THIS JUST IN
385 Responses
First ←Older Page 1 … 10 11 12 13 14 … 16 Newer→ Last
-
Finn you picked the weakest part of Moana Jackson’s argument to criticise out of the context of the rest of the discussion. This is exactly the way evidence gets misconstrued!
I posted the point where it became clear that unsupported assertions were being made at a faster rate than he appeared to be attempting to provide support for them. That claim of racism is stunningly badly supported, yet stated with crystal clear certainty, and in the current environment is far from helpful.
That's the second piece of Jackson's that I've read that appeared to be either deliberately spinning or being at best logically dubious, so forgive me if I don't appear to be affording the proper respect or something. Quite simply, his arguments aren't compelling and the fact that he's constantly on the attack bugs me. There's no concession to the fact that some people may have been arrested in connection with things they've actually done, and all possibility of wrongdoing by anybody other than the police is utterly ignored in his writing.
There may be a world of difference between terrorism and "disturbing activities", but personally I don't want to be allied with either in pursuit of my political goals. If the TSA is bad law then I'd rather see it taken on as bad law, not as bad law that saw some people arrested for things that nobody really wants to talk about, but which they're obviously innocent of, dahling. If their degree of involvement in "disturbing activities" is as yet undecided then let's neither damn them or deify them just yet eh?
-
Looking again Kyle is quite right that the "fallback position" statement is specifically about the inter-agency communications, not the police evidence, but the article does flick between the two and Watkins does argue that releasing the police evidence would be in the public interest.
Thanks Shep. Honest partnership is what it is all about. Unfortunately I haven't yet seen a government agency that really takes parthership seriously.
Somebody tell me how to do those fancy indent things so I at least don't LOOK like such a noob. Or tell me where the instructions are. (Yes my kids set up my phone...)
-
Finn, you probably don't have to protect your right to your culture every day of your life. You probably haven't had your ancestral land stolen and been beaten for speaking your native language at school. You probably haven't even been stopped by the police and photographed illegally by your car. You probably have no deep need to ally yourself with either set of activities. These guys are quite literally struggling for survival.
If you think these things haven't happened you are in denial. They haven't happened to me either, but I've looked beyond the veneer of "We're all New Zealanders" to the structural inequities that allow Pakeha New Zealand to do violence to Maori individuals and groups in real and immediate ways every day of their lives. Call me biased, I call it realism.
And sorry, Moana Jackson isn't going to come out and say, well yeah my client did it to "balance" his discussion, and he can't give specifics yet about the police misconduct.
-
"War on Terror" is a contradiction in terms.
"Police Terror Raids" is poetic justice.
-
Hmm looks like we all watched Flight of the Concords...
-
And was I the only person who had a giggle at this item:
Police are putting TV3 under scrutiny over some of the information it has broadcast since last month's anti-terror raids.
A preliminary investigation has begun into whether the network has any documents relating to Operation Eight - the surveillance programme which culminated in the swoops in which 17 people were arrested.
Detectives want to know if any information TV3 has may be in breach of court suppression orders, or has been obtained illegally. A court order is preventing the channel revealing any of the information, and lawyer Peter Williams is also demanding the channel be forced to reveal its sources.
It follows TV3's claim it has received leaked information detailing some of the evidence police obtained through bugging and other surveillance on the camps in the Ureweras. The information is not admissible in court, now no charges are being laid under the Terrorism Suppression Act.
The head of the police inquiry, Detective Superintendent Andy Lovelock, says the investigation is just getting underway and he will not be making any comment.
Is anyone asking the obvious follow-up: Because it sure seems beyond credibility that Police haven't been (selectively) leaking like the proverbial sieve. I'm not running the infantile 'but Mummy, they did it first, everybody is doing it, so its OK' lline. Three quarters of the problem in this case is there's a lot of people pushing their own agendas, and very little hard fact in the public domain. But the problem with running a shadow culture of spin and counter-spin is that, sooner or later, what goes around comes around.
-
They haven't happened to me either, but I've looked beyond the veneer of "We're all New Zealanders" to the structural inequities that allow Pakeha New Zealand to do violence to Maori individuals and groups in real and immediate ways every day of their lives. Call me biased, I call it realism.
You sound like a recent convert. I don't know who’re preaching to but you might find that a lot of other people know about our history and the negative effects this has had on Maori and have spend time and energy working towards some sort of remedy but still consider the words of people like Jackson, Sykes etc to be inflammatory.
-
Hey Finn was it you who was going to get back to us with details about when the police last locked down a township? I would still like to know that.
You sound like a recent convert. I don't know who’re preaching to but you might find that a lot of other people know about our history and the negative effects this has had on Maori and have spend time and energy working towards some sort of remedy but still consider the words of people like Jackson, Sykes etc to be inflammatory.
That sounds quite patronising to me Neil. I don't find Jackson, Sykes etc to be inflammatory; challenging yes, inflammatory no. Jackson's analyisis may be a very radical challenge to middle NZ's way of thinking but his way of expressing that challenge is very measured and cogent. Besides as I have said before, I think focusing on the issues rather than the rhetorical florishes of people trying to make a political point is a lot more useful in understanding the issues. If you don't like the way that Jackson, Sykes express themselves then argue the issues not the politics. I do realise that that in itself is a naive statement ; ) but we can hope right.........
-
The various news reports about the Abel Smith St raid and the Police's own press release say they were looking for "firearms, ammunition and people". So it would seem that they did not know that there where no weapons in Wellington.
The police did use the AOS to raid one property in Aro Valley looking for weapons. Whether they found any or not is still suppressed I think.
-
Is anyone asking the obvious follow-up: Because it sure seems beyond credibility that Police haven't been (selectively) leaking like the proverbial sieve.
Craig, is the obvious follow up "who benefits most from this latest leak"?
-
The various news reports about the Abel Smith St raid and the Police's own press release say they were looking for "firearms, ammunition and people". So it would seem that they did not know that there were no weapons in Wellington.
Either that, or they knew perfectly well that there were no firearms, but claimed there might be as an excuse for the raid. Their failure to lock down Abel Smith St supports this explanation.
-
Johnno - we know there were no firearms found in Wellington.
The Police would have leaked it already if there were.
More fundamentally they raided non-violent activists & there never were firearms there. -
Hey Finn was it you who was going to get back to us with details about when the police last locked down a township? I would still like to know that.
Kowhai, it was. I'll need to have a conversation to get you some background there, and the person I need to have it with is a colleague who isn't around much at present.
Sara - that's a very difficult post to respond to, because quite simply I don't think you're allowing for the possibility of a moderate reasoned response. The language of your post is highly emotional, yet the facts of what you're saying seem rather insubstantial.
You cited two historical wrongs without any context (i.e: they're no longer ongoing, and substantial resources have been directed towards attempting to resolve those very legitimate complaints) and a third (the police stop-and-photograph activity) that has been used against both Maori and Pakeha groups on different occasions. Not only that, my family is from Northern Ireland and I really don't want to get into some kind of stupid emotive pissing contest over whose "people" has been treated the worst.
Suffice to say that bit of background might explain my underlying distrust of armed political groups for you. Regardless of the legitimacy of their cause, there are some people who are not going to do your side any damn good, and trying to make martyrs of them just damages the ability of genuinely well-intentioned people to make positive progress. Stewing in anger is never a way forwards.
-
Somebody tell me how to do those fancy indent things so I at least don't LOOK like such a noob. Or tell me where the instructions are.
have a look to the left of the reply box.
-
Johnno - we know there were no firearms found in Wellington.
The Police would have leaked it already if there were.
More fundamentally they raided non-violent activists & there never were firearms thereWe'll have to wait for the court cases to see if you are right. Would you like a small wager ;-)
-
Their failure to lock down Abel Smith St supports this explanation.
Seriously folks, every time I hear this my mind boggles. Do we really need to go into the huge list of reasons why locking down this part of Wellington would be very difficult, expensive and futile? Let's try a few samplers:
* There was a fatal crash there at few weeks ago after midnight on a Tuesday. I got stuck in the resulting traffic jam even when the police were just trying to redirect people, forget searching them.
* Coupled to the above, the intersection has a lot of visibility from a number of roads, each of which has turn-offs and alternate routes available which a person carrying weapons would be able to take. To effectively lock down and search everybody these would all need to be blocked also, which would require essentially locking down an entire end of Wellington city.
* It's one of only two or three on-ramps for SH1 in central Wellington, as well as the main road into town for anybody coming in from Brooklyn or the Aro Valley.
* In an urban area like Wellington the relationships between people living in the same immediate area are much less tight. Cities have distributed communities (and, correspondingly, less strong local communities) in a way that somewhere like Ruatoki doesn't, so the proportion of people stopped who would have any connection to the activities that interest you would be far, far lower.
* The odds of catching any one person with weapons in Wellington moving through any one block at one particular time of day is much smaller than it would be in a small town with a single main access road.
* When the police do lock down blocks in Auckland or Wellington for AOS call-outs they're doing it to keep the public out, not to search every individual passing through.
* And lastly, Ruatoki and its surroundings were where all the gun-related activity were supposedly believed to have taken place.
That's just a taster. Quite simply, even if the police wanted to execute similar operations in all locations a number of them would be downright logistically impossible. Trying to argue that the police are racist purely because they didn't conduct operations in an identical manner in a small rural town and on a major intersection on SH1 in the capital is downright insane.
-
Finn, thanks I would appreciate mor information about that if it comes your way.
I don't think that Sara's language is overly emotive. You just don't agree with her perspective. You can't take anger out of the equation when discussing these things. What you have to say about Northern Ireland is interesting and I can respect where you are coming from on that. However when use phrases like :I really don't want to get into some kind of stupid emotive pissing contest over whose "people" has been treated the worst.
I think it is you who are ramping it up a bit (mind you if Craig Ranapia said something similar I would probably find it hilarious, go figure). These are touchy issues but it is better to engage, I don't think it is a pissing contest to bring up colonisation in this context.
-
Prime Minister Helen Clark says allowing intercepted telephone conversations to be used as evidence in a wider range of crimes is one possibility to avoid the need for terrorism laws to be used in dealing with future cases such as the Urewera raids.
Helen Clark said the Government had an "open mind" about allowing intercepted communications to be used as evidence in charges under laws such as the Arms Act.
Another option which would allow evidence such as that gathered by police in the Urewera's investigation was to widen the laws of conspiracy, which would give police a wider range of offences to lay charges under.
-
Labour wasn't driving the raids at all.
They're have an open mind as to how they get their conviction.Johnno a wager for conviction or that they found a zippo lighter?
-
Seriously folks, every time I hear this my mind boggles. Do we really need to go into the huge list of reasons why locking down this part of Wellington would be very difficult, expensive and futile? Let's try a few samplers:
I think if the police thought there was an armed offender on one of Wellington's main streets they would shut it down in a second. It'd be screw the traffic, rush hour, pedestrians etc, there's a guy with a gun running around everybody get back a couple of hundred metres.
So I don't think 'difficulty' was the issue. I think they did it because of different perceptions of the two situations. Whether that's because of different perceived threats, or just plain racism up to you to decide.
-
Quelle surprise.
well we're bound to disagree on his one but I think the PM has it right. The terrorism laws are inappropriate for what Iti was up to but the laws which should be used have a number of failings. There's no good reason why intercepts shouldn't be able to be used with fire arm charges, if they can be used for drugs then why not for guns.
And some tweaking to the laws regarding conspiracy might be a good idea.
-
And trying to subject claims of 'racism' to categorical evidence is equally insane.
I'm sure, Finn, that members of your family could tell you about prejudice and mistrust and forms of alienation expressed in intonation, bearing, gesture and careful attention to vocabulary.
'Racism' is not something that can be identified in a narrative of 'facts' (the playthings of lawyers), but is a visceral experience of being that includes the sanctioned messages of popular culture, the commodification of indigeneity, the attitude of a gaze, the eloqent tightness of a smile, or the self-conscious, ham-fisted friendliness of a liberal.
And while I find claims of Jackson's inflammatoriness almost incomprehensible, I do wonder whether the word 'racism' is simply too untenable to people's sense of dignity-in-decency to be of much value in terms of meaning anything (when people effectively refuse to hear it).
Equally 'neo-colonialist', 'fascist' etc.
Thus a challenge to the thoughtful folks of PAS: I want a word, unmudddied by the waters of historical/linguistic associations, to describe the kind of naive reductionism whereby we are all seen as born without a past, into a present without contingency, enjoying a future of equality. And where flagrant belyings of this view are denied by arguments that rest, as Wilson Harris put it, on "patterns of elegant tautology".
The word is allowed to evoke matters of gender and class, but not to the exclusion of colonialism, culture, language, and 'race'.
Onepeopleism?
Futurism?
Consensualism?
Deniestism?
?
?
Surely you all can do better than me.PS Yeah, Neil, I'm a 'recent convert' to nigga lovin. But you know what they say 'bout goin black, right? Ah just wish ah could get me some a dat 'remedy' you's talkin about, cos my soul, it's in need a some healin....
-
I think if the police thought there was an armed offender on one of Wellington's main streets they would shut it down in a second. It'd be screw the traffic, rush hour, pedestrians etc, there's a guy with a gun running around everybody get back a couple of hundred metres.
Right, easily done, regularly done and specifically addressed in my post. What they don't do is attempt to stop and search everybody passing by, which is much harder, and requires much more planning so the people you're after can't just turn around and walk away when they see the cops. Directing people around an area is much easier than stopping and searching everybody passing through one.
And again, even if they did this it would still be different tactics from those used in Ruatoki and you could still accuse them of racism, if a different tactic is a measure of racism.
-
merc,
-
Eerily similar but totally different? The uniforms are the same but the people are not so much "Freedom Fighters" as bandits and the parallels we can draw here are merely circumstantial. It leaves me wondering whether our police were, in a kind of sick fantasy way, hoping our "Guerrillas in the Mist" were a little more challenging and gladly they were not. It seems we do, by comparison, live in a peaceful corner of the world and heavy handed actions of police and lawmakers would only serve to destroy this. Let's hope sense prevails and the TSO gets quietly swept under the carpet. You 17 can all go home now, nothing to see here. Sorry.
Post your response…
This topic is closed.