I’ve heard of a lot of rich people planning on pulling up stakes and moving to New Zealand, apparently thinking that there’s liberty there. As the fallout from the Christchurch shootapalooza shows, though… liberty in New Zealand is a transitory thing, deletable at a moments notice on a government bureaucrats whim.
You can be sentenced to 14 years in Federation prison alongside Tom Paris for the vile crime of simply having a text file.
Is it illegal to own a copy of “Mein Kampf” or Mao’s “Little Red Book” or “Twilight” or any of the rest of the books that have resulted in unspeakable horrors? Are there any ahem religious texts that advocate hate and violence that have been banned?
What’s more, Australian and New Zealand internet service providers are blocking access to sites like 4chan and Liveleak that do not block uploads of the livestreamed video. This is strange on many levels. The reasoning given is typically something along the lines of “it’s objectionable,” to which a rational person would response with “yeah, so?”
I’ve watched the livestreamed video. It is… meh. I’ve seen worse. I’ve seen lots worse. Not too many weeks ago I watched the video where the Moroccan jihadis cut the throat of the Scandinavian tourist woman. *That* was worse. I’ve seen Isis videos where they set prisoners on fire. I’ve seen videos of the 911 attacks, of car bombings, suicide bombings, animal cruelty, plane wrecks, car wrecks, the Bataclan Jihadi school attack, Nancy Pelosi, you freakin’ name it. I frequented Rotten.com and Ogrish back in the day, back when that meant something, for the specific purpose of hardening my sense of the horror the world produces. There are *lots* of *far* worse videos out there, worse in every sense. The livestream is kinda “meh” image quality, so so you don’t really see much; the shootings are surprisingly video-gamish in that it’s “bang, he’s dead.” But a lot of the jihadi videos are in Glorious Extra High Rez; and while it might only be one person rather than dozens, they *lavish* attention on the one person and you not only see but hear that person suffer in fear and agony for an extended period.
Why do I bring this up? Because Australia and New Zealand didn’t care about *those* videos. You want to saw some Danish woman’s head off? New Zealand was fine showing that video. You can doubtless have downloaded copies of those videos. You can share those videos without fear of getting locked up in the hoosegow. 3,000 Americans die? That’s cool. But the Christchurch attack? Oh, no, we need special protections.
Feh. Sauron has conquered Middle Earth.