Arrests

Written By: - Date published: 11:40 am, October 16th, 2007 - 18 comments
Categories: Media - Tags:

policeraids.jpgIndymedia reports that “In a wave of massive state repression, 300+ Police, in many cases armed, raided houses around the country today making 17 arrests.” They also claim the raids were “targetted at people involved in the Tino Rangatiratanga, Peace and Environmental movements.”

From Stuff, Police claim to have found Napalm bombs, Molotov cocktails and military-style assault rifles.

Search warrants were carried out in Wellington, Auckland, Whakatane, Christchurch, Palmerston North, Hamilton and Ruatoki. Most who appeared in court faced weapons charges. The Police have apparently yet to seek advice on laying charges under the Terrorism Supression Act 2002.

Stuff has a lot of coverage, the latest of which quotes “left-leaning commentator”, Bomber Bradbury as having said “middle New Zealand will recoil in horror” when it hears of the reasons for the police raids.

Also sounds like more arrents and charges are a possibility. More coverage and video at Scoop including this TV3 video of a raid in Wellington.

18 comments on “Arrests ”

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  1. Ross Miller 1
    16 October 2007 at 11:51 am

    Just to repeat my comments in another forum …

    I think we need to see the evidence before rushing to judgement.

    On what has been reported to date I sense a certain similarity between Iti’s mob and various American hate/survivorist groups characterised by paunchy and slighty smelly individuals in cast off cammo gear playing cops and robbers games and with average IQs in the low 70s.

    But then again I guess Timothy McVeigh is a product of that.

  2. all_your_base 2
    16 October 2007 at 12:08 pm

    I agree Ross, I’d like to see some evidence too.

  3. Sam Dixon 3
    16 October 2007 at 12:08 pm

    Its really hard to know wat to think at present, guess we have to hold judgemetn until later on.

    What has ineterested me is how sceptical the news coverage (apart from the papers) has been. Closeup was frankly biased against the Police but that’s actually a relief, I was expected US-style fear-journalism ‘what were these terrorists going to do? Could there be more terrorists? Do we need stronger laws? Oh, please Mr Secret Police save us’ So good on the media for not just taking the State at its word (although don’t cross the line into automatically suspecting its lying/incompetent)

  4. Tane 4
    16 October 2007 at 12:37 pm

    DPF’s first reaction – a miserable attempt at satire that I sincerely hope he now has the wit to regret

    It was just tasteless really, wasn’t it? What a time to be scoring petty political points.

  5. Inventory2 5
    16 October 2007 at 12:53 pm

    Ross – I recently read a book about McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing, and it was pretty scary that a disaffected ex-soldier could so easily go off the rails in such a catastrophic manner. As other posters have observed, we should wait for more to come out on this – at the same time, it only needs one person foolish or gullible enough to act on the rantings and ravings of people around them, and the outcome could be tragic.

    We’ve probably all known someone in a workplace or social setting who gets “set up” to “fire the bullets” that others around them make (perhaps not a good analogy in this case, but it was all I could think of!) – some of us may even have been in that situation ourselves. The clever and cunning ones are those in the background – the plotters and planners – with less risk of being caught, and they are the real menace.

    Re DPF’s first thread on this – bear in mind that it was posted at 3.30pm yesterday afternoon, when the full impact of yesterday’s events was still not evident. His two subsequent threads have had a touch more gravitas. 20/20 hindsight is a precious gift!

  6. Nih 6
    16 October 2007 at 1:08 pm

    Just to repeat my comments in another forum .

    I think we need to see the evidence before rushing to judgement.

    Fear not, that’s how the law works.

  7. Robert Owen 7
    16 October 2007 at 1:26 pm

    “Let’s just take a moment to contrast this reasonable “wait for the evidence” approach with DPF’s first reaction – a miserable attempt at satire that I sincerely hope he now has the wit to regret:

    In preparation for the Electoral Finance Bill, the Government has pre-emptively arrested 17 Green Party and Maori Party activists today in a series of raids involving 300 police officers.

    “Their protest activities will be illegal next year, so we figured we’d be pro-active and arrest them now to save time” said a Police spokesperson. “

    When I pointed out that the post was pathetic.
    And that DPF should read a a particular post at Kiwiblogblog to understand what GOOD satire was,
    I am now unable to log in to kiwiblog and my post has been deleted

  8. r0b 8
    16 October 2007 at 12:33 pm

    Let’s just take a moment to contrast this reasonable “wait for the evidence” approach with DPF’s first reaction – a miserable attempt at satire that I sincerely hope he now has the wit to regret:

    In preparation for the Electoral Finance Bill, the Government has pre-emptively arrested 17 Green Party and Maori Party activists today in a series of raids involving 300 police officers.

    “Their protest activities will be illegal next year, so we figured we’d be pro-active and arrest them now to save time” said a Police spokesperson.

  9. Nih 9
    16 October 2007 at 1:35 pm

    Also, farrar’s original post wishing doom on the police was completely out of line. Wishing failure and bad publicity on the police for its own sake is not only childish, but seditionist treason. Redbaiter loves that phrase, I wonder if he’ll called farrar out on it.

  10. Nih 10
    16 October 2007 at 1:36 pm

    It appears even if you get the captcha wrong, it makes it look like your post was approved.

  11. all_your_base 11
    16 October 2007 at 1:48 pm

    Nih – The Standard’s commenting system uses a technology called AJAX – the same kind of thing that Google Maps is built on – it allows comments to be posted without a complete reload of the page.

    The downside is that if you get the captcha wrong your comment will *appear* to have been correctly submitted but when the page *actually* reloads – perhaps when you visit later – the comment won’t have been posted to the site database.

    I could turn off the AJAX but if you got the captcha wrong your comment would still be lost – the only difference is that you’d know immediately that you’d messed up. I now copy my comment to the clipboard before submitting the captcha just to be on the safe side.

    Any suggestions gratefully received.

    PS. one of the captcha words is computer generated, the other is a machine-unreadable scan from a book being digitised by the Internet Archive.

    So your solved captchas help computers read books. You need to get the generated word correct, the other you don’t – I guess that means if one of the words is really hard to read, just concentrate hard on getting the clearer one correct…

    http://recaptcha.net/

  12. r0b 12
    16 October 2007 at 1:08 pm

    bear in mind that it was posted at 3.30pm yesterday afternoon, when the full impact of yesterday’s events was still not evident.

    That’s a fair comment as far as it goes. But DPF’s “satire” mentions 17 arrested and 300 police. It was clear even at this point that something big was going on. And what was the first reaction? Ugly.

  13. r0b 13
    16 October 2007 at 1:33 pm

    I am now unable to log in to kiwiblog and my post has been deleted

    I guess you should feel honoured. I guess Kiwiblog (hmmm – “Kiwibog”?) has lost the last shreds of its credibility. Perhaps we could club together and buy DPF a copy of 1984 ?

  14. Sam Dixon 14
    16 October 2007 at 2:38 pm

    I just always copy my comment before submitting, I do it on Natblog too.

    and if I can’t make out the captcha I press the new challenge button.

  15. Nih 15
    16 October 2007 at 3:02 pm

    PS. one of the captcha words is computer generated, the other is a machine-unreadable scan from a book being digitised by the Internet Archive.

    I’d figured as much. BTW, I’m the same guy who emailed you yesterday about Ajax.

  17. Barry 17
    16 October 2007 at 4:23 pm

    I will wait to see the evidence too. In the meantime I wonder about the possibility that such police actions (standing over someone with a gun to their head etc) are not more likely to encourage violent responses than stop them.

  18. Nih 18
    16 October 2007 at 6:26 pm

    Eh, sorry, I had to take the post down. I let the police know what I’d found as well and they preferred it wasn’t pasted all over the internet right now. Fair enough.