Simon O'Connor: The failing international rules based order

Other than in the minds of UN junkies and some academics, the international rules based order has not been functioning properly for a long time.

This is an opinion piece I wrote recently and submitted to the NZ Herald but they have chosen not to publish (which is their right), ironically as they give their front page over to the views of Helen Clark.

We have heard much of the rules-based order and international law since the United States and Israel acted against the Islamic regime in Iran. From Helen Clark to Phil Goff, various academics and commentators, these terms roll of the tongue with an assured certainty.

JC: Time Was Now – Lawful or Not

Politicians on the left are so predictable with their timing and their utterances – popping up to mouth self-righteous platitudes and arrant nonsense. For past politicians, it is a desperate attempt to try and stay relevant. In reality, it is a stark reminder of just how awful they were and a reminder not to vote for their ilk. Think of Blair, Hillary Clinton, Obama and our own Helen Clark, the Eden Park entertainment denier. These people are sanctimonious hypocrites who don’t live in the real world.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: Happy Social Justice Day

If this is the first you have heard of ‘social justice day,’ do not feel bad. Few people have heard of it, despite it having featured on the United Nations’ calendar for nearly two decades.

The day exists to promote social justice at national, regional and international levels. It sounds splendid – until you try to work out what it actually means.

Pee Kay: The United Nations New “Bogeyman”

Here it is, the United Nations new “Bogeyman”!

Be very, very afraid because it is on our door step!

As governments begin to sense the public’s growing disillusionment and disengagement with the threat inherent in climate change narratives, political focus, as it does when it senses a significant wind change, is shifting.

Fading climate hysteria is being replaced with a new urgent, unavoidable threat to human survival!

Larry Bell: Trump freeing U.S. from UN health, energy, and climate tyranny

The Trump administration has severed fealty and bondage to United Nations programs that compromise American sovereignty and subordinate national interests and policy autonomy to globalist agendas.

Two recent actions address disentanglements from dysfunctional and exploitive world health authority and unwarranted and climate alarm-premised energy policy fiascos.

Melanie Phillips: The emergence of Holocaust erasure

Unspeakably, the Final Solution is being weaponised against the Jews

International Holocaust Memorial Day has become a spur to write the Jews out of their own history.

The United Nations chose January 27 — the date of the liberation of the Auschwitz extermination camp — to commemorate the Holocaust, the term that developed specifically to describe the Nazi genocide of the Jews.

Dr Will Jones: UN “On Brink of Bankruptcy”, Says Secretary-General

The United Nations is on the brink of bankruptcy after Donald Trump cut funding, its Secretary-General has said. The Telegraph has the story.

Geoff Parker: A Narrative of Perpetual Betrayal Isn’t Evidence

Waatea News’ end-of-year lament paints 2025 as a dark age for Māori/Crown relations. But strip away the rhetoric and what remains is not evidence of oppression, it is the frustration of activist elites seeing their policy influence reduced.

The claim that Māori rights are “under serious threat” relies almost entirely on two assertions: that Māori-specific institutions and funding streams are inherently protective of Māori wellbeing, and that scaling them back constitutes discrimination. Neither claim withstands scrutiny.

Melanie Phillips: The humanitarian front against Israel

Mass murder has been branded as conscience to mess with people’s minds

Amazing news: Amnesty International has now acknowledged that night follows day!

Well, almost. In a report just published, Amnesty has stated for the first time that Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder and torture, on and after the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

Pee Kay: We are Funding the White Anting of Democracy!

Tureiti Haromi Moxon, or Lady Moxon, until recently was not a hugely well known name in New Zealand’s political activist arena, but she seems to be making sure that changes!

Lady Moxon is married to the Anglican bishop, Sir David Moxon, hence her damehood.

Craig Rucker: COP30 - The UN wants trillions more!

In Brazil, they call it a “mutirão,” meaning the community pitching in together to accomplish a common goal.

At COP30 in Belém, it means you do the paying, and the UN pitches in by doing the collecting.

Craig Rucker: NO to the UN global climate tax!

The UN wants to raise the price of everything by collecting a carbon tax on shipping. The U.S. is working to stop them.

The International Maritime Organization is about to vote on a new “net-zero framework,” which would take the form of a tax paid by shippers into a gigantic UN climate fund.

Simon O'Connor: The Druze

I met some of the Druze community in Israel a few months back, and the response by New Zealand, the UN, and others to their suffering in Syria is both tragic and telling.

The Druze of Syria are currently being attacked and killed and yet much of the world remains silent or panglossian (there’s a word for people to look up!) that the new Syrian regime will be able to fix the solution. The head of the United Nations is doing what he always does, and that is obsess about Israel. Here in New Zealand there is political silence as this small, yet significant, religious group are being killed purely because they are Druze.

Richard Prebble: Some suggestions to Winston on how he should write to the UN

Mr. Albert K. Barume, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, based in Geneva, wrote to ministers alleging that the Regulatory Standards bill “fails to uphold the principles of partnership, active protection, and self‑determination guaranteed under the Treaty of Waitangi”.

David Seymour responded expressing the views most of us hold saying: “We neither require nor welcome external lectures on our governance, particularly from bodies whose understanding of our nuanced historical, cultural, and constitutional context is so clearly deficient.”

Brendan O'Neill: More UN lies about Israel

A new UN report on Israel’s ‘gender-based violence’ against Palestinians is full of hogwash.

The United Nations is hardly known for fair or cool commentary on Israel. But its latest report really takes the biscuit. It comes from its Human Rights Council. It is titled ‘More Than a Human Can Bear’. It is a breathless account of all the ‘gender-based violence’ Israel has apparently visited on Gaza since the start of the Israel-Hamas War. ‘Gender persecution’ and ‘sexual violence’ have been rife courtesy of those monsters in the Israel Defence Forces, the report says. Guess what? It’s hogwash. This is without question one of the most dishonest official documents I have ever read.