It’s bad news that the British Conservatives will be ruling for another five years. But the good news is that the parties campaigning on the strongest left platforms, the Scottish National Party (SNP) and the Greens, both picked up a lot more votes.
The war had nothing to do with upholding our “values”. A central value – to give everyone a fair go – was undermined by the war. Racism reared its ugly head. New Zealanders of German origin were insulted, sacked and sometimes interned.
New Zealanders should ask themselves: do they want our GCSB providing vital intelligence information to torturers and murderers? Because this is exactly what the GCSB has been doing.
As far as I can tell New Zealand (which has a representative on the UN Security Council) has yet to condemn the raids, which constitute illegal aggression against a neighbouring country.
As in New Zealand, it’s always been hard for the Aussie Greens to win electorate seats. But in Saturday’s New South Wales election they won three seats (and maybe four after postal votes are counted).
It’s common for governments to spin a story to make the indefensible sound defensible. Usually it is the government putting the best light on some commonly agreed facts.
Hager and Gallagher revealed in the Herald on Sunday that New Zealand was specifically targeting the emails of Solomon Island Prime Minister’s chief advisers, the Cabinet secretary and non-government political players.
I have launched an internet petition in the form of an apology to several Asian and Pacific Island nations for the GCSB spying on their government communications.
There are so many reasons why it is wrong for New Zealand to engage in “full-take” surveillance of the electronic communications in the Pacific Islands, as show in documents released by Nicky Hager and Ryan Gallagher and David Fisher in this morning’s New Zealand Herald.