Written By: - Date published: 7:25 am, April 8th, 2025 - 78 comments
At a time when the need for increased spending in health, education and the environment is so pressing the Government wants to spend a further $12 billion over the next four years on rearming.
Written By: - Date published: 1:18 pm, April 1st, 2025 - 30 comments
Putinversteher – one who “understands” Putin. It is meant as a slur but Professor Geoffrey Roberts, a British historian of Russia, embraces the term.
Written By: - Date published: 1:04 pm, March 24th, 2025 - 209 comments
Henry Kissinger nailed it back in 2014: “For the West, the demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of one.”
Written By: - Date published: 9:57 am, March 23rd, 2025 - 96 comments
Res Publica takes aim at modern day ‘tankies’. Pro-authoritarian leftist, who can apologise for any authoritarian regime provided that it is intellectually cloaked in the ‘correct’ rhetoric and a veneer of geo-politics. In their view, modern day tankies are only good at reducing the left’s credibility to rubble in real-time.
Written By: - Date published: 10:40 am, March 3rd, 2025 - 57 comments
In a recent interview Helen Clark managed to neatly summarise current world problems and express a desire for New Zealand to maintain its independent foreign policy.
Written By: - Date published: 10:32 am, March 2nd, 2025 - 130 comments
Yesterday’s press conference involving Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky suggests that the United States is now solidly aligned with Russia against the Western World and Western values.
Written By: - Date published: 3:44 pm, February 22nd, 2025 - 19 comments
A fascinating expose from Michael Hudson on the causes and implications of the recent rise in the price of gold. When Nixon took the US dollar off the standard in 1971 you could get an ounce for $35. Not now; Hudson explains why.
Written By: - Date published: 10:54 am, February 20th, 2025 - 68 comments
Trump’s opening bid for peace towards Ukraine was that the United States would gain access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals.
Written By: - Date published: 3:36 pm, February 13th, 2025 - 159 comments
Well it didn’t take that long: from one SecDef to another in a matter of a month. It’s time for a rethink on Ukraine and much else.
Update: Hegseth’s speech video
Written By: - Date published: 6:04 pm, January 5th, 2025 - 23 comments
U.S. President-Elect Donald Trump makes more things possible in the Middle East than the Biden administration.
Written By: - Date published: 2:43 pm, December 11th, 2024 - 4 comments
New Zealand is set to update sedition and espionage laws, making these as harsh as those of other Western states that are now gearing up for war with Russia and China.
Written By: - Date published: 4:13 pm, December 7th, 2024 - 9 comments
With extensive use of internal documents, Maire Leadbeater’s excellent exposition of the various iterations of the security intelligence services tells a story of constant make-work in search of an adversary defined only by ideology.
Written By: - Date published: 2:22 pm, November 8th, 2024 - 31 comments
The West, “will stand by the Israeli regime until they exterminate the last Palestinian”, says Mohammad Seyed Marandi, an American-Iranian academic. Despite being appalled at my government, I winced as a New Zealander to hear my country described as part of the Axis of Genocide.
Written By: - Date published: 1:41 pm, August 12th, 2024 - 27 comments
New Zealand’s decision to stay away from the event in Nagasaki paying tribute to victims of the city’s 1945 nuclear bombing called outrageous.
Written By: - Date published: 3:07 pm, July 24th, 2024 - 16 comments
Don Brash is now publicly standing together with Helen Clark to protest against the subservience of recent New Zealand governments to America’s anti-China policy.
Written By: - Date published: 3:17 am, June 8th, 2024 - 26 comments
The destruction on 23 May of a key part of Russia’s nuclear defence means the Doomsday clock is ticking closer to midnight. A Ukrainian/NATO drone attack on the Armavir radar station north of Georgia attcked a Voronezh-DM radar which is designed to detect incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Written By: - Date published: 5:47 am, May 19th, 2024 - Comments Off on Bonnie Jenkins: US ignores China proposal for no-first-use of nukes
Questioned by Senator Van Hollen re US response to China’s February 2024 offer of no-first-use, Assistant Secretary Bonnie Jenkins told the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee they would have to think about it, but at this point had no intention of changing to a no-first use policy.
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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 9:35 pm, December 22nd, 2023 - 32 comments
It is not clear exactly who persuaded Luxon to put Zelensky on his Xmas calling list. It might have been Albo or MFAT, no doubt on orders from the US, who are desperate to keep the illusion of victory alive until after the US Presidential election.
Written By: - Date published: 7:29 am, November 16th, 2023 - 12 comments
We are further away from peace in parts of the world than a decade ago. But pessimism about peace isn’t a foregone conclusion.
Written By: - Date published: 10:52 pm, November 11th, 2023 - 19 comments
“Jewish people exterminating men, women and children in a concentration camp is _______.”
How do you finish a sentence like that?
Written By: - Date published: 2:59 pm, October 31st, 2023 - 57 comments
Unlike the other four Eyes, New Zealand voted for a UNGA resolution calling for a humanitarian truce in Gaza. The US had previously vetoed a ceasefire resolution. Finally on RNZ, Ben Strang asked whether Israel’s response to HAMAS is also a “war crime?’
Written By: - Date published: 10:17 pm, October 25th, 2023 - 22 comments
The new government is leaving it to the old government to carry the ball on Gaza. Both governments have dropped it. The 5Eyes formula of “Israel’s right to defend itself” does not extend any right to the indiscriminate bombing, and refusal to allow any water, food or fuel to innocents in Gaza.
Written By: - Date published: 8:31 am, October 5th, 2023 - 7 comments
Alexander Gillespie complains that kiwis are not being given answers on foreign policy in the election. Given the state of flux in the world, and the questions he poses, it is probably just as well. The answers might all be dangerous.
Written By: - Date published: 8:36 pm, September 6th, 2023 - 9 comments
New security-state documents show Wellington aligning its military with the “rules-based international order” while preparing Kiwis for war with key trading partner China, writes Mick Hall.
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