On the eve of Prime Minister Helen Clark’s meeting with United States President George W. Bush, and other officials, it is not just the US in Anzus that New Zealand should be concerned about, writes NICHOLAS KERR. Closer to home, our relationship with Australia is not what it used to be either. [This op-ed originally […]
Loving Uncle Sam
This country’s education system has failed for decades to provide young New Zealanders with any context of the world’s only superpower and its people. There was virtually no mention of America during my own schooling; the only foreign country we studied was the global nonentity Fiji.
US healthcare system comes to aid of another Kiwi
Headline in the New Zealand Herald: Rare health condition: Government to pay for Melody Klein Ovink’s life-saving US surgery This story strikes home for me because this woman is going through the same thing my Uncle Charles went through 70 years ago. Like this girl, my uncle had a condition New Zealand’s universal healthcare system […]
Do we really have a genius in the Oval Office?
I’ve often been struck by how frequently commentators suggest that President Obama is one of the smartest or most intelligent presidents in history, with little or nothing to back up these claims. Presidential Historian Michael Beschloss famously said that “[Obama] is a guy whose IQ is off the charts.” But when pressed, Beschloss wasn’t able to […]
America: The Selfish State?
From the pre-blog archives, this op-ed of mine appeared in Australia’s major daily newspaper, “The Australian”, on May 10, 2004. America: the selfish state? A dispassionate examination of the US shows that recent criticisms are unfair, maintains Nicholas Kerr The recent abuses at Abu Ghraib prison and other incidents in the Iraq war have provoked an angry […]