Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern

Silicon Valley, New Zealand and Pandemic Exceptionalism

There are some crises that never touch the well-heeled.  Money, like flab, insulates them from bruising.  The generally applied laws of a state can be treated as meaningless jottings; the citizenry ignored with class contempt.  But few can blame the world’s sixth wealthiest person, Larry Page, for circumstances that were gifted to him.  An opportunity […]

Fantasies of Humanity: The Christchurch Pledge and a Regulated Internet

It had to come.  A massacre, broadcast in real time and then shared with viral automatism; the inevitable shock, and the counter from the authorities.  The Christchurch shootings, inflicting fifty-one deaths upon worshippers at two mosques in quiet New Zealand on March 15 this year, have spurred Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.  Laws have been passed regulating guns in her country.  Interest has increased in monitoring white nationalist groups.  But Ardern was never keen keeping the matter local.