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On Winston Peters’ Bad Trip, And The Return Of The PPPs Zombie
Thursday, 20 March 2025, 11:15 am | Gordon Campbell
The epic importance of Winston Peters’ talks in Washington this week doesn’t seem to have culminated in anything more than us expressing our “concern” to the Americans about a series of issues that are already done and dusted. Tariffs? More >>
Dunne's Weekly: ACC Rules On Volunteers Need To Change
Thursday, 20 March 2025, 8:27 am | Peter Dunne
The only ACC Minister to show any real interest in and understanding of the issue was Matt Doocey, who was, unfortunately, reshuffled out of the portfolio earlier this year. His successors are yet to show their interest. More >>
The Trauma Will Be Instagrammed: Wombat Handlings Down Under
Wednesday, 19 March 2025, 1:34 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The response to Jones in Australia proved heated. A petition seeking deportation was launched, receiving over 40,000 signatures. The Wombat Protection Society expressed shock at the “mishandling of a wombat joey in an apparent snatch for ‘social ... More >>
Geopolitical Fractures, And Untidy Yet Workable Solutions
Tuesday, 18 March 2025, 4:01 pm | Keith Rankin
At present, it would seem, the United States of America, which sees itself as the world's preeminent geopolitical player, is impatient for conflicts in Ukraine and Palestine to end, so that it can get on with its 'game of choice', namely the 'new ... More >>
On Luxon’s Survival Chances, And The India FTA
Tuesday, 18 March 2025, 11:12 am | Gordon Campbell
Whenever Christopher Luxon drops a classically fatuous clanger or whenever the government has a bad poll – i.e. every week – the talk resumes that he is about to be rolled. This is unlikely for several reasons. For starters, there is no successor. More >>
Road Cone Final Exam & Donald, I Warned You!
Monday, 17 March 2025, 7:10 pm | Adrian Maidment
Adrian Maidment Cartoons More >>
The Script Of Anxiety: Poland’s Nuclear Weapons Fascination
Monday, 17 March 2025, 1:15 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Poland would receive collective military aid in any case should it be attacked. But, as Jon Wolfsthal of the Federation of American Scientists reasons, an innate concern of being abandoned in the face of aggression continues to cause jitters. More >>
Regarding Randomness And Significance
Monday, 17 March 2025, 11:07 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
The Earth, if one sets aside one’s knowledge and experience and looks afresh at nature every day, is endlessly wondrous. Out of the approximately 100 billion stars in the Milky Way, nearly all with planets circling them, how many life-bearing planets ... More >>
Beyond Western Hegemony: A Call For Middle Eastern Media Autonomy
Monday, 17 March 2025, 9:53 am | Ramzy Baroud
The problem is often compounded by the near complete absence of voices from the Global South, as if Middle Eastern media are simply duplicating the western media marginalization of all voices that operate outside their political hegemony. More >>
When Apartheid Met Zionism
Saturday, 15 March 2025, 6:42 pm | Ian Powell
Ian Powell discusses, in a New Zealand context, what happens when apartheid meets Zionism. More >>
Sporting Contradictions: Athletes, The Olympics And Climate Change
Saturday, 15 March 2025, 5:06 pm | Binoy Kampmark
If care of the planet is what these athletes sincerely want, a swift abolition of the Olympics, along with a virtuous cancellation of the IOC, would achieve their goals. Why wait for extreme weather to either modify or even do away with the games ... More >>
Militarising Europe: The EU Defence Spending Bug
Friday, 14 March 2025, 1:34 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The March 6 meeting of the Special European Council was a chance for 27 leaders of the European Union to make that point. It was time to cash in on the Russia threat and promote a strategic vision that spoke of elevated dangers. More >>
Brown’s Surgery Puts Health System At Increased Risk
Friday, 14 March 2025, 8:39 am | Ian Powell
Ian Powell delves upon Health Minister’s major announcement last week with a particular emphasis on the risks and realities of outsourcing non-acute surgery. More >>
The Monkey’s Tail: How Netanyahu’s Ambitions Expose Israel’s Vulnerabilities
Friday, 14 March 2025, 8:22 am | Ramzy Baroud
By targeting Egypt, Israel aims to project an image of prowess, and that it is unafraid to confront the most populous Arab nation. Yet, in doing so, it inadvertently exposes its own weaknesses. This behavior is wholly consistent with Netanyahu's legacy of ... More >>
Invoking Munich, 'Appeasement', And The 'Lessons Of History'
Thursday, 13 March 2025, 6:32 pm | Keith Rankin
The Munich narrative is central to the 'Good War' morality trope, through which democracies (especially the United States) justified wars of aggression; what used to be called 'gunboat-diplomacy' in the British days of empire. More >>
Dunne's Weekly: School Lunches Fiasco Shows What Happens When Social Policy Loses Focus
Thursday, 13 March 2025, 11:19 am | Peter Dunne
When the current government took office in 2023 and sought to pare back government spending, the school lunch programme was an early target. The government produced a plan to centralise and standardise the school lunches operation which would save More >>
On Winston Peters’ Battle Against The Phantom Legions Of The Woke
Thursday, 13 March 2025, 10:33 am | Gordon Campbell
In a month’s time, the Right Honourable Winston Peters will be celebrating his 80th birthday. Good for him. On the evidence though, his current war on “wokeness” looks like an old man’s cranky complaint that the ancient virtues of grit and know-how ... More >>
Aggrieved Speculation: The Trump Illness Hypothesis
Wednesday, 12 March 2025, 2:35 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Cyril Connolly remarked, are bound to have their critical faculties blunted by the poor quality of books available for review, Trump as both subject and method has cut through the undergrowth of sensible discourse. The illness hypothesis is yet ... More >>
Dodgy Democracy, The Fiscal Double Standard, And The Application Of The Domino Theory To Ukraine
Tuesday, 11 March 2025, 12:12 pm | Keith Rankin
The Russia-Ukraine War is a mucky border conflict between two countries with a long and intertwined shared history, and with more than enough 'stirring of the pot' from outside to convert a regional security dispute into an existential global security ... More >>
On The Government’s Stubborn Refusal To Invest For Growth
Tuesday, 11 March 2025, 11:38 am | Gordon Campbell
As Simplicity economist Shamubeel Eaqub pointed out recently, the coalition government is trying to attract foreign investment here to generate economic growth, while – simultaneously – cutting back drastically on its own investment in our economy. More >>
From Gaza To Syria: The Unyielding Reality Of Israeli Settler Colonialism
Monday, 10 March 2025, 11:57 am | Ramzy Baroud
The discourse of the erasure of the Palestinian people has been the shared foundation among all Israeli officials and governments, though it has been expressed in different ways. Israeli colonialism is in no way linked to Palestinian resistance, action or ... More >>
The Polycrisis, Knowledge, And AI
Monday, 10 March 2025, 11:10 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
The real and present danger of AI is that it will destroy the brain’s potential for insight if we continue to give primacy to the intellect and knowledge, much less merge with these thought machines we’ve created in our own image. More >>
Getting Out Of The Current Health System Mess
Saturday, 8 March 2025, 4:45 pm | Ian Powell
Ian Powell discusses how New Zealand’s health system got into its current mess and how to get out of it. More >>
More Guns, Less Butter: Starmer’s Defence Spending Splash
Saturday, 8 March 2025, 2:48 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The aid budgets of wealthy states should never be seen as benevolent projects. Behind the charitable endeavour is a calculation that speaks more to power (euphemised as “soft”) than kindness. Aid keeps the natives of other countries clothed, fed ... More >>
Macron’s Offer: France And The Delusions Of Nuclear Deterrence
Friday, 7 March 2025, 1:41 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The trouble with deterrence chatter is that it remains hostage to delusion. Strategists talk in extravagant terms about the genuine prospect that nuclear weapons can make any one state safer, leading to some calculus of tolerable use. More >>
A Diagnosis And Prescription For The Polycrisis
Friday, 7 March 2025, 11:34 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
The action of spontaneous, undirected attention quiets and cleanses the brain of its useless, accumulated content, allowing the mind to fall silent and participate in the consciousness of the cosmos. More >>
International Law At A Crossroads: Can Gaza Spark A Global Reckoning?
Friday, 7 March 2025, 10:09 am | Ramzy Baroud
Unfortunately, international law, which was in theory supposed to reflect global consensus, was hardly dedicated to peace or genuinely invested in the decolonisation of the South. More >>
Dunne's Weekly: Five Top Resignations Just Coincidence?
Friday, 7 March 2025, 8:51 am | Peter Dunne
Sudden resignations and abrupt departures seem to be the fashion at present. First there was the chief executive of Health New Zealand who announced her resignation four months before her contract was due to expire, and left her role almost immediately. ... More >>
Germany's Election 2025: Far Establishment-Right Versus Far Non-Establishment-Right?
Thursday, 6 March 2025, 1:19 pm | Keith Rankin
The result in Germany proved to be very much like that of the United Kingdom in 2024: a slide in support for the two major parties ('the establishment centre'), a consolidation of power to the self-same establishment centre, and a shift of that establishment ... More >>
On Why GP Practices Are In Crisis
Thursday, 6 March 2025, 12:00 pm | Gordon Campbell
Can we please have some context for the government’s hand-on-heart claims of caring about the health and well-being of ordinary “Kiwis”? In the real world, the rising cost of going to the doctor means that many of those “Kiwis” cannot afford to ... More >>
Righteous, Confused And Unwilling: Europe’s Ukrainian Predicament
Tuesday, 4 March 2025, 7:55 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Given their lack of punch and prowess, one arising from years fed by the devitalising US teat, European states are simply playing with toy soldiers. Eventually, they will have to play along if peace in Ukraine, however much detested in its form, is to ... More >>
On Why Having Elections Less Often Is A Bad Idea
Tuesday, 4 March 2025, 12:20 pm | Gordon Campbell
Are we feeling the country is in such capable hands, that we can afford to take a longer break between elections? Outside the parliamentary bubble and a few corporate boardrooms, surely there are not many people who think that voters have too much More >>
Zelensky: Victim Of Colosseum Politics
Monday, 3 March 2025, 3:53 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It was a salient reminder that support for Ukraine has iced over, that it is no longer the blue-eyed boy of US politics, Western civilisation’s consecrated prop against Russian savagery. More >>
California Psychologically Secedes From The Union
Monday, 3 March 2025, 9:08 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
Without a genuinely global response, the fragmentation of the Earth and Humanity will continue and quicken. But paradoxically, in their race to the bottom, Trump, Putin and their ilk are making a true global response more necessary and possible every day. More >>
The Lost 'Arab': Gaza And The Evolving Language Of The Palestinian Struggle
Monday, 3 March 2025, 9:00 am | Ramzy Baroud
Aside from the obvious problem that military occupations should not be described as 'conflicts' – a neutral term that creates a moral equivalence – the removal of 'Arabs' from the 'conflict' has greatly worsened matters, not only for Palestinians, ... More >>
Private Versus Public Health Systems
Sunday, 2 March 2025, 6:28 pm | Ian Powell
Ian Powell discusses the changing nature of the relationship between public and private (hospitals and insurance) and how the latter has become an increasing threat to the former. More >>
Ukraine Deal. Beware Of Americans Bearing Gifts
Saturday, 1 March 2025, 7:01 pm | Eugene Doyle
Shortly after the on-camera shouting match, Trump said the deal was off and posted: “He disrespected the United States of America in its cherished Oval Office. He can come back when he is ready for Peace.” More >>
Ho Hum At Sea: Anti-China Hysteria Down Under
Saturday, 1 March 2025, 6:28 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Such is the standard of political debate that something as unremarkable as this latest sea incident has become a throbbing issue that supposedly shows the Albanese government as insufficiently belligerent. More >>
Fiendish Experiments: Trump’s Guantánamo Bay Migrant Detentions
Friday, 28 February 2025, 1:53 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The use of the island to deal with immigrants has been a blighted practice undertaken by US administrations since the 1970s. The Trump administration’s waspish approach to unwanted immigrants replicates the pattern of deterrence and demonisation. More >>
Both The Right And The Left Are Making Mutually Assured Destruction A Reality
Friday, 28 February 2025, 10:46 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
Clearly it isn’t just right-wing extremists that threaten the world. The left has lost its mind as well. There is no such fucking thing as national security, and the more political, media and academic leaders adhere to it, the more insecure they help ... More >>
Restoring Palestine To Its Rightful Owners: A Conversation With Mads Gilbert
Friday, 28 February 2025, 6:19 am | Ramzy Baroud
The iconic Norwegian emergency medicine doctor, Mads Gilbert, is fighting to decolonize the concept of solidarity in medicine—and, by extension, western solidarity as a whole. Since the start of the war, he has remained one of the most tireless voices More >>
Yellow Peril! Red Peril! “We Cannot Hide Anymore”. Chinese Warships In The Tasman Sea
Thursday, 27 February 2025, 5:30 pm | Eugene Doyle
The Western media went into overdrive this past week to work the laconic Kiwis into a mild frenzy over three Chinese naval vessels conducting exercises in the Tasman Sea a few thousand kilometres off our shores. What was really behind this orchestrated ... More >>
On School Lunches, And The Coalition Government Eating The Young
Thursday, 27 February 2025, 1:17 pm | Gordon Campbell
The school lunches saga gets worse by the day. If ACT leader David Seymour can’t/won’t now admit that this brainchild of his is a total disaster...what more evidence pray, does he need? Do children have to die in the school cafeteria before Seymour will More >>
Dunne's Weekly: The Unwelcome Case Of Peter Thiel
Thursday, 27 February 2025, 8:33 am | Peter Dunne
The Thiel case is a salutary reminder that citizenship can never be allowed to become just one more commodity to be casually traded as part of a putative investment deal. More >>
Breaking Bad: China's DeepSeek A.I. Reveals Taboos
Wednesday, 26 February 2025, 3:53 pm | Richard S. Ehrlich
China employs extensive state-controlled surveillance, including facial recognition, social credit systems, and internet monitoring via the 'Great Firewall.' These tools enforce social compliance and suppress dissent, akin to the Thought Police and telescreens ... More >>
Blown Away In My Backyard
Wednesday, 26 February 2025, 1:20 pm | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
A meditation on a beautiful, sunny afternoon is salubrious, but a meditation amidst the elemental forces of nature is shattering. Everything you know or think you know, everything you’ve experienced and carefully built up, is stripped away. You can ... More >>
Israel’s Annexation Drive: The West Bank And Expelling Palestinian Refugees
Wednesday, 26 February 2025, 12:36 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The blunt savagery of these latest actions, as with the broader campaign against militant groups by Israel, continues the reductive logic that celebrates force over peace, the use of weapons over considerations of diplomacy. More >>
Gloominess And Magical Thinking: The Comical, Frightening Mike Burgess
Tuesday, 25 February 2025, 12:35 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The Australian public, it would seem, is not playing along with the authorities. How dare they question and debate the norms they have been told are so sacred to servile stability? “Social cohesion” – a vacuous term – is apparently eroding. More >>
On Why Our China Panic Is About To Get Expensive
Tuesday, 25 February 2025, 12:04 pm | Gordon Campbell
Allegedly, the defence environment has changed, and New Zealand thus needs to spend significantly more on Defence. The rationale is that China (our main trading partner) has been raising its profile in the Pacific, a region hitherto seen to be our own ... More >>
Is This A 1989 Moment?
Monday, 24 February 2025, 10:19 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
The year 1989 signifies not just the end of the Cold War, but the opportunity for humankind to move in a new direction. That window of opportunity only lasted a few months, before the hellish days in Russia and the halcyon days in America ushered ... More >>
Human Sacrifice: Remembering Aaron Bushnell
Sunday, 23 February 2025, 8:05 pm | Eugene Doyle
None of us should feel we have to make the kind of sacrifice that Aaron Bushnell made but all of us need to do that little bit more - if nothing else, than to save our own humanity from vanishing into the sea of indifference that Western culture ... More >>
Cowardice And Cancellation: Creative Australia And The Venice Biennale
Sunday, 23 February 2025, 2:39 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Creative Australia's dropping of of Lebanese-born artist Khaled Sabsabi as Australia’s representative for the 2026 Venice Biennale, along with the curator of the pavilion’s artistic team, Michael Dagostino, shows that true artistic subversion is not the ... More >>
Second Endings: Terminating Neighbours (Again)
Saturday, 22 February 2025, 2:51 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Fremantle’s hunt for the cash for continued production will have to start in earnest, but short of returning to a British backer, the prospects look decidedly final for a show that has lasted well beyond its time. More >>
Dunne's Weekly: It's Now Lowest Common Denominator Politics Instead Of Informed Political Debate
Friday, 21 February 2025, 9:49 am | Peter Dunne
The demise of political debate as it used to be, in favour of the fervent, dogmatic statement of party opinion as incontrovertible fact as we have now, has dramatically changed the nature of political discourse around the world. More >>
Gaza Has Changed The Discourse On Popular Resistance, But Are We Truly Listening?
Thursday, 20 February 2025, 11:00 am | Ramzy Baroud
As hundreds of thousands of Palestinians began marching from south to north on January 27, they celebrated their return, defined as a collective victory against the Israeli war machine and a victory for the people themselves, who produced a new model of ... More >>
What Is A Human Being?
Thursday, 20 February 2025, 10:48 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
The idea of “my country” being primary is anathema to the human being. Though the vast majority of humans have identified with particular groups for thousands of years, a small minority of human beings has always emotionally realized that they ... More >>
On The Fall And Rise Of Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid
Thursday, 20 February 2025, 9:25 am | Gordon Campbell
Good to see that this year, the New Zealand film societies are celebrating what would have been Sam Peckinpah’s 100th birthday with what they are calling “Peckinpah’s West” – a tribute consisting of screenings of The Wild Bunch and Pat Garrett More >>
On Why Europe Is Being Made To Go It Alone
Tuesday, 18 February 2025, 11:43 am | Gordon Campbell
Now that the US has ripped up the Atlantic alliance, Europe is more vulnerable now than at any time since the mid-1930s. Apparently, Europe and Ukraine itself will not have a seat at the table in the talks between US President Trump and Vladimir ... More >>
Feeling Very Fine: Picasso The Printmaker At The British Museum
Tuesday, 18 February 2025, 8:42 am | Binoy Kampmark
In 1905, the print Salomé announces a serious yet teasing effort by Picasso to depict the body of the naked dancer before Herod much “like a blind man who pictures an arse by the way it feels”. The outstretched leg suggests the Moulin Rouge. More >>
