Stuff reports:

Five Dallas police officers were fatally shot and seven others wounded during a protest over the deaths of black men killed by police this week in Louisiana and Minnesota – the deadliest day for US law enforcement since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Police Chief David Brown blamed “snipers,” but it was unclear how many shooters were involved. Authorities initially said three suspects were in custody and a fourth dead, killed by a robot-delivered bomb in a parking garage where he had exchanged fire with officers.

Before dying, the police chief said, the suspect told officers he was upset about recent shootings and wanted to kill whites, “especially white officers.” The man also stated that he acted alone and was not affiliated with any groups, Brown said.

Many are upset over recent shootings, but what he has done is make such shootings more likely, not less. Plus five families have lost a family member, and will never recover.

Incredibly sad. If others were involved, hopefully they will be held accountable.

ABC reports:

ABC election analyst Antony Green says there is no doubt Malcolm Turnbull will be returned as Prime Minister, and the Coalition could secure 77 seats and win majority government.

“Malcolm Turnbull is the Prime Minister and will continue as Prime Minister,” Green told Radio National this morning.

Nothing is official in Australian elections until Antony Green calls it.

On the current figures the Coalition has secured 73 seats while Labor has 66.

The Government would need 76 seats to govern in its own right — there are six seats that have not been called.

“On the numbers, they could get four of the six seats,” Green said.

“Which would give them 77. But they may only win three of the seats.”

If the Coalition falls short of a clear majority, Mr Turnbull has been given assurances from crossbenchers Bob Katter, Andrew Wilkie and Cathy McGowan about their intention not to vote against budget supply or confidence unless it is clearly warranted.

So 73 in the bag plus three independents means they can govern. So can they get a majority?

Green said the Liberal Party is on track to win Forde, and is likely to pull ahead in Flynn, Herbert and Capricornia.

Labor is on track to secure Cowan in Western Australia.

That leaves Hindmarsh which is 50:50 with Labor 68 votes ahead.

If Labor get Hindmarsh then it would be 77 to 68 and 5 independents.

An interesting map of Wellington shaded by building height. Done by Rupert Applin and based on a Guardian one on English cities.

A full size version is here.

The Herald reports:

The High Court in Wellington has backed a decision that a 90-metre safety area for an extended Wellington Airport runway is sufficient, turning down a bid by pilots who wanted a review because they didn’t regard it as long enough.

Justice Karen Clark yesterday rejected an application for judicial review of the Civil Aviation director’s decision by the New Zealand Airline Pilots’ Association saying the director didn’t make an error in law in reaching the conclusion, nor was the consultation process with the NZAPA inadequate.

The association, which represents about 2,200 pilots and air traffic controllers, sought to have the decision reviewed, claiming the 90-metre runway end safety area was too short and needed to be 240 metres.

A good decision. I’m not sure the 350 metre extension is affordable, but adding on a further 150 metres would mean it definitely wouldn’t be affordable.

Stuff reports:

Interior minister Theresa May and eurosceptic rival Andrea Leadsom emerged on Thursday (Friday NZ Time) as the two candidates who will battle to become Britain’s next prime minister and lead the country out of the European Union.

May won 199 votes and Leadsom 84 in a second ballot of lawmakers of the governing Conservative party. Justice Secretary Michael Gove took just 46 votes and was eliminated from the race.

Around 150,000 grassroots Conservatives across the country will now vote to decide whether May or Leadsom becomes Britain’s first woman prime minister since Margaret Thatcher was forced from office in 1990.

Boris will be celebrating that Judas is out.

Interesting that both of the UK’s female Prime Ministers will have come from the Conservative Party. May be a long time until UK Labour has a female leader let alone Prime Minister.

The Herald rates Labour’s frontbench:

• Phil Twyford 9/10
• Annette King 8/10
• Chris Hipkins 8/10
• Kelvin Davis 8/10
• Jacinda Ardern 7/10
• Grant Robertson 7/10
• Andrew Little 7/10
• Carmel Sepuloni 6/10

That’s better ratings than they’ve had for a while. Little has generally placed the strongest performers on the front bench, unlike previous leaders. Little’s challenge is his own rating – you normally expect the leader to be one of the strongest performers, not mid range.

The Herald reports:

The Reserve Bank has told the Government to review immigration policy in a bid to stem rising house prices.

The call comes days after Prime Minister John Key told the central bank to “just get on with it” and introduce immediate restrictions on rampant property investors as the average Auckland house value nears $1 million.

In a speech in Wellington yesterday, Reserve Bank deputy governor Grant Spencer shot back at Key, warning that moderating housing demand was a “team effort”.

While the bank has signalled new measures to tackle the effect of investors and possible borrowing limits linked to people’s incomes, no firm deadline has been given other than saying they were possible before the end of the year.

But an economist said urgent measures were needed “overnight” and the failure to act now would spark a new run on investment property by “uninformed, under-capitalised investors”.

In an unusually direct comment on immigration policy, Spencer told the Government to review the number of people moving to New Zealand, as the impact of high net migration on housing could not be ignored.

Record net migration was a key driver to surging housing demand, he warned. “Like taxation of investor-owned housing, migration policy is a complex and controversial issue,” Spencer said.

“However, we cannot ignore that the 160,000 net inflow of permanent and long-term migrants over the last three years has generated an unprecedented increase in the population and a significant boost to housing demand.”

I agree with the Reserve Bank that the Government needs to look at reducing migration levels. I’m very pro-migration and migration is a net benefit for NZ. But if net migration is too large for the infrastructure to keep up with, them it has some negative impacts also.

The problem is that the main lever that the Government has, which is the level of residency visas has in fact been pretty constant for many years. The growth is in the other areas.

There are four aspects to net migration:

• NZers leaving NZ – has dropped from 62,000 peak to around 35,000 a year. Government can’t control this and is a good thing fewer are leaving
• NZers returning to NZ – has increased from around 22,000 to 31,000 a year. Government can’t control this and is a good thing more Kiwis returning
• Non NZ citizens leaving NZ –  decreased slightly from 26,000 to 22,000.
• Non NZ citizens arriving in NZ – increased from around 65,000 in 2008 to 95,000

So around 35,000 of the increase in net migration is simply NZers making decisions to stay or return.  And around 30,000 is more “foreigners” coming to NZ for over a year. But the 95,000 inwards is also made up of quite distinct groups.

• Australians moving here. Government has no power to stop. Around 10,000 a year now doing this, up from 5,000
• Students on a student visa was 14,000 in 2008 and now 28,000
• Workers on a work visa was 23,000 in 2008 and now 39,000
• New residents on a residency visa was 16,000 in 2008 and currently 15,000

So the growth is not in making it easier for people to get residency here. It is in student and work visas.

You can start restricting both of these, but there are economic consequences if you do. International students are a cash cow for NZ. We earn billions off them, and having studied here as a student doesn’t give them residency rights after they finish studying.

Work visas are meant to be issued only for jobs where there is a shortage of suitable NZers etc. There is probably room for some tightening here, but it means you will face more employers being unable to recruit staff, and hence hit economic growth.

The residency visas is where the Government can most easily make changes. They could increase the points needed to qualify to come here. But even if you halved them from 15,000 to 8,000 that would not make much impact on the overall net migration numbers.

The Herald reports:

A High Court judge has made a public apology to John Banks’ wife after questioning her credibility as a witness.

The ex-politician was back in court today seeking $190,000 costs over the trial that saw his wrongful conviction for a false electoral return.

That conviction was essentially based on Justice Edwin Wylie preferring Kim Dotcom and Mona Dotcom’s evidence over that of Amanda Banks but the Court of Appeal overturned that after Mrs Banks tracked down witnesses to a lunch at which Mr Dotcom had wrongly claimed the donations were discussed.

After hearing submissions from both parties today, Justice Edwin Wylie called Banks into the body of the court from the public gallery.

“It’s important I say this in public with the benefit of what I now know,” he said.

Justice Wylie acknowledged the assessment he made about Mrs Banks was “an error” and asked the former MP to pass on his apologies to his wife.

I’m pretty sure the apology to Amanda will be more important to John Banks than the amount of costs he wins back.

A reader has sent me this OIA response from Radio NZ regarding their collaboration with TVNZ and Nicky Hager. It outlines how taxpayer money was spent on paying for an exclusive that turned out to be a fizzer. Remember all this information was being released publicly anyway. They just spent taxpayers money on trying to get an exclusive.

I wouldn’t think they should hold out hope for more funding the next time they make a budget bid!

Key points of interest are:

1. The idea to pay Hager seems to have come from Guyon Espiner
2. Despite all the talk of how restricted their funding is, they had their chequebook ready to go from the beginning
3. They appear to have both paid the ICIJ to become a “partner” and paid Hager as an “independent investigator”
4. They appear to have offered setting up Gmail addresses for people
5. They have with-held some info on the basis of it being a trade secret!

UPDATE: Just had a phone call from Guyon Espiner who has clarified that he did not propose paying Hager. His e-mail references are about Radio NZ joining the ICIJ, not hiring Hager. I accept this entirely. The e-mails I got sent are a partial set, and it was not clear what the references were in relation to.

Update2: A fuller set of e-mails has been released to me and can be viewed here.

Radio Nz OIA by David Farrar on Scribd

A  guest post by David Garrett:

R vs. Shailer and Haerewa – The Attorney General’s explanation raises more questions than it answers.

Last Monday, Tania Shailer and David Haerewa were sentenced in the Rotorua High Court for the “manslaughter” of three year old  Moko Rangitoheriri. The sentence of 17 years was  one of the longest – if not the longest – imposed in New Zealand for the manslaughter of a child. The two animals who killed Moko must serve at least nine years before being eligible for parole. Sadly, the sentence will almost certainly be appealed, and probably reduced.  Even if it is not, Moko’s killers will spend much less time in jail than they would have if they had been convicted of murder- as I believe they undoubtedly  would have been  if they had faced trial for the murder charges originally laid against them.

The sentence – manslaughter vs, murder

Let me clarify the issue of sentence length. The ill informed have claimed that the sentence handed down  is about the same as they would have got for murder. That is utterly wrong. Had the killers been convicted of murder, the Judge could have sent them to prison for the rest of their lives under changes to the Sentencing Act  made in 2010. It would have been a brave Judge who imposed the first ever LWOP sentence handed down in New Zealand, but last Monday Justice Katz showed herself to be not lacking in courage, and not particularly concerned about the almost inevitable appeal.

Had she not imposed LWOP, she would certainly have been persuaded that a life sentence with a minimum non parole period (NPP) of at least 17 years was appropriate – in other words an NPP of double what Shailer and her odious boyfriend received for manslaughter.

They would have been given an NPP of at least 17 years because of s.104 of the Sentencing Act, which lists 10 factors, any one of which justifies increasing the minimum NPP for murder from 10 years to at least 17.  In Moko’s case, there were  at least two such factors: that the murder was committed with a high degree of brutality, cruelty, depravity, or callousness; and that the victim  was particularly vulnerable because of his age.

So, in my view and in the view of many others with an understanding of the criminal law, Moko’s killers literally got away with murder. Why and how did that happen?

Here is what we know: 1) The Crown originally laid charges of murder against the pair; 2) at some later point, negotiations were initiated by one side or the other, and a deal was done under which Shailer and Haerewa would plead guilty to manslaughter; 3) the original murder charges were then withdrawn, and manslaughter charges were laid in their stead, to which the killers then, no doubt very gratefully, pleaded guilty.

Here is what we don’t know: 1) If there were all the claimed  myriad problems in obtaining a murder conviction against one or both, why were the murder  charges laid in the first place; 2) who initiated the negotiations which led to the substitution of charges (the Attorney General doesn’t seem to like the colloquial term “plea bargain”) which led to the charges of murder being downgraded?

In response to various media criticism of the seemingly inexplicable decision – including an op-ed piece by retired Judge Roy Wade –  Attorney General Finlayson released a sneering condescending statement a couple of weeks ago  condemning “ill informed speculation on blogs and  in rags like the Sunday papers” and saying that he would explain “in words of one syllable” after sentencing why the decision was made.

The Attorney General’s explanation

Shortly after the sentence was announced last Monday, Finlayson released his “explanation” – a statement that was markedly less imperious and insulting than his first. I have little doubt that John Key had a hand in the markedly different tone in the second statement.  The problem – as Judge Roy Wade and others quickly noted – was that the “explanation” raised more questions than it answered. In fact, the explanation was – at best – disingenuous.

For a start, Finlayson claims that the problem with the  murder charges lay in proving “murderous intent”. Proving an intention to murder is always problematic: very few killers shout “I am going to kill you” – in the presence of a surviving witness – before they shoot or stab someone. For that and other reasons, the Crimes Act provides  an alternative to murderous intent as the basis for a conviction for murder.

Section 167 (b) of the Crimes Act contains a two limbed test to found a charge of murder: firstly that an  offender “means to cause… bodily injury that is known to the offender to be likely to cause death”; and  secondly, that the offender is reckless as to whether death ensues or not.

We know from the evidence  – including the sickening pathologist’s report – what was done to Moko. His many potentially fatal injuries,  any one of which might have killed him, are now so well known that they don’t need repeating. Unlike the Kahui case – which other ill informed commentators have compared this to – there was no-one else in the frame: Shailer and Haerewa were the only two adults who could have inflicted the injuries. In addition, there was eye witness evidence of Moko’s eight year old sister – a child more than old enough to give evidence considered reliable.

While Shailer offered some doubtless spurious evidence of her supposed mental illness, neither killer claimed to be mentally sub-normal. Quite frankly, only a moron could possibly have thought that  the injuries they inflicted were not,  in the words of s.167 (b) “likely to cause death”.  It gets even worse for the killers. Harewa admitted to police that he had “killed Moko” by knowing how badly injured he was, and failing to seek medical help. (Statement of facts, page 8). And in her sentencing notes, Justice Katz found that Haerewa was the less culpable, albeit barely.

Justice Katz also found that the two killers were engaged in a “joint enterprise” – in other words the recklessness  of one was all that was required to convict both, especially if that recklessness is established as being present in the slightly less culpable of the two killers.

That technical point notwithstanding, it is simply not credible that both the killers did not  know that what they had done was life threatening. It is quite clear from what they did, and more importantly  didn’t do, that they were, at the very least,  utterly indifferent to what would happen as a result of the injuries they had inflicted. In other words, again to quote the Crimes Act, they were “reckless as to whether death ensued or not”

So why does the Attorney General  say the prosecution might have had difficulty proving “murderous intent”? They didn’t need to. They only had to prove the two limbs of s.167 (b), and there is an abundance of evidence to so prove.

The next question Finlayson’s statement fails to answer is why, if there were such problems, the charges of murder were laid in the first place? The Crown Solicitor at Rotorua is apparently a highly experienced Crown prosecutor with a number of murder trials under her belt. She evidently felt she had enough evidence to obtain convictions for murder, or surely she would not have laid the murder charges at the outset.

Nonetheless, for reasons still unknown, she changed her mind and entered into a plea bargain with the defence lawyers. Why did she do that?  We are told that certain damning  information only  came to light after  the deal was done, and that perhaps it would not have come out had the charges not been reduced. That is surely a very smelly red herring?  The decision to downgrade the charges, and accept a guilty plea to them,  was made before   the alleged further evidence came to light. It therefore cannot have been a factor in the decision to downgrade the charges.

Before turning to the final question, let us deal with the Attorney’s claim that plea bargaining doesn’t happen here. In so arguing, he is adopting a very narrow definition of “plea bargain”, one which applies in some of the states of the US but not others. In short, in some states the deal includes both the reduced charges and the sentence – we have all seen the American TV shows. In others, just the reduced charges are agreed, and the Judge is presented with a range of sentencing options. In still other states, a Judge must sign off on the deal. The fact is,  what is now happening here is plea bargaining in all but name.

Lastly, we do not know whether the defence or the Crown  initiated the negotiations which led to the plea bargain. What we do  know is that under changes made in 2013, the Crown may initiate such discussions, and not just maintain the charade that such discussions are  always initiated  by the defence.  We do not know where the initiative came from in this case, and it would seem we will now never know – or at least not until the information leaks in the gossip ridden legal fraternity, as it always does.

Last Monday thousands of people marched, some in the most inclement weather, demanding Justice for Moko. Did he receive it? Not as far as I am concerned he didn’t. It remains a shameful and shabby case which reflects little credit on many of the players involved in it. Not least the system that now allows such deals as were made to be done.

John Minto writes:

We should fund private schools ONLY when they enrol students on the same basis as public schools and abandon their fees.

Which is exactly what charter schools do – no fees, and open enrolment.

The Herald reports:

A fight outside an east Auckland bar which made New Year’s headlines has finally been unravelled in court.

Shona Maiden, 46, sparked a public uproar when she claimed to have been punched for speaking te reo as she was leaving the 123 Casino Karaoke Bar in Howick in the early hours of the morning.

She claimed a man took issue with that and questioned why a “Palagi” (European) would use such words, before hitting her in the mouth.

But the truth was cloudier and came out after both she and 43-year-old Ernest Opai were charged by police.

CCTV footage showed she had punched him several times outside the bar and witnesses told officers there had been words exchanged between the pair throughout the night.

Despite initially telling the Herald the attack had been unprovoked, Maiden admitted a count of common assault and in March was sentenced to what amounted to a one-year good behaviour bond.

Today, Opai had his punishment dished out after pleading guilty to an identical charge.

Judge Gerard Winter sentenced him to 80 hours of community work and 6 months supervision.

The judge labelled it “alcohol-fuelled violence” after hearing Opai had drunk eight bottles of beer leading up to the fight.

There’s a growing trend we see of people claiming they are being victimised for something, and the truth coming out later. A high profile case in the US also.

They should be shamed as their false claims undermine people who really do get assaulted and harrassed due to who they are.

The Herald reports:

“I don’t think there’s any appetite in the party for another leadership change. I think we just have to be patient and Andrew Little, it may take another electoral cycle before he’s ready to become PM. I don’t know. Look how long it took Helen Clark before she became PM.”

Whether the MPs agree is another matter. If Labour scores in the mid- to high-30s, Little could well get that chance Clark had of contesting a second election in 2020.

If it is another sub-30 result, Little will be gone.

Little came in saying his aim is to get more votes than National and get over 40%. Now the expectations are so low, he keeps his job if he can get Labour to over 30%.

The Dom Post reports:

Mayoral candidate Nick Leggett wants Wellington to be the home of a national sports museum, and at the forefront of developing virtual reality technology.

Leggett announced the first steps of his “capital comeback” plan to about 200 people at his campaign launch on Wednesday night at the Royal Port Nicholson Yacht Club.

With wife Emily at his side – just hours before she was due to give birth to their first child – the two-term Porirua mayor explained his reasons for wanting Wellington’s mayoral chains instead.

If elected, he promised to put an end to the “bickering” and “palace politics” that were holding the current council back.

He also promised to throw his support behind a proposal for a national sports museum, involving partnerships with central government, Te Papa and all sporting codes.

He did not see it replacing the national rugby museum in Palmerston North or the sports hall of fame in Dunedin.

But the recent fracas over Te Papa bidding $122,500 at auction for a Peter Snell singlet later turned out to be a fake sealed the need, in Leggett’s mind, for a sports museum in Wellington.

“The Snell singlet thing showed there wasn’t a mechanism to secure taonga that is important to our sporting history,” he said. “Wellington is the capital, and we’ve got to start owning national culture.”

Leggett said he would also work with Wellington’s top businesses and researchers to establish the country’s first national virtual and augmented reality complex.

It would be a facility that supported those developing such technology in areas such as film, video games, design and medicine.

The national virtual reality centre and sports museum would become major new drawcards for Wellington, providing a significant boost to the economy by creating jobs, export opportunities and increasing tourism, he said.

He also announced his desire to create a new pathway between Te Papa and the National War Memorial.

It would carve its way through the city’s cultural, sporting and entertainment precincts, and feature plaques commemorating the service of Victoria Cross recipients.

All sound worthwhile proposals, but would like to know the cost and how they’ll be funded.

Radio NZ reports:

More than $260 million of taxpayers’ money is invested in fast-food brands and soft drink giants.

Obesity campaigners say they’re appalled at the investments by bodies such as the Super Fund and ACC and are calling for junk food investments to be banned.

Another good reminder that there are two sorts of public health activists. They are:

1. Those who want to reduce harm from certain products
2. Those who hate the companies that make products they disapprove of, and just want to damage those companies

The obesity campaigners in this article are obviously the 2nd. Having the NZ Super Fund sell its shares in say Coke will do nothing at all to reduce obesity.

Figures obtained by RNZ News show as of 31 May, New Zealand Superannuation Fund and ACC had $110 million invested in The Coca-Cola Company and its global subsidiaries and $70m in its main rival Pepsico.

A further $38m was invested in McDonalds in America and Japan, and $17m in Domino’s Pizza in Britain and Australia. Closer to home, Super Fund has $27m invested the NZX-listed Restaurant Brands, which owns KFC, Pizza Hut, Carl’s Junior and Starbucks in New Zealand – including $5m in shares.

All up, more than $260m of taxpayers’ money was invested in global soft drink and fast food chains.

So what? I drink a lot of Coke’s products – but none with sugar in them. And none of the food produced by these companies is bad for people in moderation. It is when you eat too much of one type of food. A burger a fortnight o so is fine – one per day not necessarily a great idea.

What this shows is the dangers of having any areas of investment ruled out. It starts small, and eventually the leftish activists want it to include everything they don’t like.

At first it was just don’t invest in nuclear weapon manufacturers. Then it was all armaments. Then it was tobacco. Then it was any fossil fuel company (never mind that tens of millions would die within months if they all closed up shop). Then it was alcohol. Then Coke. Then Starbucks. Hell Pizza must go also.

People with their own money can decide what to invest in. When Government bodies are investing money on behalf of taxpayers, then their obligation is to get the best return on investment – not to play politics.

FIZZ founder and Auckland University epidemiologist Gerhard Sundborn said sugar was just as addictive and dangerous as tobacco.

Oh what hysterical nonsense.

The FBI report is really very damning for Clinton. The Washington Post dissects:

Most importantly, Comey said the FBI found 110 emails on Clinton’s server that were classified at the time they were sent or received. That stands in direct contradiction to Clinton’s repeated insistence she never sent or received any classified emails. And it even stands in contrast to her amended statement that she never knowingly sent or received any classified information.

And eight of those e-mails were top secret. This will go to the heart of the trust issue.

Comey said Clinton had used not one but multiple private email servers during her time at State. He said Clinton used multiple email devices during that time. (She had offered her desire to use a single device for “convenience” as the main reason she set up the private server.) He noted that the lawyers tasked by Clinton with sorting her private emails from her professional ones never actually read all of the emails (as the FBI did in the course of its investigation). Comey said that while the FBI found no evidence that Clinton’s private server was hacked by foreign governments, it was possible that it had been. He argued that the Clinton lawyers had deleted emails they marked as personal that contained professional content, and that while the FBI found some of those emails in its investigation, it was certainly possible more existed that they were unable to track down.

This is also very problematic for her. The e-mails deleted were not purely personal, and so it looks like she was covering up.

It’s hard to read Comey’s statement as anything other than a wholesale rebuke of the story Clinton and her campaign team have been telling ever since the existence of her private email server came to light in spring 2015. She did send and receive classified emails. The setup did leave her — and the classified information on the server — subject to a possible foreign hack. She and her team did delete emails as personal that contained professional information.

Those are facts, facts delivered by the Justice Department of a Democratic administration. And those facts run absolutely counter to the narrative put forth by the Clinton operation: that this whole thing was a Republican witch-hunt pushed by a bored and adversarial media.

Normally this would be fatal for a candidate, but one thing saves her:

The best thing Clinton may have going for her at this point is that Republicans are two weeks away from formally picking Donald Trump as their party’s presidential nominee. Trump has shown a unique ability to hog the national spotlight and make comments that make people wonder whether he is fit to be president. While Clinton’s image numbers are bad, Trump’s are worse.

Almost any of other Republican candidates could have beaten her. But they chose the one who is unelectable.

Stuff reports:

A man’s attempt to rob a Christchurch dairy was foiled when he was unable to open the unlocked sliding door.

Police said the man, armed with a gun, tried to rob the Division Street Dairy in Riccarton on Monday night.

He unsuccessfully tried to get into the dairy by “pushing and pulling the unlocked sliding door”, before leaving down Division St towards Blenheim Rd, police said. 

Not a candidate for Mensa then.

Stuff reports:

British Prime Minister Tony Blair told US President George W Bush eight months before the 2003 invasion of Iraq “I will be with you, whatever”, and relied on flawed intelligence and legal advice to go to war, a seven-year inquiry concluded on Wednesday.

It strongly criticised Blair on a range of issues, saying the threat posed by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s supposed weapons of mass destruction had been over-hyped and the planning for the aftermath of war had been inadequate.

Blair responded that he had taken the decision to go to war “in good faith”, that he still believed it was better to remove Saddam, and that he did not see that action as the cause of terrorism today, in the Middle East or elsewhere.

“The intelligence assessments made at the time of going to war turned out to be wrong. The aftermath turned out to be more hostile, protracted and bloody than ever we imagined,” the former prime minister, looking gaunt and strained, told reporters.

The lesson from this is that a nasty dictator might be better than the turmoil that comes from removing him.

The 1991 war was absolutely justified as Saddam had invaded Kuwait. The 2003 war was based on the premise that Saddam had WMDs – something that turned out to be wrong.

The Herald reports:

The couple jailed for killing 3-year-old Moko Rangitoheriri have more than 100 previous convictions between them, the Herald can now reveal.

Moko Sayviah Rangitoheriri died on August 10 last year from injuries he received during prolonged abuse and torture at the hands of Tania Shailer and David Haerewa.

His case shocked, saddened and angered New Zealanders and led to marches in his name against child abuse. Last week his killers were jailed for 17 years for manslaughter.

Court documents released to the Herald reveal that Haerewa had racked up 111 convictions before he killed Moko and had been in and out of prison since 1991.

His offending included burglary, wilful damage, possession of a knife in a public place, contravening a protection order, male assaults female, aggravated robbery, breach of parole, theft, receiving stolen property, escaping custody and a raft of driving charges and bail breaches.

If the three strikes law had been in earlier he would have at least one strike for aggravated robbery. This would mean he would not be eligible for parole for his 17 year sentence for killing Moko.

Having said that, I doubt with his record he will be getting parole anytime soon.

Stuff reports:

The Government is not ruling out intervening to keep planes in the air after threatened strike action by aviation security workers during the school holidays.

Transport Minister Simon Bridges confirmed Cabinet was briefed on contingency plans to keep airport security checks going if mediation to avert the strike failed.

While neither Bridges or Prime Minister John Key would spell out the options, Key confirmed outside staff could “potentially” be used to cover the gaps.

I have a better idea. Just let them strike and have no security checks for domestic flights during this period.

I’m far from convinced the cost of the security checks provide benefits anywhere near their cost. You need them for international flights but do we to fly Wellington to Christchurch? Many domestic flights don’t have them anyway, so I say let the staff strike, and we save money and have faster flights. Then hopefully we realise it is an unnecessary burden, and abolish them.

Labour leader Andrew Little said the suggestion that police or others might fill in was “union bashing”.

National had history for strike breaking under former prime minister’s Sid Holland and Rob Muldoon.

“No doubt they celebrated all that this weekend at their 80th birthday. But that would be classic National Party if they want to go back down that path, and in the end I think, most people expect the Government to turn to their employers and say ‘yep, we’ve got to treat you reasonably, treat you professionally, and sit round the table and achieve the settlement.”

Little said unions did not take this action lightly.

“It’s my experience that union members do not rush into taking industrial action. Most of them hate it. 

“They don’t like having to lose pay, when they think they’re being treated unjustly by their employer.”

Little still speaking as a union leader, not an aspiring Prime Minister. Always backs the unions. Imagine if he ran the Government – unions would have a field day.

The number of attacks in blue is on the second axis and the death toll in yellow on the first axis. It shows a near tripling in the death toll since 2011.

The data comes from The Religion of Peace website. They catalog not just the major terror incidents but the many that get almost no reporting in global media.

Just in the last month there have been over 200 attacks in 31 countries killing 2,135 people.

The site has a good page on why you should always treat individual Muslims with respect and individuals and never harm or harass them or treat them differently. However that one can and should criticise Islam as an ideology – an ideology that has thousands killing in its name on a scale not found in any other religion.