The Herald reports:

The pregnant wife of a Sri Lankan suicide bomber has detonated a suicide vest killing her self, her children, and police officers.
The wife of the suspected mastermind behind the Easter Sunday bombings detonated the explosives as police raided the family’s Colombo home, Sri Lanka’s Deputy Defence Minister Ruwan Wijewardene said.

I can’t fathom how someone can kill their children, and convince themselves it is for a good cause. You must be going against every human instinct you have.

At the centre of the plot that has devastated the peaceful Southeast Asian nation are two brothers, according to reports. They were the sons of a rich spice merchant, and they lived in one of the most lavish mansions in their wealthy suburb in Colombo.
The mastermind of the suicide bomb plot is now believed to have been Inshaf Ibrahim, in his 30s, who owned a copper factory. He is said to have detonated his own explosive device at the Shangri-La hotel, by the busy breakfast buffet, a source close to the family told reporters.

Often those who fall for extremist ideology are poor, unemployed etc and hence see a way out through extremism. But what is scary here is these brothers were very wealthy, had family yet still decided that they had a duty to slaughter innocent people through suicide bombing.

The Herald reports:

A vegan cafe which became a “punching bag” after introducing an 18 per cent ‘man tax’, is closing down so its owner can pursue some “hands-on” work.
Handsome Her opened in Melbourne in 2017 and made international headlines with a bold approach to making a difference in closing the gender pay gap.
The owners of the Brunswick venture asked men to pay an 18 per cent premium one week a month and advertised ruled on a chalkboard out front that included “women have priority seating” and “respect goes both ways”.
The “tax” paid by male diners went to Elizabeth Morgan House Aboriginal Women’s Services.

How utterly non-surprising that it has gone out of business.

Why only ask men to pay an 18% premium? 60 year olds earn more than 20 year olds, so a premium for them also. If Asians earn more than non-Asians (as is the case in the US), will they also charge Asians more? What about Jews? How about a surcharge on Jews because they earn more than non-Jews?

Jordan Carter of InternetNZ has a very useful and thoughtful blog on the Paris meeting discussing violent extremist content online.

He has six thoughts on what is needed from it to be successful:

1. Keep the scope narrow to “terrorist and violent extremist content” rather than a wider scope which hits free speech issues. Most people accept inciting violence is not acceptable.
2. Have clear targets: Focus on the giant social media companies with the global reach, not the entire Internet.
3. Be clear about the ask: What do you want the social media companies to do, beyond the status quo, bearing in mind such content is already outside their terms and conditions?
4. Have a sensible application of the ask: Overly tight automated filtering will lead to overblocking
5. Measure success and have a cost for failure
6. Make the discussion inclusive: This shouldn’t be a decision just for Governments.

Stuff reports:

More than 100 people – including white supremacists, Muslim converts and people left disgruntled by the Christchurch terror attack – are being actively monitored by police.
Stuff has obtained part of a top secret list that names those who are of concern to police following the March 15 terror attack. Stuff has chosen not to name anyone on the list or contact them for security reasons.

This is a huge security breach. The list of people under surveillance by the Police as potential security risks should be held incredibly tightly. How it could end up (in part) in the hands of the media must be answered.

A white supremacist called John Earnest has killed one and wounded three at the Congregation Chabad synagogue.

It sounds like those in attendance fought back to some degree, which prevented a higher death toll.

Earnest is a white supremacist. He claims in an open letter that he doesn’t “care about the debt-based currency that Jews like to pretend is money” and he would “die a thousand times over to prevent the doomed fate that the Jews have planned for my race”. He goes on to blame Jews for everything from the news media, marxism, feminism, pornography, slavery, race mixing, the murder of Simon of Trent in 1475 and oh yeah the killing of Jesus.

I repeat some of his insanity here, so people can see how warped these white supremacists are. He sees anyone not white European as an “anti-human’. Also he explicitly cites the Christchurch terrorist so there is a real lesson here about how extremism encourages extremism.

The Herald reports:

More than $1 million of taxpayer money has been spent on 193 slushy machines in a bid to keep prison guards cool over summer.
Opposition leader Simon Bridges has called out the Government, saying it’s “irresponsible” and “wasteful” spending.
But Corrections Minister Kelvin Davis has reportedly said he didn’t care what Bridges had to say and he supported the health and safety spend.
Documents released to National under the Official Information Act revealed Corrections spent $1.095m on 193 ice slushy machines at the end of last year.

That’s around $5,700 per slushy machine!

You can buy home slushy machines for around $100. So even if one accepted that taxpayers should fund slushy machines for Corrections staff, they seem to have gone for the most expensive machines possible.

Stuff reports:

A Christchurch business owner who admitted sharing the Christchurch terror attack livestream told police he thought it was “awesome”. 
Philip Neville Arps pleaded guilty on Friday to two charges of distributing the mosque murders video and was remanded in custody for sentencing on June 14.
When questioned by police about the massacre –  in which 50 people were murdered and 39 more shot and wounded – he replied: “I could not give a f…, mate.”

So he thought a video of the murder of 50 people was awesome.

Arps asked for Christchurch District Court Judge Stephen O’Driscoll to have him assessed for a possible home detention sentence, but the judge ruled it out, indicating Arps would be jailed.

Good.

He is the owner of Beneficial Insulation, a Christchurch business reported as featuring Nazi-related themes in its name and branding.

Yep he is a true neo-Nazi.

The next day, Arps sent the video to an unknown person and asked for it to be modified with a “kill count” as people were shot, and with cross-hairs as though the viewer was looking through a rifle scope.

Charming.

Arps has also been known to do Nazi salutes and yell out “Bring on the cull”.

His installation company has a website name (Bllg) which was the name of a barracks at Auschwitz.

So basically a giant douche. Of course being a douche is not a criminal offence. But circulating with glee a video of a murder of 50 people is.

Stuff reports:

Police are reviewing the security of their stations nationwide following the theft of unlawful weapons from a supposedly secure room at Palmerston North Police Station.
Police were left red-faced when firearms were stolen early on Anzac Day, sparking a manhunt for the alleged offender.
Various properties have since been searched by the armed offenders squad to find the 11 unaccounted-for guns.
The burglary happened when the offender was disturbed in the station yard at 7.40am. He left the scene in a vehicle, which has since been recovered.

What a clusterfrack.

How can someone break into a police station, let alone a so called secure room?

Newshub reports:

Embattled Labour MP Meka Whaitiri has opened up about being removed as a minister in a candid interview with Turanga FM. 
Whaitiri, MP for Ikaroa Rāwhiti, was removed as a minister by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in September over allegations of a physical incident with a staff member in her office. 
She denied the allegations at the time and reiterated her stance in an interview with Matai Rangi Smith, telling him: “From the time that the allegations were made, up until today, I’ve always refuted them.”

So she’s saying her brand new Press Secretary just made it up?

Whaitiri said: “There was no altercation, there was no assault. I did not touch my staff member – I growled her for not doing her job – but I didn’t touch her.”

If we are to believe Meka, then how did her press secretary’s arm get so bruised? If she implying her press secretary deliberately bruised her own arm, to get her Minister in trouble?

The bruising is what one calls evidence. The former Minister’s denial is well not evidence.

The Labour MP said she took her staff member outside to “show her the lost opportunity and to express to her as I did that this was her job ad I was disappointed”.
But she insisted she never raised her voice because she was in a public space

So is she saying she would have shouted at her if it was in private?

Whaitiri said there have been “mistruths” about the incident and she said the Prime Minister has been “an absolute supporter” of hers even since the accusations came to light.
The Prime Minister was joined by Whaitiri earlier this month in Hastings at the Waitapu Marae where Ardern said the former minister had been doing excellent work. 
“Meka is an incredibly strong advocate for this region,” Ardern said, not ruling out whether Whaitiri could become a minister again. 

Prisoners only get parole once they admit they actually did it. Surely the same concept should apply to sacked Ministers? If she continues to deny she did it, then how could the Prime Minister possibly reinstate her?

The Herald reports:

The New Zealand Herald will next week launch digital subscriptions, showcasing New Zealand’s best journalism and commentary.
NZME will become the first major New Zealand media business to unveil digital subscriptions – costing $5 a week, with a special introductory offer to be announced next week.
While much of the content on nzherald.co.nz will remain free, digital subscribers will access a range of premium content across business, politics, news, sport, lifestyle and entertainment including indepth investigations, exclusive reports, columns and analysis. There will also be more foreign, premium content from a range of internationally renowned mastheads.

Will be interesting to see how this goes. Also whether Stuff gains traffic as a result of this.

Stuff reports:

Members of Destiny Church affiliated groups have met opposite the Al Noor Masjid to proclaim Christchurch a Christian city.
Destiny Church Christchurch senior pastor Derek Marina Tait said the affiliated groups, Man Up and Legacy, opposed the national broadcast of the first Muslim call to prayer by the mosque following the March 15 terror attack. 
“The purpose was to stand out in the open and to declare that Christchurch and New Zealand belongs to Jesus Christ who is the one true god.”

Oh eff off. Christchurch doesn’t belong to Brian Tamaki or any God.

Afterwards people inside the mosque came out and invited them in, Healey said. 

Classy. Well done Al Noor Masjid mosque.

It was “appropriate” for the church groups to return to the same place.
“Because in that very same place the decree was put out by our prime minister and the Muslim community to declare that Allah is the one true God, which I emphatically disagree with.”

And the first commandment in Christianity is “You shall have no other Gods but me”. Most religions claim to be the one true religion, and I take no more offence at the Muslim prayer than I do the ten commandments.

Also in theory all the Abrahamic religions do worship the same God. That’s not my view, but the view of Pope Francis. Where the religions diverge is on who is a prophet and the role of Jesus etc.

Islam actually teaches that Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon etc are all prophets of God. They just also believe Muhammad was the final prophet.

Anyway the decision to broadcast a Muslim prayer on the day of remembrance was a sign of empathy and tolerance, not of the supremacy of any religion. If your religion can’t tolerate two minutes of airtime to another religion, you have big problems.

The Herald reports:

Some 39 days after the Christchurch mosque massacres, social media sites are still struggling to stamp out copies of the gunman’s video.
New York-based researcher Eric Feinberg reported he had found another 12 copies across Facebook (which was hosting five copies), Facebook-owned Instagram (six) and Google-owned YouTube (four). All were live as of Monday NZT.

This is not surprising. Social media works by allowing people to upload content without pre-approval. If a moderator had to pre-approve every post on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, they would die off.

Presented with earlier links uncovered by Feinberg, a Facebook spokesman said there was an ongoing effort to eliminate all copies of the alleged gunman’s video.

On April 11, a US Congressional hearing was told the clip was not gory enough to trigger Facebook’s automated filters.

“You can train AI [artificial intelligence] to effectively look for things like nudity using data like skin tone – i.e. a high level of skin tone in a particular piece of content make flag it for human review and actioning,” a Facebook insider said.
“[But] in graphic violence content, we do use data around things like tones and colours that may identify or imply violent content, however, the AI did not identify this in the Christchurch video.”
Facebook has turned its attention to audio – and specifically, sounds that could be gunshots – in its ongoing attempts to recognise terror content in its realtime
videostreaming service Facebook Live

There is a limit to what AI can do. I’m sure Facebook would love to have a tool that could identify segments of the video and delete it automatically with no false positives.

Council for Civil Liberties chairman and Tech Liberty founder Thomas Beagle has long been wary of the potential of “protective” laws to be used for political censorship or to otherwise undermine free speech.
Beagle says that fringe sites, usually hosted offshore, will ignore any social media crackdown law, while the answer for Facebook and other platforms is for them to develop better systems to filter or block content that violates their terms.

I’m very wary of any change to our domestic laws. The solutions are better technology but we need to realise there is still a limit to what can be done if people are determined to share something.

The original livestream video was seen by under 200 people and deleted quickly by Facebook. Google removed a youtube version within minutes also. They actually did response quickly.

But the problem is users kept uploading versions of it. This was a human problem. It wasn’t Facebook and Google uploading them.

The videos were in breach of terms and conditions of all major social media companies. So there is no dispute they shouldn’t be on the Internet. But again the issue is how do you stop users uploading content when there are billions of uploads a day?

The latest MSD data shows the number of people receiving a jobseeker benefit has increased by 13,000 or 10.9% in the last year.

And it isn’t evenly spread. The increase by key demographics is:

• Maori +14.6%
• Pasifika +15.9%
• Under 25s +13.7%
• 25 – 40 year olds +16.7%

And even bigger growth with hardship assistance. The special needs grants are up 45% and advances up 53%. The Government is doing a great job isn’t it.

CNBC reports:

Former Vice President Joe Biden formally joined the crowded Democratic presidential contest on Thursday, betting that his working-class appeal and ties to Barack Obama’s presidency will help him overcome questions about his place in today’s increasingly liberal Democratic Party.

“Everything that has made America America is at stake. That’s why today I’m announcing my candidacy for president of the United States,” Biden said in a three-and-a-half-minute video posted Thursday morning.

This brings the field to 19, which is huge.

I hope they select someone sane and electable. I won’t agree with many of their policies, but it would be good to have a US President who is not pathologically disturbed.

A President Biden wouldn’t bother me at all.

Sanders and Warren would be terrible, policy wise.

But will Biden survive the very energised far left base who see him as a relic and far too moderate? I suspect not, sadly.

Labour MP Louisa Wall states that due to the power of the media, they need to be recognised as part of a political system and have a duty of care imposed on them.

This duty of care can of course only be imposed by legislation, so effectively a Labour MP is calling for the Government or Parliament to legislate to regulate the media.

A number of journalists are fairly alarmed by this.

In a thread on Facebook Wall cites her unsuccessful judicial review of her complaint to the Human Rights Review Tribunal about an Al Nisbet cartoon. Having lost in court, she is saying she wants a law change so that such cartoons can be stopped in future.

Be afraid, be very afraid.

Today we remember the 28.645 New Zealanders who died overseas serving their country.

We also remember the millions of others who have died in conflicts. Since 1990 the most lethal conflicts have been:

1. 1939 – 1945 WWII – 60 million killed
2. 1914 – 1918 WWI – 17 million killed
3. 1927 – 1949 Chinese Civil War – 8 million killed
4. 1917 – 1921 Russian Civil War – 6.7 million killed
5. 1998 – 2003 Second Congo War – 3.6 million killed
6. 1979 – 2000 Afghanistan War – 2.6 million killed

If we go further back the most lethal conflict as a proportion of population would be the Three Kingdoms War between 220 and 280 AD. This reduced the population from around 56 million to 16 million so over two thirds killed.

The Herald reports:

The UK has followed Germany in defying the US push to ban telecommunications giant Huawei – which the White House has accused of espionage and sanctions-busting – according to a media report.
British Prime Minister Theresa May has given the go-ahead to the Chinese telecoms giant Huawei to help build the UK’s new 5G network, despite warnings of the potential threat to national security, the Daily Telegraph says.

The UK paper said the National Security Council (NSC), which is chaired by May, agreed on Tuesday to allow the firm limited access to build “non-core” infrastructure such as celltower antennas.
Huawei NZ deputy chief executive Andrew Bowater has told the Herald his company is willing to make the same concession here – and even have its staff barred from access to Spark’s planned 5G mobile network.

So will the New Zealand Government decide to placate the Trump administration or do the right thing?

Just noticed this story from October where The Spinoff reports:

Jacinda Ardern says she has “upgraded my position” on her characterisation of climate change as her generation’s “nuclear-free moment”.
As part of a wide-ranging interview with the Spinoff, the prime minister said the challenge of climate change had one critical difference to the nuclear-movement. Then, “we were unified”, she said.

Well that’s wrong for a start. The decision to ban US ships from visiting was not a unifying issue at the time. Around 30% opposed the ban and 60% supported it. A later poll in 1989 found only 52% in favour if it meant breaking defence ties.

So quite wrong to claim NZ was unified behind the nuclear ban, at the time it happened. To be fair to the PM she was only four years old then, so has no idea how controversial it was.

“I feel at least positive that we’ve moved significantly from a debate that 10 years ago was whether or not climate change was real, now to a debate about how much we need to do and how quickly. Ten years ago I got booed at a public meeting for talking about climate change. When I first came in to parliament, a select committee was established to look at the science of climate change.

The part bolded is a lie. It is a lie she has repeated before.

Dunne was the Chair of the Select Committee and would know.

Eric Crampton writes:

On 5 February, MBIE’s head of the Provincial Development Unit, Robert Pigou, was reported claiming that the Provincial Growth Fund “was on track to create 10,000 jobs” – in contrast to National’s claims that the fund had created only a handful of jobs to that point. I assumed that MBIE had run an economic forecasting exercise to estimate the effects of their various initiatives, and I wanted to know whether their assumptions had stacked up. So I made a simple request:
“Please provide the workings underlying the job creation claims, along with any correspondence with Treasury relating to that modelling.”

A reasonable request. A Government agency claimed 10,000 jobs would be created due to Shane Jones handing out money. So what was the basis for the claim?

On 26 February, Treasury advised me they had no information to provide as they had not provided any advice to MBIE. On 6 March, MBIE advised that they had extended the OIA deadline to 22 March. Why? Because “consultations necessary to make a decision on the request are such that a proper response to the request cannot be made within the original time limit.”
Trying to parse bureaucratese is never easy. I assumed that MBIE’s answer meant the modelling might have drawn on commercially sensitive material provided confidentially by applicants.

It took around eight weeks to finally get an answer. So you would expect that the modelling would be something extremely complex.

And then the truth came out:

Here is what MBIE did to produce the 10,000 jobs figure.
They took the number of jobs that every Provincial Growth Fund applicant promised in their grant application. They added those numbers. Then they added one job for every feasibility study the Provincial Growth Fund was undertaking – that’s because you have to hire somebody to do a feasibility study.
That’s it.

My God. The so called 10,000 jobs is based on what the scavengers with their hand out for the free money claimed. It was not based on even a millimeter of analysis as to rigor or feasibility or probability.

Yes the Government claimed 10,000 jobs will be created, because that is what the people receiving the free money said would happen.

Now you might think people making applications for grants through the Provincial Growth Fund might not be the most unbiased assessors of the number of jobs the grants might support. Perhaps, and hear me out here – maybe, just maybe, the grant applicants might have thought they would be more likely to receive a grant if they put a bigger number on the form. It isn’t like the money would be taken away if job creation figures wound up being less than advertised.

No shit Sherlock.