Vance on terrorism scare tactics

Written By: - Date published: 7:29 am, November 10th, 2014 - 33 comments
Categories: defence, john key, spin, war - Tags: , ,

An excellent piece by Andrea Vance in the weekend, on Key’s terrorism dog and pony show:

Inflating the terrorism risk

…Key wasn’t “lying” in the strict sense of the word when he revealed to reporters on Wednesday that nine passports were revoked. … So far, the Government has cancelled only two passports and would like to make a reasoned case for greater powers to confiscate more. But Key didn’t say that. Instead, he inflated the risk because that fits with the big, scary Muslim threat that he’s been pedalling of late.

The media happily followed Key’s trail of breadcrumbs to Wednesday’s announcement. Clumsy (unsubstantiated) hints about beheadings, home-grown terrorism, and the lone-wolf attack on Canada’s parliament made for easy, dramatic headlines.
…
Ahead of the speech, exclusive access to top spies was granted to newspapers and television crews. Sold as being transparent, it was a PR snow job to tie New Zealand to the conflict raging across Syria and Iraq. The threat level was publicly raised, for added theatre. And just in case the public didn’t quite get it, Key threw up a hint about terror threats to next year’s cricket world cup.
…
Domestic action to curb terror tourism and enhance unwarranted surveillance was cynically conflated with New Zealand’s participation in the international effort to stop IS.
…
And anyone who dares to contradict him is branded naive, despite his unwillingness to engage in debate on security matters.
…
Scaremongering, twisting the facts, and ramming reforms through under urgency, is just a convenient way to bypass much-needed scrutiny of state surveillance.

There’s plenty more, go read it on Stuff…

33 comments on “Vance on terrorism scare tactics ”

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  1. Tracey 1
    10 November 2014 at 8:57 am

    read it and wondered where this level of insight was during most of the election campaign…

    • karol 1.1
      10 November 2014 at 9:29 am

      Since Vance had her privacy compromised by the Peter Dunne surveillance fiasco, Vance has been very good on critiquing spying issues, even during the election. She hasn’t shown the same degree of critique on most other political matters.

      • Tracey 1.1.1
        10 November 2014 at 9:31 am

        agree which suggests some self interest motivation. i wish she would turn her sights onto the tpp.

        • cogito 1.1.1.1
          10 November 2014 at 10:10 am

          Andrea Vance comes from Northern Ireland so is probably very well placed to comment on terrorism, surveillance etc….

          • Tracey 1.1.1.1.1
            10 November 2014 at 11:56 am

            i havent seen her contract but feel sure she can delve into other public interest areas also?

  2. RedLogixFormes 2
    10 November 2014 at 9:53 am

    Well soaked bus ticket laid gently over wrist –

  3. Brutus Iscariot 3
    10 November 2014 at 10:51 am

    FFS it’s “PEDDLING”, not pedalling.

    You PEDAL a bicycle, and you PEDDLE lies. One of my pet hates.

  4. philj 4
    10 November 2014 at 12:47 pm

    Good work AV. Keep it up and risk getting fired.

  5. minarch 5
    10 November 2014 at 1:16 pm

    This shows you how pointless confiscating passports of alleged “jihadis” is

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11355912

    if this fella can get a fake passport organized and flee the country on day release from a life sentence,I dont think they are going to stop anyone else…

  6. Jones 6
    10 November 2014 at 1:19 pm

    Reading the comments section of Andrea Vance’s article, I suspect John Key is on the wrong side of public opinion on this issue. It seems to me that more people are waking up to the bigger picture. This is about getting the internal security network in place to find the dissenters for when the global financial bubble finally blows and the people start demanding their assets back.

    Pretty soon our definition of terrorist will read something like Homeland Security’s and include the likes of: people who are anti-globalist, lovers of liberty, suspicious of centralised government, and those refuse to believe that John Key is the leader of the All Black pack.

    Not that it matters to John Key… even if he can’t manufacture consent, he will railroad the legislative changes through and I wouldn’t be surprised if there is an over-blown incident, as we saw in Australia, so he can say “I told you so”.

  7. kenny 7
    10 November 2014 at 1:39 pm

    So who is advising Key on how to do all this hoodwinking? Don’t tell me he thinks of all these tricks by himself; somebody is telling him what to do.

    I wonder who.

    • Tracey 7.1
      10 November 2014 at 2:00 pm

      steven joyce will be foremost. i suspect he is to Key what karl rove was to bush v2… and the ten grand a pop crosby textor.

      http://www.bushsbrain.com/

      • kenny 7.1.1
        10 November 2014 at 3:21 pm

        Too sophisticated for Joyce or Crosby Textor I think; more likely from some organisation with a track- record of this type of manipulation. probably from the good ol’ US of A.

        • cogito 7.1.1.1
          10 November 2014 at 3:37 pm

          Some writings by a certain Austrian corporal and his brown shirts might have come in helpful as well.

        • Murray Rawshark 7.1.1.2
          10 November 2014 at 8:06 pm

          I think Crosby Textor are totally capable of this. I wouldn’t underestimate them.

  8. Sable 8
    10 November 2014 at 5:03 pm

    Hard to say why the MSM are bleating about, given they seem at least in my opinion to spend a good portion of their time operating as “conduits” for right leaning political and governmental philosophy and policy.

    The kind of outcome described by Vance is to be expected from a right wing government operating pretty much anywhere. So I would ask where’s the story here? Is this yet another case of looking at the symptom without discussing the underlying cause?

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