PrairiePundit

 Washington Post: New Zealand finds 3.5 tons of cocaine floating in the Pacific That seems like a lot for a relatively small nation. 

 Jonathon Turley: New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is the latest liberal leader to call for an international alliance to censor speech. Unsatisfied with the unprecedented corporate censorship of social media companies, leaders like Hillary Clinton have turned from private censorship to good old-fashioned state censorship. Speech regulation has become an article of faith on the left. Ardern used her speech this week to the United Nations General Assembly to call for censorship on a global scale. Ardern lashed out at “disinformation” and called for a global coalition to control speech. After nodding toward free speech, she proceeded to lay out a plan for its demise through government regulation: But what if that lie, told repeatedly, and across many platforms, prompts, inspires, or motivates others to take up arms. To threaten the security of others. To turn a blind eye to atrocities, or worse, to become complicit in them. What then? This is no longer a hypothetical. The we...

  Breitbart: New Zealand Threatens to Use Military Against Civilian Anti-Mandate Protesters A totalitarian response to calls for freedom should not be forgotten.  It is a mistake to elect liberal fascists. 

  Legal Insurrection: Canada-Style Freedom Convoy Protest Goes Global, Reaches Australia and New Zealand   In Europe, Freedom Convoys head to Paris and Brussels. There is a limit to which people are willing to give up the freedom of choice and we are seeing in the US too.  Where we are not seeing it is Texas and Florida where Governors have done away with mandates. 

Brad Polumbo: Almost every Democrat running for president  supports so-called “gun buybacks.”  Too bad they don't work. Proposals range from Joe Biden's voluntary gun buybacks to the more radical mandatory confiscation proposed by Cory Booker. (He still misleadingly calls it a “buyback.”) So it’s worth examining how such buybacks played out recently in New Zealand, which  passed a ban  on the sale of semiautomatic weapons and a mandatory gun buyback program after a tragic shooting in April. The deadline for the mandatory gun buyback program was Friday. The New Zealand program successfully led to the compensated confiscation of  51,000 of the targeted firearms . But as the left-leaning  Guardian  newspaper  reports , this is out of an estimated 170,000 such guns currently in circulation. And there are still a minimum of 1.2 million legally owned firearms in New Zealand on top of that. This means that many people ignored the demand that t...

NY Times: New Zealand Massacre Highlights Global Reach of White Extremism The massacre in New Zealand highlights the contagious ways in which the extreme right has spread in the 21st century — even to a country not strongly associated with it. While there is some evidence to support the claim that the killer was an extremist, it is absurd to suggest that white extremist have the same global reach and history of mass murder attacks as Islamic terrorists.  In fact, when Islamic terrorist killed thousands of New Yorkers in 2001 the media was quick to say that it should not implicate all Muslims.  But the reaction to this killing has been pretty disgusting by both the media and Democrat politicians some of which have blamed Trump for the actions of the killer.  Neither Trump or the NRA had a thing to do with these murders and those who imply otherwise are just engaged in cynical politics.  BTW, I am talking about Sen. Blumenthal and Rep. AOC.

NY Times: Scott Brown, U.S. Envoy to New Zealand, Faced Inquiry for Remarks to Women Scott Brown, a former senator from Massachusetts, acknowledged calling guests at an event in Samoa “beautiful” and said the State Department cautioned him on his behavior. Since when is a compliment considered a reason for an inquiry?  Does the State Department dispute the characterization?  I find the State Department's response appalling.  They are stretching the bounds of political correctness to the breaking point.

NY Times: ‘Affordable Underground Furniture’: D.I.Y. Coffin Clubs Catch On in New Zealand Coffin-building clubs have gained popularity among older New Zealanders looking beyond traditional social activities. I do a lot of woodworking building mostly custom furniture and occasional some cabinets.  This is not on my "to do" list at his point.

Guardian: An Afghan soldier has been killed after opening fire on a foreign trainer from Afghanistan 's Sandhurst-inspired officer academy, meant as Britain's main legacy, just days after its first recruits enrolled for class. The Afghan was shot after having an argument with a trainer from New Zealand and two Australian soldiers, all three of whom were also injured in the skirmish. The shooting casts a shadow over the start of the first term at the academy, which has been described as a Sandhurst-inspired complex. An initial class of 230 recruits began training last week, with journalists invited to see them put through their paces and tour the tents serving as temporary classrooms while work finishes on the permanent buildings. Eventually it could train up to 1,500 men and women a year, with 120 UK mentors supported by instructors from Australia , New Zealand, Norway and Denmark. The brief gunfight broke out after the trainer had visited a nearby building at the Afghan Nati...

Telegraph: More than 40 poles have been bent, buckled or broken in the past 18 months in one area of south Auckland,  New Zealand , it is claimed. The signs, bearing legally required notices such as parking restrictions, are thought to have cost ratepayers thousands of dollars to replace. "Prostitutes use these street sign poles as dancing poles," said Donna Lee, an elected member of the city council's Otara-Papatoetoe Local Board. "The poles are part of their soliciting equipment and they often snap them. ...  What is surprising about this story is that prostitutes still find customers in New Zealand which has the reputation for the most promiscuous women in the world.  The two stories are likely to lead to an increased booking of flights to this land down under.

Daily Mail on Sunday: New Zealand bans families from calling their baby ‘Lucifer’ and 'Adolf Hitler' I had a friend who tried to name his dog "Damn it."  The dob just would not respond to the name, so he finally had to give him a normal dog name.

BBC: Nato forces in Afghanistan say they have killed a senior militant they suspect of involvement in the attack on the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul. Ismail Jan died in an airstrike in the eastern province of Paktia on Wednesday, the alliance said. BBC correspondents say he was a leading commander in the Haqqani network, which is linked to the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Nato and Afghan intelligence believe Haqqani members helped mount the hotel attack, which left at least 20 dead. There has so far been no independent confirmation of Ismail Jan's death. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the hotel attack, but Nato said it was carried out jointly with the Haqqani network. The group has bases in Pakistan but focuses its attacks over the border in Afghanistan. It has been accused of carrying out a number of high-profile gun and bomb attacks in Afghanistan in recent years. A statement from the Nato-led Isaf force said Jan was suspected of providing "material supp...

Image via Wikipedia Daniel Mitchell: Good fiscal policy doesn't require miracles — or dramatic showdowns. All politicians have to do is limit the growth of the public sector. Combined with normal revenue growth, this approach eliminates red ink very quickly. This is what happened in the U.S. during the Clinton-Gingrich years. Between 1994 and 1999, total government spending increased by an average of just 3% annually. The budget deficit, which was projected in early 1995 (18 months after the 1993 tax increase!) to remain above $200 billion for the rest of the century, quickly became a budget surplus once spending was restrained. Fiscal discipline also works when it is tried in other nations. Data from the Economist Intelligence Unit reveal that four nations — Canada , Ireland , Slovakia and New Zealand — dramatically reduced budget deficits in recent decades by imposing strict limits on government spending. Interestingly, these data also reveal that the tax burden was st...

Telegraph: The magnitude 7.1 quake on Friday night in New Zealand was larger than the one that killed 200,000 people in Haiti this year and appeared to have opened a new fault line. Mark Quigley, a geology professor leading a team investigating the cause of the quake, said: "One side of the earth has lurched to the right." “Up to 11 feet in some places has been thrust up. The long linear fracture on the earth’s surface does things like break apart houses, break apart roads. "We went and saw two houses that were completely snapped in half by the earthquake.” Much of the centre of Christchurch remained sealed off and under curfew for a second night on Sunday. More than 500 buildings have been badly damaged. Two men were seriously hurt by falling masonry but there have been no reports of deaths. Although it was known that the quake was caused by the Pacific and Australian techtonic plates colliding, the existence of the “blind” faultline had come as a surprise...

From the Daily Mail on Sunday: MPs slammed for going on a £70,000 trip to New Zealand...to investigate binge-drinking I's not sure why they should be concerned about binge drinking in a former colony, but from reading the Brit papers it appears they have plenty of it at home to investigate. As boondoggles to this one is near the top. Did they go to engage in binge drinking down under or to just watch others. Speaking of binges, in a survey of the most promiscuous women , New Zealand did come in number 1. Perhaps they wanted to test to see if there was a correlation.

AFP: John Key's centre-right National Party swept to power on a theme of change in New Zealand's elections Saturday, ending the nine year reign of Helen Clark's Labour Party . Key's promise to foster the "politics of aspiration" struck a chord with New Zealand 's three million voters, who gave the rich former investment banker a mandate to form a conservative alliance with the small ACT and United Future parties. "In their hundreds and thousands across the country they have voted for change," Key said in his acceptance speech to supporters in Auckland amid scenes of jubilation. "Today, New Zealanders have voted for action, for a safer, more prosperous and more ambitious New Zealand." The election success was the realisation of a boyhood dream to become prime minister for Key...