Tag Archives: Comment

Would-be Kiwi politician Kim Dotcom’s “moment of truth” passed with some concerning (but not unexpected) revelations about government spying activity in New Zealand. Despite the heavy press presence and the rather dramatic way in which the “evidence” was unveiled, there didn’t appear to be much that would have surprised the Prime Minister, or which will hurt him in the last …

You have to feel sorry for John Key that he’s been subjected to so many off-stage alarums and excursions during this, the dirtiest election campaign of my lifetime. It started with Hager’s Dirty Tricks book, dropped close to the campaign, leaving insufficient time to check the details. Hager calculated on our media being sufficiently full of gullible journalists who would …

It was the bomb that was supposed to flip the election on its head. The documents set to unveil a vast conspiracy by the Prime Minister against Kim Dotcom. John Key’s Moment of Truth. What a flop. There was no smoking gun. No game-changing piece of information. Instead, politically charged hearsay recounted as claims about New Zealand’s mass surveillance drew …

Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom presented no evidence to back his claim the Prime Minister was at the centre of a Hollywood plot to have him extradited to the United States to face charges. As I wrote on the New Zealand Herald website last night  “If Kim Dotcom thinks his Moment of Truth will affect the outcome of Saturday’s election, he …

At exactly 7pm, Kim Dotcom and allies – Laila Harre (leader of the Internet-Mana party), Glenn Greenwald (American lawyer and adversarial journalist) and Bob Amsterdam (Dotcom’s lawyer) – took the stage at the Auckland Town Hall, to raucous applause. Adding to the atmosphere was Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden via videolink. They had come for Dotcom’s …

I’ve always been reluctant to believe in media conspiracies, but having watched the way in which Radio New Zealand and TVNZ have been covering this election campaign I have to conclude that those driving the election coverage on those channels are either wildly Left-wing or plain ignorant, and I’m genuinely not sure which explanation is the more plausible. The media …

Last week, the WTO had a chance to haul itself out of the dreary post-Doha doldrums in which it has been languishing for years. Back in the day, with Uruguay Round exuberance echoing around the world, business coalitions and free trade activists would meet to discuss tactics and opportunities to grow the global economy. Now they shake themselves out of …