Posts by Kyle Matthews
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For the people who are suggesting treason, do any of you actually understand what the "owing allegiance" requirement means? It is more than simply being a citizen, it is being someone who holds a special place in society
That's not my understanding of treason at all. Certainly ordinary people have been done for treason against the Crown throughout history.
I thought owing allegiance simply meant 'subjects', which includes all NZ citizens for starters.
The person who suggested it was Graeme, who's our overworked PAS legal expert, so maybe he can respond.
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I'm also interested in what role police informers ( paid to infiltrate I assume) played in all of this. How many times did they instigate these conversations.
I'm only guessing, but I can't imagine there were any paid informants infiltrating.
If police got information from people who had been to the camps, I'd imagine it was someone who went to the camp thinking it was activist training and talking with sovereignty activsts, found out it was rather different than what they'd expected, and decided to talk to the police.
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I've really appreciated your consistent perspective on this Kyle, as much as I've been disappointed that many others on the activist left haven't been able to say: "if you were even contemplating violence, you have damaged our ideals and you are no part of us".
Thanks Russell, it's been four weeks of a lot of personal thinking, and when I think I write, and your threads have been getting most of that.
I understand a lot of where left activists are coming from right now. If this had happened in November 1995, after I'd been through a week of being at the CHOGM protests, I'd be scared that the police were doing something too. It's easy to get insulated and get into 'us vs them' mentality - both as activists, and as police.
It was never easy, but I always had a unique perspective of the two sides, as my father was a cop. Broad statements about the police as an institution always annoyed me. For every neanderthal cop who has fond memories of the Springbok Tour, there's another one who's doing a really hard job well.
There are times to go to the barricades, and if anyone has reason to do that in NZ, Tuhoe would be near the top of the list. Activism needs to be driven by ideals, but based in reality, and if they're taking guns there, it's not hard to figure out that they're only doing damage to their cause. They're not only going to piss off mainstream NZers, they're going to alienate a lot of people who previously had sympathy for them.
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Yes, they would- the point that I was trying to make was that in doing so they probably wouldn't have invoked the TSA, they would have used the general criminal law. It seems the defining difference is the fact that these were activists.
Well the TSA does have components in it about the intent of the accused:
and 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.The TSA clearly was written for 'activists', and I use the word in a fairly broad sense. There needs to be some intent to cause change or advance a cause in the actions.
The gang that you're talking about probably wouldn't kill the PM or someone else for any of those three reasons, it'd probably be retribution or something else. That's not a terrorist really, any more than David Gray was one.
I'm still not arguing for the TSA, though this morning I thought that if it did get scrapped (wishful thinking there), that I'd want the stuff on financing/supporting terrorism still saw some sensible light of day somewhere else.
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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'm sure for some of them at least, that's absolutely what happened. But the legal process should sort that out and hopefully they either end up on minor charges or have them dropped.
It's not unreasonable though to expect that they're going to get all tangled up in it, particularly at this stage. It may be that all the police know about some of them is that they turned up at one of the training camps and fired some rounds from a gun. That alone is probably enough for the arrest. If it comes out in the wash that they actually never did, or intended to do anything, then the legal system has at most scared and inconvenienced them.
Not at all nice obviously, but sometimes the police/legal system will do that as part of the process.
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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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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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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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This could be interpreted as suspect 2 suggesting that instead of acts of violence suspect 1 should become an MP.
Here's a conversation I didn't have the other day:
Grant Robertson (future MP for Wgtn Central!): "It'd have to be a, some sort of f......, sudden f......, because what it'll do, it'll come down on the thinking of the people, they'll think it's al Qaeda ... It's gotta be sudden and it's gotta be brutal."
Kyle Matthews: "Don't piss around with cities or doing the bush thing ... just go to Parliament."Your interpretation Steve, is simply apologist, and a bit sad. Don't hurt your groins stretching that far to make it.
(sorry to pick you on Grant, just recent events...).
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Why didn't they go in on the 12-13th? and catch them "red handed" and get real evidence of military training? rather than going in 2 days later and photographing women and children going about their rightful everyday lives.
That's an interesting question, and for evidential reasons, obviously that would have been better, but maybe they already had photos of an earlier camp.
However for everyone's safety, I can imagine why they did it two days later. You go into a training camp where people are practicing using firearms and possibly other weapons, then there's an increased risk of a firefight. One person out of the dozen decides to pick up their weapon when the police say "hands up" and who knows what's going to happen.
You go in at dawn two days later, weapons are not close to hand, the group is no longer together so they're isolated and less likely to react with violence. The police would have been minimising the risk for everyone, including themselves.