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CIA torture whistleblower John Kiriakou was recruited from the high school he taught Jared Leto at. In the decades to follow, he travelled the world, recruited other spies in turn, and oversaw operations that captured Al Qaeda militants and sent them to Guantanamo Bay. Trained to keep secrets, there was one he couldn’t live with – his government was torturing people. Eventually, he shared what he knew with his fellow countrymen. Tonight, he will share it with New Zealand.

“British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson says he’s comfortable with the UK selling billions of dollars’ worth of arms to Saudi Arabia, which have been used to kill thousands of civilians in Yemen.” The quotation is from a The Nation Press Release , about a Lisa Owens  interview with Boris Johnson held on 29 July this year.  

Now that the dust is settling on the Turei resignation, it might be time to have a dispassionate look at why she had quit as leader of the Greens.

Every settlement with Iwi includes a clause stating that fresh water remains unresolved, yet Chris Finlayson is out blowing racist dog whistles pretending that this reopens Treaty litigation. We wouldn’t be in this position in the first place if National hadn’t forced the issue by selling off half our hydropower generating energy companies. Labour will clean up their mess by showing real leadership with all stakeholders in water.

Let’s cut to the chase. I’m getting a little bit tired of commentators asking where Labour Party policy is. We’ve been putting out policies consistently for the past couple of months and I’m proud of the policies that Labour have been coming out with.

Greens have strategists alright. Crap ones. Ones that develop a hashtag campaign which completely individualised Metiria at the same time as they were trying to say this was not about her. If it’s not about Metiria then where were the “I stand with beneficiaries” green/pink profile pics?

I was so sad to hear that Metiria Turei MP had resigned her co-leadership of the Greens. I think she is probably the most courageous MP of our generation and had the potential to completely transform our Government for the good. Sadly that is now unlikely to happen. Hypocrites and vampires have hounded her out, for things done over 20 years ago as a struggling solo mum.

Our water is a treasure that has been abused, stolen and polluted for far too long and it is beyond time that someone had the political courage to stand up to the Farming lobby and water bottling companies.