea: … we acknowledge that there […]

Government to issue an apology for the dawn raids

Written By: - Date published: 7:33 am, June 15th, 2021 - 23 comments

The Government has announced it will publicly apologise for the treatment of Pacific people in the 1970s when they were harassed and discriminated against by the Police because of the place of their birth and the colour of their skin.

NZ Nuclear-Free Day

Written By: - Date published: 9:32 pm, June 8th, 2021 - 3 comments

June 8 is the anniversary of Aotearoa’s 1987 nuclear-free legislation. NZOnScreen is running a retrospective of our proud history, the Nuclear-free Collection. It is well worth a watch. I particularly liked the movie “Nuclear Reaction,” with Big Norm seeing off the French, Big Dave seeing off the Americans, and Kiwi Keith also clear about where we stood. The nuclear risk is worse now than it has ever been.

 

The week when Scomo came to visit

Written By: - Date published: 11:12 am, June 6th, 2021 - 5 comments

This week has seen the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to suggest that Australia is adopting a principled stand and New Zealand has sold its soul to China for trade.  But the comments by Morrison and Ardern made after their Queenstown meeting suggests the opposite.

New Zealand’s Perverse Economy

Written By: - Date published: 7:28 am, May 29th, 2021 - 37 comments

At a forecast farm gate milk price of between NZ$7.25 and NZ$8.75 per kilo of milk solid, Fonterra is going to fill up its milk tankers, drive back to their suppliers with cash and pump it straight back into the farmhouse like we haven’t seen in a decade.

Cummings: Boris is unfit for the job

Written By: - Date published: 8:37 am, May 27th, 2021 - 20 comments

Former top aide Dominic Cummings has accused UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson of being unfit for the job, and of making constant U-turns, “like a shopping trolley smashing from one side of the aisle to the other”.

The right bring out the big guns

Written By: - Date published: 8:23 am, May 25th, 2021 - 39 comments

This is day five of the post Ruthenasia era and the response from the right is really underwhelming.  The most notable response is a comment by Peter Dunne questioning whether 11 year olds are ever interested in politics.

A very Samoan coup

Written By: - Date published: 10:07 am, May 23rd, 2021 - 43 comments

In overnight news the Samoan head of state Tuimalealiifano Vaaletoa Sualauvi II has suspended the recalling of Parliament due to occur on Monday throwing Samoa’s democracy into turmoil.

The end of Ruthenasia

Written By: - Date published: 8:03 am, May 21st, 2021 - 61 comments

National presented a particularly glum picture in Parliament yesterday.  And it was not only the realisation that Judith Collins is out of her depth. It was because this budget spells the end of Ruthenasia.

Reality has a left wing bias

Written By: - Date published: 10:22 am, May 20th, 2021 - 54 comments

Fresh from a claim that the Ministry of Education is trying to persuade kids not to eat home made lunches, David Seymour has taken aim at a new target, a radical education policy that intends to teach our kids about racism and inequality and what has happened in the country’s past.