Guest and sponsored opinion pieces published on The Daily Blog, offering diverse perspectives within clear editorial guidelines.
Now that the bodies of 50 innocent human beings are lying in a Christchurch, New Zealand, morgue — gunned down by a heavily armed terrorist — New Zealand media are asking the obvious questions: why didn’t our intelligence agencies know there were xenophobic, murderous, white supremacists on the loose in Christchurch?
As a result of this city’s history of radicalized right-wing groups, failure of police and GCSB to have entrenched and effective spying apparatus in that sector, is in my view one good reason why we need a review of what I say, has been a lamentable performance by any measure of national security providers.
The entire country, and the rest of the world, is shocked and disgusted by the terrorist attacks that occurred in Christchurch last week that targeted two mosques. A day before that, Greens co-leader James Shaw was assaulted unprovoked by a member of the public.
The two events had a common denominator – both of the perpetrators were riled by the Government’s signing of the United Nations Global Compact on Migration.
All guns need to be registered with the police.
All semi- automatic and automatic weapons should be banned and the sale of devices that can facilitate the self loading of rifles should also be banned. No citizen in our country needs such a weapon.
Yesterday we witnessed the best and worst in humanity in one day.
49 people murdered in Christchurch and many injured in an act of hate, while thousands of school students ignored warnings of punishment to protest our lack of progress on climate change.
Both events are connected by the complacency of New Zealand governments over many years to regulate on some serious issues in the greater public good.
The UnSerious Fraud Office is dependent on sponsors, unlike the Serious Fraud Office, which operates independently of government and is therefore immune to bullshit, threats, influence or propaganda.
Another example of setting the terms of an inquiry to favour the outcome you want.
It would seem to me to be incongruent in the extreme to punish students for having a social conscience on what is the most urgent issue of our times. These brave young New Zealanders are striking to demand adults combat climate change meaningfully and they should be free to embark upon that activism without risk of school retribution.
Marama Davidson has come out claiming that a Capital Gains Tax should be just the start of tax system reform that favours the poor. The trouble is that a Capital Gains Tax excluding the family home actually helps the middle class. It doesn’t help the poor, and will probably even hurt them.
If you rely on mainstream media for your news then you may well have missed the fact that an estimated 5000 Canterbury folk attended a protest march in Christchurch last Saturday against the granting of more water extraction rights to the Chinese owned firm Cloud Ocean Water Ltd