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Gordon Campbell - Latest News [Page 30]
On Why Judith Collins Should Consider The Canada Model
Monday, 30 August 2021, 2:52 pm | Gordon Campbell
For months now, Judith Collins has been doubling down on National as the party of angry talkback radio. If you’ve got a beef about Jacinda Ardern telling you what to do, Collins is right on side. If you’re ticked off about all this Treaty malarkey ... More >>
On how Delta has changed the endgame for the pandemic
Thursday, 26 August 2021, 2:39 pm | Gordon Campbell
Lockdown vs Delta. Day by day, New Zealand is learning whether a Level Four lockdown can confine and eventually defeat the Delta variant. Yes, the number of cases keep on increasing – but the increase (so far, cross fingers) is linear, and not exponential. ... More >>
On “the old weird” music of America, with a playlist
Tuesday, 24 August 2021, 10:12 am | Gordon Campbell
Here’s some weird old music for the weird realities of lockdown. Like other key phases in popular music – jazz, country, rock’n’roll, punk, hip hop – the period between 1927 and 1932 marked a revolutionary leap forward. The writer Greil ... More >>
On our polarised attitudes to the Covid response
Friday, 20 August 2021, 2:23 pm | Gordon Campbell
Thesis meets antithesis again, this time in the pages of the New Zealand Herald. A week ago, Liam Dann wrote a column pondering how in contrast to the death and suffering Covid is wreaking all around the world, New Zealanders “are living in an open and ... More >>
On The Media’s Handling Of (A) The Afghan Crisis, And (B) The Hacked DHB Material
Tuesday, 17 August 2021, 1:54 pm | Gordon Campbell
Reportedly, there has been “chaos “in downtown Kabul and “chaos“ out at the Kabul airport. “Chaos” has become one of the go-to terms of modern journalism. By definition, ‘chaos” removes the need to, or even the/possibility of, rational ... More >>
On The Fall Of Kabul
Monday, 16 August 2021, 12:12 pm | Gordon Campbell
Like a giant Ponzi scheme, the 20 year experiment in nation-building in Afghanistan has come crashing down, in pieces. Since the US and its allies invaded the country in late 2001, hundreds of thousands of Afghan people have been killed. (The official ... More >>
On Labour’s Cave-in To The Business Lobbies
Friday, 13 August 2021, 9:47 am | Gordon Campbell
At a time when New South Wales is in crisis over the Delta variant, it seems bizarre that our government is willing to risk heading down the same track. Yesterday though, Labour appeared willing to jeopardise the gains made by the Team ... More >>
On How New Zealand Is Punching Below Its Weight In Afghanistan
Wednesday, 11 August 2021, 10:17 am | Gordon Campbell
First Vietnam, now Afghanistan. For the second time in living memory, the West has been defeated by the guerrilla forces of a small Third World country, while leaving its local allies in mortal danger for their sins of collaboration. Since the pull-out ... More >>
On Whether We’re Punching Above Our Weight, And Should We Care?
Wednesday, 4 August 2021, 1:39 pm | Gordon Campbell
According to Pierre De Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympic Games, the Olympic ideal was not about “winning, but fighting well. Life is not conquering, but fighting well.” True to that ideal, young people from all over the world do still congregate ... More >>
On Populism’s Changing Of The Guard, Plus A Soul Music Playlist
Monday, 2 August 2021, 12:34 pm | Gordon Campbell
The weekend’s Newshub/Reid Research poll results - Act up to 11.1%, National up 1% but still sitting at only 28.7%, Labour down to 43%, the Greens up to 8.5% - shows that the combined centre right vote is still languishing nearly 12 points behind ... More >>
On The Supermarket Scam, And On Tunisia’s Scrapping Of Democracy
Thursday, 29 July 2021, 1:31 pm | Gordon Campbell
Are we paying too much for our groceries? Hmm. Is the Pope a Catholic? Given that the two Australian supermarket chains that dominate our grocery industry routinely rack up profits in the order of $22 billion annually, that’s a no-brainer. Yet ... More >>
On The Uncanny Valley Of Tokyo 2020
Tuesday, 27 July 2021, 11:11 am | Gordon Campbell
For all involved, this year’s Olympic Games have called for a willing suspension of anxiety. For now at least, the displays of skill and agility have been compelling enough to muffle some of the previous misgivings about the wisdom of asking athletes More >>
On The Geo-political Posturing Over China’s Cyber Hacks, Plus The Weekly Playlist
Thursday, 22 July 2021, 12:19 pm | Gordon Campbell
The timing was one of the weirder aspects of this week’s cyber condemnation of China by the West. Why was this piece of political theatre being staged now? China (and Russia’s) sponsoring and/or condoning of semi-state and criminal hacker groups More >>
On Shifting To Electric Vehicles, And Who Killed Haiti’s President?
Tuesday, 20 July 2021, 11:56 am | Gordon Campbell
While the nation paused last Friday to share the existential horror of farmers and tradies maybe having to pay a little more in future for a new emissions-emitting Toyota Hilux from Japan… The real losers in this “ute tax” scenario will continue ... More >>
On The Whining Vocal Minority Of Farmers, Plus The Weekly Playlist
Thursday, 15 July 2021, 3:00 pm | Gordon Campbell
Granted, working on the land can be a lonely job and the weather can be a bitch… But speaking in general, what have farmers got to complain about? A lot of other Kiwis need to worry about finding a place to live, making rent, feeding their kids ... More >>
On When National’s Leaders Had A More Enlightened Approach To Gangs
Tuesday, 13 July 2021, 10:22 am | Gordon Campbell
One can sympathise with Human Rights Commissioner Paul Hunt and the lose/lose situation he has just found himself in. If he had stayed safe and snug in the Beltway around Parliament, he would have been stereotyped as a liberal ... More >>
On The Legacy Of Rockabilly, Plus A Playlist
Friday, 9 July 2021, 10:53 am | Gordon Campbell
Rockabilly was a 1950s precursor of punk. It was uptempo, aggressive, and shared with punk the same DIY “hell, I’ll give that a whirl” sense of adventure. It also provided more than a few hillbilly musicians with a chance to dream that hey, ... More >>
On Why The J&J Vaccine Isn’t An Ideal Back-up Option, And Haiti
Thursday, 8 July 2021, 11:13 am | Gordon Campbell
The news that Medsafe has given approval to Johnson & Johnson’s vaccin e means the government is finally putting a backup plan in place, after the series of close shaves it has been experiencing of late in getting its deliveries of the ... More >>
On New Zealand’s Lack Of Adequate Cyber Security Defences
Tuesday, 6 July 2021, 10:47 am | Gordon Campbell
Remember how, back in the olden days, we had security concerns about the Chinese firm Huawei? Allegedly, Huawei was to be shunned as a business arm of the Chinese Communist Party and supposedly some Huawei products contained security glitches that ... More >>
On The Hate Speech Panic, And The Weekly Playlist
Thursday, 1 July 2021, 9:53 am | Gordon Campbell
So far, much of the fuss about the government’s proposed legislation on hate speech has focused on the state – the state ! - being empowered to define and enforce the rules about certain forms of discrimination and related speech. As if this was ... More >>
