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Gordon Campbell - Latest News [Page 33]
On Labour’s Timid Uses (so Far) Of The Power That Voters Have Given It
Tuesday, 15 December 2020, 11:40 am | Gordon Campbell
Long on aims, short on delivery. Greta Thunberg is not the only person who feels that the Ardern government is better at aspirations than achievement. Once upon a time, Jacinda Ardern may have called climate change “this generation’s nuclear ... More >>
On The Royal Commission’s Report Into The Christchurch Mosque Shootings
Friday, 11 December 2020, 10:20 am | Gordon Campbell
For an 800 page monster, the Royal Commission report into the Christchurch shootings has proved to be a strangely weightless affair. Everyone – the Police, the PM, the security services – has apologised but (allegedly) no-one did anything wrong. ... More >>
On Werewolf's Best Music Of 2020
Tuesday, 8 December 2020, 12:02 pm | Gordon Campbell
Sure, New Zealand’s pandemic experience hasn’t been anything like the horror show it has been elsewhere. Yet the Covid anxiety levels were still high enough to undermine a lot of the creative resolutions many of us took into lockdown: read that ... More >>
On The Politics Of Why We’re Not Getting An Inquiry Into The Whakaari/White Island Disaster
Friday, 4 December 2020, 1:07 pm | Gordon Campbell
The Ardern government has made an art form out of reviews and inquiries- when to hold them, when to fold them, and when to shelve the findings, virtually untouched . Among other things, the WorkSafe criminal proceedings into the Whakaari /White ... More >>
On Why Worksafe’s Whakaari/White Island Prosecutions Are Good News
Wednesday, 2 December 2020, 11:53 am | Gordon Campbell
Somewhere in Heaven, Helen Kelly must be smiling about Worksafe’s criminal prosecution of 10 firms and three individuals for their roles in the lead up to the Whakaari /White Island tragedy. In tandem with the subsequent coronial inquest, these court ... More >>
On How America’s Middle East Allies Are Poisoning The Ground Joe Biden Will Inherit
Monday, 30 November 2020, 9:26 am | Gordon Campbell
As even the US mainstream media has been reporting, the prime motive for the murder of Iran’s top nuclear scientist Dr. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh (by Israeli or Saudi operatives, or both) has been to poison the situation that the next US president will inherit. ... More >>
On Whether We Should Be Betting Quite So Heavily On Astra Zeneca’s Covid Vaccine
Friday, 27 November 2020, 11:53 am | Gordon Campbell
According to this week’s Speech from the Throne, maintaining public safety during the pandemic will remain the government’s top priority. Next year will (hopefully) bring the rolling out of a free vaccination against Covid-19 to New Zealander. Currently, More >>
On What We Could Do For Hong Kong, If Only We Dared
Tuesday, 24 November 2020, 12:00 pm | Gordon Campbell
There has been something repulsive about PM Jacinda Ardern’s assurances that our joint 5 Eyes criticism of China’s actions over Hong Kong – and China’s harsh reaction – are all well understood on both sides. According to Ardern, it has been ... More >>
On National’s Weekend Of Doing Wheelies, Going Nowhere
Monday, 23 November 2020, 11:04 am | Gordon Campbell
Evidently, a year is not a long time in politics. The National Party for example, has just chosen to end this year much as it began it: riven by factions, leaking like a sieve, saddled with a party leader unlikely to lead them into election 2023, ... More >>
On Stuart Nash’s Plan To Turn New Zealand Into A Playground For Wealthy Tourists
Thursday, 19 November 2020, 10:57 am | Gordon Campbell
But first, a Covid-19 vaccine update. Early results from stage three trials on at least two Covid-19 vaccine contenders have been highly positive, at 90% plus levels of effectiveness. Both vaccines come with fish-hooks, though. Reportedly, the Pfizer/BioNTech ... More >>
On Chris Liddell, The RCEP, And Reviving Our Trade With Iran Under Biden
Tuesday, 17 November 2020, 11:21 am | Gordon Campbell
Being nominated by US President Donald Trump to head a key international organisation should have been the kiss of death for any nominee, even before Trump lost his bid for re-election. Throughout his presidency, Trump has done his best to wreck every ... More >>
On Adrian Orr’s Lending Scheme, The Collins Reshuffle And The Trump Coup
Friday, 13 November 2020, 9:40 am | Gordon Campbell
Does anyone under 50 know why “Muldoonist” is a bad word? David Seymour was one year old when Robert Muldoon lost the 1984 snap election. With that in mind, Seymour’s calling out of Reserve Bank governor Adrian Orr’s recent stimulatory ... More >>
On National’s Reshuffle, Pfizer’s Vaccine & Trump’s Non-exit Strategy
Wednesday, 11 November 2020, 10:06 am | Gordon Campbell
Good to hear there is at least one Covid vaccine in the pipeline, and that Pfizer is claiming a 90% level of efficacy for it. In National Party circles, there is an even higher level of certainty that Judith Collins will not be leading National into More >>
22 Short Takes On The US Election
Monday, 9 November 2020, 10:54 am | Gordon Campbell
Finally, the long night of Donald Trump’s presidency is over. To date, the courts have been given no cause to conclude that the exhaustively lengthy counts of those mountains of mail ballots was anything other than legal. Stacking the US Supreme ... More >>
On The Results(so Far) From The US Election
Thursday, 5 November 2020, 9:12 am | Gordon Campbell
Let’s be clear about what US President Donald Trump is doing. Last night’s declaration of victory before all the valid votes had been counted is an ongoing attempt at a presidential coup d’etat. It is a coup that he expects to be rubberstamped by a ... More >>
On The When And Where Of Election Results, Vote Suppression, Reasons To Panic Etc
Tuesday, 3 November 2020, 11:53 am | Gordon Campbell
In the final hours before polls close at 1pm tomorrow (NZ time) in the US election, at least four major question marks remain: Namely, the outcomes in Florida and Pennsylvania, and how a conservative federal court judge will rule later today on a Republican ... More >>
On What Lessons The Greens Should Take From The Demise Of Winston Peters
Friday, 30 October 2020, 9:32 am | Gordon Campbell
Wondering about “if only" is one of those political games we all indulge in from time to time. For example: episode one of the latest season of The Good Fight TV series dropped us into a world where Hillary Clinton is the US President and Elizabeth ... More >>
On How The US Supreme Court Is Undermining American Democracy
Wednesday, 28 October 2020, 9:20 am | Gordon Campbell
If Joe Biden is elected President next week, here comes the bad news. If Biden tries to defend Obamacare, combat climate change (via say, a variant of the Green New Deal) or tries to improve the access of US women to abortion services , he will run afoul ... More >>
On Why Herd Immunity Isn’t A Valid Option, And What’s With Our Reluctance To Wear Masks ?
Friday, 23 October 2020, 10:58 am | Gordon Campbell
Herd immunity has recently bounced back into the headlines as a tool for managing Covid-19, and as a supposed alternative to lockdowns. In the US, a group of scientists was recently brought together in the town of Great Barrington, Massachusetts by a ... More >>
On National Being Shafted By Its Own Creation
Wednesday, 21 October 2020, 11:10 am | Gordon Campbell
As it licks its wounds, let’s hope the National Party can still find time to look back with some pride at what it has achieved in Epsom. The Act Party’s nationwide success on Saturday night has been a tribute to National’s foresight, and to its ... More >>
