Latest Top Scoops Headlines
Students Save Palestine
Friday, 30 January 2015, 5:10 pm | David Swanson
In proposing that Congress Members boycott or walk out on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's planned speech to Congress, expected to push for sanctions if not war on Iran, activists are drawing on actions engaged in by college students in recent ... More >>
When Shock and Awe Turns 12
Friday, 30 January 2015, 4:36 pm | David Swanson
Shock and Awe is having a troubled adolescence. The U.S. government is killing children with flying robot death planes, keeping troops in 175 countries, actively using "special" forces in 150 countries, asking us to ignore what it's done to Libya so that we'll ... More >>
The Shipwreck of the Mexican State
Friday, 30 January 2015, 4:29 pm | Rafael Barajas and Pedro Miguel
Without drug money, the Mexican economy would collapse, which is why politics, economics and organized crime are entwined at the highest levels. That reality, underlying the students’ massacre, has led to a rare display of anger on Mexico’s streets. More >>
In the Shadow of Zheng He: China’s One Belt, One Road Policy
Friday, 30 January 2015, 2:29 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The Chinese flag hangs in fraternal union with Serbia as one crosses the Zemun-Borča bridge, completed last month, and now named Pupinov most. It was yet another infrastructure gem in what is becoming typical of Beijing’s global investment push, a policy typified ... More >>
Russel Norman announces resignation as Greens co-leader
Friday, 30 January 2015, 12:23 pm | The Scoop Team
Today Russel Norman announced his upcoming resignation as co-leader of the Green Party. His reasons were in order to spend more time with his young family, and to allow new leadership to step forward. However, he will still remain a Green MP. More >>
Malcolm Aitken on Duncan Garner’s local government column
Thursday, 29 January 2015, 5:45 pm | Malcolm Aitken
Duncan Garner’s Squeals of self-interest in the Dominion Post in early December supporting local government amalgamation in Wellington was entertaining and interesting. However the piece also, with respect and it is important we can have a lively, ... More >>
Keith Rankin: Rent AND Buy
Thursday, 29 January 2015, 5:00 pm | Keith Rankin
The Auckland housing debate debacle is important because it reveals some key aspects of the workings of global financial capitalism. Of course, because of the diverse interests at stake – including the fact that more New Zealanders than we might ... More >>
Dear Syria: From One Refugee to Another
Thursday, 29 January 2015, 4:46 pm | Ramzy Baroud
Whenever the word ‘refugee’ is uttered, I think of my mother. When Zionist militias began their systematic onslaught and ‘cleansing’ of the Palestinian Arab population of historic Palestine in 1948, she, along with her family, ran away from the once ... More >>
Secret Briefings & An Official Information Request To WCC
Thursday, 29 January 2015, 3:55 pm | Ian Apperly
The Mayor and Councillors were briefed behind closed doors last night on Project Odyssey. We, the ratepayers, are no nearer to having our questions answered after nearly a month. The lights are dark. People are hiding behind their filing cabinets. ... More >>
Killing Ragheads for Jesus
Thursday, 29 January 2015, 2:26 pm | Chris Hedges
“American Sniper” lionizes the most despicable aspects of U.S. society—the gun culture, the blind adoration of the military, the belief that we have an innate right as a “Christian” nation to exterminate the “lesser breeds” of the earth, ... More >>
Martin Doyle Cartoon: Voting sucks
Thursday, 29 January 2015, 2:14 pm | Martin Doyle
It's a measure of the times we live in that neither the media nor New Zealanders in general seem worried that parliament can 'remove' rights supposedly guaranteed under our Bill of Rights. Prisoners are themselves victims of a serious constitutional ... More >>
Keith Rankin: The Future of 'Wealth' and 'Work'
Thursday, 29 January 2015, 12:01 pm | Keith Rankin
Andrew Little uses 'wealth' in two different ways. When he says "wealth has to be created first" he means economic wealth , goods and services produced. Later when he refers to "the combined wealth of the richest 1 percent" he is talking about financial ... More >>
Gordon Campbell on the Eleanor Catton rumpus
Thursday, 29 January 2015, 9:45 am | Gordon Campbell
If anyone was in doubt about the accuracy of the comments made in India by Eleanor Catton, the reaction from some quarters here at home has gone a long way to proving her point. By ‘some quarters’, I mean (a) RadioLive host Sean Plunket who called ... More >>
Why Do We Fear Love?
Wednesday, 28 January 2015, 5:37 pm | Robert J. Burrowes
Why do human beings fear love? That is, why do we fear loving ourselves and others, and why do we fear being fully loved ourselves? If someone does not receive what they need emotionally as a child, their capacity to give will be limited accordingly. More >>
Housing affordability crisis worsens in New Zealand
Wednesday, 28 January 2015, 5:33 pm | John Braddock
New Zealand’s deepening social disaster was highlighted by a report released on January 19 showing that Auckland, the country’s biggest city, now ranks among the least affordable in the world for housing. More >>
Canada leaps into the empire of chaos
Wednesday, 28 January 2015, 5:16 pm | Jim Miles
Canada has always been a part of U.S. imperial ambitions, in spite of our pretensions otherwise. Locked in as we are to the U.S. economy and our dollar only relevant in comparison to the US$, up until the Harper regime Canada was able to maintain that ... More >>
Reflections on Four Preventable National Epidemics
Wednesday, 28 January 2015, 5:11 pm | Gary G. Kohls
A couple of days ago I received a letter from the mother of a post-adolescent daughter, expressing a common concern that millions of parents share. She wrote, in part, “It seems to me that my daughter and her classmates have more depression and mood disorders ... More >>
Dakuku Peterside’s Royal Blessings & Future of Rivers State
Wednesday, 28 January 2015, 5:03 pm | Eze Chukwuemeka Eze
Eric Arthur Blair, better known as George Orwell (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), an influential English novelist, essayist, journalist and critic, once stated that he who controls the past controls the future and who controls the present controls ... More >>
Drones and the new ethics of war
Wednesday, 28 January 2015, 4:52 pm | Neve Gordon
This Christmas small drones were among the most popular gift under the tree in the U.S. with manufacturers stating that they sold 200,000 new unmanned aerial vehicles during the holiday season. More >>
The Origin of Modern Terror and Crumbling Western Values
Wednesday, 28 January 2015, 3:52 pm | John Chuckman
Do you ever solve problems by ignoring them? Most of us would say that is not possible, yet that is precisely what western governments do in their efforts to counteract what is called “Islamic terror.” More >>
"We murdered some folks" in Guantanamo
Wednesday, 28 January 2015, 3:48 pm | David Swanson
Murder at Camp Delta is a new book by Joseph Hickman, a former guard at Guantanamo. It's neither fiction nor speculation. When President Obama says "We tortured some folks," Hickman provides at least three cases -- in addition to many others we know ... More >>
Martin Doyle Cartoon: Two wrongs
Wednesday, 28 January 2015, 2:05 pm | Martin Doyle
The case being mounted in the Auckland High Court against John Key by prisoner Arthur Taylor has great merit. The law passed by Parliament in 2010 that blocks the right of prisoners to vote flies in the face of our own Bill of Rights. Section 12 of the ... More >>
Holocaust Memorial Day Wellington 2015
Wednesday, 28 January 2015, 1:12 pm | Daan Kolthoff
Attending the Holocaust Remembrance Day at Makara (27 January) and reading the booklet “Auschwitz: 70 years later” (courtesy of a number of foreign embassies), left me with very mixed feelings. More >>
Thought for the Day: Debating Inequality
Wednesday, 28 January 2015, 10:30 am | Keith Rankin
In the weekend I watched A Richer World, but for Whom? BBC's 'World Debate' from the 2015 World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland. Martin Sorrell and Klaus Kleinfeld represented the capitalist rich. On the fence were 'political economists' loosely ... More >>
Gordon Campbell on the Sabin case, and pressures on Greece
Wednesday, 28 January 2015, 10:12 am | Gordon Campbell
Brain fades are one thing, but the brain freeze that seems to have beset the Prime Minister over the Mike Sabin affair is an even more worrying affliction. Sabin is a National MP, and the current chairman of Parliament’s law and order committee. More >>
PM Post-Cabinet Press Conference – 27 January 2015
Tuesday, 27 January 2015, 5:56 pm | The Scoop Team
The Prime Minister met with reporters today to discuss: • Social housing, the Auckland housing market, and his upcoming speech on housing • The prospect of joining international forces to combat ISIS • David Bain’s compensation • The lowering of the flag ... More >>
Detective Who Wanted Prison Staff Prosecuted In Jai Davis Case Replaced
Tuesday, 27 January 2015, 5:34 pm | Roger Brooking
No one in the Corrections Department has ever been prosecuted over an ‘unnatural death’ in prison. In what could have been the first case, Detective Senior Sergeant Colin Blackie (below), who conducted the police investigation into the death of Jai ... More >>
Martin Doyle Cartoon: We can't pay
Tuesday, 27 January 2015, 2:52 pm | Martin Doyle
The passionate anti-austerity stance of the new Greek government is like an echo of Dario Fo's drama "We can't pay! We won't pay!". It's a piece of theatre the European "troika" is not going to enjoy. More >>
Gordon Campbell on tomorrow’s speeches by Key and Little
Tuesday, 27 January 2015, 10:21 am | Gordon Campbell
The Key government has already kicked off the political year on a stridently ideological note, with Environment Minister Nick Smith choosing to lay all manner of sins at the door of the Resource Management Act. Tomorrow, the government will wheeling out ... More >>
Social Media An Unlikely Guardian Angel
Tuesday, 27 January 2015, 9:08 am | Melanie Duval-Smith
The announcement last week of Facebook’s collaboration with US Police to solve missing person cases felt like a huge leap forward for communities and their capacity to benefit from social media. More >>
Keith Rankin : Deflation
Tuesday, 27 January 2015, 8:59 am | Keith Rankin
In December 2014 I wrote in The Daily Blog about a possible clash of global economic crises that might reach its fullest intensity in the 2030s. More >>
The blogger got it wrong mate, it’s only $10million, promise
Monday, 26 January 2015, 12:46 pm | Ian Apperly
Bubble bubble toil and trouble. The City Council spin doctors are due to release a statement in regards to Project Odyssey I am told. It no doubt will be along the lines of “the blogger got his facts wrong, mixed it up with amalgamation, and has ... More >>
The Rumblings of the Left: Podemos, Syriza and Greece
Monday, 26 January 2015, 9:23 am | Binoy Kampmark
The left – and by this, the genuine, progressive, unmanagerial left – is getting noisy. The Greek elections are upon us, with the similar challenges being played out from 2012. There are fears of Grexit – a heavy breathing departure from the ... More >>
Barrett Brown Jailed : The Sentencing of American Journalism
Monday, 26 January 2015, 9:09 am | Binoy Kampmark
“The US government decided today that because I did such a good job investigating the cyber-industrial complex, they’re now going to send me to investigate the prison-industrial complex." - Barrett Brown. More >>
About Buried Phosphorus And Thuggish Diplomacy - Adam Keller
Sunday, 25 January 2015, 7:12 pm | Adam Keller
In 1974, as a young soldier just inducted into the ranks of the Israel Defense Forces, I was among a group of soldiers whom the platoon sergeant took on a tour of the munitions dump, showing us the different types of ammunition used by the army. Among other ... More >>
Uri Avnery : Galant's Gallant Act
Sunday, 25 January 2015, 7:07 pm | Uri Avnery
THERE USED to be a joke about a sadist and a masochist. "Hit me! Beat me! Kick me!" the masochist pleads with the sadist. The sadist smiles a cruel smile and slowly answers: "No!" THAT, MORE or less, reflects the situation on our northern border ... More >>
Pay Any Price - Greed, Power and Endless War - Book Review
Sunday, 25 January 2015, 7:03 pm | Jim Miles
Following the events in Paris at Hebdo Charlie and the accompanying media frenzy concerning freedom of expression and freedom of the press, James Risen’s recent book Pay Any Price becomes, ironically, even more important than its original intention ... More >>
Recruiting for Fox/US Army: American Sniper & Atrocity Porn
Sunday, 25 January 2015, 6:57 pm | Binoy Kampmark
If ever the direction of a film and the shape of a particular narrative of US history, as written by, say, the fiction set on Fox News, could come together, then American Sniper is it. Not that you will have director Clint Eastwood, screenwriter Jason ... More >>
Global Systemic Chaos and Transitions Already Underway
Sunday, 25 January 2015, 6:54 pm | Raul Zibechi
Global Systemic Chaos and Transitions Already Underway – the Zapatistas are a Case in Point BY Raúl Zibechi * La Jornada, 23rd January, 2015 More >>
Divesting America of Ozone-Destroying Energy Sources
Sunday, 25 January 2015, 6:49 pm | Walter Brasch
Long before the price of gas and oil began to plummet, socially conscious churches, universities, non-profit organizations, and local governments began to divest themselves of fossil fuel stock and shock the fossil fuel industry to understand the environmental ... More >>
Distrust But Verify : David Swanson
Saturday, 24 January 2015, 9:26 am | David Swanson
What the U.S. government does openly is many times worse than anything it can be doing secretly, and yet the secrets fascinate us. If you compare polling on majority views on most political topics with actual U.S. policy, there's little overlap. More >>
Militarism in the Air We Breathe - David Swanson
Saturday, 24 January 2015, 9:22 am | David Swanson
If there is a group of Americans to whom Iraqis struggling with the health effects of depleted uranium, cluster bombs, white phosphorous, and all the various poisons of war can relate, it might be the mostly black and largely poor residents of Gibsland, ... More >>
Martin Doyle Cartoon : Housing Growing Families
Saturday, 24 January 2015, 9:19 am | Martin Doyle
This cartoon addresses one of the contributing factors to the housing crisis. Oddly enough, this factor is almost never confronted in our media. Other factors are equally important and will be addressed in upcoming cartoons. More >>
In Ukraine NATO Ceases To Be Instrument Of US Foreign Policy
Saturday, 24 January 2015, 9:16 am | Bob Rigg
In Ukraine, NATO Has Ceased To Be An Instrument Of US Foreign Policy By Bob Rigg 21 January 2015 Also Published by Open Democracy More >>
2015, A Critical And Turbulent Year : Raúl Zibechi
Saturday, 24 January 2015, 9:13 am | Raul Zibechi
2014 ends with Barack Obama’s decision to re-establish relations with Cuba, after a half century of the blockade and attacks on the island’s sovereignty. The joy that this news stirs up must be shaded. The rapprochement is produced at the moment ... More >>
How Freelancers & Bloggers Inform NZ's $23 Bn ICT Industry
Friday, 23 January 2015, 6:07 pm | The State of NZ News Media
In his reflection for this "The State of NZ News Media" public conversation series he provides an overview of the current state of NZ Technology reporting and concludes the current state of technology journalism is serving neither readers nor NZ's $23 ... More >>
News Before Profits : Bill Rosenberg
Friday, 23 January 2015, 3:33 pm | The State of NZ News Media
n New Zealand and internationally, news services are under stress. Developments in technology are creating new forms of media, allowing the public more choice. Combined with discontent with the conventional media, this undermines their main income source: ... More >>
Connie Lawn: Middle East Turmoil
Friday, 23 January 2015, 2:57 pm | Connie Lawn
In Saudi Arabia 91 year old King Abdullah has died.... In Yemen, the President and his top advisors have resigned. More >>
Gordon Campbell on Saudi Arabia and Islamic State
Friday, 23 January 2015, 9:27 am | Gordon Campbell
So the US has been holding talks in London this week with its 21 coalition allies , on how best to co-ordinate the military response against Islamic State. Oddly enough, New Zealand has not been attending the conference even though we seem well down the ... More >>
Uber: The lost opportunity
Friday, 23 January 2015, 8:49 am | Digitl
At Whatisitwellington Ian Apperley says the fuss over Uber operating in New Zealand is a fight between dinosaurs and exciting new business models: The War on Uber in New Zealand: Dinosaur business models meet new tech . More >>
Fast broadband: How does New Zealand shape up internationall
Friday, 23 January 2015, 8:41 am | Digitl
[caption id="attachment_20665" align="alignnone" width="660"] World’s fastest broadband - click to expand chart[/caption] More >>
Looming customer service cuts at Vodafone
Friday, 23 January 2015, 8:36 am | Digitl
The New Zealand Herald reports Vodafone plans to trim staff numbers across the board and cut the customer service department by up to 100 jobs. . The proposal, outlined in an internal document obtained by the Herald, is part of a restructuring expected ... More >>
Credit where credit is due on NZ tech regulation
Friday, 23 January 2015, 8:32 am | Digitl
From Andrew Cushen at InternetNZ writing in Flexibility of regulation for technology .: ...the government moving relatively quickly to respond to technical innovation in a sensible, considered matter, and that seeks to accommodate that innovation rather ... More >>
Inside John Key's club
Thursday, 22 January 2015, 4:41 pm | Don Franks
Expensive, exclusive, comfortable and discrete - what a haven for some is the gentlemen's club. Nowadays the smoking rooms have become gyms, the chefs can do gourmet vegetarian and rich ladies are slowly being admitted membership. More >>
Lessons that Hollande Failed to Learn from W. Bush’s Plunder
Thursday, 22 January 2015, 10:11 am | Ramzy Baroud
Francois Hollande is not a popular president. No matter how hard the ‘socialist’ leader tries to impress, there never seems to be a no solid constituency that backs him. He attempted to mask his initial lack of experience in foreign affairs with ... More >>
Beyond Vietghanistan - A Speech By Martin Luther Obama Jr.
Thursday, 22 January 2015, 10:09 am | David Swanson
Text of "Beyond Vietghanistan: A Time To Break Treaties" By Rev. Martin Luther Obama Jr. - January 19, 2015 Speech delivered at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City. More >>
Iran and Israel – International Pawns
Thursday, 22 January 2015, 10:04 am | Connie Lawn
The leaders of Israel and Iran have tense relations and they are likely to be exacerbated in the wake of a move by House Speaker John Boehner. He invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to visit Washington and address a Joint Session of Congress on ... More >>
Gordon Campbell on the Greek election, and EU turmoil
Thursday, 22 January 2015, 9:33 am | Gordon Campbell
The election in Greece on Sunday – and the likely triumph of the left wing Syriza Party – will be only the first of three hammer blows this year to the European Union and its politics of austerity. Spain too will be holding a general election ... More >>
Eyes Shut : West Papuans in Exile - A Photographic Project
Wednesday, 21 January 2015, 5:55 pm | Rohan Radheya
Dutch Surinamese photographer Rohan Radheya has spent two years photographing West Papuans in exile... More >>
Right of Reply - Scoop Responds To The Daily Blog
Wednesday, 21 January 2015, 4:48 pm | Alastair Thompson
The following comment was submitted to The Daily Blog at 4pm for publication on an item published yesterday & headlined "Scoop’s latest attempt to rebrand itself". More >>
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