Hard News: Te Qaeda and the God Squad
938 Responses
First ←Older Page 1 … 8 9 10 11 12 … 38 Newer→ Last
-
Ok, I did. For 2 seconds. From what I have read this bill is going to be passed by about 110 to 10. Given its negative nature and the support of National why the hell would the Government/Cops contrive an event to bring unwanted attention to the bill. That claim is nonsense.
Pretty much. Why would anyone need to conspire when they were already going to get what they wanted?
I like a good fnord as much as anyone, but please...
What seems more likely is that those opposed to the bill are using this incident to bring more rigorous attention to its content.
As they bloody well should - the bill is Ahmed Zaoui all over again, a human rights disaster waiting to happen. And a lot of people should be paying a lot more attention to what our Parliament does, and the seeming cosy consensus that basic things like the right to a fair trial can be tossed in order to keep the 'merkins happy.
-
$200m Avatar starts filming in Wellington
Check out the photo; they better be careful they don't get the Anti-Tewwor Squad around... -
Guns don't kill people, bullets kill people?
-
Jeremy - yep, I'm assuming that is what he means by being anti-ammunition.
I'm not buying that line though, mostly because I saw a movie once where the villain used ice, shaped like bullets, to shoot people and leave no trace. I don't want to encourage the underground trade in bullet-icetrays. -
I don't want to encourage the underground trade in bullet-icetrays.
Absolutely, there's enough of a water shortage already...
Being pro-gun, anti-ammunition is a bit like being pro-gun, anti-triggers really.
/end facetiousness (just unfortunate quoting of the poor guy I imagine)I await Friday's "announcements" with baited breath - the level and history of surveillance suggests something of interest, but given the police seemed to act rather suddenly I get the feeling it may have been a rather odd little group that they kept tabs on, that suddenly made a "big call". One that may have passed undetected into the silent history of activist boasting if it wasn't for the surveillance already in place - that the police had to act on out of sheer cautious prudence...
Has made for a fun week of "I rekons" though, like a To Be Continued episode of something... -
merc,
It's an episode of Lost, scripted by the Govt. (why did the police commissioner have to clear the Warrants with Helen first?), the actors aren't allowed to read the script and the writers don't know the ending.
-
It's an episode of Lost, scripted by the Govt. (why did the police commissioner have to clear the Warrants with Helen first?)
Because it would be improper to launch an operation of this scale without briefing senior ministers. Because if the police do decide they want to bring charges on the SoTA they will need the permission of of an officer of state: the solicitor general via the attorney general's office. Because threats have been made against the state. And possibly because specific threats have been uttered against a senior politician.
All of which make more sense than the conspiracy theory you're alluding to.
-
There's a lot of nutters around activist groups.
There's a reason cops, soldiers, terrorists, activists, and revolutionaries tend to be young men. All you need to do is wind them up and point them in the right direction.
They don't question things. They see things in black and white terms. They think they know it all. They are not overly burdened with scruples.
Ideologues (of whatever ilk) are dangerous. Everything is sacrificed to the cause, even their humanity.
Oh, and you don't need bullets to kill people with a gun. Either you stick a bayonet on to the end and jab it into someone's vitals or you bludgeon them to death with the butt.
-
but Gareth, "the police seemed to act rather suddenly" - they're not going to make a public service annoucement 'Please keep clear of the Ureweras as we're going to go in and arrest some people we've been keeping an eye on' are they!
-
True, David, but of course the same could be said of a sword/steel pipe/baseball bat/ criket bat/candle stick/lead piping in the Conservatory.
-
Ouch. I mean cricket bat.
-
Walking on wild side here but Guns can kill people.
The "Butt Stroke" when the butt of the rifle is used to club someone to death & and of course fixing a bayonet is pretty handy as well.TV last night had a couple of log stools & deisel cans as the military camp - um - pretty scout masterish to me.
Digging to level 3, overhead protection, sleeping bays and then you've got something. -
There's a reason cops, soldiers, terrorists, activists, and revolutionaries tend to be young men. All you need to do is wind them up and point them in the right direction.
They don't question things. They see things in black and white terms. They think they know it all. They are not overly burdened with scruples.
Ideologues (of whatever ilk) are dangerous. Everything is sacrificed to the cause, even their humanity.
Hullo Mr Stereotype, how are you today?
For every activist like that, I could find ten who are intelligent, responsible, non-violent people with strong principles and a drive to make a difference in the world.
And they all question things. That's at the heart of the work.
-
It was interesting to read that Mark Jennings has claimed their was no tipoff to TV3 about the morning Wellington raid.
My fairly reliable sources say that a TV3 Executive received a direct tipoff from the Police. Supposedly TV3 had to invent a convincing story so as to avoid it looking like a tipoff. Obviously there is no certainly about this one way or another, but I hope some further questions are asked about all of this. If TV3 did indeed have a Police tipoff then it would raise significant questions about the motivations of the Police in carrying out the raids.
Bryce
www.liberation.org.nz -
but Gareth, "the police seemed to act rather suddenly" - they're not going to make a public service annoucement 'Please keep clear of the Ureweras as we're going to go in and arrest some people we've been keeping an eye on' are they!
In my wild speculation I am referring more to the comments made by Broad et al in terms of escalated concern etc, rather than the act of the raids themselves.
-
What's the saying - "There are no problems, only opportunities."
Get Te Qaeda some government funding to run Outward Bound meets Territorials meets Cultural Understanding courses - NZQA accredited!
Or hire them to help train the SAS. They could chase each other around the Uruwera National Park doing simulated war games.
Tama Iti is just doing us another favour. -
Flavell Said that's exactly what has happened in the past
-
the bill is Ahmed Zaoui all over again, a human rights disaster waiting to happen.
It's only a human rights disaster if it gets misused.
The real problem with the bill is that it is legally a mess. The only winners will be lawyers arguing over whether this or that "secret" evidence should or should not be admissible. As such it is simply bad law. Not because of what it tries to do but because it is written so badly that it cannot achieve what it is meant to achieve. For that reason alone it should be rejected.
cheers
Bart -
Hullo Mr Stereotype, how are you today?
For every activist like that, I could find ten who are intelligent, responsible, non-violent people with strong principles and a drive to make a difference in the world.
Ha ha, how am I meant to respond to that without it descending into a 'are too' ... 'are not' farce?
I shall take your word that 90% of all activists seriously question their assumptions and don't assume they have all the answers.
-
Of course media/establishment apologists such as Brown would characterise my representation of the unjust incursion into activists' lives as the allegation of of a conspiracy theorist.
Brown's facile insight into the ways of the world are so shallow it makes one wonder what he does with all his gallivanting. Certainly no reflecting on how it is one and one makes two.
Conspiracies are clumsy efforts by concrete thinkers to attain something by way of a pre-planned strategy. They rarely work in reality and are prone to gossip and unfulfilled undertaking.
The Labor Government, the Police, the security establishment and the media arrived at the fine notion of oppressing the remnants of NZ activists as separately as their divergent goals.
The confluence was of interests not people.
Events such as the Ruatoki raid happen rather like the free market - by way of Adam Smith's invisible hand. That is if sufficient people in positions of authority in a community want/need something to happen, that need creates a demand. That demand is met by way of infinite circumstance. In this case a couple of Auckland hunters didn't like being made to feel like outsiders by Tuhoe people tired of the prevailing attitude that any kiwi can go anywhere they want, without demonstrating any respect at all for the locals birthright.
That one event may have normally caused a couple of coppers to go out to Ruatoki and to tell the locals to ease up. Maybe the coppers did do that. The intractable problems caused by whitefellas imagining they own everything no questions asked needs to be treated sensibly. There is no right or wrong here only mankind's need to control the territory around them.
Generally that is how this stuff is handled but in this case it wasn't for a range of initially probably local reasons -see whitefella councillor ex-copper with an axe to grind.The town I live in is full of hunters 90% of whom spout racist right wing clap trap at the sight of a koru, no one polices them or spies on them for saying things like. "I can't tell you the number of times that I've had one of those environmental protesters in my sights when they've been carrying on sitting up trees and stuff, out in our bush. One day I will pull the trigger." cue everyone laughing and swigging away.
Lefties aren't allowed to play with guns. Maoris can under extremely limited circumstance, but not unsupervised around whitefellas. (N.B. it is worth noting that at least 14 people from all over NZ have been charged so far. The selective leaking of specific facts against one 'defendant' is lumped together in the public consciousness to incriminate all those charged. Many will not know each other or have any links outside the usual 3 degrees of separation that applies to everyone in NZ. Imagine if the police rapists had been charged this way. All at once with everyone's evidence lumped into one hit. The evidence at the first case in Tauranga would have incriminated Rickard even though he wasn't there.)
As the operation progressed some of the following inter alia needs played out:
The police and security establishment's motives are the usual. After a lifetime working in bureaucracies around the world, I can picture exactly how the pressure for a 'result on terror' built up.
One of the curses of the OECD and the plethora of other Globalist agendas such as APEC has been the way that the administrations of members have been standardised by swapping mid to senior level bureaucrats between countries.
There was a time when NZ would innovate policy. No longer Helen of Beehive usually grabs from Bliar-Brown Britain, Key's corporate kiddies look to amerika.
If you thought some Scunthorpe refugee is unbearable when he incessantly points out that things were done better "back home by gum", try working under some local up and comer who has been wined dined and fed bullshit on his/her 'overseas posting'.
In an administration of reasonably longstanding vintage such as the current NZ one, the public servants and the ministers have often received the same new policy widgets and indoctrinations from different angles, so all are "reading from the same page".
NZ's security industry has long been made to feel like the poor relation at international conferences. This even pre-dates the anti-nuke bust up, and the subsequent highly embarrassing arrest of two 'friendlies' during the Rainbow Warrior affair. Those issues are ancient history, but the traditional poor resourcing of NZ security services isn't.
All their mates in the whitefella security club have been getting mobs more money, human resources and best of all police state style powers. Stuff that the kiwi spooks would die for.
The 2002 anti Terra Act
was a pretty watered down version of the police state stuff all the other whitey countries and their colonies got to protect themselves from unwhite people.So a new one is on the books. This one is designed to by-pass courts, lawyers and all that boring and unpredictable stuff.
All that will be required to determine if a group or activity is terror related will be a set of numbered instructions from the UN security council. That way only those who US, China, UK, France and Russia have no vested interest in will be dealt to. Of course that also means that there will be no way for some kiwi to get his/her status 'reviewed'.
No more appeals for people from deemed groups means no more Ahmed Zaoui type 'embarrassments. That saga would have been the cause of much derision at the biennial Conference of Mid-level Administrators of Security.(COMAS)But many ordinary Kiwi's (to paraphrase Helen of Beehive) probably won't think much of the plan. Unless...? Brown fellas carrying guns could do the trick. Most NZers have a vague uneasiness about the litany of atrocities and rip-offs Maori have endured and this is most often processed into contempt mingled with fear. See the most recent evidence.
Teachers claim they are being bullied to take part in a programme aimed at boosting Maori achievement in the classroom and are considered "anti-Maori" if they don't, a new report says.
The Government-funded Te Kotahitanga programme aims to turn around damning Maori education statistics by a range of methods, including putting more emphasis on Maori cultural content and changing teachers' attitudes towards Maori students.
When teachers are told that it would be smart to learn other things, say new technology and it's impact on the way children can be taught, they generally thank their boss for the heads up. This doesn't apply with Maori education though. Despite the fact that NZ's education system has failed Maori students since it's inception, now that some techniques have been developed which address some Maori education issues, when teachers are told that it would be smart to learn the new techniques, if they can successfully turn around Maori education statistics in their class it would be good for their careers, they don't say "Thanks for the heads up boss, I'll get right onto it." No they run off to the ministry claiming they are being 'bullied'.
Ooops another digression- Sorry class back to today's topic.
If anything will get this act through it will be that crass appeal to Pakeha insecurity. The scenario is pretty much win-win. If the terra-ists get done like a dinner most everyone will think the security services are marvelous and deserve a hand and the act will be passed with hardly a murmur.
If the prosecutions fail then NZ's weak legislation will be blamed and the act will be passed with hardly a murmur.
So that is part the police and security industry's 'need' although things may be even more petty than that. One of the defendants is bringing a private prosecution against several police for assault. He called his own press conference to elucidate on that and what he felt the case was about for him and lo and behold a copper turned up in the middle of it telling him he needed to get his ass to the High Court for an appeal against his bail.
Now he's in the Mount we probably won't hear more from him for a while. Of course it will be devilish awkward for him to put together his private prosecution whilst incarcerated.
Next the politicians.
The conservative nature of security operatives (and yes this includes within alleged leftist regimes) means that the Nats will be happy to see the power of security services increased.
Labour Party pols have a rather more urgent and desperate need.Every poll shows them being snipped away from both sides. Key and his greedheads have been reasonably successful at pretending that tax cuts, and increases health and education expenditure can be achieved without flogging off the few chattels remaining.
So Labour has been banking big time on gaining some ground back on environment issues.
However not everyone who cares about this planet believes a system of papal indulgences where polluters can pollute as long as they spend money on planting trees and the like makes much sense.
Firstly there is too much emphasis on global warming. No one seems to notice that the % of mankind related carbon excretion is tiny. Worst of all the multiplicity of toxins are still secreted. Eco-system destruction continues unabated.
The really big winner out of the perverse 'environment policy' is likely to be the nuclear power industry. The real losers will be poorer people who will have to pay more for everything (the carbon credit scheme will be passed straight on to the consumer) especially with food where increased production costs will be compounded by decreased supply as vast tracts of food producing lands are turned over to growing crops for making 'bio-fuels'.
NZers will be hit by much higher energy costs (carbon credits costs roll to the bottom of the hill).
Yet there has been no real debate about any of this. So far anyone in NZ who has tried to speak out on this issue is branded a Luddite who doesn't believe 95% of the world's scientists or doesn't care about the planet. No one seems to ask how the "Fart tax" was dismissed as bad science four years ago when now even the cockies are talking global warming.
The green movement have been girding their loins and developing the information. The parliamentary greens know they have to play this one carefully.
Pointing out the social injustices of reducing protection of the environment to 'indulgences' with a carbon credit scheme must be done very carefully; lest the baby go out with the bathwater and environmental protection goes off the agenda again.
Just as it did when Labour mishandled these issues in 03.
Labour knows the onslaught will come and it also knows that the Greens are seen by many as a credible alternative for caring Kiwis.
Labour has a need for seeing elements of the Green left discredited. Circumstance will meet that need, just as water flows downhill through a labyrinth of trickles until pressure pushes the water through the most direct route. NO conspiracy is required, all that is needed is a willingness to take advantage any eventuality.
The police operation against activists especially green left activists would have been seen by Helen of Beehive as a chance too good to be missed. Any Labour realists left standing must recognise that getting creamed in 08 at the same time as the Greens and the Maori Party consolidate their position spells doom for 'their brand'.
So Helen approved the operation and is currently standing back to see which way the wind will blow.
Conspiracies are old hat ways of looking at the world and entirely too clumsy to be effective. Those on the left in amerika who haven't quite forsaken amerikan exceptionalism are fond of blaming 911 on some evil right wing conspiracy.
The pricks didn't need to conspire they just played the numbers.
The architects of amerika's Patriot Act set the method of play on this. They knew that all they had to do was keep the draft Act up to date and eventually they would run into the ideal circumstance which would cause the normally libertarian amerikan public to drop their guard. A dozen annoyed middle-class Arabs did the business on 911. That was pretty much all it took to destroy a couple of hundred years of precedents and protections. True the amerikan security mob probably released a little anthrax to keep the whole thing bubbling along, but even that wouldn't have taken too much whispering in back rooms or whatever conspiracists are meant to do. Even finding the patsy, the person to be 'blamed' for the out-break was simple. The seppos got the instrument of their own oppression.
Shit here we are again digressing well away from NZ's small pond and even smaller fish pretending to be big.
One of the most sickening attributes of mainstream media for want of a cliche is the brown-noses who populate the opinion pages. When I lived in Oz I used to loathe David McNicholl brown-nose to a couple of generations of Packers, McNicholl acted more like a chinless englishmen rather than the Australian he was born. His ethical nardir was as part of the media push to quell protest after the Whitlam dismissal. McNicholl could write though and unlike many of the contemporary crop of commentators eager to join the establishment by reducing events to a bland mish mash, he made no secret of his conservatism.
In other words he was outspoken about his position. It seems all we get nowadays are weak assed apologists, the 'yes but' brigade. Yes the police did raid activists in a scatter gun attempt to tar alternative thinkers with the terra-ist brush, but no they weren't wrong, when the truth comes out you will see, my sources tell me.
If nothing does come out at trial we will be told that the arcane and archaic court system prevented this. Next thing you know they will be supporting the removal of the judicial process from decisions about who is a terra-ist. Streamlining the process until there is no due process.That won't be because of some grand conspiracy where selected journalists and mainstream bloggers were told what to write. No one has to tell them they need to be on the side their bread is buttered.
-
Not because of what it tries to do but because it is written so badly that it cannot achieve what it is meant to achieve. For that reason alone it should be rejected.
The notes on the bill say that the "for avoidance of doubt" wording specifically protecting legitimate protest is being removed because it has "caused confusion".
It's hard to see how an explicit clarification causes confusion, and how removing it will make things less confused.
-
1984
-
zomg
-
James George, you know what's going on from the inside? Or just guessing like everyone else?
-
merc,
All of which make more sense than the conspiracy theory you're alluding to.
Thanks RB, you would be right in calling me out for being conspiracist and alluding to a conspiracy here, thanks for that. Remembers last time being called a conspiracist here re. EB's and Brash, wonders why bothers to ask genuine question at all, but also remembers that there are some laughs to be had.
And at this juncture wonders if the police asked Helen before they decided not to charge...oh that's silly conspiracy mind of mine, always working, always working.
Post your response…
This topic is closed.