Posts by David Cauchi
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I think the rebuttal to that would that there's been a huge amount of trial by media going on already -- a good deal of it of the police, who have been accused of racism, incompetence, "state terror", etc, etc.
Ye gods, are you seriously equating accusing the police of racism with facing jail if the charges against you are proven!?!
Trial by media means trying a case that is before the courts in the media instead, where rules of evidence and cross-examinations etc etc do not obtain. That is in no way the same thing as your use of 'trial by media' above.
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Nice quote from the hikoi:
"When have we ever had bombs here in NZ? All we have is a couple of fringe people talking rubbish in the bush. The Tuhoe people are totally against these people so why must we all be punished with these laws," Ms Tamara said.
Damn straight. Why indeed? Cos it's not just Tuhoe being punished with draconian laws. The prime minister can now declare any of us to be a criminal. Good eh?
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Cheers Graeme. The bit that confused me was
1. You can only enhance the ability of a terrorist entity if it is already a terrorist entity. Even if you're helping it towards committing a terrorist act, if your help is before it becomes a terrorist entity, then you haven't committed the offence.
Under section 13(1)(b) a terrorist entity is one that commits a terrorist act, and a terrorist act is something done for a political cause and intended to cause death to cause terror (among other things). Surely, though, you train to do something with the intention of doing that thing? Or is that where the need for a specific target comes in, despite things like
First speaker: "What's going to be the strategy?"
Reply: "Strategy will divide, will divide Aotearoa ... extreme violence and extreme f...... actions too." -
With domestic terrorists we don't have one single example. No one has ever actually done it.
Um, Te Kooti would probably count. Funnily enough, though, his biggest legacy has been his ideas, mostly expressed through art (see the chapter in the Binney biography on artistic responses to him).
Tame is to my mind first and foremost an artist. Most artists i know especially the good ones are loaded with baggage, very self centred and court publicity. It's his nature to be that way and I respect him for it.
And this gets right to the crux of it. Art is much more effective than violence. Even the yanks realised they had to cover the copy of Guernica in the UN when they were making their case for invading Iraq there. Compare Delacroix's Liberty leading the people to the Revolutionary Terror, one of these rallied people to the Revolution and the other derailed it. Look at how the historical avant-garde completely reshaped the way we see the world (even milk ads use cubism now!). There are lots and lots of examples (including McCahon's Urewera Triptych).
To be a good artist, you need to have a certain obsessive nature and a lot of self-confidence. I'm not sure that equates to baggage and self-centredness though. Courting publicity? Well, everyone wants their pictures seen.
I too went down to Parliament at lunchtime, and found myself joining the hikoi for a stroll along Lambton Quay. The flags were glorious in the breeze, especially the Tuhoe one.
Visual art wins every time!
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It's even possible that we have a mixture of all three cases among the 17:
a few activists engaged in a long-term plan of "deliberately arousing suspicion" for the purposes of getting (first) an obvious overreaction by the police, and (then) sympathetic media attention for their cause;some genuinely scary individuals not in on this plan, who were taking it at face value;
and some (possibly the majority) who didn't know what was going on and were absolutely freaking.
That's even more plausible.
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To claim that some of these bugged conversations could be taken to mean the bugee was thinking of running for Parliament is facetious. Some of these conversations are BS 'fighting talk' but others clearly go beyond that and indicate that some people were willing to ramp things up.
...if you take them at face value, that is.
That Herald article about Lockett claiming it was all a hoax seems somewhat plausible to me. He does have an axe to grind against the police (private prosecutions against every police officer who crossed his path, I believe it said), and does seem willing to go to ridiculous extremes (and shoot himself in the foot) to do so.
And what's up with Stuff? It's all back again, with an even bigger banner than ever - and an extra story.
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Didn't the police originally say the launched the raids because of an imminent threat? I couldn't work out from that timeline what the imminent threat was.
According to the Solicitor-General:
The fundamental problem is that the legislation focuses upon an entity that carries out a terrorist act, and if individuals are actually developing towards ... carrying out a terrorist act, they aren't yet an entity that is carrying out a terrorist act, and so there is a tautology in the legislation which is extremely difficult to unravel.
However, according to Graeme's summary of what's involved in terrorism charges, section 13(1)(b) states that a terrorist entity is '(b) an entity that carries out, or participates in the carrying out of, 1 or more terrorist acts'. And of course a terrorist act is:
An act is a terrorist act if it is intended to cause:
[you need one of these]
a) death or serious injury (other than to the terrorist);
b) serious risk to health or safety;
c) serious interference to an infrastructure facility likely to endanger human life;
d) destruction or serious damage to property of great value or importance, or major economic loss, or major environmental damage if likely to cause a, b, or c;
e) the release of a disease bearing organism if likely to devastate the economy; orand if it is carried out for the purpose of advancing:
[and you need one of these]
a) an ideological cause;
b) a political cause; or
c) a religious cause.and if it is intended to:
[and you need one of these]
a) induce terror in a civilian population; or
b) unduly compel or to force a government or an international organisation to do or abstain from doing any act.So, according to the DomPost, we have people stating that they want to advance their political cause by causing death to induce terror in a civilian population.
According to section 13(2), you participate in a terrorist group if you do anything 'to enhance the ability of any entity (being an entity of the kind referred to in subsection (1)(a) or (b)) to carry out, or to participate in the carrying out of, 1 or more terrorist acts', which I would imagine includes training to do these things.
Why then weren't they charged under the TSA? The argument I suppose is that section 13(1)(b) hadn't been satisfied, so there was no entity to enhance. But isn't training to do something 'intended' to do the thing you're training for? Graeme, help! I'm drowning.
Oh look! It's all disappeared from Stuff! I wonder why that could be? Bet paper sales will be good today.
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Sigh. That should be 'in the context... you claim to mean'. My brain is obviously absent without leave. I'll shut up now.
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Finn, it's not an unreasonable position at all. Of course, there's an implied negative connotation - and as you mentioned earlier, this is mostly a good thing, in that it shows how far we've come over the last 40 years or so (out of 6000 years of civilisation, and approx 200,000 years of there being modern humans around!).
However, that doesn't mean, as you originally maintained, that things like reacting differently to someone of another ethnicity because they're of another ethnicity isn't racism. Further, I maintain that there being an implied negative connotation doesn't necessarily mean that there cannot be such a thing as positive racism. In fact, I reckon insisting on the point helps the debate. Good old emotive language used for rhetorical purposes, eh?
Speaking of which, Kyle, I think you are being disingenuous that in the context
I know that they have powers to do with mental health, what about a spaz who knowingly puts themselves in danger?
to mean
"an idiot who decides to ignore the helpful police officer who is telling him/her 'hey, do not walk down the street there is a person with a gun down there'"
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Ye gods, I've done it again. By 'the usual term' I mean of course that positive discrimination is the usual term to describe these kind of policies.
I assume the reason this is the usual term is to avoid the negative connotations of the word racism, which has become such a loaded term that it is almost impossible to use it sensibly without having to have these kind of discussions ad nauseum.
I think the best way to stop accusations of racism being flung around as insults that attempt to shut down discussion and deal with the full spectrum of racism in society, is to acknowledge reality.