Posts by Stephen Judd
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It's getting silly and, in the case of "stormtrooper" verges on the offensive. And I'm sure the old bloke in Ruatoki was treated somewhat insensitively by the police, but was it really "like what the Nazis did to the Jews"? No it bloody wasn't.
Aye. That's hyperbolic.
I'm inclining towards the view (a) that the police over-reacted in some key respects, but (b) it's past time that some of the advocates for the other side stopped ignoring the elephant in the room, especially evidence of the stockpiling of weapons, and draw an emphatic distinction between dissent and arming-up.
This is just my impression, mind, and just by way of speculation, but anyway... I think part of the problem here is that while a few people may have been stockpiling weapons (which hasn't been proven), a much larger group who definitely haven't been stockpiling guns feel unjustly accused of terrorism, subject to harassment in the form of search and seizure, and so on. And that larger group are in turn members of communities who already have bad relations with the police for one reason and another.
As and when concrete evidence of plans to commit acts of terror emerge those annoyed people may change their tune, but right now they're really pissed off with being tarred as terrorists and having their doors kicked in.
So to abuse your metaphor, they don't think there are any elephants, and they have other animals in the living room that are annoying them much more right now.
I honestly honestly think that the word "terrorism" itself is poisoning our debate all around.
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It's weird, but whenever someone gets my name wrong, they call me Simon.
Anyway, Grant, what I mean by editorial emotion is that when you read an item with overt emotion, I see that as potentially editorialising. This is Bad. This is Good. This is Funny.
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Keep watching Kyle, I'm finding that I'm absorbing stuff from context.
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they have expression on their face and in their delivery because that's how people tell stories to each other
Call me an elitist bastard, but I don't want stories, I want information. I don't want newsreaders to convey editorial emotion.
Incidentally, here is a really heroicly stoic newsreader. I hope he and his colleagues are ok:
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One of my best culinary memories is as a child getting platefuls (or was it old ice-cream containers?) of spit-roasted, rosemary-scented lamb from Labour party fundraisers at The Narrows outside Hamilton.
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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.
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If they knew there were no weapons in Wellington, they wouldn't use the AOS there.
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.
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Map, for those who are unfamiliar with the area. Karo drive is extremely busy during morning commute hours.
On the other hand, it's dead quiet before 6 AM or so. And I recall police locking down blocks in town during the day for reasons as trivial as accidents and bomb scares, never mind executing search warrants for guns and ammunition under the TSA.
I wouldn't want to put words in Jackson's mouth, but I expect he would contend that the police fear violent response from Tuhoe but not from Pakeha. They line up Tuhoe for photographs because they don't know who they're looking for, but apparently they're better at telling Pakeha apart. And so on. Did the police detain and photograph people in the vicinity of Abel Smith St? Not that I know of.
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Moana Jackson: There are questions that need to be asked.
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If you read about Barrie, you discover that he had an absolute horror of a childhood, including actual psychogenic dwarfism from lack of affection. Seen in the light of his personal history, his writings about children and childhood take on a rather different hue, manifesting his experience of loveless, cruel and indifferent adults. Lucky for him that Victorian sensibilities were so receptive to what are essentially healing fantasies for the abused.