"The Terrorism Files"
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Actually, as long as we're going for ambitious rationalisations: knowing the temperament of certain people, perhaps they knew they were being monitored and delighted in saying outrageous things to tweak the listeners.
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Sure TSA not being passed
?? The amendment to that bill had overwhelming political support, was certainly going to pass...
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Actually, as long as we're going for ambitious rationalisations: knowing the temperament of certain people, perhaps they knew they were being monitored and delighted in saying outrageous things to tweak the listeners.
I think we can safely eliminate that. This isn't dropping the word 'bomb' and 'osama bin laden' into random conversations. This is a fairly extensive operation over a couple of years, involving making contacts with people throughout a wider movement and drawing them in, training camps, possibly building huts, accumulating ammunition and weapons, and presumably a whole heap of conversations, of which the police have only got some on tape.
And what Finn said about them lining their own community up for the police intervention.
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A S,
Actually, as long as we're going for ambitious rationalisations: knowing the temperament of certain people, perhaps they knew they were being monitored and delighted in saying outrageous things to tweak the listeners.
that's what i figure with half of it , but well to me that's just being plain stupid.
Perhaps to take a cynical view, it is probably a claim I would frantically trying to convince all and sundry of if I was facing these charges.....
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Too true Gareth - I was absolutely off mark there.
Then ensure Domestic aspect is included & strengthen Police role as domestic anti-terror agency - as opposed to SAS.
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"And what Finn said about them lining their own community up for the police intervention."
No, the Police must take responsibility for there own actions & Ruatoki was OTT.
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Then ensure Domestic aspect is included & strengthen Police role as domestic anti-terror agency - as opposed to SAS.
Possibly, but without any firsthand knowledge I can't bring myself to come down on the "cops did all this to influence legislation" side of things...
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WH,
if the police hadn't been such fuck ups with arrests and raids, i suspect public sympathy would not be with those arrested.
I don't really get the impression that it is... I think most of the public supports the police action in this case, even if we suspect that the threat posed by this particular lunatic fringe hadn't fully crystallised. Why take avoidable risks with people's lives?
Well - in the UK...
It may prove easier to deal with each case independently and to assess each on its own merits. It is always difficult to make meaningful and helpful comparisons, and it may just be that both cases are bad in very different ways.
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No, the Police must take responsibility for there own actions & Ruatoki was OTT.
How should police have reacted to the statements made public today? By walking up and knocking politely on the door?
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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.
I couldn't work that out either David. Of course, it might just not be in the documents that the Dom have, since they're from a court hearing on the 10th, and the raids were on the 15. It may be that something happened on the 11th or 12th that brought matters to a head. However, curious minds would like to know.
Perhaps we should stop quoting John Minto on the "nothing different to what you'd hear at any gunclub" BS. Based on his statements to date, he doesn't strike me as the type to let fact or reality stand in the way of a gross generalisation.
I'm not so much with you on the fact and reality stuff. But does John Minto ever go to gun clubs? And if not, how would he know?
No, the Police must take responsibility for there own actions & Ruatoki was OTT.
I'm sorry, if, as you've hypothesised, it was all a trap to catch the police and make them come in over the top and prove what a crap law the TSA is, then the 17 really would have to front up to Ruatoki and apologise for involving a whole community in their little game. You can bet that people who have put themselves forward and supported them, like Moana Jackson, would be pissed as all hell at them. That's his mana that he's put forward on their behalf.
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Sure. They were bad. I wouldn't hang out with them, or give them a job.
My point is that while deeply unpleasant, that doesn't make them part of a Terrorist War On Civilisation (TM). It doesn't mean that we have to abandon our liberties. It doesn't mean we should just shut up and be thankful that our great and good government is here to protect us from these nasty people.
I'd say that on a scale of threats to my future health and happiness, Tama Iti and his band are somewhere down there with volcanic eruptions and meteorite strikes.
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Finn - pretty much as they did in the rest on NZ.
Even Broad is on side on this point. -
I have to say that I'm pretty pissed off by this. The police have leaked consistently in the last month, feeding juicy bits of information to the media - and now that they've failed to get a prosecution, they dump the whole thing in the media's lap in an act of pure revenge.
There is a culture of impunity in the police, and releasing information simply because you don't like someone, and you think they should have been convicted, when the courts have said otherwise, is simply disgraceful.
I wonder if this will see a fair trial possible under the Arms Act, or whether that may have to be dumped now to? (I have no idea about these matters, it's a genuine question)
And it appears Indymedia has suffered some kind of attack - it's offline...
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i'm switching everything off till the dust settles.
Ditto. And dubmugga's comment (page 4) best exemplifies why I can't be bothered getting into a debate. So I'll just leave you with a rant:
I think there's a lot of naivete being displayed here from some commenters. And worse there's a lot of apologists too.
I marched against the Springbok tour, even took part in some 'direct action'. I also pumped my fist and sang along with NWA on "Fuck Tha Police". I 'hate' Bush and 'hate' the attempts by his administration to control the world (and yes, he's just the current figurehead of that cabal) but that doesn't mean I'm ready to side with Al Qaeda who also hate Bush (etc) because I hate the War in Iraq/Gitmo. And it doesn't mean I won't call the cops if someone is doing something illegal (especially to me!).
I think some people on the left (especially the extreme Left) need to have a think about what was going and how they expect the Police to react. And be realistic about it. The Police had zero chance of raiding these 'camps' and catching anyone doing anything. The camps were too remote for any surprise visit (it's only in the movies where Special Ops can hide in a tree for 3 days so they can drop down on the baddies at precisely the right time) so they did the next best thing (from an operational point) and blocked the only road in and out of Tuhoe. Yes, it was a dragnet and a innocent people were affected. Why was the dragnet so tight? Because in previous years when pursuing gang members in relation to a murder the Police cordon wasn't so tight and the suspects were smuggled out of the area in a Kohanga Reo van.
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. So what would you prefer? That the Police take no action and maintain a watching brief? If so then maybe we should form our own KGB to covertly follow suspects 24/7 so we can arrest them when they're in the car, outside the Beehive, with Molotovs in hand. And even then there would be people here on PAS claiming that those arrested were possibly only on their way to a BBQ.
Activism is a lot like buying property at an auction. You can go in with the best of intentions, knowing your limit, and be determined to not go beyond that. But as any auctioneer knows, it's not hard to get people to cross that line once you've got them emotionally involved. You just have to do it incrementally. Those camps in Tuhoe may have started out as opportunities to learn bush/hunting skills, but clearly (IMO) some people saw an opportunity to use them as training for a different purpose.
And clearly some people don't see it that way. Nothing happened, other than a major Police over-reaction. I can't agree with that, but I can agree with Sue's comment:
if the police hadn't been such fuck ups with [the] arrests and raids, I suspect public sympathy would not be with those arrested.
Although I would amend that to "...__**some**__ public sympathy..."
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A S,
Rich
My point is that while deeply unpleasant, that doesn't make them part of a Terrorist War On Civilisation (TM). It doesn't mean that we have to abandon our liberties. It doesn't mean we should just shut up and be thankful that our great and good government is here to protect us from these nasty people.
So can we take it that means that when (because it will happen) everyone starts jumping on the lets ban guns bandwagon after all of this, you will come out and stand up for those firearms owners who have obeyed the law, and who will be the ones who are ultimately punished through loss of their liberties for the actions of this particular bunch of muppets?
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Oh, BTW, since none of what's been published amounts to *evidence* as opposed to *journalism*, I have no idea which if any of the 17 have been engaging in unpleasant hate-speech.
Some of them might have gone on the bush trip and come back rather shocked and with a mental note to avoid those nutters in future.
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What I wonder is at what point do the law-enforcement authorities do the shift from doing the arrests etc through the normal legal processes to calling this a 'war on terrorism' and sending in the SAS or the like and not ask questions. Would it take an actual terrorist-like action to make this shift?
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Probably that it's utterly idiotic and hypocritical. Of course, if you don't mind being a hypocritical idiot that probably doesn't bother you.
...would it bother you if i called you a sanctimonious retard ???
I'm not a cop or a journo. I have the luxury of making shit up and reserve the right to express it...
...it's great and in the overall scheme of things it don't mean jack
lighten up...
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WH,
It doesn't mean that we have to abandon our liberties. It doesn't mean we should just shut up and be thankful that our great and good government is here to protect us from these nasty people.
True. But it's a mistake to align yourself with a bad idea for the purpose of advancing a good one.
This might be a case that shows why we give the state powers of surveillance and arrest. That doesn't mean that civil liberties aren't important or that they don't need protecting from overreach. Why defend the indefensible I say.
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Some of them might have gone on the bush trip and come back rather shocked and with a mental note to avoid those nutters in future.
I've been wondering if that happened since it appears none of those activists with more tenuous links thought it might be a good idea to tell the Police what was going on.
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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.
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I'm not a cop or a journo. I have the luxury of making shit up and reserve the right to express it...
Perhaps you could do it elsewhere. Some of us are investing our time and brains in having a discussion about some important issues, and you're muddying the waters and wasting our time.
If you want to make stuff up, up to you, but this isn't really a 'creative fantasy thinking' blog.
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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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The absollute worst part of all of this is that Maori orgainisations including the Maori Party have not been on TV every day and noght condeming the threat of violence and the actions of these nuttas. They have either not been doing it or the MSM has not been reporting it. Which is it - either answer is a very scary scenario for the short to medium term future of our country.
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What I wonder is at what point do the law-enforcement authorities do the shift from doing the arrests etc through the normal legal processes to calling this a 'war on terrorism' and sending in the SAS or the like and not ask questions. Would it take an actual terrorist-like action to make this shift?
How would we ever know? Can we really be sure that this stuff isn't already happening?
Seems unlikely to me, but when there really is major violence, then, as we've already seen in the US, strong civil institutions are no match for powerful people acting outside of the law, with plenty of willing followers. Yet. NZ doesn't even have particularly strong civil institutions on paper, but practically it has worked so far, mainly because as a society we are so unaccustomed to armed violence that the boundaries are maintained by common sense. Much though I'd love stronger paper institutions, the fact that we haven't needed them is actually the strongest defence of the rule of law.
Then again, I'm not poor and Maori, so wtf would I know about institutionalized oppression?
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