There are those who’d change the channel or hide a post on Facebook when confronted with another image of Syria in flames.

It’s too sad, too complicated and too far away, they say. And anyway, we can’t do anything about it.

Murdoch Stephens, the force behind a 3-year-old campaign to double New Zealand’s refugee quota, isn’t one of them.

The Wellington-based PhD student was prompted to start the “Doing Our Bit” campaign in 2013, after stumbling upon a cache of photographs at an abandoned detention centre in the Iranian desert. Read the rest of this entry »

A woman jailed after she hijacked an Air New Zealand flight is warning she will do it again when she is released.

Asha Ali Abdille, a refugee from Somalia, was sentenced to nine years in jail after trying to hijack a flight from Blenheim to Christchurch in February, 2008.

The then 33-year-old stabbed both pilots and a female passenger suffered minor wounds as she tried to restrain Abdille.

Abdille - whose sentence is due to end in February - is still classified as a high risk and has reportedly warned that given the chance, she will attempt to hijack an aircraft again.

Radio NZ obtained a written summary of a Parole Board hearing for Abdille, in which is reads that she has “said that she will attempt to hijack another plane and has threatened to set herself on fire.”

The report also said that hospital staff held “ongoing concerns about potential risky behaviour in the community on any release.”

Abdille is due to be transferred into the mental health system on a compulsory treatment order after her sentence ends, Radio NZ said.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11776475

China Inc., the business arm of China’s repressive dictatorship, is trying to take over the world by grabbing key sectors of various countries’ economies as part of its strategic plan for global control of the world’s resources. China’s rapid arms build-up suggests that it is preparing to back its ever increasing demands on other countries with force.

China chose New Zealand as the first Western country with which to have a free trade agreement, which is more about colonising and dominating our economy than about free trade. Since then the New Zealand government has bent over backwards to accommodate the interests of China Inc. - often at the expense of the prospects and interests of ordinary New Zealanders, e.g. the refusal to do anything meaningful to halt the unnatural rise in house prices, fueled in large part by Chinese cash, and the unnecessary grants of approval for the alienation of the Crafar farms and the giant Silver Fern Farms co-operative to Chinese interests.

This book should be read by every New Zealander since it affects the future prospects of the country in respect of economic welfare, sovereignty and national security. It is a case of getting a grip on the situation now or sleepwalking to a situation where New Zealanders will finish up as lowly paid serfs in the land that was built by the sweat and toil of the pioneers.

Order here http://trosspublishing.co.nz/publication/in-the-jaws-of-the-dragon

The biggest modern social networking platforms are rife with censorship, opacity and inscrutable rules governing harassment. Many conservatives feel unfairly targeted and believe their viewpoints are being suppressed.

Enter Gab.ai, a new social networking platform that hopes to be the answer to these pressing issues.

A beta version of the site, which is a lot like Twitter with hints of Reddit, was created in a remarkably short three weeks and has let in a few hundred users for testing. While the site currently only contains basic features, its founder holds lofty goals for the platform. As it stands, the site allows you to write 300-character “tweets,” but also upvote and downvote them like on Reddit. Read the rest of this entry »

All the best for 2017.

OPINION: Wellington’s waterfront is its most contested piece of land, for good reason: it’s a gem, and it’s worth fighting for.

After years of objections, visions of hotels on the harbour have come and gone. On the other hand, twin hulking boxes on Queen’s Wharf came to fruition, and the city must live with them.

The latest fight isn’t between the usual forces of commerce and landscape preservation, though.

It’s a more difficult one, and it concerns the one proper stretch of green space by the water: Frank Kitts Park.

Wellington City Council wants to overhaul the park, by moving a children’s playground, levelling a sort of amphitheatre and the wall that separates it from the water, creating a wide expanse of open lawn - and installing a Chinese garden. Read the rest of this entry »