Politics

Fair Trade Refugees Are A National Shame

Isn’t it exciting? Our Prime Minister has now put us in the people buying business. We should be so proud.  Look what we’ve just purchased: 150 hurting men, women and child political pawns—I mean, Australian asylum seekers—whose lives have been traded on the open market. [More]

Doing Time for No Crime

Looking back now, maybe this was the most unsettling thing; the room felt like it could have been some stripped-out McDonald’s Playland, but filled with prisoners instead of children. [More]

The Mister Affable Vote Rules Again

Uh-oh, I’m just a tad tetchy we’ve just been caught—how can I say this politely—looking kind of shallow. Not quite Kim Kardeshian-esque, but still somewhere uncomfortably between SpongeBob and Oprah. [More]

A Frack Attack Follow-Up

You’re no expert, but you’re no fool. Somewhere between oil company spin and our government’s thirst for cash, is our ignorance.  Unless we educate ourselves fast, we’re going for a ride, whether we like it or not. A follow-up column after the gas and oil industry’s response.  [More]

What The Frack is This Government Thinking?  

If you don’t know what fracking is, you’d better learn now. I would call it a dirty word,one this country may sadly regret. [More]

Confused Slutwalkers Unite!

I could give a whore’s thong if women should reclaim the word “slut” but I do care deeply about the invisibility of rape. Then why am I so damned confused? [More]

Wild West Republicans

American voters will tolerate a standard poodle running for office, provided they can do at least one good trick.  They often even enjoy candidates with the intelligence quotient of a sock puppet. But God forbid he can’t laugh at himself. He’s fired.  [More]

Deepwater Doo-doo. Don’t Do It New Zealand.

Why are we celebrating New Zealand becoming the oil industry’s next poster boy for overcoming big risk deepwater drilling?  Our Prime Minister is trying to sell us high risk for short-sighted cash. Don’t buy it. [More]

Watch Out for the Tall Tales of War

Once upon a time, a long time ago, our government sent troops to fight the bad guys in a far away land. They stayed and stayed. They stayed so long that we forgot their promises to leave. [More]

The Man Who Couldn’t Get Angry

By this time in the evening, I didn’t know if I even wanted to hear the story of the thin, angular man who sat next to us, barely touching his coffee. Ko Soe Lwin had been arrested as a boy at age 12, along with 14 other children. His crime was handing out leaflets. [More]

Is This The War You Want New Zealand?

It was like someone had dropped our Prime Minister in a 2002 time warp of stock phrases that no longer make any sense for the actual war in front of him today. We got rote blurbs about fighting Al Qaeda in Afghanistan [they uprooted to Pakistan years ago] and combating terror [instead of fostering it anew in Pakistan] like it was pulled off General McChrystal’s teleprompter. [More]

Pathetic Pundit’s Audacity of Nope

My profession sucks at what they do. Let me be very specific. Commentators, pundits, columnists, people like me who get their little heads put in a box on the left side of the story, are myopic sheep— on a good day. [More]

The Biggest Story You’ve Never Heard

The biggest story you’ve never heard of in the last decade had nothing to do with 9/11 or the War on Terror. It is a story that will have more ramifications to your life than Al Qaeda ever will, yet you probably have no idea what Operation Aurora, Titan Rain, or GhostNet is. [More]

Welcome to John Key’s The Age of Beige

One year on from John Key taking office and it feels as if New Zealand has entered the Age of Beige– and I can’t think of anything more terrifying. [More]

The Wrong Enemy

When Dr. John Johnson finally brought himself to look at the slain body of his beautiful 19-year-old daughter flown home from Iraq, he knew immediately he was looking at murder. [More]

For Our Daughters

Louise Nicholas lost the trials she always believed would rebalance justice. But she won something much bigger than her own experience. She won a different future for her daughter– one that was stolen from her past. [More]