Hard News: Te Qaeda and the God Squad
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Police raid organic vegetable growers.
Damn right - those bloody things leave bruises when they're thrown at your head. (Sorry, chaps and chapesses - you've got to laugh occasionally, or you'd just cry all the bloody time. Been there, done that, it sucks.)
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Police raid organic vegetable growers.
I liked this bit....
Ms Pearfell conversed with Scoop on a mobile phone that had only this morning escaped from police custody.
Can we expect to hear questions in the house about mobile phones escaping from police custody?
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merc,
Oh I'm a surfer, we change in and out of our wetsuits in public carparks with free abandon, if you want to stare, go for it. However I think Kyle may have suggested a darker tone re. my pants round my ankles on the web owing to Danyls supposedly owning me, very strange behaviour for a violence trainer.
I'm a little creeped out. -
__what Kyle Matthews said on Page 15__
Good post Kyle! I'm not sure if it's the definition of anarchy but what do you do when you've done all the 'legitimate' things 'allowed' under societal rules of reasonable protest, and yet nothing changes?
We wrote letters, we formed a lobby group, we held a rally, we had a march, and still no change ... oh, well we gave it a go. Maybe I'll start jogging when it gets warmer.
I don't agree with the idea of violent protest/action because of the danger of the innocent being caught up in it. It's a slippery slope, especially when definitions of who is innocent vary according to the political beliefs of the protestor.
The weird thing is that many protestors share a similar trait with the corporates/politicians they despise: "I know I'm right and that this is the right course of action to take" -
re. my pants round my ankles on the web owing to Danyls supposedly owning me
I would just like to note that I took Kyle to be referring to the primary school humiliation of the 'downtrou' (or as the Americans call it, 'pantsing'), rather than any more disturbing 'analrapist' themes. (I hope someone is going to get that Arrested Development reference, too.)
And, um, not all southerners are rednecks, nor are all rednecks southerners. I need a Venn diagram here or something.
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I don't know what happened in Ruatoki, but I have just learned about two aquaintances of mine who had their house raided with dogs and all their computer equipment seized. (Think about that for a moment if you depend on computers for your living or your household management). As far as I can tell they have done nothing worse than be environmentalists with the wrong friends and family.
There had better be something bigger going on here than Tame Iti planning to shoot someone. I was sitting on the fence before, but now I'm getting a strong sense that this is a payback/fishing expedition that doesn't have much to do with "terror" at all.The more raids, and the wider they cast their net, the higher the police are making the stakes for themselves.
As I've indicated, if they have, for example, documentary evidence of Tame Iti trying to obtain grenade launchers, along with various utterances about using the weapons in a "war", then I think there's every reason to intervene.
But if they're going to seize the computers of people who seem to have no more than a distant association with persons of interest, they'd better have a bloody good reason for doing so.
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The more raids, and the wider they cast their net, the higher the police are making the stakes for themselves.
as i've stated from the beginning, this one seems fishy to me.
the only thing that's making me take it seriously is the number of well-established journalists who aren't poo-pooing it.
this makes me think that the word on the street must be highly interesting indeed. no?
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3410,
'analrapist' themes. (I hope someone is going to get that Arrested Development reference, too.)
Yep. Analyst / Therapist. LOLed just thinking about how funny that was.
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The weird thing is that many protestors share a similar trait with the corporates/politicians they despise: "I know I'm right and that this is the right course of action to take"
I mentioned the arrogance of some of the more fringe people who've posted on Indymedia and in blog comments this week; I might also have added the word "contemptuous" and "hostile". They actually remind me of religious nutters.
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this makes me think that the word on the street must be highly interesting indeed. no?
What I've been told is certainly interesting. Wouldn't want to repeat it here though.
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What is the greater evil - (1)failing to prevent Vietnam non-violently, or (2)preventing Vietnam violently?
My numbering.
Excuse my computer programmer mind for noticing the two unmentioned cases: (3) Failing to prevent Vietnam violently and (4) Preventing Vietnam non-violently.
The greatest evil would be 3, and the ideal outcome would be 4. The other two are possibilities, but not the only ones. It's a false dichotomy.
If you've been trying the non-violent option and it's not working, then you could be tempted to up the ante to using violence, if you weighed that 2 was the lesser evil than 1. But rationally you should also weigh up the ongoing possibility of 3 and 4 in your decision. I personally think that 3 is so very much worse than 1 that to tip the balance towards using violence you need to either
a. Believe the violence you might prevent so far outweighs the violence you will cause.
b. Believe that the violence really alters the odds towards the prevention of the other violence.a. is plausible in the case of Vietnam. In NZ, I think it isn't.
b. is totally tenuous. Violence could work backwards, causing far more violence. That seems to me extremely likely. In the case of Vietnam, violent cells opposing the war could easily be used by the state as further evidence that their famous domino effect was actually happening, and then not only smash Vietnam harder, but also a heck of a lot of locals.In NZ it will clearly have that effect - to uncover even a plausible plot of violence against the state, and particularly assassination (which has never happened in this country), would swing huge numbers of people behind the idea of crushing even the right to talk about having such a group, much less having their boy's own adventures out in the woods. In my mind that's a totally fucked outcome, and even a 20% chance of it is too much to risk for whatever lame message of dissent that they were pushing on behalf of sweet-fuck-all people. Only people who really don't care about the real outcome, for whom the actual goal is the violence itself, or the notoreity, would seriously contemplate it. And I don't have much compunction about those people being disarmed.
I don't see that it requires anti-terror laws, though. The existing laws against conspiring to commit crimes would actually do the job quite nicely. They carry punishments fitting to the crime.
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And, um, not all southerners are rednecks, nor are all rednecks southerners. I need a Venn diagram here or something.
Nor is everyone in the south a southerner. Sorry Danielle, I've messed up your diagram there.
I don't know what happened in Ruatoki, but I have just learned about two aquaintances of mine who had their house raided with dogs and all their computer equipment seized. (Think about that for a moment if you depend on computers for your living or your household management). As far as I can tell they have done nothing worse than be environmentalists with the wrong friends and family.
I heard the news story about this on national radio. It didn't exactly bring up images of high terrorism, executing a search warrant on an organic farming meeting.
I can see the cops now, breaking in with their black uniforms and MP5s. "PUT THE MUTATED CARROT DOWN OR WE WILL FIRE." Not that it involved cops all blacked up with guns I understand, but it's more amusing to visualise it that way.
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I might also have added the word "contemptuous" and "hostile". They actually remind me of religious nutters.
i refer you back to someone's comment about the extreme left and the extreme right being mirror images of each other.
it's like a big left/right political affiliation circle where "wacko" meets on the far side from "rational".
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Here is my informant's description:
[X and Y] got raided by 15 police and 2 dogs in
search of the great Kiwi Terror Cell... $15,000 of computer equipment and other stuff was taken.I'd say that's intimidating enough as it is.
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And from here
Green Party Co-Leader Jeanette Fitzsimons says she was shocked to hear that police had raided the Taupo home of Eco-Show organisers Jo Pearsal and Bryan Innes.
"These are law-abiding, respected people, who have had their lives and businesses disrupted by the seizure of computer equipment.
"It is hard to see how disrupting a workshop on yeast-free bread-baking and seizing the underwear of the organisers of the very popular Eco Show, under the Terrorism Suppression Act, is contributing to protecting the New Zealand public."
No charges were laid as a result of the search.
Of course my very cynical view is: yes, trust the police when they go after Maori, but middle-class Pakeha greenies? That's crossing a line. I bet there's broken joinery in Ruatoki too.
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Pita Sharples has jumped the shark.
He's publicly compared Monday's police action in Ruatoki to the sacking of Parihaka.
In Parihaka, 1600 armed constabulary, acting outside the law, drove 2000 people off their land (many of them permanently), destroyed houses and burned crops.
Many people were imprisoned without trial, some for as long as 18 years. Two million acres of land were subsequently seized.
What happened on Monday might have pissed people off, and even made them feel scared, but to compare it to Parihaka is to grossly trivialise the memory of Parihaka itself.
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Just because they're fringe and wacko doesn't mean they're wrong. Sometimes, just sometimes, they have quite interesting things to say.
I tend to give a wacko a fair go. If they're not accustomed to talking politely to polite people who actually listen to what they say and then pick the bones out of it, they might just be someone in need of a bit of polish in their language and a bit of a beating from all sides to knock the rough edges off. Personally, that's how I'm using the blogosphere myself, the more insane rough edges have come off, and my thoughts have actually been altered occasionally by others.
If, on the other hand they go down the path of the dad4justices of the world then they're best ignored or moderated away.
That's the kid who turns up in a martial arts club and instead of learning discipline and how to fight fair, and all the other noble intentions of most martial arts, instead bites their opponent, or kicks them in the balls, beats up on the girls, etc. Those guys usually just get a short sharp beating and expulsion. Some clubs will tolerate them, but you won't find any girls in those clubs, and you seldom find anyone who knows much about discipline or fair fighting either.
Then there's the wacko cult clubs, and I'd put these wargaming kill-the-PM types in there, where all the seriously crap shit goes down, like people being seriously injured or killed in training, abuses of all kinds, etc. These guys couldn't handle a fair fight at all because they never get any practice. They're cheap-shot wankers whose idea of fighting is always the kinghit and run-away. Eventually they're dealt to either by the law or by an outraged victim and their mates. Prison is the best place for them, where all the other ignoble lazy cheap-shotters end up. Some will see the error of their ways and change. Others will love it, and be in and out of the place for their whole life.
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Excuse my computer programmer mind for noticing the two unmentioned cases: (3) Failing to prevent Vietnam violently and (4) Preventing Vietnam non-violently.
The greatest evil would be 3, and the ideal outcome would be 4. The other two are possibilities, but not the only ones. It's a false dichotomy.
Well in the case of the Weather Underground, 3 wasn't really considered to be a possibility, and 4 was considered to have failed. What the Weather Underground were saying was that, given the millions of people that had opposed the war nonviolently (and they also would have said, opposed the oppression of black people nonviolently, yet America continued to be racist and oppress black people), option 4 had failed. They had come to the conclusion that nonviolence, democratic processes etc were faulty methods. It was bourgeois, it was white, and it was Western first world learnings, not appropriate for the revolution many of them were working towards.
3 wasn't considered to be an option by them, because if it's only non-violence that failed, then violence will succeed. They believed that if tens of thousands of people followed them into 'bringing the war home', it would succeed. Interestingly enough, they were taking non-violence theory (if we fill up the jail cells with enough protesters, the system will collapse and they'll have to stop arresting us and let us march over the bridge, vote etc) and applying it to violence (if thousands of people commit violent acts, the war in Vietnam will cost too much domestically to continue). It's not an unreasonable proposition, it's used by terrorist organisations everywhere - I'm sure it's part of the thinking in Iraq at the moment.
They also had justified domestic violence in their minds. Violence was necessary to bring down the industrial military complex. And they believed absolutely your A above - a small amount of violence is justifiable if it prevents a larger amount of violence elsewhere.
That's not an unreasonable proposition for us. If a person was going crazy with a gun shooting innocent people, and you had the ability to stop them by killing that person, would you do it? Probably most of us would. Does it become a different answer if the person was seriously mentally ill, or under the influence of some drug, and therefore not making a conscious choice to kill innocents? Probably not - you'd still be saving a bunch of lives by killing one.
And they really believed it would work. Once you're in their heads it becomes a different equation to one where you say "well it's only 10% likely to work" etc. That wasn't really part of their thinking.
Does the story apply to NZ? No, at least not as far as I know. But I note Ben, you're applying your viewpoint to what other people should be doing and the choices that they should be making. They'll be applying their view of the world and given that they're the ones that are/have/could be making those choices, it's really their view that we should be most interested in.
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Godfather Gypsy, Russell, glad to see a leftie like yourself saying that.
I was disappointed in Sharples' comments. Derek Fox (ok, a bit more of a hot head) was comparing it to the Police crackdown on Rua Kenana in the Ureweras in 1916. Back then, the cops shot a couple of people (one was his son).
I've got two very big concerns about all this, and there's a tension between them.
Firstly, that the cops will be found to have so grossly over-reacted the damage to the country's institutions (the ones which, for all their flaws, do provide a bulwark of democracy and civil society against chaos) will be huge.
So I want there to be something in all this.
But not too much in it. Because the little bit of idealist in me which remains, believes NZ doesn't do things this way; that whatever our differences we sort them out without reaching for weaponry; that despite what was a violent first 60 years and an intolerant second 60 years, we have learned something since then; and that, in Curnow's words, we are "something different, something no-one counted on."
That's my dose of mysticism for the day.
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I thought this was interesting, and somewhat amusing ...
Pakeha police gunmen botched their politically correct attempts at speaking Maori during the terror raids in Ruatoki.
A teenage girl said police clad in black uniforms wielding rifles stormed into a home on Monday morning then spoke in a broken form of Maori. "I had to say, 'Speak in English, I can't understand you'," the girl told the Herald yesterday ...
The Herald has been told the officers were ordered to speak in Maori after Prime Minister Helen Clark was briefed about the raids.
A police spokeswoman said there was no policy in place for officers on the raid to speak Maori.
It understandable that locals would think the police checkpoint being set up on the "confiscation line" was deliberately provocative. Given the above, it seems more likely to have been simple ignorance.
But it suggests that the potential consequences of the raid weren't lost on Clark when she was briefed.
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3410,
Only people who really don't care about the real outcome, for whom the actual goal is the violence itself, or the notoreity, would seriously contemplate it.
Ben, try this on.
Consider whether it is wrong to punch other people in the face.
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Now consider whether, upon stumbling across a man repeatedly punching a young child in the face, it is wrong or right to punch that man in the face in order to get him to stop.
I'm certainly not necessarily saying that unjustifiable behaviour by the state would legitimise violence against it - there are other issues at play - but it's not as cut-and-dried as you make out.
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All politics aside, if your ongoing income relies upon computer equipment then you'd better be taking that particular area of risk seriously regardless of whether or not the police want to take your stuff away. Hard disks fail. Off-site backups are a wonderful thing when you need them, and a relatively cheap insurance policy when you don't.
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Completely off topic, but some might be amused to hear that ACT's Andrew Falloon has managed to register familyparty.org.nz ahead of The Bish.
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All politics aside, if your ongoing income relies upon computer equipment then you'd better be taking that particular area of risk seriously regardless of whether or not the police want to take your stuff away. Hard disks fail. Off-site backups are a wonderful thing when you need them, and a relatively cheap insurance policy when you don't.
Excellent. I'll save that tip to a 5.25" floppy and stash it where the filth will never find it.
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