Heather du Plessis-Allan: David Seymour and the UN letter

I’m as interested as anyone on this mystery about whether David Seymour is in trouble over the letter he sent to the UN.

Whether the media reporting is right that the Prime Minister gave Seymour a telling off, or whether David was right that it was just a nice chat, or whether the media reporting is right that Winston is cross with David for sending the letter, or whether David’s right that Winston is fine and is basically going to send the same letter again, or whether Winston is right when he says that’s not true – I’m as interested as you are in what the truth is.

Simon O'Connor: China blindness

What is it with former Prime Ministers and others when it comes to China?

Many former leaders of New Zealand have made much of New Zealand’s independent foreign policy, our commitment to the international rules based order, and human rights, and yet appear to throw such principles to then wind when it comes to appeasing Communist China.

Dave Patterson: Trump, the UN, and the World

The new administration will be familiarly transformational.

President-elect Donald Trump has not demonstrated a fondness for the United Nations (UN). During his first term, he pulled out of the United Nations Human Rights Council because it operated to attack rather than preserve human rights. There is little to recommend the UN for anything more than an opportunity for international diplomats to sit and chat among themselves.

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: It's a really tough time to be the UN

Tell you what, it’s a tough time to be the UN.

I can’t help but feel that the UN’s credibility is increasingly on the line at the moment with how often it’s being ignored.

Take for example what’s just happened overnight: the International Criminal Court – which was set up through the UN and endorsed by the UN's General Assembly – has issued an arrest warrant for the Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu.

Centrist: UN and WHO influence on political decisions in New Zealand

Influence and concerns over New Zealand’s sovereignty

The influence of the United Nations (UN) and its specialised agency, the World Health Organization (WHO) in New Zealand’s domestic affairs raises concerns about the country making their own decisions.

A recent example involves Associate Health Minister Casey Costello, who has faced criticism for citing advice supporting Heated Tobacco Products (HTPs) as a tool to reduce smoking.

JC: PM Needs to Take a Breath on UN

I am writing this criticism of the prime minister with a sense of reluctance, as overall I think he is doing a very good job. He is on a global mission to improve this country’s trade prospects to increase our wealth. He is managing what could be a fractious coalition well. In both instances he is applying his various business skills to achieve these aims. Christopher Luxon deserves plaudits in both cases. The country will hopefully see long-term benefits from his work in these areas.

Lushington Brady: Time to Go the Way of the League of Nations

The UN is worse than useless.

In the first couple of decades following WWII, the United Nations seemed like a beacon of hope for a war-torn world subsequently split by the Cold War.

Yet, when the world came perilously close to full-scale nuclear war in 1962, the UN was mostly irrelevant. Instead, it was old-fashioned personal diplomacy between the US and the USSR that averted the crisis.

David Farrar: Who did we vote with?

Winston Peters announced:

New Zealand has voted for a United Nations resolution on Israel’s presence in occupied Palestinian Territory with some caveats, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says.

“New Zealand’s yes vote is fundamentally a signal of our strong support for international law and the need for a two-state solution,” Mr Peters says.

Thi Thuy Van Dinh, David Bell: The UN Machinery against Human Rights

WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED (…)

to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and (…)

to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

Rodney Hide: Leave our kids alone

The UN is corrupt and perverted. So too is the WHO. Anyone working for these organisations is immediately suspect. So too every pronouncement they make.

How bad?

Well, here’s the WHO explaining when sex education starts:

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 10/4/24

Govt gives farmers something to talk about (regarding environmental issues) at those woolshed meetings

Hard on the heels of three rurally oriented ministers launching the first of their woolshed meetings, the government brought good news to farmers on the environmental front.

First, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced an additional $18 million is being committed to reduce agricultural emissions.

As the Israel-Gaza crisis worsens and the UN remains impotent, what are NZ’s diplomatic options?

Global security involves managing a complex combination of law, ethics and politics. No situation exemplifies this more than what is happening now in Israel and Gaza.

When United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres coupled an unequivocal condemnation of the October 7 Hamas terror attacks with the observation that they “did not happen in a vacuum”, Israel was quick to react.

Jonathan Turley: Harvard's Jacinda Ardern calls on the United Nations to crack down on free speech as a weapon of war

Jacinda Ardern may no longer be Prime Minister of New Zealand, but she was back at the United Nations continuing her call for international censorship. Ardern is now one of the leading anti-free speech figures in the world and continues to draw support from political and academic establishments. 

In her latest attack on free speech, Ardern declared free speech as a virtual weapon of war. She is demanding that the world join her in battling free speech as part of its own war against “misinformation” and “disinformation.” Her views, of course, were not only enthusiastically embraced by authoritarian countries, but the government and academic elite.

Point of Order: Two views of how the war in the Ukraine is impacting on a small country in the Pacific

Last year, when she was still Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern described the state of world affairs as “bloody messy”. Since then there have been few, if any, signs of improvement. The war in Ukraine delivered an economic jolt to NZ, and its effects have barely dissipated. The war’s expansion would bring more pain for local business and consumers.

Without the military or economic scale to influence events directly, NZ relies on its voice and ability to persuade.

But by placing its faith in a rules-based order and United Nations processes, it also has to work with – and sometimes around – highly imperfect systems. In some areas of international law and policy, the machinery is failing. It’s unclear what the next best step might be.

Point of Order: PM traces shift in our independent foreign policy under Labour – and rails against ‘morally bankrupt’ United Nations

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, enjoying her global celebrity status in Australia, has also succeeded in clawing back her poll ratings in New Zealand. According to the Roy Morgan poll, Labour has risen a couple of points to 33.5% while National has edged back a point to 39% since May.

On the Roy Morgan sampling, the Maori Party would hold the balance of power. Given the apparent distaste of that party’s two members in Parliament for parties of the Right, this could ensure Labour has another term .

Ardern brushed off a question on the ABC about her global celebrity status, saying her total focus was at home.

Roger Childs: Gallipoli - Myth and Reality

We were beaten by our own high command. Australian soldier Lucky Durham

A disastrous and wasteful military fiasco

Another Anzac Day is coming up. Around the country there will be the traditional dawn parades and other gatherings at local war memorials; the veterans along with current armed forces, police and other groups will march; the wreaths will be laid; flags will be lowered and raised; speeches will be delivered and the Last Post and Reveille will be played. We will also have the reminders: Lest we forget and We will remember them.

April 25 was the day in 1915 when our troops first landed at Gallipoli in World War One. But why do we give that disastrous campaign such importance? It is like the French celebrating the Battle of Waterloo, or the Germans regarding the Battle of Stalingrad as an important event in their history worth commemorating.

Mike Hosking: Will the Govt listen to the people over co-governance?

So let's try again, shall we?

The co-governance paperwork is off to Cabinet today. It was delayed a week because of bereavement in the Willie Jackson family. So off we go again today.

Jackson claims they have already had 70 hui. Now I don’t know whether he means hui, as in the Maori word for meetings, was with all and sundry or was exclusive to Māori. I suspect it’s the latter.

The rest of us get to have a say, I use that term in the loosest possible way, at a later date. The reality is this will be your typical consultation. You say whatever you like, they nod, say thank you, and then ignore you.

Michael Bassett: Reforming the United Nations

When I heard Ukraine’s President Zelensky arguing for a fundamental overhaul of the United Nations, and especially of the Security Council, I recalled our greatest New Zealand Prime Minister and World War Two leader, Peter Fraser. He envisaged just the sort of issue we face today with Russia’s war on Ukraine. Old Peter, a wily, highly intelligent Scotsman, was one of the world’s few prime ministers to attend the San Francisco conference in 1945 that set up the rules for a postwar body to monitor the peace. With support from nearly all the smaller countries represented at the conference, Fraser objected strenuously to the great power veto that enabled any of the five victorious powers – the US, Britain, France, Russia and China – to block any substantive move the Security Council might want to take in the event of a breach of the UN Charter, even if all other countries favoured action. Peter Fraser pointed out that by allowing a veto, one of the five might behave as it pleased, and then act as judge and jury in its own cause. He was right. That’s exactly what has happened several times since 1945. The US has done it and Russia much more often. The veto is why today the United Nations is such a toothless tiger. It is unable to protect Ukraine, one of its member states, from the ruthless onslaught from neighboring Russia. The recent motion to condemn Russia passed the Security Council with a significant majority. Several Security Council members abstained from voting or absented themselves, but Russia exercised its veto, thereby preventing what should have resulted in international punishment, with Russia having to pay reparations for the damage it has done.

Daniel J. Mitchell: The United Nations Report on American Poverty Is Just Plain Wrong

When writing about the statist agenda of international bureaucracies, I generally focus my attention on the International Monetary Fund and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Today, let’s give some attention to the United Nations.

Based on this story from the Washington Post, the bureaucrats at the UN have concluded that America is a miserable and awful nation.

…a new United Nations report that examines entrenched poverty in the United States…calls the number of children living in poverty “shockingly high.” …the report, written by U.N. special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights Philip Alston, says the United States tops the developed world with the highest rates of youth poverty… The results of the report are not out of line with a number of others…in recent years by different organizations in which the United States has turned up at or near the top on issues such as poverty rates.

Mike Butler: More on the big climate lie

The United Nations repeated its Big Lie today in yet another report that breathlessly asserted "the gathering risks of climate change are so profound that they could stall or even reverse generations of progress against poverty and hunger if greenhouse emissions continue at a runaway pace”.

But first, look at what former broadcast meteorologist John Coleman says. The founder of the Weather Channel, who produced a video explaining the history of the man-made global warming hoax, says that if there were evidence of man-made global warming, he would have dedicated his life to stopping it.

Environmental activists now call it “climate change” instead of global warming because the warming has stopped, Coleman added, and US$4.7-billion in taxpayer money is funding “bogus reports” and “bogus research.”