NZ First’s time to shine in an age of populism?

Posted 10:48am Saturday 10th September 2016

Order is crumbling. The democratic world is in disarray. Neoliberal capitalism, academia’s Marxist identity politics, immigrants, the expert elite - they’re all dragging us into an abyss. Only the toughest ‘anti-politician’ politician will rise to lead us in our anger, our Read more...

Somalia: Hope after 25 years of bloodshed

Posted 10:37am Sunday 4th September 2016

While most people’s knowledge of Somalia might come from the 2001 blockbuster Blackhawk Down or occasional horrific news stories popping up, there has been some recent optimism that the state could pull itself out of its long running civil war in time for the 2016 elections. Sadly, this Read more...

Eggs benedict and our humanitarian myth

Posted 10:32am Sunday 4th September 2016

At New York’s Turtle Bay, where the United Nations building stands, there’s a breakfast club for Security Council diplomats to meet and start the day with a meal and a chat. It has become quite a tradition, and it is all thanks to New Zealand. The bringing together of some of the most Read more...

NZ Politics in review

Posted 10:50am Sunday 21st August 2016

Parliament’s back for its August session, with new spy legislation set to be introduced by the government. Elsewhere, a new poll shows an increase for the opposition and Labour leader Andrew Little has floated the idea of wiping student loans—with a catch! Following up on Read more...

Island of horror: abuse at Australia’s Nauru detention centre exposed

Posted 10:48am Sunday 21st August 2016

A cache of 2000 reports pertaining to Australia’s infamous asylum seeker detention centre on the island-nation of Nauru has found its way into the hands of UK newspaper, The Guardian. The leaked documents are sickening, shocking and shameful, which illustrates the scale and severity of the Read more...

It’s not looking good for Aunty Helen, according to leaked UN Security Coucil straw poll

Posted 2:36pm Monday 15th August 2016

Despite a worldwide media campaign, a celebrated televised debate performance and a refreshing message, Helen Clark’s bid for the United Nation’s top job could be coming to an end. Clark is in seventh place, according to the results of an informal straw poll conducted by the Security Read more...

Harawira is back, and a Maori-Mana alliance over Te Tai Tokerau is on the cards

Posted 11:26am Sunday 7th August 2016

Harawira lost his seat in the Maori electorate of Te Tai Tokerau to Labour’s Kelvin Davis by nearly seven percent of the vote in the 2014 election. It was a devastating loss for Mana, which had held the seat since it split with the Maori Party in 2011. Pundits chalked the de-crowning moment up Read more...

Have you heard of a feminist foreign policy? Sweden has

Posted 11:20am Sunday 7th August 2016

In the aftermath of the Cold War, a feminist approach to international relations became popular among some academic circles. Two of the movements founding scholars, Cynthia Enloe and Carol Cohn , proposed using a critical "feminist consciousness" when examining how countries do business Read more...

Putin's Nonsense Media

Posted 12:06pm Sunday 31st July 2016

George Galloway, the abrasive former British MP and leader of the leftwing Respect Party, was once a prolific moonlighter. In 2014 he made as much money working for dubious state-run news broadcasters than he did as a British Member of Parliament. Two years later, after a failed bid at becoming Read more...

Alarm bells: What ever happened in Burundi?

Posted 10:53am Sunday 24th April 2016

It is almost a year since the small landlocked nation of Burundi, in the African Great Lakes region, burst into the world headlines. Experts and commentators feared a repeat of the 1994 ethnic genocide next door in Rwanda when between half a million and a million people were slaughtered. The current Read more...