Posts by Stephen Judd
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Another thing that occurs to me, WH, is that when you say "This is too important a subject to leave to the likes of professional dissidents such as Locke, Minto and Hager", the sad fact is that only the "professional dissidents" are looking at this in any detail or with concern for my civil rights, while the *cough* mainstream political figures are letting me down.
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I think it is a mistake to allow the possibility that terrorism legislation could be misused to override the reality that people who plan politically inspired violence need to be stopped.
Believe it or not, WH, I am right behind you there.
And the converse applies too. It's a mistake to let the reality that there are people who plan politically inspired violence railroad us into misusing legislation.
It's all about the implementation.
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What did Sam Buchanan have to say about the side of police that Pakeha don't see? He has 'copped it' previously so to speak, did he talk at all about the raids on the house in Wellington?
He made the point that when he was scruffy punk rock youth with no obvious middle class connections, his treatment at the hands of the police was far worse than what his respectable peers would have got, and perhaps more similar to what the average Maori experiences. He also (spot the anarchist!) corrected an earlier speaker's statement that there is no history of political violence in NZ by suggesting that there is a history of state political violence.
He didn't talk about the raids on his house though.
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My notes on yesterday's symposium. Notes do not necessarily indicate endorsement of views expressed.
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I don't really get the whole "the accused started using the word terrorist first" thing.
As soon as the raids became news, the police had to talk about them. If they were asked with authority they conducted searches, would they have got away with saying "we can't say?"
This just seems an absurd thing to be arguing about. If the police don't think the accused were engaged in terrorism, why did they seek to lay charges under the act?
Arguing about whether the police used the word publicly first or not seems like quibbling to me. If the police obtain interception warrants under the TERRORISM suppression act, obtain search warrants under the TERRORISM suppression act, and then seek permission to lay charges under the TERRORISM suppression act, then I'm comfortable drawing the inference that they believe they have terrorists to deal with.
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Paintball guns: that's actually what the National Front and co in Christchurch do, according to my informants.
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"why didn't the police step in earlier and dismantle the military camps?"
Well actually I would side with the police there. It isn't illegal to hang out in the bush and do group exercises. Unless they had clear evidence for firearms charges or some other obvious offence, what could the police have charged them with?
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Kyle, I think you've explained yourself well and thoroughly and I understand that all you've done is lay out the issues in conspiracy-type charges. I know you haven't said anything that assumes guilt; I was thinking of other people.
I also agree that leaking goes both ways.
I do think that it's particularly concerning when members of the agency tasked with upholding the law deliberately and flagrantly break it. What's more, in a way that may actually hinder their objective of a successful prosecution. Again, I feel fine taking a more dim view of that than of an activist sharing a copy of the warrant they were served or a defence lawyer talking to a journo (and we don't know who that was, we just have to take the DomPosts's word for it).
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"unknowable" should be "currently unknown". Sorry.
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... isn't the logical thing to take a neutral stance and say "I don't know who's in the wrong here?" (and follow that up with "I'd like to hear all the evidence so I can come to a fair conclusion"?)
I'm really happy to posit counter-factuals at people whose default assumption is that if the police accuse you, you're probably guilty. That's just restoring the balance of the universe as far as I'm concerned.
Also, I'd like to hear all the evidence in a criminal trial, not drip-fed into the media by leakers trying to vindicate themselves.
Also, I'd like to step back from the "terrorism" label with all its baggage and try to see things for what they are, and what I currently see is not what I would normally associate with that word. Quite possibly bad, but not out of the normal range of crime in NZ, not what I would expect as the fruit of an $8m multi-agency year-long operation and certainly not worthy of ZOMG! TERRORZ!
In this area, for me a neutral position is not one where we take the police' word for granted. Neither do I have to withhold judgement on the accounts that we do have, eg of behaviour in Ruatoki vs behaviour at other raids.
Finally, we can all have our hunches about unknowable things. Neil can suspect that the accused will prove to be crazies with guns; I can suspect that the police have an interest in assembling a terror law test case. I can still exercise my (possibly lamentably wrong) judgement about what may happen because this is the interwob. In that sense I will never be neutral and don't aspire to be.