Problem hiding in plain sight

We asked MSC Newswire's European correspondent for an update on the emergency in France........

You have evaluated at close hand the terrorism in France. Are there any lessons that can be learned by New Zealand?We can see clearly an ingrained mind-set in both countries centred on the it-can’t happen here syndrome. The difference being that in France, it has happened there. We can see also a facilitating over-tolerance in both countries and at many levels of the community in both countries in regard to accepting and even condoning anti-social behaviourBe more specific here.I will. In both countries if the police in the interest of law and order are obliged to use force of arms in pursuit of their purpose and someone is shot the reaction is the same. It is that the police are always in the wrong, and that the person shot was always somehow in the right. It is like that.This sympathy for the perceived underdog is a characteristic in both countries?In France, and as I have noted before, this extreme tendency to see everything from the underdog’s point of view dates back to the French Revolution and is enshrined in law. In the New Zealand case it is part of the wider Ned Kelly larrikin syndrome. .You seem to be saying that there is a head-in-the-sand attitude by the authorities?In France this has been made manifest for years. The more the problem built up, the more the authorities hoped it would go away. The riots in the suburbs of France’s main cities several years ago was a wake-up call. But the authorities went back to sleep.In France now, what about more recent events?Here is one lesson for New Zealand. It has only just been mooted in France that the mosques for example are in fact financed by countries such as Saudi Arabia and in order to pacify their own extremists, notably the Waahabis. Until just a few days ago, hours even, the received wisdom was that these structures were financed by the local community faithful.How would this be a threat to New Zealand?The point here is that the French government ardently, some might say, fanatically, pursues money trails in terms of both inward and outward flows. So here is an example of something so obvious taking place that quite genuinely none of the money trail bloodhounds appear to have noticed it. It would be comforting to think that these extremely tough financial police simply cut the local faithful some slack. But I have this horrible feeling that the financing of the mosques simply never went onto the official agenda.Can you be more precise how this is a lesson relevant to New Zealand?In addition to the source of the financing, there has been raised the matter of the spill-over. This is the money over and above that which was required. What has happened to it?

From the MSCNewsWire reporers' desk July 30, 2016