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Localism Is A Dead End; It’s All Glocal Now

Friday, 24 January 2025, 3:29 pm | Martin LeFevre - Meditations

The cliché “local solutions for local problems” becomes nonsensical without awareness of the planetary crises facing all of human beings. By refusing to see and deal with things as a whole, localism exacerbates of the very problems it purports ... More >>

Gaza Ceasefire At Last: How Israel's 'First Defeat' Will Shape The Country's Future

Thursday, 23 January 2025, 4:14 pm | Ramzy Baroud

Unlike previous military campaigns in Gaza—on a much smaller scale compared to the current genocidal war—there is no significant strand of Israeli society claiming victory. The familiar rhetoric of “mowing the lawn”, which Israel often uses ... More >>

Pity The Poesy: Mark Rutte, NATO And Spending For War

Thursday, 23 January 2025, 9:49 am | Binoy Kampmark

A chief function of NATO’s public relations efforts lies in justifying its own existence. Instead of dismantling or finding more peaceful pursuits at the end of the Cold War, it became the groomed emissary of US power in Europe, while never being ... More >>

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Parliament's Annual Rituals Are Underway Again

Thursday, 23 January 2025, 8:39 am | Peter Dunne

When Parliament resumes next week, the first item of business will be the presentation of the Prime Minister’s Statement, which is supposed to set out the broad thrust of the government’s legislative plans for the year ahead. More >>

Gutting Specialised Health Teams Follows ‘slash And Burn’ Strategy

Wednesday, 22 January 2025, 3:23 pm | Ian Powell

Ian Powell discusses Health New Zealand’s plan to disestablish expert national health teams as part of its Commissioner’s ‘slash and burn’ strategy. More >>

On The Looming Conflicts Within The Trump Presidency

Wednesday, 22 January 2025, 10:46 am | Gordon Campbell

How long is it going to take for the MAGA faithful to realise that those titans of Big Tech and venture capital sitting up close to Donald Trump this week are not their allies, but The Enemy? After all, the MAGA crowd are the angry victims left behind ... More >>

The Wasted Interregnums Of Obama And Biden

Wednesday, 22 January 2025, 10:26 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations

Since neither Obama nor Biden was capable of speaking from the clarity, insight and passion required for meeting the psycho-spiritual crisis in the USA, both interregnums were wasted. More >>

Justifying The Egregious: John Howard And Spying On East Timor

Wednesday, 22 January 2025, 8:53 am | Binoy Kampmark

The best assessment offered of this episode in Australian history comes from Galbraith: both Howard and his foreign minister, had shown themselves to be mere “shills for the corporations”. This amoral approach towards a country in dire need undercut ... More >>

Friend Or Foe? How Trump’s Threats Against ‘Free-Riding’ Allies Could Backfire

Tuesday, 21 January 2025, 7:14 pm | The Conversation

Donald Trump wants US allies to spend more on defence and has threatened NATO members with coercion. But allies have agency too, and are already planning their responses. More >>

The Fight For Dignity: Reshaping Gaza’s Post-War Narrative

Tuesday, 21 January 2025, 10:52 am | Ramzy Baroud

The latest Israeli war on Gaza was not ordinary, but then, no previous wars have been anything but destructive and lethal. For Israel, it was a genocide—a war aimed at exterminating Gaza's population through mass killings and driving the survivors ... More >>

On The Rise Of Simeon Brown

Monday, 20 January 2025, 11:33 am | Gordon Campbell

Replacing Shane Reti with Simeon Brown as the new Minister of Health is a signal that the gloves are coming off in this crucial portfolio. Alarmingly, PM Christopher Luxon even used the term “ruthless execution” to describe how Brown will be carrying ... More >>

Good Does Not Fight Evil, But Stands Firm And Dispels It

Monday, 20 January 2025, 10:26 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations

The die is cast where Trump, the United States and the post-World War II order are concerned. The failure of insight and imagination by academic, media and political elites, exemplified in the moronic “good Trump, bad Trump” fantasy, feeds the ... More >>

Bitter Harvests: The Gaza Ceasefire

Sunday, 19 January 2025, 6:38 pm | Binoy Kampmark

Whoever claims credit for these latest developments hardly lessens the bitterness of the harvest. The prevarications, delays and obstructions have permitted massive destruction and loss of life to take place. Cowardice and bad faith have been the ... More >>

Situation Critical: UNRWA And Its Continued Operations

Saturday, 18 January 2025, 6:10 pm | Binoy Kampmark

Any ceasefire, already soured by the killing of over 100 Palestinians since its announcement, does little to address the institutional chasm that will be left were UNRWA to cease operating in any meaningful way. More >>

Waiting For Trump: How Bad Will It Be?

Friday, 17 January 2025, 10:37 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations

There aren’t two America’s anymore than there are two political parties. There’s just one, and it’s Trump’s America. He will do his worst. More >>

The Gaza Genocide: The Fall Of Israel’s Immunity

Thursday, 16 January 2025, 3:46 pm | Ramzy Baroud

Numbers, though helpful, are rarely enough to convey collective pain. Using a new data-collecting method called ‘capture–recapture analysis’, the report indicates that by the first nine months of the war, between October 2023 and June 2024, 64,260 ... More >>

On More Threats To Democracy From David Seymour

Thursday, 16 January 2025, 11:55 am | Gordon Campbell

Early reports indicate that a temporary Israel/Hamas ceasefire deal is due to take effect on Sunday. And the Regulatory Standards Bill is another vehicle for constitutional change that’s being launched under the guise of sensible, garden-variety law-making. More >>

When Politics Gets In The Pocket Of The Gun Lobby

Wednesday, 15 January 2025, 4:19 pm | Ian Powell

Ian Powell discusses when a government gets in the pocket of the gun lobby. More >>

The Darkest Hour Before Dawn Or The Sum Of All Dark Ages?

Tuesday, 14 January 2025, 10:27 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations

Given the global ecological, psycho-spiritual, economic and political crisis of humankind, is there a latent exaptation that can be released which will enable us to meet the present climacteric? Yes, the universal capacity for flashes and states of insight. More >>

AUKUS: Flawed And Sinking

Monday, 13 January 2025, 1:24 pm | Binoy Kampmark

Announced in September 2021 as “an enhanced trilateral security partnership”, AUKUS has hobbled and stuttered its way into 2025. Commentary from the pompom holders for war at such outlets as The Economist continue with such mild remarks as “ambitious ... More >>

On The History Of Doo Wop Music

Monday, 13 January 2025, 11:01 am | Gordon Campbell

The decade between 1952 and the early 1960s was the peak period for the style of music we now call doo wop, after which it got dissolved into soul music, girl groups, and within pop music in general. More >>

Israel Destroyed Gaza ‘For Generations To Come’ And The World Stayed Silent

Monday, 13 January 2025, 8:58 am | Ramzy Baroud

The worst-case scenario has actualized in a way that even the most pessimistic estimates by Palestinian, Arab, or international groups could not have foreseen. Not only is Gaza now beyond "uninhabitable", but, according to Greenpeace, it will be "uninhabitable ... More >>

Detained Without Charge: Eleven Yemenis Leave Guantánamo

Friday, 10 January 2025, 3:40 pm | Binoy Kampmark

They are reminders about what the German jurist and Nazi enthusiast Carl Schmitt called a state of exception, a rather sinister way of saying that states, and leaders, can behave abominably if their position enables them to do so. More >>

The War Criminal 'Victim': Netanyahu’s Inevitable Fate

Friday, 10 January 2025, 9:43 am | Ramzy Baroud

Netanyahu understands this well and seems to have concluded that his only path to political survival is the continuation of the Gaza war and the expansion of the conflict to engage multiple parties. More >>

From Symbolic Consciousness To Insight Consciousness

Thursday, 9 January 2025, 2:37 pm | Martin LeFevre - Meditations

No computer, however complex it may become in a simulacrum of sentience, will ever be able to approach the state of silence and insight, and communion with death and love that is the birthright of the human being. More >>

Arresting And Killing Greenies: Targeting Climate Change Protests

Wednesday, 8 January 2025, 3:52 pm | Binoy Kampmark

In wealthier states, the climate change protester may be safer, but hardly immune from state violence. Arrests of protestors in both Australia and the UK are above the international average: 20% and 17% respectively. More >>

Welcome Puberty Blockers Report But Beware Derailing Transphobia

Tuesday, 7 January 2025, 5:16 pm | Ian Powell

Ian Powell discusses the Health Ministry’s position statement on puberty blocker prescribing in the context of an NZ Medical Journal article, guidelines based on the Hippocratic Oath and the risk of transphobic derailment. More >>

Take Your Money And Shove It: The Second Long Telegram, US Aid, And Russia’s Economic Trauma

Tuesday, 7 January 2025, 3:36 pm | Binoy Kampmark

While historical forces, local conditions and cultural idiosyncrasies will always guide the development of any state and community, there is something to be said that post-Cold War Russia might have taken something of a different path had Merry’s ... More >>

On Justin Trudeau’s Demise, In A Global Context

Tuesday, 7 January 2025, 11:48 am | Gordon Campbell

Canadians can take a while to get angry – but when they finally do, watch out. Canada has been falling out of love with Justin Trudeau for years, and his exit has to be the least surprising news event of the New Year. On recent polling, Trudeau’s ... More >>

Join The Army; Travel To Exotic, Distant Lands; And Radicalise

Monday, 6 January 2025, 3:47 pm | Binoy Kampmark

Those with such records were also abundantly linked to far-right domestic extremist groups and movements (73.5%), while 15%, or 24 offenders, “were inspired by or connected to foreign Islamist extremist groups” such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic ... More >>

Letters from Gaza – ‘Alhamdulillah. We Are Not Okay’

Monday, 6 January 2025, 10:16 am | Ramzy Baroud

It may seem strange that none of those who communicated with me throughout the war have ever questioned their faith, and have often, if not always, begun their messages by checking on me, and my children. More >>

Imperialism, Chagos Islanders And The Fight To Return

Sunday, 5 January 2025, 1:58 pm | Ian Powell

Ian Powell discusses the long determined fight of evicted Chagos Islanders to return home in the context of imperialism. More >>

Frail Egos And Sandpit Colonialism: Australia, The United States And Invading Iraq

Saturday, 4 January 2025, 2:38 pm | Binoy Kampmark

What makes Australia’s own involvement even worse, was that the reason to go to war lay less in an international security threat than a weak ego and reputational yearning: to be cringingly worthy to Washington. More >>

Ignoring A Leopard’s Spots: The UK, Syria And Courting Dictators

Friday, 3 January 2025, 1:38 pm | Binoy Kampmark

In an echo of history, the current UK government has found a new man of transactional worth in Damascus. The great usurper, Jolani, has taken Bashar’s place. His Al Qaeda and Islamic State past is being strategically sanitised, the revolutionary ... More >>

Neuroscience’s Misleading Half-Truths

Friday, 3 January 2025, 10:37 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations

Diversity arises from wholeness, not from particularity. The notion that life can be reduced to its “basic building blocks” is a fundamental philosophical mistake of many scientists, who project the basic premise of thought—separation—onto ... More >>

Fighting Israel’s War In Jenin: Can The Palestinian Authority Be Saved?

Thursday, 2 January 2025, 6:20 pm | Ramzy Baroud

In the face of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and unprecedentedly violent crackdowns on Palestinians in the West Bank, the betrayal of the PA has been laid bare for all to see. The latest operation in Jenin is a clear manifestation of how Israel uses ... More >>

Far From Ignorant: The European Union, Arms Exports And Israel

Thursday, 2 January 2025, 1:14 pm | Binoy Kampmark

While the European Union dithers and stalls on responding to this subject, despite the ICJ’s interim rulings that there was a risk of irreparable harm to the Palestinian right to be protected from genocide, bureaucrats have been busy. More >>

Jimmy Carter, Israel And The Apartheid Question

Tuesday, 31 December 2024, 1:40 pm | Binoy Kampmark

Beyond his stint in office, the tongue worked more easily, and opinions expressed with greater ease. Over time, for instance, he frowned with matronly disapproval at Israel over its treatment of Palestinians. More >>

Pulverized By Asia's Tsunami

Monday, 30 December 2024, 2:58 pm | Richard S. Ehrlich

Tourists were thronging Thailand's gorgeous southwest coast where Phuket island and the granite-studded, sandy beaches of Khao Lak became the hardest hit zones amid estuaries, mangroves, and sea cliffs. More >>

Greenland Redux: Trump And America’s Continuing Obsession

Monday, 30 December 2024, 12:45 pm | Binoy Kampmark

History shows that empires acquire territories in various ways. Dynasties link arms through marriage, as the Habsburgs were famous for doing. Territories are pinched by means of arms or stolen through sham contracts and undertakings. They might also ... More >>

A Palestinian Year In Review: Genocide, Resistance And Unanswered Questions

Sunday, 29 December 2024, 1:07 pm | Ramzy Baroud

2025 could, indeed, represent that watershed moment. This remains to be seen. However, as far as Palestinians are concerned, even with the failure of the international community to stop the genocide & reign in Israel, their steadfastness, sumoud, will ... More >>

Sinking Mike Pompeo: Tucker Carlson, Assange And Trump

Saturday, 28 December 2024, 2:25 pm | Binoy Kampmark

With the return of Trump to the White House, whose campaign was aided by various figures sympathetic to Assange’s publishing efforts, the eyes shifted, once again, to Pompeo. Would the now leaner figure make a return, probably as Defense Secretary? ... More >>

Suing Antony Blinken: The US State Department, Israel And The Leahy Law

Friday, 27 December 2024, 2:56 pm | Binoy Kampmark

Blinken’s record when applying the Leahy Law to Israeli units is disturbingly scrappy. In May, for instance, he explained to Congress that the punishments meted out to soldiers and officers in four cases prior to the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, More >>

Jesting On The Environment: Australian Mining Gets A Present

Thursday, 26 December 2024, 1:18 pm | Binoy Kampmark

The institute pointed out that the three mines, in the current state of operation, “were already so large that they could almost cover greater Sydney, or most Australian cities.” More >>

The Antithesis Of What Jesus Taught And Lived

Wednesday, 25 December 2024, 10:42 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations

Rather than face their own failings, mourn their loss and question why things went wrong, they declared that he died for our sins and started a religion that has ended in hate, power and greed, the antithesis of what Jesus taught and lived. More >>

The West Bank's Men Of The CIA - Why Is The PA Killing Palestinians In Jenin?

Wednesday, 25 December 2024, 8:52 am | Ramzy Baroud

It could be argued that the PA was structured since its establishment in 1994 as a body whose existence catered to benefit the Israeli occupation. Evidence that substantiates this claim includes the arrests, torture and killing of dissenting Palestinians soon ... More >>

Concentrated Markets And Iceless Fokkers

Monday, 23 December 2024, 1:14 pm | Binoy Kampmark

It’s a scheme that has become the central strategy of governments, administrative and corporate entities the world over. More >>

Catching Pegasus: Mercenary Spyware And The Liability Of The NSO Group

Sunday, 22 December 2024, 5:34 pm | Binoy Kampmark

In this woefully unregulated industry, Israel’s poster child of spyware will most likely cough up and continue to make money from the pathologies of government insecurity. They will just have to be mindful of the US market from hereon in. More >>

The World Owes Palestine This Much - Please Stop Censoring Palestinian Voices

Saturday, 21 December 2024, 5:23 am | Ramzy Baroud

In the specific case of social media censorship in Gaza, lives are literally being lost as a result of politically motivated decisions. The censorship takes a dark, deadly turn as it could make the difference between people dying under the rubble ... More >>

Why Vanuatu Should Brace For Even More Aftershocks After This Week’s Deadly Quakes: A Seismologist Explains

Friday, 20 December 2024, 5:35 pm | The Conversation

Since Vanuatu’s first earthquake was at a magnitude over 7, we would expect to see more aftershocks to come, at declining strengths and frequency – in a pattern that can last weeks to months. More >>

Meditation Without A Method

Friday, 20 December 2024, 11:40 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations

There is no method to meditation. Methods and systems are fabrications of thought, and thought cannot be used to quiet psychological thought without dulling the brain. One simply begins with the intent to listen, and delight in the senses. More >>

Israel To Annex The West Bank – Why Now? And What Are The Likely Scenarios?

Thursday, 19 December 2024, 6:15 pm | Ramzy Baroud

What is taking place in Syria serves as a model of what to expect in the West Bank in coming months. All of this in mind, the annexation of the West Bank in the coming weeks or months is a real possibility. More >>

The Strawman Of Antisemitism: Banning Protests Against Israel Down Under

Thursday, 19 December 2024, 2:28 pm | Binoy Kampmark

Ever the opportunist, Netanyahu saw a chance to see unsubstantiated links between the bombing in Melbourne, Australian foreign policy and antisemitism. The conclusion was childishly simple: “Anti-Israel sentiment is antisemitism.” More >>

On Why We Can’t Survive Two More Years Of This

Thursday, 19 December 2024, 12:10 pm | Gordon Campbell

Finance Minister Nicola Willis seems intent on portraying herself as that damsel in distress. According to her, this country’s current economic problems have all been caused by the spending schemes cooked up by the dastardly and long-departed ... More >>

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