CoveragePost
June 16, 2025
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Is history binary? A judge of past behaviour with just two available options: thumbs-up, or thumbs-down? If you are not on the ‘right side’ of history, are you therefore on the ‘wrong side’? Can there be a ‘right side of history’? Given the contexts that we now proclaim to be the ... <a title="Keith Rankin Analysis – Clio: Whose side is ‘History’ on?" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2025/06/16/keith-rankin-analysis-clio-whose-side-is-history-on/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Analysis – Clio: Whose side is ‘History’ on?">Read more</a>
CoveragePost
June 10, 2025
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Every country has its tragedies. A few are highly remembered. Most are semi-remembered. Others are almost entirely forgotten. Sometimes the loss of memory is due to these tragedies being to a degree international, seemingly making it somebody else’s ‘duty’ to remember them. This could have been the case with the Air ... <a title="Keith Rankin Analysis – Remembering New Zealand’s Missing Tragedy" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2025/06/10/keith-rankin-analysis-remembering-new-zealands-missing-tragedy/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Analysis – Remembering New Zealand’s Missing Tragedy">Read more</a>
CoveragePost
June 6, 2025
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Capitalism is in crisis, and our species’ imagination to save ourselves is sorely lacking. There are of course understandings out there, and solutions; but they are so heavily gate-kept that conversations about saving ourselves are well-nigh impossible. It remains a puzzle why those political and intellectual leaders who would most benefit ... <a title="Keith Rankin Analysis – Equity Rights: UBI, SUI, BUI, HUI, or GUI?" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2025/06/06/keith-rankin-analysis-equity-rights-ubi-sui-bui-hui-or-gui/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Analysis – Equity Rights: UBI, SUI, BUI, HUI, or GUI?">Read more</a>
CoveragePost
May 30, 2025
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Who, neither politician nor monarch, executed 100,000 civilians in a single night? Answer: Curtis LeMay, American Air Force General, in the wee hours of 10 March 1945. While authorised by his immediate superior, this firebombing of Tokyo was a decentralised military operation which received subsequent popular approval. It was called ‘Operation ... <a title="Keith Rankin Analysis – Who, neither politician nor monarch, executed 100,000 civilians in a single night?" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2025/05/30/keith-rankin-analysis-who-neither-politician-nor-monarch-executed-100000-civilians-in-a-single-night/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Analysis – Who, neither politician nor monarch, executed 100,000 civilians in a single night?">Read more</a>
CoveragePost
May 27, 2025
Analysis by Keith Rankin. People of a certain age will be aware that the 1962 Cuba Missile Crisis was, for the world as a whole, the most dangerous moment of the Cold War. The 1962 ‘Battle of Cuba’ was a ‘cold battle’ in the same sense that the Cold War was a ‘cold war’. (Only ... <a title="Keith Rankin Analysis – Using Cuba 1962 to explain Trump’s brinkmanship" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2025/05/27/keith-rankin-analysis-using-cuba-1962-to-explain-trumps-brinkmanship/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Analysis – Using Cuba 1962 to explain Trump’s brinkmanship">Read more</a>
CoveragePost
May 22, 2025
Analysis by Keith Rankin. On 11 April 2025, AP noted that the two-year-old Civil War in Sudan is regarded by the United Nations as “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis”, though it is grossly underreported (see Wake up: The Worst Humanitarian Crisis on Earth is in Sudan, by Shirley Martey Hargis and Mike Sexton, Third Way ... <a title="Keith Rankin on the War in Sudan" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2025/05/22/keith-rankin-on-the-war-in-sudan/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin on the War in Sudan">Read more</a>
CoveragePost
May 22, 2025
Analysis by Keith Rankin. The central narrative of New Zealand’s Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis, is ‘There is only so much money to go around’. (For example, her interview on RNZ on 20 May, Willis on her second Budget, price of butter. The interview also covers, in the usual subservient way our media addresses these ... <a title="Keith Rankin Analysis – Zero-Sum Fiscal Narratives" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2025/05/22/keith-rankin-analysis-budget-2025-zero-sum-fiscal-narratives/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Analysis – Zero-Sum Fiscal Narratives">Read more</a>
CoveragePost
May 20, 2025
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Government-owned Kiwirail is supposed to be presiding over the New Zealand Main Trunk (Railway) Line, from Auckland to Invercargill. As such it runs a ferry service (The Interislander) between New Zealand’s North and South Islands. We are being told by Kiwirail (and see today’s report on Radio NZ) that the only ... <a title="Keith Rankin Analysis – The Aratere and the New Zealand Main Trunk Line" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2025/05/20/keith-rankin-analysis-the-aratere-and-the-new-zealand-main-trunk-line/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Analysis – The Aratere and the New Zealand Main Trunk Line">Read more</a>
CoveragePost
May 9, 2025
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Donald Trump is a mercantilist, as noted in Trump’s tariffs: Short-term damage or long-term ruin? ‘The Bottom Line’, Al Jazeera, 11 April 2025 (or here on YouTube). But the United States, in today’s world, is not a mercantilist country. Or at least not a successful mercantilist country, though it is inhabited ... <a title="Keith Rankin Analysis – Make Deficits Great Again: Maintaining a Pragmatic Balance" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2025/05/09/keith-rankin-analysis-make-deficits-great-again-maintaining-a-pragmatic-balance/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Analysis – Make Deficits Great Again: Maintaining a Pragmatic Balance">Read more</a>
CoveragePost
May 8, 2025
Analysis by Keith Rankin. The ‘see-saw’ chart above shows the accumulated ‘excess benefits’ that Aotearoa New Zealand, and a few other countries, have enjoyed from international trade over the last 40 years. These are benefits arising from ‘unbalanced trade’ which are in addition to the regular benefits – arising from efficient specialisation – of ‘balanced’ ... <a title="Keith Rankin Chart Analysis – International Trade over time: gifts with strings" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2025/05/08/keith-rankin-chart-analysis-international-trade-over-time-gifts-with-strings/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Chart Analysis – International Trade over time: gifts with strings">Read more</a>
CoveragePost
May 2, 2025
Analysis by Keith Rankin. On Anzac Day we remembered World War One and World War Two, or at least the peripheral little bits of those imperial wars that New Zealand was involved in. There was and is little context given to how New Zealand got involved with such far-away wars which need never have become ... <a title="Keith Rankin Analysis – The Great World War 1914-1945: Germany, Russia, Ukraine" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2025/05/02/keith-rankin-analysis-the-great-world-war-1914-1945-germany-russia-ukraine/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Analysis – The Great World War 1914-1945: Germany, Russia, Ukraine">Read more</a>
CoveragePost
April 17, 2025
Essay by Keith Rankin. Operation Gomorrah may have been the most cynical event of World War Two (WW2). Not only did the name fully convey the intent of the war crimes about to be committed, it, also represented the single biggest 24-hour murder toll for the European war that I have come across. On the ... <a title="Keith Rankin Essay – Barbecued Hamburgers and Churchill’s Bestie" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2025/04/17/keith-rankin-essay-barbecued-hamburgers-and-churchills-bestie/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Essay – Barbecued Hamburgers and Churchill’s Bestie">Read more</a>
