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Yale, Ben-Gvir and Banning Palestinian Groups
Sunday, 27 April 2025, 6:59 pm | Binoy Kampmark
This profaning of protest in a university setting is a convenient trick, using the popular weasel words of “offensive” and “unsafe” while deploying, more generically, the pitiful policy inventory that makes freedom of expression an impossibility. More >>
Deporting Dissent: The Dangerous Precedent Set By The Persecution Of Pro-Palestine Activists
Saturday, 26 April 2025, 5:15 pm | Ramzy Baroud
While US activists advocating for justice in Palestine deserve unwavering support and defense for their profound courage and humanity, Americans must also recognize that they, and the remnants of their democracy, are equally at risk. More >>
The Myth Of Conquest: Why Gaza Will Never Be Subdued By Israel
Saturday, 26 April 2025, 12:26 pm | Ramzy Baroud
Since Israel failed to subdue the Gazans over the course of two relentless decades, it is not merely improbable, but an outright absurdity to expect that Israel will now succeed in subduing and conquering Gaza More >>
Fallibility, Dirty Wars And Pope Francis I
Friday, 25 April 2025, 1:32 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Pope Francis I, eulogised as the pontiff of the periphery and the oppressed, was not averse in his pre-papal iteration to courting the powerful and the authoritarian when a US-backed military dictatorship seized power in his native Argentina in 1976. More >>
Dunne's Weekly: An Issue No-One Can Afford To Lose
Friday, 25 April 2025, 8:54 am | Peter Dunne
For the sake of Parliament’s integrity, any penalty should be significant – it cannot look like a slap with a wet bus ticket. However it also cannot be unreasonable, which would simply inflame the current situation further & embolden TPM’s line that it is the victim of a repressive, racist system. More >>
Choosing Mass Murder?
Friday, 25 April 2025, 8:18 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
No matter how much planning and “premeditation”, the plague of mass murderers in the USA is the ultimate expression of pathological individualism. More >>
On The Trump Upside, And Peters Persecution Of Trans People
Thursday, 24 April 2025, 1:23 pm | Gordon Campbell
Spare us the media pearl-clutching about what Donald Trump is doing to the natural order of things. Perhaps instead, we need to treat Trump II as a pandemic/climate change scale of convulsion that offers as much of an opportunity as it does a threat. ... More >>
Quiet Mutiny: The U.S. Army Falls Apart
Thursday, 24 April 2025, 11:15 am | Eugene Doyle
There were many reasons that the U.S. and its allies were defeated in Vietnam. First and foremost they were beaten by an army that was superior in tactics, morale and political will. More >>
The Selling Of America: Ending The US Dollar’s Exorbitant Privilege
Wednesday, 23 April 2025, 3:05 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Curious events are unfolding as a result of Trump’s carnivalesque approach to trade and markets. While the value of the greenback has fallen, the returns from 10-year US government bonds have risen. More >>
Remembering Vietnam And Cambodia 50 Years On During ANZAC Week
Wednesday, 23 April 2025, 12:18 pm | Frances Palmer
It’s distressing as a paediatric nurse, to see the horrors humans create for civilians, out of thirst for power or in reaction to attacks. During ANZAC week, let’s not be seduced into ‘unseeing’ decades of manipulation of foreign policy by military ... More >>
Papal Picks, And India As A Defence Ally
Tuesday, 22 April 2025, 3:54 pm | Gordon Campbell
Reportedly, the global uncertainty being triggered by the US tariff wars has been motivating India to speed up its bilateral trade dealings with many countries, including NZ. More >>
Euphemistic Practices: The IDF, Killing Aid Workers And Self-Investigation
Tuesday, 22 April 2025, 1:12 pm | Binoy Kampmark
In marking its own report card, and giving it a credible pass, the IDF found, using the dulling terms that make murder an afterthought, that the deaths were of minor if regretful consequence. More >>
Easter Reflections
Monday, 21 April 2025, 8:17 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
Stripping away the half-baked misinterpretations, obfuscations, Catholic misconducts and Protestant misconstructions, what was it? Can we gain insight into Jesus’ mission, and does it have any relevance for our endarkened world? More >>
French Contradictions: Macron's Palestine Play - Too Little, Too Late?
Monday, 21 April 2025, 6:51 am | Ramzy Baroud
While any European recognition of Palestine is a welcome, if overdue, step, its true significance is considerably diminished by the near-universal recognition of Palestine within the global majority, particularly across the Global South, originating in ... More >>
Dotty And Cretinous: Reviewing AUKUS
Sunday, 20 April 2025, 3:25 pm | Binoy Kampmark
To add to the more specialist literature calling large parts of AUKUS expenditure into question comes the emergence of disquiet in political ranks. Former Labor senator Doug Cameron, who fronts the Labor Against War group, is a symptom of growing dissent. More >>
Beneath The Surface: Is The Trump-Netanyahu 'Unthinkable' About To Erupt?
Saturday, 19 April 2025, 2:47 pm | Ramzy Baroud
The outcome hinges on Trump's willingness to confront Netanyahu. If he does, and sustains the pressure, Netanyahu could find himself in an unenviable position, marking a rare instance in modern history where the US dictates its terms, and Israel listens. ... More >>
Between The Fires Of War And The Hope Of Life
Saturday, 19 April 2025, 5:31 am | Julie Webb-Pullman
Gaza is bleeding — yes. But it will not die. We are here, and we will remain, until life returns, and justice prevails, and the sun of freedom rises once again over the land of Palestine. More >>
The Fall Of Saigon 1975: Fifty Years Of Repeating What Was Forgotten
Friday, 18 April 2025, 3:58 pm | Eugene Doyle
Here we are 50 years later in the midst of the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza, with the US fuelling war and bombing people across the globe. Isn’t it time we stopped supporting this madness? More >>
De Facto Occupation: Israel’s Security Zone Strategy
Friday, 18 April 2025, 1:38 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Displacement orders, euphemised as “evacuation orders”, have become the staple of operating doctrine, the means of creating buffers of guns and steel. More >>
RNZ Celebrates 100 Years - Where To Now For The National Broadcaster?
Friday, 18 April 2025, 12:16 pm | RNZ
Comment - Paul Thompson, chief executive and editor-in-chief of RNZ, takes a look at the state of journalism in 2025 and the role RNZ has in its future. More >>
Dunne's Weekly: Trump's Tariffs Still Pose Risks For New Zealand
Friday, 18 April 2025, 9:21 am | Peter Dunne
While PHARMAC does not appear to have been raised during the recent tariff discussions, New Zealand should prepare for some sort of tariff imposition to blunt PHARMAC’s impact on the profitability of American pharmaceutical companies supplying to the ... More >>
On The Left’s Electability Crisis, And The Abundance Ecotopia
Thursday, 17 April 2025, 1:30 pm | Gordon Campbell
Basically, centre-left opposition parties that have recently been in government are struggling to find an identity in an era where they are still detested by many of the voters they need to win over, to be re-elected. More >>
Barbecued Hamburgers And Churchill's Bestie
Thursday, 17 April 2025, 12:16 pm | Keith Rankin
Hamburg was, literally, a dry run for what came later; the aim was to maximise the number of barbecued civilians by, among other things, choosing perfect weather conditions for an experiment in incendiary murder. More >>
Flexible And Sly: Indonesian Defence Policy, Russia And Australian Anxiety
Wednesday, 16 April 2025, 2:45 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Just as Australia would rather not see Pacific Island states form security friendly ties with China, an anxiety directed and dictated by Washington, it would also wish those in Southeast Asia to avoid the feelers of other countries supposedly unfriendly ... More >>
Before It’s Too Late: Reimagine New Zealand’s Military Future
Wednesday, 16 April 2025, 1:25 pm | Eugene Doyle
The increases in spending are spread across a range of areas: digital modernisation, science and tech, cyber capabilities, long-range remotely piloted aircraft, helicopters, planes, Javelin missiles, uncrewed surveillance vessels, and a sustainment programme ... More >>
Experience Confers Cynicism, Not Wisdom
Wednesday, 16 April 2025, 10:53 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
It’s a shrunken mind and heart that speaks of walking past granite mountains such a state of dullness and habit that one is devoid of feeling beauty or wonder. More >>
Gender Stunts In Space: Blue Origin’s Female Celebrity Envoys
Tuesday, 15 April 2025, 12:59 pm | Binoy Kampmark
On their return, the female cast performed their contractual undertakings to bore the press with deadly clichés and meaningless observations, reducing space travel to an exercise for the trivial. More >>
A Deadly Earthquake & Chinese Construction
Tuesday, 15 April 2025, 12:11 pm | Richard S. Ehrlich
Washington and Beijing have been unofficially competing with each other for decades to influence Bangkok's diplomacy, politics, economy, and military through financial aid, investment, tourism, education, ancestorial ties, and other ways. More >>
It Does Matter To Patients Whether They Are Operated In A Public Or Private Hospital
Tuesday, 15 April 2025, 12:04 pm | Ian Powell
Ian Powell responds to the claim of New Zealand health minister Simeon Brown that it doesn’t matter to patients whether their funded operation is in a public or private hospital. More >>
On Why The US Stands To Lose The Tariff Wars
Tuesday, 15 April 2025, 11:05 am | Gordon Campbell
Trump has plunged the world’s two largest economies into conflict in ways likely to damage both, and alter the wider patterns of international trade. Countries are being forced to deal with the fact that essential products will have to be sourced ... More >>
Olfactive Implications: Perfume, Power And Emmanuel Macron
Monday, 14 April 2025, 12:06 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The fragrance analysts and perfumeries will be delighted to know that a head of state is so enamoured with a specific product. Those wishing to make a fuss about workplace attitudes and dispositions will also add, and have added, their worthless observations. More >>
Junk Science And Bad Policing: The Homicide Prediction Project
Friday, 11 April 2025, 12:52 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in identifying a form of predictive criminality perpetuates similar sins. The trend towards data heavy systems that supposedly offer insight into inherent, potential criminality has captured police departments ... More >>
True Abundance
Friday, 11 April 2025, 7:23 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
True abundance is wholly an inward phenomenon. And while one can physically live without it, as the vast majority of Americans have for decades, if not our entire history as a colonising and westward expanding nation, one cannot inwardly survive ... More >>
Netanyahu’s Shin Bet Scandal: Who Holds The Power?
Thursday, 10 April 2025, 6:12 pm | Ramzy Baroud
This chaotic decision-making process helps explain the deep lack of trust Israelis have in their leadership. Recent public opinion polls show that a significant percentage of Israelis lack faith in their government and are calling for new elections or Netanyahu’s ... More >>
Rational Expectations, Intelligence, And War
Thursday, 10 April 2025, 4:23 pm | Keith Rankin
It is through our ManualI – our manual override, our consciousness, our awareness – that we have the opportunity to make rational valuations which incorporate morality. Our AutoI, while rational in its own terms, is also amoral. Our automatic benefit-cost ... More >>
On Marketing The Military Threat Posed By China
Thursday, 10 April 2025, 1:30 pm | Gordon Campbell
Gosh, we had to wait years for this flimsy Defence Capability Plan (DCP), only to get a 25 page document filled with back-of-the-envelope costings meant to justify a gigantic $12 billion spending spree of public money over the next four years. More >>
Dunne's Weekly: Is Andrew Little Wellington's Mayor-In-Waiting?
Thursday, 10 April 2025, 9:59 am | Peter Dunne
Andrew Little was regarded in national politics as a reasonable, competent safe pair of hands, although sometimes his passion got the better of him, causing the National-led Government to label him "Angry Andy" after one of his not infrequent outbursts in ... More >>
Killing Paramedics: Israel’s War On Palestinian Health
Wednesday, 9 April 2025, 12:32 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Since October 7, 2023, the death toll of health workers in the Gaza Strip has been impressively grim, reaching 1,060. Health facilities have been destroyed, with hundreds of attacks launched on health services. More >>
On Peter Dutton’s Fading Election Prospects.
Tuesday, 8 April 2025, 1:11 pm | Gordon Campbell
Since Australia is now our only dependable defence ally, maybe we should be paying attention to their upcoming election. Thanks entirely to Donald Trump, this is a very, very good time for those in power to be holding an election. More >>
Withdrawal Symptoms: Hungary, Europe And The International Criminal Court
Tuesday, 8 April 2025, 11:29 am | Binoy Kampmark
On the arrival of the Israeli leader for a four-day visit, there was a conspicuous absence of any law officer or police official willing to discharge the duties of the Rome Statute. The reception for Netanyahu featured a welcoming ceremony at the ... More >>
The Dalai Lama's Escape & CIA Money
Monday, 7 April 2025, 2:08 pm | Richard S. Ehrlich
The unprecedented event may irk Beijing which began invading Tibet in 1951 and denounces the Dalai Lama as subversive. More >>
No Silver Lining, Just An Opening
Monday, 7 April 2025, 10:32 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
The evils being perpetrated by the Trump Administration did not begin with Trump and won’t end with him. We have to understand just what this malevolence is, where it comes from, and what its goals are. More >>
Breaking The Silence On Palestinian Armed Struggle: A Call For Legal Clarity
Monday, 7 April 2025, 10:28 am | Ramzy Baroud
The history of Palestinian resistance is not a history of armed resistance, per se. The latter is a mere manifestation of a long history of popular resistance that reaches all aspects of societal expression, ranging from culture, spirituality, civil disobedience, ... More >>
Trump Tariffs Island Without People
Monday, 7 April 2025, 8:44 am | Adrian Maidment
Adrian Maidment cartoon More >>
Addressing Hate Speech And Incitement: Holding Meta Accountable In Africa
Sunday, 6 April 2025, 1:54 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It is yet another example of holding the conduct of tech behemoths to account for the convulsive information ecosystem they have so blithely created and exploited. More >>
Closed For Business: The Oddities Of Trump’s Tariffs
Friday, 4 April 2025, 1:06 pm | Binoy Kampmark
A baseline tariff of 10% was applied on goods imported by the US. Countries were then singled out for being particularly mischievous, in the eyes of the administration, not so much for having their own tariffs on US goods and products so much as having ... More >>
Teach Children The Distinction Between The World And Nature
Friday, 4 April 2025, 11:42 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
Perhaps the most important distinction we can teach children, which most adults lose sight of as they grow older, is the difference between nature and the world. The world is the man-made reality, the manifestation of the human mind, whereas obviously ... More >>
On The Clash Between Auckland Airport And Air New Zealand
Thursday, 3 April 2025, 10:45 am | Gordon Campbell
With one notable exception, the Commerce Commission’s comprehensive investigation has ended up endorsing every other aspect of the airport’s building programme (and its pricing/charging decisions) as “reasonable” and /or “acceptable” within ... More >>
Civil War On The Horizon? The Ashkenazi-Sephardic Conflict And Israel’s Future
Thursday, 3 April 2025, 10:32 am | Ramzy Baroud
The battle in Israel has preceded the Israeli genocide in Gaza. It largely began when Netanyahu rebelled against the Supreme Court and attempted to fire former Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant in March 2023. Mass protests in Israel that followed highlighted ... More >>
Dunne's Weekly: While We're Breaking Up Monoliths, What About MBIE?
Thursday, 3 April 2025, 8:06 am | Peter Dunne
To ensure New Zealand does not become a backwater for international sporting and related events, the government ought to establish a stand-alone independent specialist agency to work on both securing such events for New Zealand and the public and private ... More >>
Revisiting Universalism
Wednesday, 2 April 2025, 7:35 pm | Ian Powell
Ian Powell discusses the role of universalism in the provision of public services and benefits in New Zealand in the context of a challenging published critique. More >>
Supermarket Signs
Wednesday, 2 April 2025, 2:38 pm | Adrian Maidment
Adrian Maidment cartoon More >>
For The Love Of Landmines: European States Exit The Ottawa Convention
Wednesday, 2 April 2025, 1:37 pm | Binoy Kampmark
With the vibrant war chat that has gripped European capitals, the stockpiling and use of landmines is now being revisited as a genuine possibility. In its 2023 Landmine Monitor report, Human Rights Watch found that the active remnants of landmines killed ... More >>
In A Global Society, There Is No Such Thing As “National Security”
Wednesday, 2 April 2025, 10:04 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
Global citizens are facing the imminent complete collapse of the international order. But people can be psychologically and philosophically prepared to change course and create a true global order during the short window of opportunity after the bombs ... More >>
On The Government’s Latest Ferries Scam
Tuesday, 1 April 2025, 1:47 pm | Gordon Campbell
Has Winston Peters got a ferries deal for you! One of the contract bidders, South Korea’s vast Hyundai-Mipo Dockyard (HMD) held the initial contract for Labour’s iRex ferries, and this has to give HDM a unique ability to dictate the terms of where ... More >>
Secrecy And Virtue Signalling: Another View Of Signalgate
Tuesday, 1 April 2025, 1:26 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Other countries, notably members of the Five Eyes alliance system, are also voicing concern that their valuable secrets are at risk if shared with the Trump administration. Again, the focus there is less on the accountability of officials than the cast iron ... More >>
Trumpian Health Leadership
Monday, 31 March 2025, 10:54 am | Ian Powell
Ian Powell discusses the implications of the decision of Health New Zealand to restrict the relative independence of medical officers of health and the wider ramifications for health professionals. More >>
Disruption: Historians Challenge Russophobic Propaganda
Saturday, 29 March 2025, 6:07 pm | Eugene Doyle
The courage to oppose a dominant discourse comes at a price. Powerful forces are pressing in on academics and others who dare to express alternative views. Staying silent or parroting the party line is the safer option. More >>
War, Doublethink, And The Struggle For Survival: Geopolitics Of The Gaza Genocide
Saturday, 29 March 2025, 4:51 pm | Ramzy Baroud
The Arab world must escalate beyond mere statements, or the Middle East may endure further war, all to prolong Netanyahu’s coalition of extremists a little longer. More >>
Authoritarian Politics: Netanyahu’s War On Israeli Institutions
Friday, 28 March 2025, 1:08 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The convulsions in Israeli politics have been evident from various efforts to stall, if not abandon the legislation altogether. The law changing the judicial appointments committee had received 71,023 filed objections. While it passed 67-1, it only did ... More >>
