So schools serving poor communities have rejected John Key’s offer to facilitate donations from business of breakfasts for hungry kids. I agree with Kerre Woodham: Thank heavens there are charitable organisations, caring businesses, church groups and community leaders that are just getting on with distributing food and filling stomachs without pausing to argue over who’s [...]

Development, Labour, New Zealand, Politics | No Comments »

Like PC and DPF, I felt compelled to do this meme after seeing the AA “101 Must-dos for Kiwis” list. It’s comprehensive and beautifully illustrated, and makes me wish I had seen more of New Zealand than I actually have. Anyway, places I’ve visited in bold, and Luke’s in italics, after the fold. I still [...]

Holidays, New Zealand | No Comments »

This was a comment in response to noizy on Ban, ban, ban, ban… where will it end? I hadn’t really thought about this issue (although PC, controversially, discussed it last year: Protecting a predator) so I decided to expand it into a post. Privatizing marine resources is a really interesting idea, and it turns out [...]

Free market environmentalism, New Zealand | 3 Comments »

Martin van Creveld: “Once the legal monopoly of armed force, long claimed by the state, is wrested out of its hands, existing distinctions between war and crime will break down much as is already the case today in . . . Lebanon, Sri Lanka, El Salvador, Peru, or Colombia.” Continuing the theme of the previous [...]

Black globalization, Non-state actors, Police, Terrorism | 5 Comments »

A French diplomat was shot dead in his apartment in the EU complex in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.  Two Americans, dependents of an American diplomat, were killed in a carjacking in Nairobi last month (another American was killed on Sunday in a similar incident).  Last year a US official was shot, and the Russian ambassador stabbed [...]

Non-state actors, Terrorism | 2 Comments »

[CYFSWATCH] exposes some fundamental issues that the department needs to address, and the responsible thing to do would be to take some action to improve their services, and the way they do them. Well they have taken action all right, not to try and improve themselves, but by devoting all their (tax-payer funded) resources to [...]

Free Speech, Labour, Libertarianz, Linkage, Politics, Quotable, Uncategorized | 6 Comments »