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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 >>
Judaism, Antisemitism, And Israel
Wednesday, 18 December 2024, 7:09 pm | Keith Rankin
Israel today has arisen as a consequence of two millenniums of antisemitism in its various Christian forms. Israel is a nation-state which must abide by the same rules as any other nation state. Criticism of Israel is not antisemitism. More >>
Haka, Hikoi And The Empowerment Of The Kohanga Generation
Wednesday, 18 December 2024, 6:26 pm | Ian Powell
Ian Powell discusses the recent massive unprecedented hikoi in New Zealand in its wider context including the relationship between struggle, consciousness and empowerment. More >>
Feeding Chaos: Israel Cripples Syria’s Defence
Wednesday, 18 December 2024, 2:54 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Israeli troops have militarised the demilitarised zone inside Syria created in the aftermath of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, including Mount Hermon, a site overlooking Damascus. More >>
Last Acts: Time For Biden To Pardon Assange
Tuesday, 17 December 2024, 3:10 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The Assange campaign has now shifted its focus to obtaining a pardon for the publisher, with a goal of persuading up to 30,000 people to write to US President Joe Biden to do just that. More >>
On The Coalition’s Empty Gestures, And Abortion Refusal As The New Slavery
Tuesday, 17 December 2024, 11:28 am | Gordon Campbell
A whooping cough story from south Auckland is a good example of the coalition government’s approach to social need - spend money on urging people to get vaccinated but only after you’ve cut the funding to where they could get vaccinated. More >>
Foiling Rupert Murdoch: Project Harmony Misfires
Monday, 16 December 2024, 8:39 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Media vultures in search of carrion see this ruling as remarkable – probably more so than it is. More >>
Commissioner’s Approach To Healthcare Provision: ‘Slash And Burn’
Sunday, 15 December 2024, 5:06 pm | Ian Powell
Ian Powell discusses Health New Zealand’s ‘slash and burn’ approach under its new Commissioner Lester Levy with particular reference to IT infrastructure. More >>
The Case For Brand Aotearoa
Sunday, 15 December 2024, 3:24 pm | Jack Yan
Jack Yan says we’re still falling short of having a nation brand that supports all exporters. More >>
Unity Above Else: The Only Road to the Liberation of Palestine
Sunday, 15 December 2024, 6:09 am | Ramzy Baroud
The road for Palestine liberation can only go through Palestine itself and, more specifically, the clarity of purpose of the Palestinian people who, more than any other nation in modern times, have paid and continue to pay the highest price for ... More >>
Finding The Unmentionable: Amnesty International, Israel And Genocide
Saturday, 14 December 2024, 2:46 pm | Binoy Kampmark
No amount of pedantry and disagreement can arrest the sense that Israel’s lethal conduct, whatever threshold it may reach in international law, is directed at destroying not merely Palestinian life but any worthwhile sense of a viable sovereignty. More >>
