Shoot-out at the OK corral in Oz: “Prime Minister Scott Morrison has ordered Pauline Hanson’s One Nation to be put below Labor on Liberal how-to-vote cards. The One Nation leader has shot back describing him as a “fool” and predicting it would lead to a Shorten Labor government.” https://nz.news.yahoo.com/libs-preference-one-nation-below-labor-233054044–spt.html
“The minor party has been rocked by revelations Senator Hanson questioned whether the Port Arthur massacre was a government conspiracy during an undercover investigation by Qatari TV network Al Jazeera.”
Raises the question of just how big a portion of the electorate conspiracy theorists actually are, eh? Gallup established that around a third of the US electorate believed the moon landings were a govt hoax in a poll sometime in the seventies.
Sad that a man shoots himself because he has an illegal gun and fears he may go to prison again and he phones his ex wife and son from his ute and the police won’t let them answer him while he is saying goodbye to them. It’s heartbreaking stuff. He
likes carry imitation pistols and seemed to be a ‘loose cannon’.
The police will look to see if there was a connection between the shooter and this ex-army man from Afghanistan. They were alerted when his son put up a profile picture on his facebook page wearing some ‘play gear’ that looked real. The 54-year-old tried calling his son once and ex-partner twice, however officers told them not to answer the phone. His ex-partner briefly spoke to him, and he said goodbye, his son said.
Dubovskiy also called another friend, 21-year-old Jonathan Hinds.
“He just called me brother and said goodbye,” Hinds told Stuff. https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/111596809/exrussian-soldier-dies-of-suspected-suicide-after-police-standoff-in-christchurch
One day, in frustration, I posted this social media status:
“If your anti-racism work prioritizes the ‘growth’ and ‘enlightenment’ of white America over the safety, dignity and humanity of people of color – it’s not anti-racism work. It’s white supremacy.”
“When it comes to the threat of Islamist terrorism, no one doubts the role of radicalisation. The internet, hate preachers such as Anjem Choudary and Abu Hamza, and the western-armed, extremism-exporting state of Saudi Arabia: all play their part in radicalising the impressionable. When it comes to the far right, however, this consensus is absent. The reason for this is as obvious as it is chilling: the hate preachers, recruiting sergeants and useful idiots of rightwing extremism are located in the heart of the British, European and American establishments. They are members of the political and media elite.”
we really do need to have a conversation about this at some stage, no matter the hurt. Cause it ain’t going away anytime soon.
Are you saying that the leadership of the Arabian states and Iranian state
This isn’t just a Islamic thing. All of the people without faith always have to consider any organisation and the people following them who goes for “do as I say rather than fo as I do”.
What you see in the Arab states is, to me, little different from what I see in the Israeli state, or in the secular religious states like China.
And Christianity has lonv history of doing the same.
I often think exactly what you think about Iran of the US as well. That was a probably the state founded most deeply as a Christian state. With its weaponry, deep faith populations and wealth – it remains a threat.
Probably its saving grace was that it founded after the reformation. As a result of the massive wars and repressions that erupted from that, it built a certain amount of secularism directly into its laws.
With Christianity, it gets hard to look past its long history of religiously justified slavery and colonization even before you look at religious actions covert and overt against neighbours – especially variants of it’s own faith. It is after all why we don’t have the Byzantines any more.
Personally I’d prefer that most faiths and the people adhering to them would concentrate on their own behaviours rather than judging that of others. It’d be a whole lot more inspiring than what I usually see.
No what i am saying is that we have discussed the Arabs and their problems and their terrorists continuously since the longest of time.
what we don’t like to speak about is our intervention ‘ to protect our interests’ in their political life, their economies, their self determination and if all fails our intervention at the point of a gun, invading whom ever we consider ‘roque’. I.e. Venezuela, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, various countries in Africa, South America, the overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran leading to the regime now, the war on drugs, and so on and so on.
We in fact know how hate, racism, and terror is created, we do a lot of this creation anywhere on this planet and we then exploit these acts to our advantage.
Now what we don’t speak about is why some 28 year old, well to do, ordinary average bloke, with average looks n height, is so fucked up that he believes that the only thing good about him is his color of skin, his european desendency and his believe that white means might and that he would kill for that. Why this guy fears he is being ‘replaced’ by others. We don’t speak about people in our media that dehumanizes others on the grounds of their virtue – single mothers, income – low income workers, their social status – useless benefit bludgers, or nudge nudge wink wink – brown people. We don’t even speak about our own fears of the ‘others’. WE are nice and polite and don’t speak his name, and don’t read his words, and don’t discuss how this guy could live among us. Cause fact is his white skin is according him many privileges that any brown, muslim 28 year old bloke never had.
The stench of ‘white extremism’ has been (far) right under NZ noses for a while, but Islam/Muslims!!
Sabine’s excellent quote points to the need for a clear-headed, unbiased approach to terrorist threat analyses in NZ – hopefully the Royal Commission of Inquiry will reveal just how even-handed (or not) the NZ GCSB/SIS/NAB et al. have been.
“It is important that no stone is left unturned to get to the bottom of how this act of terrorism occurred and what, if any, opportunities we had to stop it” – Ardern
The process should not be so terribly difficult, if we start with violent fringe spaces like 8Chan and parts of the dark web I wot not of.
I’m not sure Facebook has deserved all of its condemnation, but some care in moderation there seems not especially hurtful.
The modus operandi of recruiters or creators of violent fanatics are reasonably well documented. I venture to suggest that web literate analysts like Wikileaks or Bellingcat could readily produce a risk assessment profile of web forums with some predictive validity.
Start with the Churches and the end times extremists baying for a body count so they can get themselves all raptured AF, I reckon.
The first time I remember hearing Islam equated with terrorism from the pulpit, I was a 17-year-old junior at Heritage Christian School in Indianapolis, where my mom was—still is, in fact—an elementary teacher. It was 1998, long before Islamophobia seized the Western mainstream. My family attended a small, nondenominational evangelical church in the suburb of Carmel, where my dad was the music pastor.
“A good Muslim,” our head pastor, Marcus Warner, intoned that Sunday morning, “should want to kill Christians and Jews.” He insisted that this was the only conclusion possible from a serious reading of the Quran. As a doubting young evangelical who would later become an agnostic, this extreme statement made me uncomfortable even then. Today, in the wake of the shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand, it should be considered every bit as offensive as the worst anti-Semitic tropes
Contemporary terrorists are as likely to be radicalized in chatrooms as churches or mosques, but condemning all chatrooms or churches or mosques would be neither reasonable nor effective.
For all that seems to have been true in the case of America’s worst contemporary terrorist, George Bush, reasonable numbers of shooters fit the profile of deculturized and disaffected persons. These are rarely members of thriving churches, which can provide a kind of social contact that is antithetical to murderous nihilism.
Somewhere along the way elite understanding of the role of churches seems to have been lost – they were once the social institutions that provided the kind of guidance or role modeling the likes of Jordan Peterson identify as being missing in contemporary society. Anthropologically speaking almost no society is without them in some form. Unable to cope with the pace of social change, their demise has created a void into which all kinds of lesser and less wholesome mysticisms and enthusiasms proliferate.
Somewhere along the way elite understanding of the role of churches seems to have been lost – they were once the social institutions that provided the kind of guidance or role modeling
A point I’ve gently made here many, many times over the years … at the same time it’s been open slather for atheists to mock, smear, attack and generally denigrate what we believe in. There are examples of this even on threads this past week.
And you know what? We accept this as part of the open discourse necessary in a tolerant, healthy society. And you’ll notice that long term regulars here like Ad and myself who have made it clear we do have a religious faith, also go about our participation here without openly pushing or promoting it onto others.
What does have to be at least a little irksome is how selective this has become; suddenly Islam is being protected by all the woke radical lefties, a favour they never extended to Christianity (or any number of other faiths.)
It was 1998, long before Islamophobia seized the Western mainstream.
It seems so to them because they were young at the time. Those of us who were adults at the time of the Rushdie fatwa have been familiar with Islam as a source of terrorism since the late 1980s. And I presume I’m only putting that date on it because I was young at the time myself, and it goes back further.
Police in France answer to:
Policing is centralized at the national level.[1] Recently, legislation has allowed local governments to hire their own police officers which are called the “police municipale”.[1]
There are two national police forces called “Police nationale” and “Gendarmerie nationale”. The Prefecture of Police of Paris provides policing services directly to Paris as a subdivision of France’s Ministry of the Interior. Within these national forces only certain designated police officers have the power to conduct criminal investigations which are supervised by investigative magistrates.
National civilian police Force – major cities and large urban areas – under the Ministry of the Interior. Police Nationale.
Gendarmerie is part of the French armed forces and responsible for smaller towns and rural areas and important national locations. Its civil duties are under the
Ministry of the Interior and the rest are under the Ministry of Defence. Gendarmerie Nationale.
Local police of towns and cities, are under the oversight of Mayors. They can notice breaches but cannot investigate. There are also local police in the rural zones. Police municipale. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_enforcement_in_France
Police in NZ answer to: The current Minister of Police is Stuart Nash. While the New Zealand Police is a government department with a minister responsible for it, the Commissioner and sworn members swear allegiance directly to the Sovereign and, by convention, have constabulary independence from the government of the day.
If members of the police swear allegiance to the Crown only, and by convention?
have constabulary independence from the government of the day, I think it is time
to break that convention. There needs to be an Ombudsman type authority that watches and to whom they are beholden, who then reports to Parliament as a whole not just the government of the day. The Police Minister would also report to the ‘Ombudsman’ but be involved on a day-to-day basis and they would brief him and answer his/her questions.
Police as a business? There seems a whiff of that: Praise or complain about Police…
We will pass your comments on to the employee and their supervisor. … Write to or visit the officer in charge of any police station Find your nearest police station. https://www.police.govt.nz/contact-us/praise-and-complain
Would it be better to have the decisions made about cases made by independent experienced magistrates used to working in the criminal and fraud field?
Well, for one thing, that is such a wild conspiracy theory that few believe it, so why bother?
For another thing, blame game has not seen as appropriate to date..
And your strange concern makes me wonder if you are pushing a political end – branding any criticism at all of Israeli Govt. policy as anti-Semitism?
I personally do not believe Mossad were involved in this.
What Was the Prime Minister Reading in the Runup to Election Year?It’s the summer break. Everyone settles down with family, books, the sun and some fishing. But the Prime Minister has a pile of briefing papers prepared just before Christmas, which have to be worked through. I haven’t seen them. ...
In case you hadn't noticed, FYI, the public OIA request site, has been used to conduct a significant excavation into New Zealand's intelligence agencies, with requests made for assorted policies and procedures. Yesterday in response to one of these requests the GCSB released its policy on New Zealand Purpose and ...
Farming leaders are watching closely whether Damien O’Connor keeps the key portfolios of Agriculture and Trade when Prime Minister Chris Hipkins restructures his Cabinet. O’Connor has been one of the few ministers during Labour’s term in office who has won broad support for what he has done ...
South Islands farmers are whining about another drought, the third in three years. If only we knew what was causing this! If only someone had warned them that they faced a drying climate! But we do know what is causing it: climate change. And they have been warned, repeatedly, for ...
Ok, there’s good news and bad news in this week’s inflation figures, but bad > good. Our inflation rate held steady but hey, at a level below the inflation rate in Australia. The main reason for the so/so result here? A fall in petrol prices of 7.2% offset the really ...
Dr Bryce Edwards writes: Since her shock resignation announcement, Jacinda Ardern has been at pains to point out that she isn’t leaving because of the toxicity directed at her on social media and elsewhere, rebutting journalists who suggested misogyny and hate may have driven her from office. Yet ...
Since her shock resignation announcement, Jacinda Ardern has been at pains to point out that she isn’t leaving because of the toxicity directed at her on social media and elsewhere, rebutting journalists who suggested misogyny and hate may have driven her from office. Yet there have been dozens of columns ...
The Clinical Magus: Of particular relevance to New Zealanders struggling to come to terms with the sudden departure of their prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, is Jung’s concept of the anima. Much more than what others have called the feminine principle, the anima is what the human male has made out ...
The Select Committee, considering the proposed RNZ-TVNZ merger, has come back with a report conceding many of the criticisms that were made of the original legislation. In what is one of the most comprehensive demolitions of a Bill submitted to a Select Committee, the Economic Development, Science and Innovation ...
Such are the 2020s, the age when no-one, it seems, actually respects the basic underpinnings of democracy. Even in New Zealand. This week, I stumbled across a pair of lengthy and genuinely serious articles, that basically argue that Something is Rotten in the state of New Zealand democracy. One ...
Buzz from the Beehive Hurrah. Today we found something fresh on the Beehive website, Beehive.govt.nz, which claims to be the best place to find Government initiatives, policies and Ministerial information. It wasn’t from Finance Minister Grant Robertson, whose reaction to the latest inflation figures would have been appreciated. So, too, ...
Smiling And Waiving A Golden Opportunity: Chris Hipkins knew that the day at Ratana would be Jacinda’s day – her final opportunity to bask in the unalloyed love and support of her followers. He simply could not afford to be seen to overshadow this last chance for his former boss ...
Extremism Consumes Itself: The plot of “Act of Oblivion” concerns the relentless pursuit of the “regicides” Edward Whalley and William Goffe – two of the fifty-nine signatories to King Charles I’s death warrant. As with his many other works of historical fiction, Robert Harris’s novel brings to life a period ...
To challenge the Government’s promotion of co-governance, to share power between Maori and public authorities and agencies, is to invite accusations of racism. An example: this article by Martyn Bradbury on The Daily Blog headed Luxon’s race baiting hypocrisy at Ratana. The article was triggered by National leader Christopher Luxon, ...
A very informative video discussion: Are we getting the whole story about Ukraine? | Robert Wright & Ivan Katchanovski Getting objective information on the situation in Ukraine and the cause of this current war is not easy. There is the current censorship and blatant mainstream media bias – which ...
Yesterday the Herald ran an op-ed from Mayor Wayne Brown titled “The case for light rail is lighter than ever” and a few things stood out. However, it’s getting more and more tricky to make a strong economic case for spending up to $29 billion on a single route of ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Samantha Harrington Imagine it’s a cold February night and your furnace breaks. You want to replace it with an electric heat pump because you’ve heard that tax credits will help pay for the switch. And you know that heat pumps can reduce ...
In 2005, then-National Party leader based his entire election campaign on racism, with his infamous racist Orewa speech and racist iwi/kiwi billboards. Now, Christopher Luxon seems to want to do it all again: Fresh off using his platform at this week's Rātana celebrations to criticise the government's approach to ...
Inflation is showing little sign of slowing down, posing a problem for freshly minted PM Chris Hipkins. According to that old campaigner Richard Prebble, Hipkins should call a snap election. If he waits till October, he risks being swept away. The dilemma for the new leader is that fighting an election ...
Buzz from the Beehive A great deal has happened since January 19. Among other things, a new Prime Minister and deputy have been sworn in and our leaders (past, present and aspiring) have delivered speeches at Ratana. Newshub reported that politicians of all stripes had descended upon Rātana for the ...
It’s a big day for New Zealand; our 41st Prime Minister has taken office and the new, “Chippy” era of politics is underway. Or, on the other hand, the Labour Party continues to govern with an overall majority and much the same leadership team in place. Life goes on and ...
New Zealand has another Prime Minister who does not have a basic grasp of the three articles of the Treaty of Waitangi. THOMAS CRANMER writes: It is simply astonishing that New Zealand’s next Prime Minister, Chris Hipkins, is unable to give even a brief explanation of the three articles ...
A statue of a semi-naked Nick Smith puts the misogyny debate into perspective. GRAHAM ADAMS writes … In the wake of Ardern’s abrupt resignation, the mainstream media are determined to convince us she was hounded from office mainly because she is a woman and had to fall on her sword ...
A Different Kind Of Vibe: In the days and weeks ahead, as the Hipkins ministry takes shape, the only question that matters is whether New Zealand’s new prime minister possesses both the wisdom and the courage to correct his party’s currently suicidal political course. If Chris “Chippy” Hipkins is ...
An editorial in the NZ Herald last week, titled “Nimbyism goes bananas as housing intensifies“, introduced Herald readers to a couple of acronyms that go along with the now-familiar NIMBY (Not in My Back Yard): “bananas” (build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone) “cave” dwellers (citizens against virtually everything). The editorial ...
Back in the dark autumn of 2020, when the prospect of Covid was freaking the country out, Finance Minister Grant Robertson set himself and Treasury a series of questions about what a post-Covid economy might look like. Those were fearful days, and the questions in part reflected a series ...
Buzz from the Beehive Yet another day has passed without Ministers of the Crown posting something to show they are still working for us on the Beehive website. Nothing new has been posted since January 17. Perhaps the ministers are all engaged in the bemusing annual excursion ...
Incoming Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has already indicated he intends making the tax system “fairer”. That points to the route a government facing an election could take to tilt the odds towards winning in its favour, given Labour’s support in the last months of the Ardern era had been ...
NewsHub has a poll on the cost-of-living crisis, which has an interesting finding: the vast majority of kiwis prefer wage rises to tax cuts: When asked whether income has kept up with the cost of living, 54.8 percent of people surveyed said no and according to 58.6 percent of ...
Labour has begun 2023 with the centre-left bloc behind in the polls and losing ground. That being so, did his colleagues choose Chris Hipkins as the replacement for Jacinda Ardern because they think he has a realistic shot at leading them to victory this year, or because he‘s the best ...
Two Flags, Two Masters? Just as it required a full-scale military effort to destroy the first attempt at Māori self-government in the 1850s and 60s (an effort that divided Maoridom itself into supporters and opponents of the Crown) any second attempt to establish tino rangatiratanga, based on the confiscatory policies ...
The first of Kiwirail’s big network shutdowns to fix the foundations on our tracks is now well underway with the Southern Line closed between Otahuhu and Newmarket. This is following on from the network wide Christmas/New Year shutdown, during which Kiwirail say that nearly 1,300 people working across 69 different ...
This is a re-post from the Citizens' Climate Lobby blogIn last year’s passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Congress included about $20 billion earmarked for natural climate solutions. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is responsible for deciding how those funds should be allocated to meet the climate ...
You’ve really got to wonder at the introspection, or lack thereof, from much of the mainstream media post Jacinda Ardern stepping down. Some so-called journalists haven’t even taken a breath before once again putting the boot in, which clearly shows their inherent bias and lack of any misgivings about fueling ...
Over the weekend I was interviewed by a media outlet about the threats that Jacinda Ardern and her family have received while she has been PM and what can be expected now that she has resigned. I noted that the level of threat she has been exposed to is unprecedented ...
Dr Bryce Edwards writes: The days of the Labour Government being associated with middle class social liberalism look to be numbered. Soon-to-be Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and Deputy Prime Minister Carmel Sepuloni are heralding a major shift in emphasis away from the constituencies and ideologies of liberal Grey ...
A Different Kind Of Vibe: In the days and weeks ahead, as the Hipkins ministry takes shape, the only question that matters is whether New Zealand’s new prime minister possesses both the wisdom and the courage to correct his party’s currently suicidal political course. If Chris “Chippy” Hipkins is able to steer ...
The days of the Labour Government being associated with middle class social liberalism look to be numbered. Soon-to-be Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and Deputy Prime Minister Carmel Sepuloni are heralding a major shift in emphasis away from the constituencies and ideologies of liberal Grey Lynn and Wellington Central towards the ...
Following the surprise resignation of Jacinda Ardern last week, her replacement, Chis Hipkins, has said: Over the coming week, Cabinet will be making decisions on reining in some programs and projects that aren’t essential right now That messaging is similar to what Jacinda Ardern said late last year and as ...
Much of what will mark the early days of Chris Hipkins’ Prime Ministership would have happened anyway. By December, the Prime Minister and Finance Minister were making it clear the summer break and early days of this year were going to be spent on a reset of government policy. ...
Going to try to get into the blogging thing again (ha!) what with an election coming up and all that. So today I thought I'd start small and simple, by merely tackling the world's (second) richest man.I'm no fan of Elon Musk. You don't want to know why, but I'll ...
A chronological listing of news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Jan 15, 2023 thru Sat, Jan 21, 2023. Story of the Week State of the climate: How the world warmed in 2022With a new year underway, most of the climate data for ...
Well, that was a disappointment. As of today, the New Zealand Labour Caucus opted for Chris Hipkins as our new Prime Minister, and I cannot help but let loose a cynical cackle. ...
Get ready for a major political reset once Chris Hipkins is sworn in as Prime Minister this week. Labour’s new leader is likely to push the Government to the right economically, and do his best to jettison the damaging perceptions that Labour has become “too woke” on social issues. Overall, ...
Things have gone sideways… and it’s only the third week of January? It was political earthquake time. For some the Prime Minister made a truly significant announcement. For others – did you have this on your bingo card? – a body double did so (sit tight, you’ll understand later, ...
Buzz from the Beehive Because our hard-working Ministers of the Crown are engaged in Labour Party caucus stuff in Napier, no doubt jockeying to ensure they keep their jobs or get a better one, Point of Order was not surprised to find no fresh news on the Beehive website this ...
By the end of 2019, Jacinda Ardern was a political superstar heading towards an election defeat. She was an icon, internationally beloved, on track to be an ex-prime minister before the age of forty. It was the year of the Christchurch terror attack when Ardern’s response to the atrocity saw ...
People complain about their jobs being meaningless. Does it matter?David Graeber, author of Bullshit Jobs: The Rise of Pointless Work and What We Can Do About It, would have smiled at Elon Musk’s sacking half the Twitter workforce. Musk seems to be confirming the main thesis of the book, that ...
Dr Bryce Edwards writes: Should New Zealand have a snap election? That’s one of the questions arising out of the chaos of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s shock resignation. There’s an increased realisation that everything has changed, and the old plans and assumptions for election year have suddenly evaporated. ...
Should New Zealand have a snap election? That’s one of the questions arising out of the chaos of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s shock resignation. There’s an increased realisation that everything has changed, and the old plans and assumptions for election year have suddenly evaporated. So, although Ardern has named an ...
I warned about the trap of virtue signaling in my article Virtue signaling over Ukraine. This video is still relevant – but have we moved on since then? The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was universally condemned at the time. Or was it? Certainly, the political atmosphere ...
Earlier this week Point of Order carried a post by Geoffrey Miller on how Japan under a new security blueprint is doubling its defence spending. The plans see Japan buying up advanced weaponry – including long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles from the US – and spending more on ...
Anyone else suffering back-to-work-blues? We’re battling, but still upright. Haere tonu! Today’s cover image is of sunset over Tirohanga Whānui Bridge, sourced from Twitter. The week in Greater Auckland On Monday, Jolisa pondered the fate of AT’s ‘Statements of Imagination’. Tuesday’s post was a guest post by Grady ...
Open access notables Bad news delivered by an all-star cast of familiar researchers: Another Year of Record Heat for the Oceans. From the abstract: In 2022, the world’s oceans, as given by OHC, were again the hottest in the historical record and exceeded the previous 2021 record maximum. According to IAP/CAS data, ...
The resignation of Jacinda Ardern has already made more global headlines than you might expect for that of the PM of a small commonwealth nation like say Sierra Leone (population 6.5 million) or Singapore (population 5.5 million). But international observers might not be too surprised by Ardern’s announcement that ...
One of my earliest political memories is the resignation of Prime Minister David Lange in August 1989. I remember this because of a brown felt-tipped pen drawing I did of the Beehive, the building that houses the Executive of the New Zealand Government. More than thirty years later, we ...
Buzz from the Beehive Hard on the heels of our Buzz from the Beehive earlier today, the PM has made two announcements – the 2023 general election will be held on Saturday 14 October and she will not be campaigning to win a third term as Prime Minister. She will ...
Jacinda Ardern had an outsized impact on New Zealand’s international relations. While all Prime Ministers travel internationally, Ardern’s calendar was fuller than most. Ardern’s first major foreign trip came within weeks of her election in 2017, to the APEC summit in Vietnam. The meeting gave Ardern her first in-person encounter ...
She gave it her all. No New Zealand Prime Minister has ever dominated the political scene at home as she has done, or has established an international profile to match hers. No New Zealand Prime Minister has had to confront such a sequence of domestic and international catastrophes – from ...
Jacinda Ardern's shock resignation announcement today has left a lot of us with a lot of complicated feelings. In my case, while I've been highly critical of Ardern's government, I'm still sorry to see her go. We've had far too many terrible things happen during her term as Prime Minister ...
The decision by Jacinda Ardern to end her term as Prime Minister on February 7 has come as a stunning surprise. It turns the task of a centre-left government winning re-election this year from difficult to nigh on impossible. No-one else among the Labour caucus has Ardern’s ability to explain ...
Jacinda Ardern’s first press conference as Labour leader in August 2017 was a defining moment in the past decade of New Zealand politics. A young woman (by the standards of politics) who had long been tipped for higher office, she had underperformed as a minister and Andrew Little’s noble resignation ...
An Astonishing Rapport: Jacinda Ardern's "Politics of Kindness" raised so many progressive possibilities. Her own tragedy, and New Zealand's, is that so few of them were realised.MUCH WILL BE WRITTEN in the coming days about "The Ardern Years", some of it sympathetic and insightful, most of it spiteful and wrong.For ...
The tools exist to help families with surging costs – and as costs continue to rise it is more urgent than ever that we use them, the Green Party says. ...
Members of Parliament for the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand have today written to Iran’s Grand Ayatollah Khamenei to condemn the ongoing violence and killing of women’s rights and democracy protesters, and to call on him to intervene immediately. ...
Ka papā te whatitiri, Hikohiko ana te uira, wāhi rua mai ana rā runga mai o Huruiki maunga Kua hinga te māreikura o te Nota, a Titewhai Harawira Nā reira, e te kahurangi, takoto, e moe Ka mōwai koa a Whakapara, kua uhia te Tai Tokerau e te kapua pōuri ...
Carmel Sepuloni, Minister for Social Development and Employment, has activated Enhanced Taskforce Green (ETFG) in response to flooding and damaged caused by Cyclone Hale in the Tairāwhiti region. Up to $500,000 will be made available to employ job seekers to support the clean-up. We are still investigating whether other parts ...
The 2023 General Election will be held on Saturday 14 October 2023, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced today. “Announcing the election date early in the year provides New Zealanders with certainty and has become the practice of this Government and the previous one, and I believe is best practice,” Jacinda ...
Jacinda Ardern has announced she will step down as Prime Minister and Leader of the Labour Party. Her resignation will take effect on the appointment of a new Prime Minister. A caucus vote to elect a new Party Leader will occur in 3 days’ time on Sunday the 22nd of ...
The Government is maintaining its strong trade focus in 2023 with Trade and Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor visiting Europe this week to discuss the role of agricultural trade in climate change and food security, WTO reform and New Zealand agricultural innovation. Damien O’Connor will travel tomorrow to Switzerland to attend the ...
The Government has extended its medium-scale classification of Cyclone Hale to the Wairarapa after assessing storm damage to the eastern coastline of the region. “We’re making up to $80,000 available to the East Coast Rural Support Trust to help farmers and growers recover from the significant damage in the region,” ...
The Government is making an initial contribution of $150,000 to the Mayoral Relief Fund to help communities in Tairāwhiti following ex-Tropical Cyclone Hale, Minister for Emergency Management Kieran McAnulty announced. “While Cyclone Hale has caused widespread heavy rain, flooding and high winds across many parts of the North Island, Tairāwhiti ...
Rural Communities Minister Damien O’Connor has classified this week’s Cyclone Hale that caused significant flood damage across the Tairāwhiti/Gisborne District as a medium-scale adverse event, unlocking Government support for farmers and growers. “We’re making up to $100,000 available to help coordinate efforts as farmers and growers recover from the heavy ...
A vaccine for people at risk of mpox (Monkeypox) will be available if prescribed by a medical practitioner to people who meet eligibility criteria from Monday 16 January, says Associate Minister of Health Dr Ayesha Verrall. 5,000 vials of the vaccine have been obtained, enough for up to 20,000 ...
Opinion - Election year has begun with a bang, and already the punditry and speculation are ramping up, but Grant Duncan warns not to treat polls as gospel. ...
New Zealand’s new prime minister, Chris Hipkins, is formally facing down an emergency just a few days after being sworn in, summoning the National Crisis Management Centre to the Beehive. The Beehive Bunker is being stood up to help with coordination of the emergency response in Auckland. I’ve asked ...
Analysis - Jacinda Ardern is one of New Zealand's most historically significant leaders. But she did not achieve the grand vision for Aotearoa her outsized rhetoric promised. ...
Brits abroad can be an asset to Aotearoa - but only if we make an effort to engage with te ao Māori, writes Scottish expat Fran Barclay Earlier this week, the UK High Commissioner signalled a promising intention to address the barriers facing young Māori and Pasifika who aspire to ...
"They want the Māoris out": provincial life in NZShe hadn’t learned to shut her mouth. Howard was tired of Councillor Kemp harping on and on and on. He pushed himself deeper into the boardroom chair and leaned back as far as he could force it. This woman had ranted ...
Positive affirmation quotes often aren’t helpful for tāngata whai ora. But taking the piss out of them can be. Early in January, on the first day of what would be a week of staying in bed with the curtains pulled, I put a disappointingaffirmations Instagram post up on my stories. ...
Ellen Rykers visits Mahakirau Forest Estate, ‘a crown jewel in the Coromandel Range’, where pest control is serious business.This is an excerpt from our weekly environment newsletter Future Proof – sign up here. The Mahakirau Forest Estate is not your average subdivision. Enter through its tall ...
As Auckland tackles severe floods and the city’s airport emerges from a deluge on both the runway and in terminals, Air New Zealand has confirmed that no flights will leave or arrive before noon on Saturday at the earliest. In a statement, the airline said anyone booked for a flight ...
RNZ News Mayor Wayne Brown has shut down criticism that he was too slow in declaring a state of emergency after severe flooding in Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city. In a media stand-up late on Friday evening, Brown said he was following advice from experts and as soon as they ...
The Prime Minister has gone down to the Beehive bunker to help coordinate the emergency response, as the Insurance Council warns some Aucklanders whose homes and business are flooded face very hard times ahead. Jonathan Milne reports.Comment: Standing by the south-western motorway, I watched in dismay as hundreds of cars ...
A state of emergency has been declared in Auckland as severe weather causes major flooding across much of the city. It’s expected the rain will continue into the morning. This post will be updated as more information is shared.What does a state of emergency mean? A state of emergency ...
Auckland’s mayor Wayne Brown said he declared an emergency in Auckland as soon as he possibly could – and he made the decision without listening to the “clamour” of the public. There has been some criticism of the mayor for his relative silence today throughout the deadly flooding that’s hit ...
Welcome to a special late night edition of The Spinoff’s live updates as Auckland enters a state of emergency. Stewart Sowman-Lund is on deck, with help from our news team.The top linesAuckland is in a state of emergency. It will remain in place for seven ...
Prime minister Chris Hipkins is pleased the call was made to declare a state of emergency in Auckland. All government agencies were working “flat out” to help in what was an “extraordinary set of circumstances”, Hipkins said in a tweet. “The emergency response is underway and the government is ready ...
Auckland’s mayor Wayne Brown has released a statement following the decision to declare a state of emergency in Auckland. Brown has faced criticism this evening for his relative silence throughout today’s major flooding, with the first public pronouncement of the state of emergency coming from his deputy. Brown said the ...
Christopher Luxon has criticised the time it took for the state of emergency in Auckland to be declared. The National Party leader is currently in Southland, but told Today FM he intends to get back to Auckland as soon as possible. Earlier in the night, Luxon sent a tweet “urging” ...
Here is, verbatim, that latest information we have from Civil Defence on tonight’s state of emergency in Auckland: Auckland Emergency Management has opened a Civil Defence Centre to assist those that have been displaced or need assistance following today’s severe weather. The centre is open now and is based at ...
Severe flooding has ravaged Auckland today but the mayor of the city is barely visible. As I write, the airport has flooded, check-in areas looking like a public pool. Motorways are overflowing and cars have been seen floating down streets like a river. A person has died in floodwaters in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Treasurer Jim Chalmers has laid out an economic blueprint for pursuing “values-based capitalism”, involving public-private co-investment and collaboration and the renovation of key economic institutions and markets. In a 6000-word essay in The Monthly ...
This is live coverage of the developing situation in Auckland. We will continue to update this with photos and information as it comes to hand. After a day of torrential rain, and new reports of at least one death in the flood water, a state of emergency has been declared ...
Fans are describing Auckland Transport's plans to help them get to and from Elton John's concerts in the supercity this weekend as a fiasco with tonight's concert now cancelled due to the weather. Two concerts were due at Mt Smart Stadium before tonight's concert was called off in the face ...
A state of emergency has been declared in Auckland due to severe flooding that has caused people to evacuate their homes. It was officially declared at 9.54pm. Meanwhile, Auckland Airport has closed its international terminal check-in due to flooding inside the building. The airport says it is sincerely sorry to ...
RNZ News Residents in flood-prone areas of West Auckland are being asked to prepare to evacuate as bad weather causes power cuts and car crashes across Tāmaki Makaurau, with a severe thunderstorm watch in place for the north of Aotearoa New Zealand. Auckland Emergency Management said the severe weather across ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Ward, Postdoctoral research fellow, The University of Queensland Five years ago, bulldozers with chains cleared forests and woodlands almost triple the size of the Australian Capital Territory in a single year. Brazil? Indonesia? No – much closer: Queensland. In 2018-19, ...
Auckland Transport has apologised for confusing messaging that suggested attendees of tonight’s Elton John concert should drive. In a post on Facebook last night, AT said “driving to the concert is recommended” – a suggestion that prompted backlash due to the lack of parking options near the stadium. The announcement ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven Tingay, John Curtin Distinguished Professor (Radio Astronomy), Curtin University Asteroid 20223 BU’s path in red, with green showing the orbit of geosynchronous satellites.NASA/JPL-Caltech There are hundreds of millions of asteroids in our Solar System, which means new asteroids are discovered ...
In his memoir Spare, Prince Harry revealed he attended the future King and Queen of England’s wedding with a frostbitten penis. A veteran of Antarctic expeditions says it’s not an issue that crops up often, if at all.Now that the avalanche of coverage about the Duke of Sussex’s memoir ...
A new poem by Wellington poet and publisher Ash Davida Jane. objects in the mirror are closer than they appear if a dog digs in the right spot and unearths a rib what do I care if a woman grows from that bone take her in and tend to her ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (Grove Press, $25) Everyone’s chowing down on fiction ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan Hazel, Associate Professor, School of Animal and Veterinary Science, University of Adelaide schankz/Shutterstock Have you ever worried if the play between your cats was getting too rough? A new study published in Scientific Reports has investigated play and fighting ...
More water than anything else, the cucumber is the perfect counter to intense and fiery flavours. Cucumber is without a doubt the most refreshing vegetable*, the antidote to hot summer days. At 95% water, a cucumber is basically an edible, crunchy, waste-free water bottle. Beside water, the cucumber has almost ...
REVIEW:By Rowan Callick Radio Australia was conceived at the beginning of the Second World War out of Canberra’s desire to counter Japanese propaganda in the Pacific. More than 70 years later its rebirth is being driven by a similarly urgent need to counter propaganda, this time from China. Set ...
The yellow brick road to Mt Smart stadium looks to be packed this weekend as thousands travel to dual Elton John concerts In the words of pop royal Elton John, “I think it’s going to be a long, long time” - in this case for the 40,000 odd concert-goers driving ...
The decision by Sport Northland to deny 'Stop Co-Governance', a community group, use of their Whangarei venue to hold a public meeting is illegal and defies the rights given to all Kiwis to voice their political opinions. This case, yet again, illustrates ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rolf Gerritsen, Professorial Research Fellow, Northern Institute, Charles Darwin University The supposed dimensions of the “crisis” in Alice Springs have been exhaustively portrayed in the media, both nationally and in the Northern Territory. The stories abound: shopfront windows repeatedly broken, groups of ...
Children’s Commissioner, Judge Frances Eivers: "Myself and previous Commissioners have been clear that the use of motels at all is deplorable, and a symptom of a system that is failing children. "Concerns around the practice have been raised repeatedly ...
Everything you need to know to get through the chaotic commute to to the Elton John concert in Tāmaki Mākaurau this weekend. Fans heading to Elton John’s concerts at Mt Smart Stadium this weekend have been advised to drive or walk thereby Auckland Transport (AT). In a Facebook post ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tamara Borovica, Research assistant and early career researcher, Critical Mental Health research group, RMIT University Shutterstock If your new year’s resolutions include getting healthier, exercising more and lifting your mood, dance might be for you. By dance, we don’t ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julie Andrews, Professor and Academic Director (Indigenous Research), La Trobe University ShutterstockAboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names and images of deceased people. Many people do not know about the early activism undertaken ...
Finance minister Grant Robertson has opted to go list-only for the upcoming election, meaning he will not seek to be re-elected as MP for Wellington Central. It opens up the door for a swift exit from politics should Labour lose the election; without an electorate, no byelection would be triggered ...
Tory Whanau told The Spinoff’s When The Facts Change podcast that National’s transport spokesperson would push Wellington ‘backwards’ if he becomes transport minister.Wellington’s left-leaning mayor is worried her plans for the city could be scuppered by a new National-led government – and specifically by the party’s most likely candidate ...
Thousands of people are expected to flock to Auckland’s Western Springs on Monday for the triumphant return of the Laneway Festival. But with severe weather warnings in place, is it going to be reduced to a Splendour in the Grass-style “hellscape”? According to the organisers, no. In an email sent ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert G. Patman, Professor of International Relations, University of Otago A German Leopard 2 heavy battle tank of the type destined for Ukraine.Getty Images The recent decision by Olaf Scholz’s German government to supply Ukraine with Leopard 2 tanks – after ...
The Hauraki Gulf Alliance, a group of diverse organisations representing more than 1 million people, has rubbished proposals to continue trawling and dredging in New Zealand’s first marine park, the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park. The Hauraki Gulf Fisheries ...
Te Kāhui Tika Tangata Human Rights Commission has shared experiences of children and young people in emergency housing ahead of New Zealand’s review under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in Geneva this week. “The government ...
It’s felt like a long time between drinks, but everyone’s favourite/least favourite family are almost back on our screens. HBO today released a trailer for the upcoming fourth season of Succession and announced a March release date. Check out the trailer – which doesn’t give away too much, but successfully ...
Want to avoid being a bad visitor at the beach this summer? Just follow these simple steps.My partner’s whānau has had a bach in Whangaparāoa, 45 minutes north of Auckland, since the 1950s. They’ve been around long enough to become a part of the bay’s furniture. They know the ...
A slightly underrated track from Elton John gained real life resonance last night. Fans heading to his concerts at Mount Smart Stadium in Auckland this weekend have been advised to drive or walk there by Auckland Transport as work on the rail network upgrade has closed the Penrose train station. One of ...
Morning Report - RNZ political editor Jane Patterson and deputy political editor Craig McCulloch run the ruler over the transition to Prime Minister Chris Hipkins, and the co-governance debate. ...
Activists from the Coalition for the Protection of Racehorses (CPR) will gather right outside the main entrance of the Wellington Cup with props that symbolise the blood that is shed on the racetrack. ...
Waking up this morning was like a return to my summer break, where I was lulled out of my sleep by the sound of torrential rain. The North Island is in for a wet, windy and generally just bleak weekend. That’s particularly bad news for those of us at the ...
A lot of it is from Auckland as business leaders and a local MP make their requests. Further south, leading academics want plans for a new airport scratched, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign ...
Parts of the nation’s capital have turned into a wasteland of red stickers, and ‘for lease’ signs. WellingtonNZ CEO John Allen has been given the challenge of breathing new life into the city’s economy, businesses, and image. He talks to Bernard about housing and hotel shortages, sewerage on the streets, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sam Baron, Associate Professor, Philosophy of Science, Australian Catholic University Counterfactuals are claims about what would happen, were something to occur in a different way. For instance, we can ask what the world would be like had the internet never been developed. ...
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Liz Giuffre, Senior Lecturer in Communication, University of Technology Sydney Ian Alexander “Molly” Meldrum is 80 on January 29 2023. The Australian music industry would not be where it is today without his work as a talent scout, DJ, record producer, ...
The Bill that will create a new public media entity has been improved by the select committee that studied it, but it remains unfit for purpose. Kio Tū: The Centre for Informed Futures, a think tank at the University of Auckland, had submitted that ...
This morning, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child called out the failure of the New Zealand Government to raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility. Referring to the current minimum age of criminal responsibility, the Committee stated ...
Never mind the chief executives and TV cameras in the CBD – it was a small business grouping in west Auckland that had the new Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister as a captive audience, to talk through the challenges for struggling employers. Jonathan Milne reports.Mark Hauser and his ...
Eighty years after Jewish youths fought for their lives on the streets of the Warsaw Ghetto, the family of an Auckland Holocaust survivor is calling on New Zealanders to reject hatred and treat everyone with dignity, no matter their background. Alicja ...
Our box-fresh prime minister sat down Auckland’s CEO set for his first public audience yesterday. Duncan Greive was there.“I did say we wanted to get closer to business,” quipped our very new prime minister, Chris Hipkins. He sat alongside former National leader, now Auckland Business Chamber CE Simon Bridges, ...
In the northern part of Aotearoa, mangroves occupy mudflats and river mouths. They’re not always loved – but given our rising sea level, maybe they should be. It took a long time for Mere Kepa (Ngati Raka, Ngati Ira) to learn to love the manawa. She grew up around their ...
Kiwis are still buying oodles of new gas guzzlers, David Williams writesOpinion: I like a positive news story, especially when it comes to the environment – I really do. But it’s hard to reconcile progress on the Government’s clean car discount scheme with the urgency we need to reduce ...
Being an international hockey player and a business owner is busy work for Brooke Roberts, but it's taught her the values of self-belief and looking after yourself. And they're values that the Black Sticks have brought into a partnership with Women's Refuge this weekend. When Brooke Roberts was put in ...
Is Theresa May the only person at the Brexit poker table that realises that Britain does not hold all the aces?
Oh…
Brief story on Portugal and how the affects of changing their approach to drugs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuaBWnn-0Bg
Shoot-out at the OK corral in Oz: “Prime Minister Scott Morrison has ordered Pauline Hanson’s One Nation to be put below Labor on Liberal how-to-vote cards. The One Nation leader has shot back describing him as a “fool” and predicting it would lead to a Shorten Labor government.” https://nz.news.yahoo.com/libs-preference-one-nation-below-labor-233054044–spt.html
“The minor party has been rocked by revelations Senator Hanson questioned whether the Port Arthur massacre was a government conspiracy during an undercover investigation by Qatari TV network Al Jazeera.”
Raises the question of just how big a portion of the electorate conspiracy theorists actually are, eh? Gallup established that around a third of the US electorate believed the moon landings were a govt hoax in a poll sometime in the seventies.
And this: https://www.news.com.au/national/politics/one-nation-sought-millions-of-dollars-from-americas-largest-gun-lobby/news-story/81aa8f50df99c15f5f6fb16a7fdc0b1c
pauline, your voice is shaking……
Tracey Ullman as nanny.
Lol
Sad that a man shoots himself because he has an illegal gun and fears he may go to prison again and he phones his ex wife and son from his ute and the police won’t let them answer him while he is saying goodbye to them. It’s heartbreaking stuff. He
likes carry imitation pistols and seemed to be a ‘loose cannon’.
The police will look to see if there was a connection between the shooter and this ex-army man from Afghanistan. They were alerted when his son put up a profile picture on his facebook page wearing some ‘play gear’ that looked real.
The 54-year-old tried calling his son once and ex-partner twice, however officers told them not to answer the phone. His ex-partner briefly spoke to him, and he said goodbye, his son said.
Dubovskiy also called another friend, 21-year-old Jonathan Hinds.
“He just called me brother and said goodbye,” Hinds told Stuff.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/111596809/exrussian-soldier-dies-of-suspected-suicide-after-police-standoff-in-christchurch
Recent:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/111622101/russian-man-found-dead-after-christchurch-police-standoff-was-intimidating-and-cold
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2019/03/police-investigate-link-between-christchurch-shooter-and-troy-dubovskiy-who-died-in-police-stand-off.html
Care in the community is awesome.
I would like to know why he was not deported years ago
Xtian values.
Great article
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/28/confronting-racism-is-not-about-the-needs-and-feelings-of-white-people
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/28/media-far-right-radicalisation-politics-hatred?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Telegram&fbclid=IwAR0tSicjQ2Xz9kaU79NPb-I8j_QWwOJaZ9DUvWdaoM3u_EI6H_S9Iy6SI_k
“When it comes to the threat of Islamist terrorism, no one doubts the role of radicalisation. The internet, hate preachers such as Anjem Choudary and Abu Hamza, and the western-armed, extremism-exporting state of Saudi Arabia: all play their part in radicalising the impressionable. When it comes to the far right, however, this consensus is absent. The reason for this is as obvious as it is chilling: the hate preachers, recruiting sergeants and useful idiots of rightwing extremism are located in the heart of the British, European and American establishments. They are members of the political and media elite.”
we really do need to have a conversation about this at some stage, no matter the hurt. Cause it ain’t going away anytime soon.
Are you saying that the leadership of the Arabian states and Iranian states are not hate-mongering extremists?
The hurt is well shared, the evidence rich and deep.
This isn’t just a Islamic thing. All of the people without faith always have to consider any organisation and the people following them who goes for “do as I say rather than fo as I do”.
What you see in the Arab states is, to me, little different from what I see in the Israeli state, or in the secular religious states like China.
And Christianity has lonv history of doing the same.
I often think exactly what you think about Iran of the US as well. That was a probably the state founded most deeply as a Christian state. With its weaponry, deep faith populations and wealth – it remains a threat.
Probably its saving grace was that it founded after the reformation. As a result of the massive wars and repressions that erupted from that, it built a certain amount of secularism directly into its laws.
With Christianity, it gets hard to look past its long history of religiously justified slavery and colonization even before you look at religious actions covert and overt against neighbours – especially variants of it’s own faith. It is after all why we don’t have the Byzantines any more.
Personally I’d prefer that most faiths and the people adhering to them would concentrate on their own behaviours rather than judging that of others. It’d be a whole lot more inspiring than what I usually see.
No what i am saying is that we have discussed the Arabs and their problems and their terrorists continuously since the longest of time.
what we don’t like to speak about is our intervention ‘ to protect our interests’ in their political life, their economies, their self determination and if all fails our intervention at the point of a gun, invading whom ever we consider ‘roque’. I.e. Venezuela, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, various countries in Africa, South America, the overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran leading to the regime now, the war on drugs, and so on and so on.
We in fact know how hate, racism, and terror is created, we do a lot of this creation anywhere on this planet and we then exploit these acts to our advantage.
Now what we don’t speak about is why some 28 year old, well to do, ordinary average bloke, with average looks n height, is so fucked up that he believes that the only thing good about him is his color of skin, his european desendency and his believe that white means might and that he would kill for that. Why this guy fears he is being ‘replaced’ by others. We don’t speak about people in our media that dehumanizes others on the grounds of their virtue – single mothers, income – low income workers, their social status – useless benefit bludgers, or nudge nudge wink wink – brown people. We don’t even speak about our own fears of the ‘others’. WE are nice and polite and don’t speak his name, and don’t read his words, and don’t discuss how this guy could live among us. Cause fact is his white skin is according him many privileges that any brown, muslim 28 year old bloke never had.
And we should discuss it. We really should.
The stench of ‘white extremism’ has been (far) right under NZ noses for a while, but Islam/Muslims!!
Sabine’s excellent quote points to the need for a clear-headed, unbiased approach to terrorist threat analyses in NZ – hopefully the Royal Commission of Inquiry will reveal just how even-handed (or not) the NZ GCSB/SIS/NAB et al. have been.
The process should not be so terribly difficult, if we start with violent fringe spaces like 8Chan and parts of the dark web I wot not of.
I’m not sure Facebook has deserved all of its condemnation, but some care in moderation there seems not especially hurtful.
The modus operandi of recruiters or creators of violent fanatics are reasonably well documented. I venture to suggest that web literate analysts like Wikileaks or Bellingcat could readily produce a risk assessment profile of web forums with some predictive validity.
Start with the Churches and the end times extremists baying for a body count so they can get themselves all raptured AF, I reckon.
The first time I remember hearing Islam equated with terrorism from the pulpit, I was a 17-year-old junior at Heritage Christian School in Indianapolis, where my mom was—still is, in fact—an elementary teacher. It was 1998, long before Islamophobia seized the Western mainstream. My family attended a small, nondenominational evangelical church in the suburb of Carmel, where my dad was the music pastor.
“A good Muslim,” our head pastor, Marcus Warner, intoned that Sunday morning, “should want to kill Christians and Jews.” He insisted that this was the only conclusion possible from a serious reading of the Quran. As a doubting young evangelical who would later become an agnostic, this extreme statement made me uncomfortable even then. Today, in the wake of the shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand, it should be considered every bit as offensive as the worst anti-Semitic tropes
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/03/26/americas-islamophobia-is-forged-in-the-pulpit/
Contemporary terrorists are as likely to be radicalized in chatrooms as churches or mosques, but condemning all chatrooms or churches or mosques would be neither reasonable nor effective.
For all that seems to have been true in the case of America’s worst contemporary terrorist, George Bush, reasonable numbers of shooters fit the profile of deculturized and disaffected persons. These are rarely members of thriving churches, which can provide a kind of social contact that is antithetical to murderous nihilism.
Somewhere along the way elite understanding of the role of churches seems to have been lost – they were once the social institutions that provided the kind of guidance or role modeling the likes of Jordan Peterson identify as being missing in contemporary society. Anthropologically speaking almost no society is without them in some form. Unable to cope with the pace of social change, their demise has created a void into which all kinds of lesser and less wholesome mysticisms and enthusiasms proliferate.
That said, the wilder US churches are pretty out there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwBVcsWYJd8
Somewhere along the way elite understanding of the role of churches seems to have been lost – they were once the social institutions that provided the kind of guidance or role modeling
A point I’ve gently made here many, many times over the years … at the same time it’s been open slather for atheists to mock, smear, attack and generally denigrate what we believe in. There are examples of this even on threads this past week.
And you know what? We accept this as part of the open discourse necessary in a tolerant, healthy society. And you’ll notice that long term regulars here like Ad and myself who have made it clear we do have a religious faith, also go about our participation here without openly pushing or promoting it onto others.
What does have to be at least a little irksome is how selective this has become; suddenly Islam is being protected by all the woke radical lefties, a favour they never extended to Christianity (or any number of other faiths.)
It was 1998, long before Islamophobia seized the Western mainstream.
It seems so to them because they were young at the time. Those of us who were adults at the time of the Rushdie fatwa have been familiar with Islam as a source of terrorism since the late 1980s. And I presume I’m only putting that date on it because I was young at the time myself, and it goes back further.
Police in France answer to:
Policing is centralized at the national level.[1] Recently, legislation has allowed local governments to hire their own police officers which are called the “police municipale”.[1]
There are two national police forces called “Police nationale” and “Gendarmerie nationale”. The Prefecture of Police of Paris provides policing services directly to Paris as a subdivision of France’s Ministry of the Interior.
Within these national forces only certain designated police officers have the power to conduct criminal investigations which are supervised by investigative magistrates.
National civilian police Force – major cities and large urban areas – under the Ministry of the Interior. Police Nationale.
Gendarmerie is part of the French armed forces and responsible for smaller towns and rural areas and important national locations. Its civil duties are under the
Ministry of the Interior and the rest are under the Ministry of Defence. Gendarmerie Nationale.
Local police of towns and cities, are under the oversight of Mayors. They can notice breaches but cannot investigate. There are also local police in the rural zones. Police municipale.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_enforcement_in_France
Police in NZ answer to:
The current Minister of Police is Stuart Nash. While the New Zealand Police is a government department with a minister responsible for it, the Commissioner and sworn members swear allegiance directly to the Sovereign and, by convention, have constabulary independence from the government of the day.
The New Zealand Police is perceived to have a minimal level of institutional corruption.[2][3]
wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_Police
There is also an investigating body Independent Police Conduct Authority
https://www.ipca.govt.nz/
If members of the police swear allegiance to the Crown only, and by convention?
have constabulary independence from the government of the day, I think it is time
to break that convention. There needs to be an Ombudsman type authority that watches and to whom they are beholden, who then reports to Parliament as a whole not just the government of the day. The Police Minister would also report to the ‘Ombudsman’ but be involved on a day-to-day basis and they would brief him and answer his/her questions.
Police as a business? There seems a whiff of that:
Praise or complain about Police…
We will pass your comments on to the employee and their supervisor. … Write to or visit the officer in charge of any police station Find your nearest police station.
https://www.police.govt.nz/contact-us/praise-and-complain
Would it be better to have the decisions made about cases made by independent experienced magistrates used to working in the criminal and fraud field?
Good points. Probably: Yes, it would, but few Kiwis will care enough to advocate…
When will there be a post about the Anti Semitic views that are being expressed, such as last weekend:
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2019/03/jews-outraged-after-mosque-leader-blames-mossad-for-christchurch-attack.html
For many, anti Semitism is Hate Speech – something this site is big on but seems to turn a blind eye to when Jews and Israel is involved.
Hate Speech = racism, this needs to be addressed especially for those “Jew Baiters” here and elsewhere.
Well, for one thing, that is such a wild conspiracy theory that few believe it, so why bother?
For another thing, blame game has not seen as appropriate to date..
And your strange concern makes me wonder if you are pushing a political end – branding any criticism at all of Israeli Govt. policy as anti-Semitism?
I personally do not believe Mossad were involved in this.
OK?