Posts by Rich of Observationz
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Readers ... have also been almost unanimously in support of a front page editorial today
could more accurately have said:
amongst a tiny minority (less that 0.1% of the electorate) of the especially opinionated, support was almost uninanimous for our editorial.
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Let us know if the taxi drivers words to you in Kabul are:
<i>"New Zealand. Tama Iti. Tim Selwyn. Bang bang bang. You want SAM missiles?"</i> -
Graeme, really.
The word "war" is much misused, but it describes a state of affairs very, very far from anything that 17 radicals armed with Lion Red, petrol and bolt-action rifles could achieve. Prosecuting for treason on that basis would be like prosecuting a kid for attempted murder for attacking his brother with a blunt pencil.
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Is that it?
I'm sure if you bugged the National Front, or indeed a group of policemen off on a hunting or rugby trip, you'd hear all this and worse.
What they haven't got is any actual plan to do anything. "Just wait till he visits somewhere and just blow them" isn't a coherent conspiracy.
I'd also suggest that making all this selective, inadmissable evidence public where any juror will be able to google it is pretty much the worst kind of contempt of court and will make any kind of fair trial on the firearms charges impossible.
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It does occur to me that if these people had really been terrorists, they could have avoided all illegality by splitting their activities.
The crawling around in the bush stuff could be done legally with paintball guns .
For the weapons training, those without previous convictions could have obtained gun licenses and gone along to their local shooting club for a basic course.
Pretty much the same result and not a law broken.
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What Sara said. And Stephen
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but as some one who is centre-left and spent a bit of time confronting Police in demos
I've been arrested twice - once protesting at a national party conference, once after getting sick of being pushed around by the NZ police at the CHOGM protests in 1995
Is this the new equivalent of saying "some of my best friends are Maori"?
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I'm loath to dispute with Graeme, but surely if I make arrangements to obtain a gun, go to Wellington, climb to a suitable vantage point and shoot the first red-headed person I see, that's conspiracy to murder?
If on the other hand, I mutter vague threats about wanting to kill gingas, that isn't?
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Oh, and you'd need to know someone's got an interception warrant against you to appeal against it. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the spooks and cops tend not to let you know they're spying on you.
Indeed, but in this case I think the police have more or less stated that they evidence that was so gathered. But there doesn't seem to be a process to (even after a trial) bring the justification of these warrants into the open.
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I've had a look at Part 11A of the Crimes Act and it seems to me that the requirements for a warrant in the case of a "serious violent offence" and in the case of a "terrorist offence" or more or less identical. Graeme - please correct me if there is a substantial difference that I've missed?
So why could they not get a warrant against an offence of "conspiracy to murder" or criminal damage, arson, etc?
And how did they get a warrant given that the Solicitor General couldn't find any grounds to charge under the TSA? Was the evidence the police presented to get the warrant (which would not have include any evidence from the actual wiretaps) misleading, or did the judge misinterpret the Act?
Sadly, there seems to be no mechanism to appeal an interception warrant after it's issuance? Not least because the existence and nature of the warrant and its justification are suppressed?