Written By: - Date published: 5:21 pm, June 26th, 2026 - 20 comments
The reason I chose to interview the ambassador is because I accept as self-evident the truism that all wars end with diplomacy and the sooner we return to diplomacy the better.
Written By: - Date published: 5:16 pm, June 6th, 2026 - 15 comments
FiveEyes issues warning re possible Chinese intelligence recruiting methods! Beware! China issues warning re already recruited anti-China MPs. Cue shock horror!
Written By: - Date published: 2:59 pm, March 13th, 2026 - 14 comments
We are now in the opening days of what may be the decisive war to determine either the survival of the Iranian state or the expulsion of the US from the Arab lands.
Written By: - Date published: 2:56 pm, February 10th, 2026 - 5 comments
OPINION: I visited Facebook recently and noticed some fake accounts (you know the ones with AI pictures depicting Māori in an unfavourable light, along with NZ flags featured prominently, as if love for a country is about a piece of cloth), and there’s a distinct anti-Indian sentiment being cultivated on the platform
Written By: - Date published: 9:39 am, December 31st, 2025 - 3 comments
Chris Bishop is thought by some to be the politician of the year, mainly for drafting a couple of bills plaigarised from the work of David Parker and untested promises to build hugely expensive roads of National significance. But they are ignoring the most extraordinary performance by an opposition leader in recent decades.
Written By: - Date published: 7:54 am, December 24th, 2025 - 22 comments
“National preferred doing a quick, low-quality deal over doing the hard work necessary to get a fair deal that delivers for both New Zealanders and Indians.”
Written By: - Date published: 2:06 pm, December 19th, 2025 - 18 comments
the US administration stresses that countries like Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan will need to militarise as never before in peacetime to keep China in its place.
Written By: - Date published: 8:27 pm, December 12th, 2025 - 25 comments
“The days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over.” White House National Security Strategy, 2025
Written By: - Date published: 5:11 pm, September 13th, 2025 - 23 comments
The greatest threat Russia poses to Europe is not that it marches west but that it turns its back and builds a brighter future to the east. We may be witnessing the emergence of a Eurasian World Order.
Written By: - Date published: 10:03 am, July 15th, 2025 - 35 comments
The real threat to peace in our region does not stem from China, but from a “China threat” narrative—promoted by the United States to rally other nations behind its China containment agenda.
Written By: - Date published: 7:56 pm, April 24th, 2025 - 36 comments
Seven cross-party New Zealand politicians have just paid a “private” visit to Taiwan. They were received publicly by the Taiwanese government, who paid for the trip. In the current geopolitical environment, it was extraordinarily foolish.
Written By: - Date published: 7:00 pm, April 14th, 2025 - 82 comments
It looks like the three way marriage made in hell is on the rocks.
Written By: - Date published: 5:40 pm, April 13th, 2025 - 7 comments
A recent run on US Government bonds showing possible coordination between different countries may have been the reason that Donald Trump walked back the worst of his tariff changes. And he has also realised the US can’t make cheap IPhones.
Written By: - Date published: 3:28 pm, April 11th, 2025 - 19 comments
There is a method to Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff madness. The chaos and confusion is deliberate; the aim is nothing less than the controlled disintegration of the world economy, writes Elliot Crossan. The eyes of the world are on Donald Trump once again. The world’s most successful attention-seeker has us all transfixed. It’s a story […]
Written By: - Date published: 1:43 pm, April 3rd, 2025 - 52 comments
While 10% is at the lower end of this unjustified tax, it is very serious for our whole NZ economy.
Written By: - Date published: 11:10 am, March 22nd, 2025 - 14 comments
We’re good, but we know we want better leadership.
Written By: - Date published: 12:23 pm, March 9th, 2025 - 17 comments
The United States of America is in full territorial expansion mode and there is little that anyone can do about it.
Written By: - Date published: 10:48 am, March 5th, 2025 - 27 comments
Vladimir Zelensky has apologised to Donald Trump for being the receipient of Trump’s appalling behaviour recently. And Trump has sparked a full on trade war with some of America’s closest allies.
Written By: - Date published: 11:28 am, February 4th, 2025 - 50 comments
And why isn’t New Zealand backing Canada against Trump’s self declared trade war?
Written By: - Date published: 10:16 am, May 19th, 2024 - 26 comments
Fonterra is a complete construct of the New Zealand state, but it is pulling our entire country down.
Written By: - Date published: 12:38 pm, January 25th, 2024 - 31 comments
CNN reports that the US has named the ongoing operation against Houthi in Yemen “Operation Poseidon Archer, suggesting a more organized and potentially long-term approach.” New Zealand has joined it – cue the slippery slope.
Written By: - Date published: 9:25 am, January 14th, 2024 - 65 comments
New Zealand has gained prosperity over 40 years within a free flow of trade under peacetime supported by minor attacks to shipping and planes, low international trade costs such as tariffs, and confidence that international trade disputes will be settled by law rather than by might is at risk: all of that required a United States President prepared to support that.
Written By: - Date published: 1:13 pm, January 13th, 2024 - 14 comments
But the ones that run US foreign policy are. Matthew Hooton in a typical smear wants to label Helen Clark as anti-American because she warned that involving us in attacking Houthis was a ”slippery slope.” She’s not and he’s wrong.
Written By: - Date published: 12:08 pm, July 5th, 2023 - 17 comments
An excellent interview with a well-connected American who would like to see the US and China work together, and knows Xi Jinping well, provides some real insight as to why he is a serious leader. Interviewed today by Richard Harman, Tim Groser backs it up.
Written By: - Date published: 8:01 am, May 9th, 2023 - 16 comments
In case we just missed it, New Zealand really has picked a side. Prime Minister Hipkins will head to the NATO summit in Lithuania together with Australia, Japan and South Korean leaders. Also Vladimir Zelinskyy is intending to go as well.
Written By: - Date published: 7:50 pm, April 20th, 2023 - 10 comments
We didn’t need the Russian invasion of Ukraine to tell us that great power competition is back, since China and the United States and Russia had been going at it well before even COVID temporarily messed up the multilateral trade system upon which we had built our little country. But it’s made it worse, and so we’re picking a side, and that side is NATO.
Written By: - Date published: 10:12 pm, December 21st, 2022 - 15 comments
“When Joe met Chou, we have opened the door and said hello” captions the photo of the Beijing meeting between Joe Walding and Chou EnLai in March 1973. It followed New Zealand’s recognition of the People’s Republic of China on December 22, 1972, an anniversary definitely worth celebrating.
Written By: - Date published: 12:26 pm, December 19th, 2022 - 16 comments
After nearly 20 years of frustrating ‘Free Trade’ talks between India and New Zealand, the chair of the India New Zealand Business Council (INZBC), Earl Rattray, has acknowledged that “a different approach to the traditional Free Trade Agreements which have served us well in many markets will be needed for India.” Whew. About time.
Written By: - Date published: 5:39 pm, November 21st, 2022 - 4 comments
Trudeau got a 10-minute stand-up with Xi followed by a public shirt-fronting, Albanese a 32-minute sit-down, and Jacinda Ardern a 50-minute formal bilateral. In the carefully calibrated world of the diplomatic dance-card, that says something. New Zealand would be foolish not to take advantage of what is on offer from China.
Written By: - Date published: 8:05 am, October 17th, 2022 - 23 comments
The political and economic disasters now unfolding in Britain are the responsibility of the Conservative Party from their 2016 Brexit vote through to now.
Written By: - Date published: 11:24 am, August 22nd, 2022 - 19 comments
Muchn’all as I try and stay positive about New Zealand’s economic direction, our reliance on China is getting much, much worse, and we need to move as China declines.
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