Vance on terrorism scare tactics
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- Date published:
7:29 am, November 10th, 2014 - 33 comments
Categories: defence, john key, spin, war -
Tags: andrea vance, look over there!, terrorism
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…
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read it and wondered where this level of insight was during most of the election campaign…
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.
agree which suggests some self interest motivation. i wish she would turn her sights onto the tpp.
Andrea Vance comes from Northern Ireland so is probably very well placed to comment on terrorism, surveillance etc….
i havent seen her contract but feel sure she can delve into other public interest areas also?
Well soaked bus ticket laid gently over wrist –
lol
FFS it’s “PEDDLING”, not pedalling.
You PEDAL a bicycle, and you PEDDLE lies. One of my pet hates.
pat, pat – nice puppy
Ah, those off-shore sub editors, probably paid a low rate!
But what if you loose your lose peddles while pedalling loosing liars like Key? Aint gonna bicycle far at all then.
What about people who sell drugs on bicycles – are they “peddling drugs” or “pedalling drugs”?
clever…
Good work AV. Keep it up and risk getting fired.
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…
That is a very good point, Minarch.
Confiscating passports would actually only serve to send the ‘problem’ underground.
he will have bought some other prisoners identity most likely
or maybe a homeless persons identity
as long as its someone who has never left the country before or never will it is undetectable
Strangely, TVNZ has just reported (on the internet) that he got out of the country using his original birth name:
http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/convicted-murderer-fled-nz-chile-just-hours-after-temporary-prison-release-6126048
the good old deed poll loophole…
they will be closing that up pretty fast I imagine !
Yeah, lol, funny. Am just having a conversation on twitter re why we aren’t learning fast enough that putting profit before life isn’t working (subject is the Pike River Tragedy) – yet with something like this passport issue, no doubt, the lesson will be learned very quickly.
or david garretts, for ironys sake
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”.
+1 Jones
nice diversion from the tppa too….
So true **sigh**
fight back blue. use facebook, email and inform friends and family. everyone i have spoken to who didnt know anything about tpp implications are startled at how much we are being asked to give up.
people cant know what they dont know. use this link, i think its as good a summary as http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/04/us-trade-deal-full-frontal-assault-on-democracy
or for data farming on behalf of corporates for their marketing and planning and providing tax payer funded subsidies for corp cyber security.
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.
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/
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.
Some writings by a certain Austrian corporal and his brown shirts might have come in helpful as well.
I think Crosby Textor are totally capable of this. I wouldn’t underestimate them.
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?