The controversy over the dossier purporting to show US President-elect Donald Trump’s alleged ties with Russia has been virtually overshadowed by the related controversy over whether the Buzzfeed site should have published the dossier in the first place...
The fact that the dossier was clearly being taken seriously by decision makers in the US government (and by US intelligence agencies) and was already part of the decision frame for real-life repercussions makes publication (with the caveats provided) seem a virtual no-brainer. More>>
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Gordon Campbell: Why Tax Cuts In 2017 Would Be A (Proven) Bad Idea
Ever since the world fell prey to the mullahs of the free market in the 1980s, no amount of real world evidence has managed dispel one key tenet of their economic faith. Namely, the idea that if you cut income taxes and taxes on small business, a wave of individual enterprise and entrepreneurial energy will thus be unleashed, profits will rise and – hey bingo! – the tax cuts will soon be paying for themselves ... More>>
Liquor Sponsorship: Researchers Call For Ban On Alcohol Sponsorship Of Sport
“Due to alcohol sponsorship of sport, New Zealanders, including children, were exposed to up to 200 ads per hour they watched televised sport, and people watching football and tennis saw alcohol ads for almost half of each game,” says Associate Professor Signal. More>>
Mt Albert: Ardern For Labour, Genter For Greens
At the close of nominations, Jacinda Ardern was the sole nomination received for the position of Labour’s candidate for the Mt Albert by-election, says Labour General Secretary, Andrew Kirton. More>>
IPCA: Use Of Taser On Greymouth Man Was Unjustified
After a 20 minute struggle, during which pepper spray was appropriately used on the friend, Police managed to handcuff the man and his friend and escort them to a Police van. When the man refused to move his foot from the van cell door, the sergeant directed a probationary constable to contact stun the man twice with a Taser. More>>
Waitangi Day: PM Will Not Attend Powhiri At Te Tii Marae
Prime Minister Bill English has accepted the invitation of iwi leaders to lead a delegation of ministers to Waitangi to meet ahead of Waitangi Day celebrations, and announced he will not attend the annual powhiri at Te Tii Marae. More>>
Gordon Campbell: On The UN Resolution On Palestine
For any small trading nation, trading opportunities need to be at the forefront of its diplomatic planning and – presumably -our role in the recent UN resolution on Palestine was driven by the possible trade opportunities in the Middle East that our public stance on Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories might now put within our grasp. More>>
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NIWA: 2016 New Zealand’s Warmest Year On Record
Annual temperatures were above average (0.51°C to 1.20°C above the annual average) throughout the country, with very few locations observing near average temperatures (within 0.5°C of the annual average) or lower. The year 2016 was the warmest on record for New Zealand, based on NIWA’s seven-station series which begins in 1909. More>>
Farewell 2016: NZ Economy Flies Through 2016's Political Curveballs
Dec. 23 (BusinessDesk) - New Zealand's economy batted away some curly political curveballs of 2016 to end the year on a high note, with its twin planks of a booming construction sector and rampant tourism soon to be joined by a resurgent dairy industry. More>>
NZ Economy: More Growth Than Expected In 3rd Qtr
Dec. 22 (BusinessDesk) - New Zealand's economy grew at a faster pace than expected in the September quarter as a booming construction sector continued to underpin activity, spilling over into related building services, and was bolstered by tourism and transport ... More>>
KiwiRail Goes Deisel: Cans electric trains on partially electrified North Island trunkline
Dec. 21 (BusinessDesk) – KiwiRail, the state-owned rail and freight operator, said a small fleet of electric trains on New Zealand’s North Island would be phased out over the next two years and replaced with diesel locomotives. More>>
NIWA: The Year's Top Science Findings
Since 1972 NIWA has operated a Clean Air Monitoring Station at Baring Head, near Wellington... In June, Baring Head’s carbon dioxide readings officially passed 400 parts per million (ppm), a level last reached more than three million years ago. More>>
Extended Warranties: Godfreys Fined For Agreements It Sold
New Zealand Vacuum Cleaner Company Limited (trading as Godfreys) was today fined $58,000 in the Manukau District Court after earlier pleading guilty to 10 charges relating to its extended warranty agreements. More>>
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Gordon Campbell:
On Meryl Streep’s Speech
Primarily, Meryl Streep’s critical speech at the Golden Globes – which is the award ceremony hosted by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association – was a defence of journalism and of journalists... More>>
New HiveMind Project: What Should We Do About Sugar?
While most people agree that increased sugar consumption is a major cause of too many New Zealanders being overweight and obese, what we should do about this remains a matter of debate and argument. More>>
Gordon Campbell: On Vladimir Putin’s Wonderful, Fabulous, Very Good Year
Safe to say that no-one, but no-one has had a better 2016 than Vladimir Putin. What an annus mirabilis it has been for him. Somehow, Russia got away with directly interfering in the US election process, such that a friendly oligarch is about to take up residence in the White House, rather than a genuine rival. More>>
Gordon Campbell: On The Media Normalisation Of Trump
We all supposedly agree that the media is going to hell in a tabloid handbasket, but the trends to the contrary can be a bit harder to spot. In his 1970s book The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe had mocked the way the media instinctively acts as what he called The Victorian Gentleman. More>>
Binoy Kampmark: The Reality Of Fake News
Fake news as reality; the inability to navigate the waters in which it swims; a weakness in succumbing to material best treated with a huge pinch of salt. That, we are told, is the new condition of the global information environment. More>>
Alastair Thompson: Helen Kelly And The Compassionless People
I wasn't a close friend of Helen Kelly's. But her passing has moved me to tears more than once in the past two weeks. I feel honoured to be one of the many who worked with her and was helped by her. More>>
Postnatal Depression: 'The Thief That Steals Motherhood' - Alison McCulloch
Post-natal depression is a sly and cruel illness, described by one expert as ‘the thief that steals motherhood’, it creeps up on its victims, hiding behind the stress and exhaustion of being a new parent, catching many women unaware and unprepared. More>>
Gordon Campbell: On News From The US Election Eve
Here’s a somewhat scary headline from October 30 on Nate Silver’s 538 site, which summed up the statistical factors in play at that point: “The Cubs Have A Smaller Chance Of Winning Than Trump Does” More>>
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President Obama authorized a number of actions in response to the Russian government’s aggressive harassment of U.S. officials and cyber operations aimed at the U.S. election in 2016. More>>
Israel/Palestine: Michael Field - Background To How Israel Nearly Went To War With New Zealand
New Zealand and Senegal managed to get the United Nations Security Council to pass resolution 2334 which said Israel’s settlements in Palestinian territory violate international law and undermine a two-state solution in Israel's conflict with Palestine. More>>
US Indigenous Affairs: How President Obama Has Protected Our Sacred Land
I am very proud to be both Navajo and American. As the President of the Navajo Nation, I’ve dedicated my life to ensuring that, as a Navajo, my story -- and our stories -- are part of our collective American history. Today, I want to share one of those stories with you. More>>
Binoy Kampmark: The Berlin Truck Attack And The Refugee Question
The hard-nosed neo-cons were certainly showing little interest in linking arguments, examining evidence, or even considering elementary logic in the aftermath of the Berlin truck attack near the Gedächtniskirche. With the bodies fresh in the morgue, former US ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, peered into the mind of the everyday German, and found teeth chattering fear. More>>
Demonetisation: Gordon Campbell On India’s Huge Socio-Economic ExperimentWithout much coverage at all in the West, India has just been engaged for the past few weeks in one of the world’s biggest socio-economic experiments since the Cultural Revolution in China. More>>
Gordon Campbell: On The Death Of Fidel Castro
New Zealand likes to think we played our part – via the 1981 Springbok tour – in bringing the apartheid regime in South Africa to an end… Jacob Zuma treated the death of Fidel Castro at the weekend as an occasion to pay a heartfelt tribute to the thousands of Cuban soldiers who travelled across the world to inflict the first significant military defeat on the forces of white supremacy. More>>
Gordon Campbell: On The US Election Home Stretch
Once again at the business end of a US election, the result will hinge on the same old bits of geography as always: the Five Crucial Counties in Ohio, the Two Crucial Counties in Pennsylvania and the I-4 Interstate Corridor in Florida that runs from Tampa Bay through Orlando to Daytona Beach. More>>
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Carrie Fisher: Hollywood In-Breeding & The Velocity Of Being - Binoy KampmarkThere was always going to be a good deal of thick drama around Carrie Fisher, by her own confession, a product of Hollywood in-breeding. Her parents, Debbie Reynolds and the crooner Eddie Fisher, provided ample material for the gossip columns in a marriage breakup after Eddie sped away with Elizabeth Taylor. More>>
Gordon Campbell: On The Best Albums Of 2016
OK, I’m not even going to try and rationalise this surrender to a ‘best of’ listicle. Still…maybe there is an argument for making some semblance of narrative order out of a year that brought us Trump, Brexit and the deaths of Prince, David Bowie, Leonard Cohen and Alan Vega, who I missed just as much as the Big Three. So without further ado….oh, but first a word from the sponsor More>>
Emojis: World’s First Māori Emoji App Launched
It’s here - the world’s first Māori emoji app Emotiki has landed just in time for summer roadtrips and santa stockings, with 200 Māori and Kiwi cultural icons for people to share their kiwiana moments with each other and the world. More>>
Howard Davis: Album Of The Year - Van Morrison's 'Keep Me Singing'
2016 was a grand year for Van The Man - The Belfast Cowboy turned 71, received a knighthood, and reissued an expanded set of soul-fired live recordings from 1973 ('It's Too Late to Stop Now'). In the game for 53 years now, Morrison's albums consistently open new windows into the heart and soul of one of the most enigmatic figures in modern music. More>>
Review: The NZSO Performs Handel's MessiahMax Rashbrooke: Saturday night's performance took the piece back to something like the way it would have originally been performed when premiered in 1742, with an orchestra of 20-30 players and only a few more singers. More>>
Culture: Rare Hundertwasser Conservation Posters Found After 40 Years
When Jan and Arnold Heine put a roll of conservation posters into storage in 1974 they had no idea that 42 years later they would be collectors items. More>>
Scoop Review Of Books: The Stolen Island: Searching for ‘Ata by Scott Hamilton
Reviewed by Michael Horowitz
Located even further south than temperate Noumea, Tonga’s tiny island of ‘Ata might have become the jewel of the kingdom’s burgeoning tourist industry. Imagine a Tongan resort that would not only be mild in winter, but pleasant in summer. More>>
Scoop Review of Books: Extraordinary Anywhere: Essays On Place From Aotearoa NZ
The New Zealand landscape undoubtedly is very beautiful, but so is the British one, and my attachment to this country is much more about some particular places, and the memories and emotions that in them combine, than it is about the landscape as a whole. More>>
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Russian Hack Job?: White House - Actions In Response To Russian Malicious Cyber Activity & Harassment