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Gordon Campbell - Latest News [Page 64]
Editorial Comment : Gordon Campbell
Wednesday, 25 May 2016, 10:08 am | Gordon Campbell
Since taking over as Editor at Scoop few months ago, I’ve avoided making mission statements, and have focussed on what can be done and/or set in train, given our resources. However, the PledgeMe campaign currently being run by the Scoop Foundation ... More >>
Gordon Campbell on the rise of the far right
Tuesday, 24 May 2016, 10:48 am | Gordon Campbell
In his victory speech at the Cannes film festival this week, the British film director Ken Loach warned that the rise of far right parties in Europe was being fuelled by the economic policies of austerity, and manifested in a welfare bureaucracy that ... More >>
Gordon Campbell on bank scandals and air crashes
Monday, 23 May 2016, 10:26 am | Gordon Campbell
Libor. It stands for the London Interbank Offered rate. Back in 2012, Libor became synonymous with a scandal involving the dodgy manipulation of how interest rates were fixed - during the years before and after the Global Financial Crisis - thus ... More >>
Gordon Campbell on electricity, executions, and Bob Dylan
Wednesday, 18 May 2016, 10:15 am | Gordon Campbell
This week, New Zealand’s crisis of poverty and homelessness has been making headlines around the world . At exactly the same time, Electricity Authority has unveiled the final version of its pricing plan for electricity transmission. More >>
Gordon Campbell on NZ’s support for the Kazakh dictatorship
Monday, 16 May 2016, 10:53 am | Gordon Campbell
Thanks to Sacha Baron Cohen , Kazakhstan will always seem like a bit of a jokey, ramshackle kind of place. To that end, the Stuff story last week about the New Zealand courts’ recent compliance with the wishes of the Kazakh dictatorship was illustrated ... More >>
Gordon Campbell on the proposed media merger
Friday, 13 May 2016, 12:40 pm | Gordon Campbell
Monopolies are bad for people, and bad for capitalism, too. Look at what happened in the late 1980s when a Labour government handed a state monopoly over to Telecom – which proceeded to screw its customers over prices, spent the bare minimum on ... More >>
Gordon Campbell on the future of conservatism
Thursday, 12 May 2016, 10:08 am | Gordon Campbell
For years, observers have noted the contrast between Prime Minister John Key’s ordinary Kiwi bloke persona, and the patrician prat more commonly seen in Parliament. This week though, the prat has been in plain sight. Nominally, Key got expelled from ... More >>
Gordon Campbell on how class colours Panama Papers reactions
Wednesday, 11 May 2016, 11:36 am | Gordon Campbell
Not many heroes so far in the Panama Papers saga, but any number of villains. Those villains happen to include: criminals laundering their ill gotten gains, terrorists funding their nefarious activities, and shadowy figures guilty of varying levels ... More >>
Gordon Campbell on the govt’s token plans for cyber-security
Friday, 6 May 2016, 10:09 am | Gordon Campbell
Basically, the world is divided into two types of people : those who think the Panama Papers illustrate the bad shit that some people do, and those who think the Panama Papers illustrate what needs to be done to make sure no-one else discovers the shit ... More >>
Gordon Campbell on Pharmac’s grudging concession to reality
Thursday, 5 May 2016, 9:36 am | Gordon Campbell
Is this any way to run a health system… whereby terminally ill patients are forced into public demonstrations before the government (and its funding agency Pharmac) will grudgingly provide the money for life-saving treatments freely available and ... More >>
Gordon Campbell on Pharmac’s indefensible stance
Tuesday, 3 May 2016, 10:15 am | Gordon Campbell
One of the interesting line items in this month’s Budget will be the one that sets out the increase – if any – in Pharmac’s base funding, to enable it to meet the huge cost of the new class of so called ‘biologics’ drugs for treating ... More >>
Gordon Campbell on not crying foul, Argentina
Friday, 29 April 2016, 11:07 am | Gordon Campbell
So a couple of guys found to be criminally liable of environmental pollution in Argentina lodge an application with the Overseas Investment Office… in order to buy some prime New Zealand rural land. Seems that their factory back home had carelessly ... More >>
Gordon Campbell on Trump and the Madman Theory
Thursday, 28 April 2016, 10:04 am | Gordon Campbell
Years ago, Richard Nixon explained to his chief adviser Bob Haldeman what has since become known as the “Madman Theory” of foreign policy . More >>
Gordon Campbell on Kiwirail’s latest stint in the dogbox
Wednesday, 27 April 2016, 10:58 am | Gordon Campbell
The denigration of Kiwirail continues. The latest review (based on a 2014 assessment) of the options facing the company have enabled Kiwirail to be hung out to dry once again as a liability and burden on the taxpayer . More >>
Gordon Campbell on having an extradition treaty with China
Thursday, 21 April 2016, 9:45 am | Gordon Campbell
Reportedly, an extradition treaty with China is now on the table , although – thankfully - Prime Minister John Key has also indicated that a lot of detailed work would be required before any such arrangement took final shape, much less came into ... More >>
Gordon Campbell On Our Fearless PM's Foray Into China
Tuesday, 19 April 2016, 10:34 am | Gordon Campbell
Don't mention the South China Sea dispute. Oh, but he will! Earlier this week, the image of dauntless Prime Minister John Key not backing down in the face of alleged Chinese intimidation would have done him no harm at all with the voters back home. ... More >>
Gordon Campbell on banning a leading Iranian film-maker
Monday, 18 April 2016, 4:33 pm | Gordon Campbell
For the past fortnight, New Zealand has been obsessing on the reputational risk to this country of being seen as a tax haven – despite the fact that (with the notable exception of the Australian Financial Review ) few sources offshore have ... More >>
Gordon Campbell on political rhetoric, and the Dark Triad
Friday, 15 April 2016, 11:46 am | Gordon Campbell
Unfortunately, the systematic use of tax avoidance strategies – by corporates and by wealthy individuals – is not occurring in a vacuum. At an accelerating rate, new technology is wiping out the sort of jobs in the retail sector, white collar ... More >>
Gordon Campbell on the govt's Panama Papers tokenism
Tuesday, 12 April 2016, 10:01 am | Gordon Campbell
Prime Minister John Key could have dealt with the clamour for an independent inquiry into the Panama Papers scandal in a variety of ways. He could have - for instance - set up a public inquiry, as was done in the mid 1990s, in the wake of the Winebox ... More >>
Gordon Campbell on (missing) US links to the Panama Papers
Friday, 8 April 2016, 11:51 am | Gordon Campbell
Belatedly, US complicity in the global tax avoidance systems is now trickling out into daylight. To some, one of the suspicious aspects of the scandal to date has been how few firms and individuals from the US have featured in the document dump ... More >>
