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US-imposed Austerity In Cuba
Monday, 25 March 2024, 2:19 pm | Mike Treen
Over the last few weeks, the Western news media has been full of stories of “unrest” in Cuba including protests over food and fuel shortages. From Western media reports, you would think that the Government of Cuba was neglectful and unresponsive to the ... More >>
Capitation Should Not Be Decapitated
Sunday, 24 March 2024, 8:03 pm | Ian Powell
Ian Powell discusses the importance of not allowing the system of funding general practices (capitation) from being decapitated by eroding neglect. More >>
Julian Assange And The Plea Nibble
Saturday, 23 March 2024, 8:34 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The current process is one of gradual judicial & penal assassination, conducted through prolonged proceedings that continue to assail the publisher’s health even as he is confined to Belmarsh Prison More >>
Download Weekly: Mobile phone market bounces back
Saturday, 23 March 2024, 6:25 pm | Digitl
Upmarket phones lead handset market recovery. Bubbles in the frame as US government launches Apple antitrust case. Chorus expands edge racks after Mount Eden pilot sellout. More >>
Orcas Are Very Smart, But They Don’t Construct Separate Selves
Friday, 22 March 2024, 11:51 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
Orcas, projectively called Killer Whales, are the top predators of the sea. Different “cultures” of orcas use different strategies to hunt everything from manta rays to Great White sharks. There is no recorded instance of orcas killing a human in ... More >>
Censors Celebrated: Misinformation And Disinformation Down Under
Friday, 22 March 2024, 6:03 am | Binoy Kampmark
The proposed bill on assessing, parcelling and dictating information (mis-, dis-, mal-) is a nasty little experiment in censoring communication and discussion. More >>
From Overcoming ‘Bonkers’ To A Political Pickle
Thursday, 21 March 2024, 7:32 pm | Ian Powell
Ian Powell discusses the political pickle that New Zealand finds itself between an increasingly unpopular new government and a deeply unpopular former government. More >>
Why Artificial Intelligence Must Be Stopped Now
Thursday, 21 March 2024, 9:57 am | Richard Heinberg
Those advocating for artificial intelligence tout the huge benefits of using this technology. For instance, an article in CNN points out how AI is helping Princeton scientists solve “a key problem” with fusion energy . AI that can translate text ... More >>
On The Attack Of The Tax Cut Zombies, And A Music Playlist
Thursday, 21 March 2024, 9:48 am | Gordon Campbell
As long ago as 2007, New Zealanders were telling pollsters that while they wanted tax cuts, a majority of the public opposed tax cuts if the funding for them required cuts to social services. Seventeen years later, we’re still in the same boat. Almost ... More >>
“You Could Hear A Frog Piss On Cotton”
Thursday, 21 March 2024, 9:46 am | Eugene Doyle
Anyone who remembers the Black September attack at the 1972 Munich Olympics or the various protests, boycotts and expulsions of recent games may, in the shadow of today's Gaza, wonder whether Paris 2024 could be a long hot Summer Games. Moments when sport ... More >>
Dunne's Weekly: Media Dance On Peters' String
Thursday, 21 March 2024, 9:30 am | Peter Dunne
Nearly three decades after the introduction of MMP and multiparty governments there should be a greater level of understanding about their finer points than often appears to be the case. The reaction to the despicable outburst from the Deputy Prime Minister ... More >>
Economic Performance: New Zealand versus Japan
Wednesday, 20 March 2024, 4:28 pm | Keith Rankin
Tomorrow we will see the latest Gross Domestic Product (GDP) data for New Zealand. It's worth looking today, however, at what the situation is before that data release (with its revisions as well as new data). And in context by comparing New Zealand ... More >>
Complicity In Gaza: Holding US Foreign Policy Legally Accountable
Tuesday, 19 March 2024, 3:01 pm | Binoy Kampmark
On March 15, the next stage of an intriguing legal process seeking to hold the Biden administration accountable for its failure to prevent, as well as being complicit in, alleged acts of genocide taking place in Gaza, was taken. It all stems from a ... More >>
Predictable Outcomes: Australia, The National Security Committee, And Invading Iraq
Tuesday, 19 March 2024, 6:31 am | Binoy Kampmark
The latest documents from the NSC are more sleet than snow. They do confirm that the parliamentary system, more than ever, should be involved in reining in the wild impulses of war makers. More >>
Starlink’s fixed wireless challenge
Monday, 18 March 2024, 6:32 pm | Digitl
SpaceX’s Starlink deprioritised plan challenges rural fixed wireless broadband. Spark job cuts. More >>
On Dune 2, And Images Of Islam
Monday, 18 March 2024, 11:29 am | Gordon Campbell
Depictions of Islam in Western popular culture have rarely been positive, even before 9/11. Five years on from the mosque shootings, this is one of the cultural headwinds that the Muslim community has to battle against. Whatever messages of tolerance and ... More >>
Five Years Since The Christchurch Terror Attack, Many Unanswered Questions Remain
Monday, 18 March 2024, 10:00 am | Socialist Equality Group
By Tom Peters March 15 marked five years since fascist terrorist Brenton Tarrant murdered 51 men, women and children, and injured 40 other people, in mass shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. The 2019 terror attack was the country’s ... More >>
We Need A Plan For The Transition To Renewable Energy
Friday, 15 March 2024, 9:26 am | Independent Media Institute
The transition to renewable energy is inevitable given the current climate crisis and the fact that fossil fuels are a finite resource. To make the shift, a detailed plan is required to indicate the first steps and anticipate challenges in allocating ... More >>
Words Vs. Action: A Supplication For Gaza, And Humanity
Thursday, 14 March 2024, 2:14 pm | Ramzy Baroud
‘All we can do for Gaza is just offer our Du’a.” This is an oft-repeated statement by enraged Arabs and Muslims who feel helpless before the Israeli genocide in Gaza. But is it true that only invocations and supplications are possible, as tens of thousands ... More >>
Prejudicial Bans: Congress Tosses Over TikTok
Thursday, 14 March 2024, 1:18 pm | Binoy Kampmark
How delicious is political hypocrisy. Abundant and rich, it manifests in the corridors of power with regularity. Of late, there is much of it in the US Congress, evident over debates on whether the platform TikTok should be banned in the United States. ... More >>
On National’s Fantasy Trip To La La Landlord Land
Thursday, 14 March 2024, 11:39 am | Gordon Campbell
How much political capital is Christopher Luxon willing to burn through in order to deliver his $2.9 billion gift to landlords? Evidently, Luxon is: (a) unable to cost the policy accurately. As Anna Burns-Francis pointed out to him on Breakfast ... More >>
Winning Director Compares Gaza To Auschwitz
Wednesday, 13 March 2024, 9:45 am | Eugene Doyle
At the Oscars this week Jonathan Glazer went nuclear. The director of Zone of Interest, the Best Foreign Film, directly compared the Auschwitz death camp to what is happening in Gaza. I have to admit that until I heard his speech I had no intention of watching ... More >>
Matters Of Revenue: Meta Abandons Australia’s Media Stable
Tuesday, 12 March 2024, 12:55 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It was praised to the heavens as a work of negotiated and practical genius when it was struck. The then Australian treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, had finally gotten those titans of Big Tech into line on how revenue would be shared with media outlets ... More >>
On Luxon’s Landlord Myths, And The Needless Nightmare Of High Interest Rates
Tuesday, 12 March 2024, 11:05 am | Gordon Campbell
During the PM’s post-Cabinet press conference yesterday, Christopher Luxon claimed that renters will be feeling “grateful” for the way the government is putting “downward pressure“ on rents. Really. Allegedly, the coalition government is ... More >>
Road Ambulance Service Cuts Highlight Vulnerability Of Ownership Model
Monday, 11 March 2024, 7:08 pm | Ian Powell
The vulnerability of Aotearoa New Zealand’s road ambulance service was highlighted by the announcement last month than the largest ambulance (Hato Hone St John) was looking to pull ambulances off the road because of rising fiscal deficits. It raised ... More >>
Empty Rentals And 'Investor'-friendly Taxes
Monday, 11 March 2024, 4:27 pm | Keith Rankin
This morning on RNZ's Morning Report, Revenue Minister Simon Watts admitted that it was a legitimate option for 'landlords' to leave their houses empty. (Refer Revenue Minister on mortgage tax deductions for landlords , RNZ 11 March 2024.) The official ... More >>
Academic Witch-hunted For Criticising Military Boot Camps For Young Offenders
Monday, 11 March 2024, 10:28 am | Socialist Equality Group
By Tom Peters, Socialist Equality Group New Zealand’s far-right government and sections of the media this week launched a furious witch-hunt against an academic who criticised plans to cut spending on school lunches and to establish military ... More >>
The Campaign to Free Assange: Reflections on Night Falls
Sunday, 10 March 2024, 6:18 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The town hall meeting is the last throbbing reminder of the authentic demos. People gather; debates held. Views converge; others diverge. Speakers are invited to stir the invitees, provoke the grey cells. Till artificial intelligence banishes such ... More >>
On The Government’s Fast Track To Trashing The Environment
Friday, 8 March 2024, 11:27 am | Gordon Campbell
With Shane Jones as the watchdog, who needs predators? Mining on DOC land now seems to be a fait accompli. Plainly, New Zealand‘s conservation estate is now open for business, regardless of the impact on the environment and on the endangered species ... More >>
Download Weekly: Call for firmer data leak action
Friday, 8 March 2024, 10:14 am | Digitl
Kordia's annual survey finds businesses are losing patience with poor data protection, Spark wants email customers to pay for the service, Mobile World Congress looks at 5G evolution. More >>
On Solidarity And Kushner’s Shame: How Gaza Defeated US Stratagem, Again
Thursday, 7 March 2024, 3:07 pm | Ramzy Baroud
Jared Kushner, a former US official whose relationship to power is that he married the wealthy daughter of a man who was later to become the US president, once attempted to teach Palestinians how to handle their own struggle for freedom. In 2020, he advised ... More >>
Interest Costs, The Cost-of-Living, And The Cost-of-Government
Thursday, 7 March 2024, 3:01 pm | Keith Rankin
In Question Time in Parliament, yesterday, Finance Minister Nicola Willis was asked a question about the extent of the cost of government debt-servicing. The answer, in short, was 'a lot'; and she mentioned that the cost had been assessed on an interest-only ... More >>
Christchurch Terrorist Foreshadowed Mosque Attacks Online Over A Year Before
Thursday, 7 March 2024, 12:35 pm | Socialist Equality Group
By John Braddock According to a report from the Conversation , republished in the Guardian on February 20, Christchurch fascist gunman Brenton Tarrant posted about his intentions on the website 4chan at least a year before his 2019 deadly ... More >>
Aiding Those We Kill: US Humanitarianism In Gaza
Thursday, 7 March 2024, 12:29 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The spectacle, if it did not say it all, said much of it. Planes dropping humanitarian aid to a starving, famine-threatened populace of Gaza (the United Nations warns that 576,000 are “one step from famine”), with parachuted packages veering off course, ... More >>
A Wishful Gamble: Rugby League In Las Vegas
Wednesday, 6 March 2024, 2:42 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The history of such experiments is not promising. Why would those in the US like the game of rugby league, when an established code of superficial similarity already exists? Fundamental differences, for one thing, abound. The US NFL Superbowl tries ... More >>
On The Supreme Court’s Collusion With Trump
Wednesday, 6 March 2024, 11:49 am | Gordon Campbell
This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. In the week preceding the Super Tuesday primaries and caucuses, a US Supreme Court stacked with Trump appointees obligingly handed the former President a couple of huge victories. First, the Court helped Trump ... More >>
Wary Of Sinophobia: Anwar Ibrahim At The ASEAN Summit
Tuesday, 5 March 2024, 1:46 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It can take much bruising, much ridicule, and much castigation to eventually reach the plateau of wisdom. Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who took office in November 2022, is one such character. Like a hero anointed by the gods for grand ... More >>
Child Palliative Care: A Sad But Avoidable Plight
Monday, 4 March 2024, 5:54 pm | Ian Powell
On 21 February the NZ Herald published a compelling article by its Wellington-based journalist Vita Molyneux on the state of child palliative care in Aotearoa New Zealand: Health system failing terminally ill children . The ... More >>
Mistakes, Misfiring And Trident: Britain’s Flawed Nuclear Deterrence
Monday, 4 March 2024, 4:36 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Nuclear weapons are considered the strategic silverware of nation states. Occasionally, they are given a cleaning and polishing. From time to time, they go missing, fail to work, and suffer misplacement. Of late, the UK Royal Navy has not been doing so ... More >>
On The Flaws In Anti-gang Laws
Monday, 4 March 2024, 11:34 am | Gordon Campbell
Google “Christopher Luxon“ and “mojo” and you get nearly 60,000 matching responses. Over the past 18 months – here and here and again, here – Luxon has claimed that New Zealanders have either lost their mojo and/or are in the process ... More >>
Download Weekly: Aue to succeed Rousselot at Chorus
Friday, 1 March 2024, 5:56 pm | Digitl
Aue to take over at Chorus as Rousselot moves on. Mobile shows strength in Spark first half. Crown Infrastructure update as Rural Broadband programme nears completion More >>
Conscious And Unconscionable: The Starving Of Gaza
Friday, 1 March 2024, 1:36 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The starvation regime continues unabated as Israel continues its campaign in the Gaza Strip. One of the six provisional measures ordered by the International Court Justice entailed taking “immediate and effective measures” to protect the Palestinian ... More >>
On The Newshub/Smokefree Twin Fiascos
Thursday, 29 February 2024, 10:57 am | Gordon Campbell
Here’s a tale of two sunset industries. One has a track record of quality investigative reporting, and sound reportage of the 24/7 news cycle. The other sunset industry peddles a deadly substance that kills and injures tens of thousands of New Zealanders ... More >>
Dunne's Weekly: Unseemly Rush Shows Need To Review Role Of Waitangi Tribunal
Thursday, 29 February 2024, 9:12 am | Peter Dunne
The rush to push legislation through Parliament under Urgency to abolish the Māori Health Authority, Te Aka Whai Ora, has been unseemly. No matter that the Authority’s abolition was an election commitment of all three government coalition partners, ... More >>
Trussonomics At CPAC
Wednesday, 28 February 2024, 1:41 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The silly will make print and leave bursts of digital traces; the idiots will make history, if only in small print. One such figure is the shortest serving UK Prime Minister in living memory, the woeful, joke-packed figure of Liz Truss who lasted ... More >>
Missing The Health Target
Tuesday, 27 February 2024, 8:17 pm | Ian Powell
Wilhelm Tell (more commonly known as William Tell in the English speaking world) was a 14th century folk hero in Switzerland then ruled by the Austrian Hapsburgs. Tell is widely considered to be the symbolic father of the Swiss Confederacy. Among ... More >>
Old Problems With The New: Reforming The UN Security Council
Tuesday, 27 February 2024, 2:20 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The end of the Second World War was a calamitous catalyst, laying the bricks and mortar for institutions that were always going to look weary, almost comically so, after some decades. The United Nations was meant to be the umbrella international ... More >>
Formal Democracy, Popular Will And Military Coups
Monday, 26 February 2024, 5:48 pm | Ian Powell
In its 2023 Index of the countries of the world Transparency International rated Aotearoa New Zealand the third best nation on transparency. However, as credible as this was, there was a drop in its score. The fall was in how common it was for ... More >>
A Copper’s Skewed Logic: Politicising Palestinian Visas
Monday, 26 February 2024, 5:45 pm | Binoy Kampmark
If only we could say that Peter Dutton, Australia’s federal opposition leader and curator of bigoted leanings, was unusual in assuming that granting humanitarian visas to Palestinians might be problematic. But both he, and his skew-eyed spokesman ... More >>
Imperial Venality Defends Itself: Day Two Of Julian Assange’s High Court Appeal
Friday, 23 February 2024, 2:19 pm | Binoy Kampmark
On February 21, the Royal Courts of Justice hosted a second day of carnivalesque mockery regarding the appeal by lawyers representing an ill Julian Assange, whose publishing efforts are being impugned by the United States as having compromised ... More >>
On The Perils Of Joining AUKUS Pillar Two
Friday, 23 February 2024, 10:25 am | Gordon Campbell
The lure for New Zealand to join the AUKUS military alliance is that membership of only its “second pillar” will still (supposedly) give us access to state of the art military technologies. As top US official Kurt Campbell said during his visit ... More >>
Identifying Imperial Venality: Day One Of Julian Assange’s High Court Appeal
Thursday, 22 February 2024, 7:10 pm | Binoy Kampmark
On February 20, it was clear that things were not going to be made easy for Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who infuriated the US imperium, the national security establishment, and a stable of journalists upset that he had cut their ill-tended ... More >>
Dunne's Weekly: National's Benefit Changes All About Politics
Thursday, 22 February 2024, 9:31 am | Peter Dunne
Here we go again. Another National-led government, and another round of cracking down on beneficiaries. That was the reaction of the parties of the left to the coalition government's announcement it was returning to applying sanctions to beneficiaries ... More >>
Swiftie Nonsense Down Under
Wednesday, 21 February 2024, 6:13 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Gaza. Palestinians. Israel. Genocide. Taylor Swift? This odd cobbling of words is the extent celebrities make a mockery of serious conversation, even in such middle-brow outlets as Australia’s Radio National. Admittedly, it was breakfast, and the presenter ... More >>
New Zealand Foreign Minister Seeks To Block Chinese Influence In Southwest Pacific
Wednesday, 21 February 2024, 9:24 am | Socialist Equality Group
By John Braddock New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters undertook a four-day tour of three Pacific Islands states beginning on February 7, hard on the heels of a visit to Australia that saw a strengthening of security and defence ties between ... More >>
Far-right Activist Kyle Chapman Avoids Jail On Gun Charges
Tuesday, 20 February 2024, 3:22 pm | RNZ
Far-right activist Kyle Chapman has avoided jail, telling a court he now wants to be a father first. More >>
Things Are Not What They Seem
Tuesday, 20 February 2024, 3:21 pm | Eugene Doyle
We are homo dramatis , the species that tells stories. Today more and more of us are rejecting America and Israel’s stories and are searching for a better script. That is a good thing because History is calling us to be actors, not spectators, ... More >>
On National Spreading Panic About The Economy
Tuesday, 20 February 2024, 9:03 am | Gordon Campbell
It is a political strategy as old as time. Scare the public with tales of disaster and stampede them into supporting your ideological agenda because they believe There Is No Alternative. Yet, if the NZ economy truly is as “fragile” as PM Christopher ... More >>
Joe Biden: The Damnation Of Age
Monday, 19 February 2024, 12:07 pm | Binoy Kampmark
He was sweet and well meaning, but he was old. He was hazy. His memory was poor. Doddering, confused, the self-proclaimed leader of the Free World seemed ready to check into a retirement village. That, at least, is the thick insinuation of the ... More >>
Here Come The Steroid Games
Saturday, 17 February 2024, 6:34 pm | Binoy Kampmark
To attribute weighty moral codes to athletes has always been a silly pastime of the judging classes and flesh admiring voyeurs. But sporting bodies, in a manner similar to the clergy, demand something called the level playing field. Fairness ... More >>
