The Standard

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NZ not attending Nagasaki event, insists decision unrelated to Israel invite snub

Written By: - Date published: 1:41 pm, August 12th, 2024 - 27 comments

New Zealand’s decision to stay away from the event in Nagasaki paying tribute to victims of the city’s 1945 nuclear bombing called outrageous.

ALP knows how to redress wrongs. NZ dithers

Written By: - Date published: 7:15 am, August 2nd, 2024 - 5 comments

God Bless the ALP, Bill Shorten and all the Labour MP’s across the ditch for tackling the real issues facing people with disabilities in Australia. It takes courage, fortitude, a good heart to seek redress to wrongs done to the weakest amongst us. They are taking those steps.

NZ government are just good at dithering.

Resisting US pressure for NZ to sacrifice itself to defend US hegemony against China

Written By: - Date published: 3:07 pm, July 24th, 2024 - 16 comments

Don Brash is now publicly standing together with Helen Clark to protest against the subservience of recent New Zealand governments to America’s anti-China policy.

Code Pink at NATO: Negotiate for peace.

Written By: - Date published: 2:10 pm, July 7th, 2024 - 53 comments

When NATO leaders meet in Washington, what they should be doing, apart from figuring out how to comply with Article 33(1) of the UN Charter, is conducting a clear-eyed review of how this organization that claims to be a force for peace keeps escalating unwinnable wars and leaving countries in ruins.

Mountain Tui: New Zealand deserves better than marketing

Written By: - Date published: 10:58 am, July 7th, 2024 - 6 comments

Last week the Coalition Govt said they were doing away with the name “fast-track.” This is a Govt of professional lobbyists so I am not surprised by their attunement to marketing. “Fast-track” became bad for business. The name had to go. They have also weakened regarding fast-track because of opposition.

NATO escalation danger

Written By: - Date published: 3:17 am, June 8th, 2024 - 26 comments

The destruction on 23 May of a key part of Russia’s nuclear defence means the Doomsday clock is ticking closer to midnight.  A Ukrainian/NATO drone attack on the Armavir radar station north of Georgia attcked a Voronezh-DM radar which is designed to detect incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Is our investment in defence value for money?

Written By: - Date published: 4:31 am, May 29th, 2024 - 30 comments

Defence cost us more than $6.7 billion in 2023/24. Why does our small, remote country have such a costly defence force? Is it fit for purpose – and in 2024, what is that purpose?

Making up for lost time

Written By: - Date published: 8:34 am, May 22nd, 2024 - 39 comments

Guest post by Nigel Haworth where he discusses Labour membership’s desire for taxation reform and why it is important that Labour decides on its position as soon as possible.

AUKUS. We “share values” with people committing genocide??

Written By: - Date published: 11:29 pm, May 20th, 2024 - 46 comments

Western leaders like to talk about values, shared values, common values.  The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) says the US and Israel have a partnership based on shared values. I believe them.

Joining US military alliance not in our national interest

Written By: - Date published: 1:56 am, April 22nd, 2024 - 23 comments

Former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark – the safest pair of hands this country has had in living memory – gave a masterclass on the importance of maintaining an independent foreign policy when she spoke at an AUKUS symposium held in Parliament’s old Legislative Chambers on April 18.

On Newshub and economic voice

Written By: - Date published: 1:21 pm, April 14th, 2024 - 16 comments

Nigel Haworth writes on some of the historic implications and strategy of the worker plans for companies in the context of the worker initiated initiatives for allowing Newshub to survive.

Guest Post – I was wrong about rainbows

Written By: - Date published: 11:41 am, April 1st, 2024 - 13 comments

Brian Tamaki, recent victim of self/God?-inflicted burns. Don't be like Brian.

Guest post by Brian Tamaki where he shares his change of thinking about rainbows.

Vale, Magista

Written By: - Date published: 12:37 pm, March 10th, 2024 - 5 comments

Respects to the falling of the Rt Hon Jonathan Hunt.

The apparatus behind the curtain – Part 2: The mainline

Written By: - Date published: 2:40 pm, February 11th, 2024 - 60 comments

In a guest post Seddonville Miner explores links between the Atlas Network and the Taxpayer’s Union.

The Subs and the Next War

Written By: - Date published: 11:28 am, February 11th, 2024 - 9 comments

In March 2023, former Australian prime minister Paul Keating attracted significant media attention when he described AUKUS as a manifestation of the United States’s campaign to encircle China with hostile military allies and partners.

A modest proposal on Waitangi day

Written By: - Date published: 1:58 pm, February 5th, 2024 - 32 comments

While the Treaty of Waitangi continues to be battered back and forth, the clear reality is that Maori, after signing the infuriating Treaty, were systematically dispossessed of their land. Any reading of the history of colonial treaties shows that treaties were the primary method of dispossession and were designed to be broken. And invariably they were.

The Apparatus behind the Curtain

Written By: - Date published: 1:54 pm, February 2nd, 2024 - 6 comments

The release from the Public Health Communication Centre Aotearoa around tobacco industry interference was a glimpse behind the curtain into a troubling reality.

John Pilger, RIP

Written By: - Date published: 8:43 am, January 2nd, 2024 - 8 comments

A bright star in the firmament of justice has gone out.   One of the greatest journalists of our era has passed away. John Pilger was always on the side of the oppressed.

Why Labour must change course

Written By: - Date published: 8:31 am, December 19th, 2023 - 49 comments

“A Left government with any claim to progressive credentials will focus on three policy areas – first, high-quality, high value production; second, taxation measures to reduce significantly wealth differences; third, strengthened democracy, including industrial democracy beyond collective bargaining. These three are indispensable. A Left politics, which does not build on these three, will founder.”

Nigel Haworth – Back to the Future?

Written By: - Date published: 10:08 am, November 27th, 2023 - 22 comments

“Labour should be as focused on production as it is on distribution. Labour’s job is not simply to distribute such resources as accrue to the state; it is to promote production and trade that underpin fairer distribution, but under particular conditions.”

The Holocaust should be a lesson not a template

Written By: - Date published: 10:52 pm, November 11th, 2023 - 19 comments

“Jewish people exterminating men, women and children in a concentration camp is _______.”
How do you finish a sentence like that?

Nigel Haworth on Labour at the crossroads

Written By: - Date published: 6:10 am, November 8th, 2023 - 42 comments

Former Labour Party President Nigel Haworth: “Any decisions about leadership should follow a careful and comprehensive review of, first, the recent campaign, and second, the broader settings in which Labour has chosen to work in recent years”

The lost art of the heckle

Written By: - Date published: 8:33 am, October 10th, 2023 - 12 comments

What has happened to the fine art of intelligent heckling?

New Zealand’s climate obligations and National’s climate policy

Written By: - Date published: 6:05 am, October 7th, 2023 - 18 comments

National plans to renege on our Paris Agreement pledge

Should you be more worried about co-governance or the top 1%?

Written By: - Date published: 1:13 pm, October 3rd, 2023 - 52 comments

To the those voting ACT or NZF or National this year because you are worried about co-governance. I have a secret for you. You have been co-governed by the richest 1% for decades.

Unease Over New Zealand Overtures to US in Pacific

Written By: - Date published: 8:36 pm, September 6th, 2023 - 9 comments

New security-state documents show Wellington aligning its military with the “rules-based international order” while preparing Kiwis for war with key trading partner China, writes Mick Hall.

Self-destructive stupidity, New Zealand style

Written By: - Date published: 5:51 am, August 27th, 2023 - 25 comments

Belief in capricious gods would explain the perplexing habit of governments with intelligent and informed people to embrace policies which are manifestly an example of self-destructive stupidity. Clever people doing stupid things.

Enter the Patriarchy

Written By: - Date published: 9:57 am, May 26th, 2023 - 68 comments

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; send him off to fish and you get a matrilineal society.

NZ history of voting systems in elections

Written By: - Date published: 12:46 pm, May 13th, 2023 - 33 comments

A guest post by Seddonville Miner outlining the history of voting rights in New Zealand and how Christopher Luxon’s recent claims about our voting system are hopelessly incorrect.

About Wayne Brown’s dereliction of duty

Written By: - Date published: 12:42 pm, April 15th, 2023 - 22 comments

Dear journalists, please do not let Mayor Wayne Brown off the hook regarding his appalling dereliction of duty.

How I answered the census ‘gender’ question 

Written By: - Date published: 10:44 am, April 13th, 2023 - 77 comments

Guest Post by Laura López on the complex problems with the “What is your gender?” question in the New Zealand 2023 Census.