QUOTE OF THE DAY: Giving a bugger

“Key’s announcement that he plans to respond to the GCSB’s habit of
illegally spying on New Zealanders by making it legal for them to spy on
New Zealanders is the same as National’s previous response when the
police were caught illegally spying on New Zealanders. No one gets held
accountable, and the law is changed to enable the previously illegal activity.
    “The message to government agencies – that they can break the law and
violate people’s rights with impunity because the government will never
prosecute them and will rewrite the law to whatever they want if they get
caught – doesn’t seem very compatible with National’s nominal values of  
freedom, responsibility and limiting the power of the state over individuals.”
                  - Danyl, DIM POST

From Urewera to Mt Eden, via complete farce

It took four-and-a-half years to finally dribble to a close, the final result of Operation 8 and the police’s first and only use of the error-ridden Terrorism Suppression Act  being a thirty-month jail sentence for the two organisers of Tame Iti’s rag-tag band of insurgents.

It was a poor return really for an operation so bungled it has exposed police, lawmakers and now the courts  as embarrassing incompetents prepared to stretch the law they swore to uphold, and it is the final act of farce in long litany of them in this case.

After all the smoke has cleared—after a police operation for which justification has never properly been shown—after the Terrorism Suppression Act on which the police investigation was based was revealed as so poorly written it could never be practically used to bring any case, let alone this one—after delays so long and incompetence so thorough that the number of defendants was reduced by degrees from 20 to 16 to 15 to 14 to just four (justice delayed being justice denied and made a mockery of)—when the case finally limped to its close Iti and his lieutenant Te Rangikaiwhiria Kemara were found guilty only of handling and using unlicensed firearms and molotov cocktails.  That was it. That was what it was all about.

Pathetic. Crikey, I’ve handled and used unlicensed firearms and a molotov cocktail, and I’d wager a few of you reading this have done too. I’d be awfully surprised if that on its own could justify being locked up for thirty months, and I bet you would be too. But it was supposedly for that that the sentence was supposedly handed down.

Of course, that’s not the real reason for the sentence at all. Because the real reason for the longer sentence was stated explicitly by Justice Rodney Hansen. “In effect a private militia was being established,” he said.  

So Iti and Kemara were not being sentenced primarily on the six firearm charges on which the jury found them guilty, but also on the terrorism charges on which the jury found the case unproven. That, right there is the reason Iti and Kemara were locked up in Mt Eden last night. Not because of their facial furniture or the colour of their skin, but because the judge believed what the jury didn’t.

In effect, this was a law court trying to make up for the failure of the lawmakers, because this had been a jury who found the case unproven not because the evidence wasn’t there, but because the poor drafting of the Terrorism Suppression Act couldn’t make legal the way the evidence was gathered. Thus, this was one branch of government trying to make up for the failure of another.

Which is not the way law is supposed to work.

Nonetheless, from start to finish the whole operation has shown that New Zealand law does not work. It doesn’t work  for defendants, who face years before having their day in court; it doesn’t work for the man in the street, who could face armed police  at any time based on who-knows-what evidence cooked up under a buggered piece of legislation; and it doesn’t even work for prosecutors, who are left with very little with which to attempt to prove their case.

And in the final wash-up we finish up never knowing what really went on in those hills, whether twenty or seventeen or four should really have been charged, whether the police were justified in using the force they did in their early-morning raids, nothing—nothing at all beyond the knowledge that “pacifist” peace protestors by day can actually be gun-toting militia joiners harbouring fantasies of armed revolution.

But justice has neither been done, nor has it been seen to be done. And John Minto et al have been handed a cause on a plate with which to further sharpen their axe of grievances.

The law is an ass. Which is where it and those responsible for it deserve to be kicked.

PS: Time to recycle this magazine cover…

A shambles

Is there any truth to the rumour that jurors failed to convict Tame Iti and his co-defendants on the charge of involvement in an "organised" criminal group because what they saw of their group looked far from organised?

In any case, after the farcical arrests and trial it's now clear that the hastily drawn up Suppression of Terrorism Act under which the Urewera 20 16 15 14 4 were seized and charged is as great a shambles as Iti's rabble, and perhaps an even greater threat to our individual security.

It must go.

Peace activists?

Yes, folks, the trial of the Urewera 18, 16, 15, 4 has finally got under way this morning in Auckland’s High Court.

So we may finally hear some facts about what this motley lot are accused of, rather than the self-serving soft-soaping they and their chums have been peddling on their behalf.

It has now been four and a half years since the 18 were arrested. Four and a half years! Four and a half years in which the crown muddled while defendants and their lawyers and their friends in the media churned out press releases, interviews and media events in their defence. In the absence of a real trial we had instead a trial by media—a “trial” in which defendants were feted while all the substantive evidence against them was suppressed at the behest of their own lawyers!

Law has been very much the loser in this case.

But let’s not accept any crocodile tears about how long it’s taken for this crew to finally get before the court—like the crocodile tears John Minto et al were crying this morning about how tough it’s been for them to be on bail for so long.  Because right from day one of this whole debacle, the Urewera 18, 16, 15, 4 and their lawyers have been using every delaying tactic in the book. (That their requests for suppression only delayed proceedings even longer puts their crocodile tears now over the delays into damning perspective.) But if a justice system cannot pull together a case in four years, while fending off the shysters out looking for a loophole, that’s a pretty serious indictment of the system’s failure.

And while out on bail Tame Iti was allowed to dance his way around Europe on the taxpayer.

Only in New Zealand, one suspects, would a man facing charges of participating in an organised criminal group, unlawful possession of firearms and possession of restricted weapons be allowed to swan off around Europe on a dance tour while taxpayers sit here at home picking up his tab.

So let’s hope we finally do hear some facts in coming days. Or else we’ll be left to conclude only that our “justice” system is little more than a laughing stock.

Key Government overturning Supreme Court, and principles of good law [update 2]

The Key Government seems to have learned nothing from the many mistakes of the Clark Government.  Instead of avoiding them, it is repeating them. Virtually all of them.

Perhaps the two highest profile judicial mistakes of the Clark Government’s last term, with the biggest consequence for the Government itself, was (first) its overturning of the Appeal Court’s decision allowing iwi to take cases in common law arguing for their ownership of specific parts of foreshore and seabed, and (second) its passing of retrospective legislation covering its arse over the pledge card.

The Clark Government’s first intervention didn’t just overturn the judiciaries’ independence, one of the bulwarks of Objective Law, it politicised a decision that would have been far better taken through the courts in common law—without all the screaming and shouting, and the resignations of ministers and formation of new parties. (Wooh, talk about unintended consequences!)

Its second intervention, passing retrospective legislation to protect itself from the consequences of its own law-breaking, overturned yet another bulwark of Objective Law: the principle that, to be objective, law must be known in advance.

In every regard, the law must be adapted to its essential goal: predictability. "[M]en must know clearly, and in advance of taking an action, what the law forbids them to do (and why), what constitutes a crime and what penalty they will incur if they commit it."

A bad habit of changing law retrospectively, just because it doesn’t suit the government, is hardly the mark of good predictable law.

But does this National-led Government learn? No way. It’s just announced it plans to pass law overturning the Supreme Court decision disallowing the Supreme Court’s decision in the case of the police surveillance of the Urerewa 18 17 15 4.  At a stroke, overturning virtually all the principles of good Objective Law–and all because the government wrote bad law in the first place.

Maori Party MP Te Ururoa Flavell is absolutely right.

"It appears that what the National Government will ask us to do, is to suspend the law temporarily - to condone the unlawful act by the Police; and then to add fuel to the fire by introducing legislation to make the 'unlawful' lawful. What sort of justice system do we have if the upholder of the law is allowed to break the law and get away with it?”

Fair question? It’s certainly not one that’s worthy of respect.

UPDATE 1: Speaking of Objective Law  and the separate arms of government being independent, I just heard the Prime Minister tell Leighton Smith “I’m not going to allow these people to walk free.” With the clear implication he will change whatever law  is necessary to do that.

There was a time in  history when the superiority was realised of “a government of laws, not men.” Feel free to write whatever opinion you like about whether this still exists.

UPDATE 2: Dim Post on John Boy’s Bureaucratic Capture:

“John Key isn’t an intellectual … [which]  makes him vulnerable to mistakes like this decision to retrospectively validate illegal activity undertaken by the New Zealand police. The bureaucrats embarrassed by the Supreme Court’s finding that the police acted illegally can argue that it would be awfully practical and convenient for the state to pass legislation dumping the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the law, and the Prime Minister doesn’t have the intellectual clarity to say, ‘Hold on a minute. That violates almost every principle my own party is supposed to stand for!’”

I agree with John Minto.

There, I said it. I agree with John Minto.

I also agree with Annette Sykes, Tamati Kruger, Barry Wilson, Keith Locke, Pita Sharples, and the lawyers for Tame Iti and the rest of the ragtag  “terrorists” caught red-handed running around the Ureweras practicing armed atrocities.

I agree with them that justice has not been done in the case of the ‘Urewera 18.’ I agree with them that the four-year wait for justice is a farce. I agree with them that if charges against 11/15 of the crew are to be dropped, then an apology is probably warranted for the way the arrests were carried out—and not just to the (now former) defendants, but to the people in Ruatoki whose homes and families were invaded based on charges that were never tested in open court.

JUSTICE HAS NOT BEEN DONE.  Evidence suppression and the lack of any real trial in four years has seen to that. Were the 11 no acquitted totally innocent of all wrong doing?  Given what little we’ve been allowed to know, that’s unlikely. Given the Supreme Court has now ruled off-limits even discussing the reasons for the charges being dropped, we’re unlikely ever to be satisfied. Any of us. But this group of malcontents were entitled to try to clear their name in open court, if they could. That they haven’t had that right protected is a reflection of the injustice of our  so-called justice system—and of the efforts of their own lawyers, who did all they could themselves to suppress publication of the evidence against their clients. (Which was damning,  as I heard for myself in open court.)  We’ve seen a lot about the ‘Urewera 18’ in the last four years. But justice has not been done, and nor has it been seen to be done.

EXTRAORDINARY POWERS REQUIRE EXTRAORDINARY CARE. The Terrorism Suppression Act was drawn up under the previous government to give the police extraordinary powers—and so poorly conceived and drawn up so ineptly the only power it really gave them was the power to overreach themselves.  Which is what the Supreme Court decided they did. Poor police practice combined with this poorly-conceived and badly-drafted Act gave the Supreme Court grounds to throw out the cases against eleven defendants, not because (please note) that there was no evidence against them, but  because  the way the evidence against them was gathered. This is ineptitude of a high order. It means justice will never be served in this case at all.

JUSTICE DELAYED IS JUSTICE DENIED. It has now been four years since the 18 were arrested. —Four years! Four years in which the crown muddled while defendants and their lawyers and their friends in the media churned out press releases, interviews and media events in their defence. In the absence of a real trial we had instead a trial by media—a “trial” in which defendants were feted while all the substantive evidence against them was suppressed at the behest of their own lawyers! (That their requests for suppression only delayed proceedings even longer puts their crocodile tears now over the delays into damning perspective.) But if a justice system cannot pull together a case in four years, while fending off the shysters out looking for a loophole, that’s a pretty serious indictment of the system’s failure.

Law is the loser today.

It is a farce—especially when all the evidence suppression means we now have no clear idea in law whether the arrests and the way they were carried out were justified or not. Only suspicions.

So I agree with John Minto, Annette Sykes, Tamati Kruger, Barry Wilson, Keith Locke, Pita Sharples and the lawyers for Tame Iti and the rest of the ragtag “terrorists.” Justice has not been done—only not in the way they mean it.

I’ve always agreed as a foundation of justice with the legal principle as formulated by Blackstone :

“Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer."

But at times like this, my commitment to it is somewhat stretched.

Help, help, we're being oppressed!

Californian columnist for 'The Free Radical' Michael Vardoulis sent me a reflection from afar on why Maori activists need to learn about independence and self-reliance from the likes of the late-career Malcolm X (right) ...

Yes, Maori individuals have a lot fewer historical claim to bitterness than Afro Americans, or especially Native Americans and Hawaiians!  Whatever their legitimate complaints, at least New Zealanders never suffered the stain of slavery while proclaiming the protection of individuals' rights.  These are individuals whose ancestors were never enslaved -- not at least in New Zealand after the British arrived.

Maori individuals need to shake off the great state fixation too many seem obsessed with.  There is a kind of philosophical 'judo' that Malcolm X represents, insofar as the pride of self-reliance he talked about is essential to survival as an individual, and it would apply to Maori as well.  His message of "why look to your former 'masters' and  the government which supported them, for anything?  The only thing a (insert arbitrary racial identity here) individual should seek from the government which supported their former master is to be left the hell alone!"

   The lesson that needs to be tattooed on the soul was expressed perfectly by Isabel Paterson: "A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you've got" -- including, if you let them, your pride in your self-reliance.  Self-reliance does not come from sucking nanny's tit, or from the marshmallow embrace of collectivism -- it comes from standing on one's own feet and beginning to take responsibility for one's own future as an individual.

And then we have the conclusions one can draw universally on the issue of 'race' from what Rand wrote so perfectly: the only genuine solution to racism is a color-blind government supporting the same rights for all individuals as individuals; anything *other* than that merely perpetuates the evil of racism, and (not incidentally) the careers of political figures who benefit from the perpetuation of the problem rather than achieving solutions. 

Liberty HAS been stolen from many different arbitrary groups (though compared to what others have suffered over history, including many Europeans it's much harder to find in the case of post-1840 Maori) and in any case it's ultimately irrelevant to the much more important issue of regaining that liberty, which can only be achieved in a society where only the rights of the individual are upheld regardless of any arbitrary 'group' status either placed upon them or with which they choose to identify. 

   Hell, the Brits stomped all over my mother's ancestors in Ireland, and the Turks all over my father's ancestors in Greece.  I don't go looking for handouts from Downing Street or Istanbul!  I just pursue a society in which the individual is protected from being interfered with, knowing as a result that no arbitrary group can be singled out either for persecution, or for restitution.  The people who stomped all over my ancestors are long dead and buried -- those alive now bear no guilt for what their great-great-great grandparents did to mine.

But, I fear I preach to the choir.  It's individuals of Maori, Afro-American or Native American backgrounds which need to 'get it'... as my mentor Richard Boddie (right), a former student of Malcolm X, is fond of saying, "People are deluded en masse and enlightened one at a time." 

The lesson of Malcolm's own growth and change over his life helps to show that lesson is true -- and dangerous to those who would hope the lesson is never learned.

The interested reader might appreciate PC's review of Spike Lee's film 'Malcolm X' that appeared in The Free Radical at the time of the film's release.  [NB: Some light editing of Michael's post has been done for sense and context.]

Free Radical #79: 'Brown-Nosing Te Qaeda'

                                      

Yes, that's the cover of the latest Free Radical, which will be going out to shops and subscribers from the end of this week.  Subscribe now to make sure your letterbox is included in the first mailout, and you get the earliest possible briefing on the issues that matter:

• What happened to One Law for All?  Why is John Boy cravenly brown-nosing a man who wanted to assassinate him?  What does that say about him? And what do a dead Italian Communist and a live Mexican gunman have to do with it all?  LINDSAY PERIGO, TREVOR LOUDON, PETER CRESSWELL, PHIL HOWISON & TIM WIKIRIWHI between them examine Waitangi collectivism, the objective threat and ideological links of Te Qaeda, and why this matters to you.  DON'T MISS OUT!  You'll be keeping this issue as a reference for a long time to come.
• And who wrote the strategy for the left's long march through the culture?  LINDSAY PERIGO has the answer, and a solution.
• How do you keep yourself afloat in the world's most recent financial crisis? The simple answer is understanding.  Recent articles in The Free Radical have warned about the economic downturn, explained how the counterfeit capital of the world's central banks are culpable, and pointed to real solutions. In this issue we have  all the literature that's fit to read to understand the mess, and keep yourself afloat.
• And what about those dark greens, and their claims that the environment is endangered - that we're "running out of resources"?   "Rubbish," say our writers.  It's not climate that's endangered, says Czech president VACLAV KLAUS, it's freedom!  Progress is good, not destructive, says GEORGE REISMAN -- economic freedom is the solution, not the problem, he proves.  Reisman utterly demolishes environmentalists' claims that we're running out of resources and shows that as long as we pursue wealth we never will, and OWEN McSHANE &  VINCENT GRAY dissect the background of those who insist we must.  The historical links will surprise you, and the weight of argument will floor you!

All this and much, much more, including the Belgian who gave fuel to the Nanny State, the Canadian who became a hero of free speech, the architect who combines art and business, the educationalists who have a lot to say sorry for, and the American who's been proclaimed as a hero of conservatism and who is shown to be anything but  -- all this plus film reviews, book reviews and all our usual and controversial columnists.

The world is in a mess, the long march through the culture by anti-reason, anti-life state worshippers is the root cause – and like every ‘Free Radical’ since issue number one, this one has the solution: in a nutshell, it’s reason and the freedom to use it.

DON"T MISS OUT!  Subscribe now to get your copy in your mailbox ... and give the gift of Free Radicals to a friend or three who need the rocket-fuelled intellectual ammunition within. 

del.icio.us Tags: Libertarianism,Objectivism,Politics

Te Qaeda were 4 real

Were Tame Iti's one-hundred or so bush trainees simply amiable nature-lovers exercising a peaceful interest in bushcraft and lethal weapons, or were they an objective threat to all  of us?   Were the arrested seventeen "political prisoners" who were "kidnapped by state terrorists," or were they armed insurrectionists being schooled in "direct action" who were arrested in a copybook police action? 

Says Phil Howison in a new article looking at these questions, "the Urewera 17 Posed an Objective Threat to New Zealand," and we have the police to thank for averting that threat.  His article draws on leaked police evidence, "attempt[ing] to restore public confidence in the police by demonstrating why the alleged terrorists posed an objective threat to New Zealand's security."

I urge you to read it, and digest it.

"Very disturbing" evidence online

KiwiBlog and MikeE both report that the "New Zealand Civil Liberties Union" home page has a download of the surveillance evidence filed in the Manukau District Court to obtain the search warrants on the so called 'Urewera 17.' There is no link given, but I understand Google can do amazing things.

As Mike says, this is definitely NOT "what you'd hear in any gun club," despite John Minto describing it that way after hearing it all in court. It is this stuff about which Minto said everyone in the public gallery was laughing -- "everyone" included the likes of Jane Kelsey, Nandor Tanczos and the editors of Socialist Worker's 'Unity' magazine, ie., the ones whose "friends" were "kidnapped by state terrorists."

The litmus test for "social justice"

The activities of the Urewera 16 are becoming clearer, giving all advocate of "social justice" to declare their commitment to renouncing force.

Presented with the opportunity to nail their colours to the mast and issue a ringing condemnation of violence -- to come out against taking up arms against "the white man"; against a wish that "bullets start going through people"; against any suggestion of "a bombing campaign that blew up Waihopai spy base, power dams, gas facilities, TV stations and radios" and a terror campaign so sudden and so brutal "they'll think it's al Qaeda" -- what do the advocates for global peace and social justice do instead?

 What do so called advocates of peace, equality, non-violence and non-racism do in the face of excerpts from transcripts of police surveillance showing those acting in the name of those aspirations prepared to carry out actions markedly less pacifist than their supposed aims? 

The reaction from the fellow travellers is instructive.

 Do they condemn? Do they hell.

 They turn their heads away instead and whine about everything from our "racist" police force (who arrested three Maori out of seventeen who were charged) to "heavy handed" treatment of some suspects, to the publication of these oh so revealing transcripts -- but they have refused to condemn what's revealed in those transcripts.

That in itself is enormously revealing. Make no mistake, this is a litmus moment: a time when people who support the stated ends of those arrested can and should make make it clear that they are revolted by their chosen and now-stated means. But for the most part they aren't doing that, are they.

 Even 'Bomber' Bradbury has invited them to, saying repeatedly:

"NO PEACE ACTIVIST - NO SOCIAL JUSTICE ACTIVIST HAS ANY RIGHT TO PICK UP A GUN IN NZ! And the second you do pick up a gun - you are no longer a member of a social justice movement." 

Would that others in that camp said the same. But they aren't, and we're entitled to make a judgement about what that means.

 Instead of condemning the aspirations for blood lust, Keith Locke for example has come out against ... The Dominion. Given the Greens already called those arrested “Maori, peace and environmental activists,” with whom the Greens presumably see some common cause, it would appear there is prima facie evidence here that, for the Greens (or at least for Keith Locke), being a peace activist gives one carte blanche to cheer about murder. It wouldn't be the first time, would it.

And fellow traveller of many of those arrested Nandor Tanczos said a year ago that he had "spoken to people" who see a future of "permanent civil unrest and eventually when the demographics change enough, for outright war" and it "frightens the hell" out of him. Where is he now that when what frightened him is more public? Like Trevor Loudon, I'd like to think his silence indicates he's telling the police all he knows, no matter how minor it may seem. But I don't for moment think that's what the silence of this "mainstream environmentalist" indicates, do you?

Meanwhile Iti's lawyer Annette Sykes, the woman who twelve years ago called for the burning of forests and the blowing up of dams, and who "clapped and cheered" when 3000 people were murdered in destruction of the World Trade Center, is heading to the UN to seek "justice" for the people "terrorised" by the police carrying out search warrants, but not before condemning ... that's right, the publication of transcripts showing her client(s) for what they are.

And John Minto, co-organiser with many of those arrested of a ragbag of radical groups, found time to condemn as "despicable" ... what do you think? ... the media. Ne mention of how despicable it is to arm and train and plan for murder.

And Jamie Lockett's lawyer is equally outraged that the public might read for themselves the true nature of his client is joined by fellow lawyer Moana Jackson who is "appalled" -- appalled! -- at ... no, not at the revelations of violent hatred and blood lust but "the lack of journalistic responsibility" shown in telling the public what his client(s) are really like, and particularly that "Fairfax printed selective items from a huge volume of evidence." I doubt whether we should take that to mean that all the evidence should be made public.

And then there's dear old Peter Williams, QC, who's made a healthy living over the years from defending scum in court (and campaigning for a more comfortable stay in prison for the scum when they go down), who used the word "cowardly" yesterday when commenting on the transcripts. No, not the aspirations stated therein to "to kill Pakeha to get trainees used to killing" or "to assassinate the prime minister, the new one, next year's one." No, that wasn't what stated this officer of the court calls cowardly -- what he condemns as cowardly is the publication of these statements. That tells you as much about Mr Williams as you'd ever care to know.

And we're entitled to draw conclusions too from the likes of blogger Idiot Savant, who like Keith Locke condemns the publishing, condemning the aspirations of violence only elliptically with his comment on Jamie Lockett, and from TV3's John Campbell, who (as Lindsay Perigo identifies), "dismiss its significance because of the small number of people involved." Crikey, even Jordan Carter can find it within himself to express a little momentary distaste. But not I/S.

There's really only one of the usual suspects so far who emerges from this litmus test with a better colour. The Maori Party early on nailed their colours to those accused being angels, and Pita Sharples disgraced himself by quickly pulling out the race card and waving it in the face of the evidence, but he has at least said "Make no mistake - we are absolutely and categorically horrified by the threatening language we have read in the paper today."

Signs of hope, perhaps? It is at least an indication to some of these other fellow travellers the sort of response they now need to take, or to be judged accordingly.

For my own part, let me repeat what I've already said here:

There is a vast gulf between genuine civil disobedience and the "direct action" supported by so called peace activists and anarchists and anti-colonialists, and I for one find it instructive that defenders of the arrested seventeen wish to conflate the two. There is an unstated assumption that because the state so often uses force in promoting its values, that this somehow legitimises ragtag envy-ridden whiners using force to promote values. It doesn't. Two evils don't whitewash the fallacy. Ayn Rand makes the point as clear as it can be:

One does not and cannot "negotiate" with brutality, nor give it the benefit of the doubt. The moral absolute should be: if and when, in any dispute, one side initiates the use of physical force, that side is wrong—and no consideration or discussion of the issues is necessary or appropriate.

Clear enough for you?

Lindsay Perigo drives the point home:

The greatest good to come from the terror raids may not be the stopping of the terrorists in their tracks, excellent and noble though that certainly be, but the exposure of their vile apologists for what they are.

[Thanks to Liberty Scott and Trevor Loudon, whose well-researched posts were invaluable in writing this one. Any errors of course are mine.]

UPDATE 1: The young idiots at Socialist Worker, whose "friends" was who were arrested, continue the theme. These erstwhile advocates of the rule of law condemn the "contempt for the judicial process" shown in exposing the extent of their friends' vileness, while carefully avoiding any judgement of what their friends were up to. If you think it's because they think you're stupid, then you'd be right.

UPDATE 2: Kudos for once to Shane Jones, who told Newstalk ZB's Mike Hosking:

I rather suspect that a lot of the characters mixed up in this rubbish up in Tuhoe and various other parts are using the cloak of Maoriness to disguise and obscure criminality and soon as the cops round the buggers up and treat them as criminals the better.

UPDATE: Scoop has photos of the "Tuhoe-ain't-terrorists" march arriving in Helengrad, and then at Parliament. They're not really doing themselves any favours, are they ...

"Very disturbing activities" in the Dom

Your job for today is to read and digest the Dominion's publication of the transcripts of police surveillance that were used to obtain search warrants when police suspected terrorist plots were under way.

Feel free to comment as you're reading.

UPDATE 1: Short summary (partly pinched from Liberty Scott) of bugged conversations:

• Threat to blow up John Key
  
• Calls to kill police and evict non-Maori farmers;
• Talk of using a sniper's rifle to assassinate US President Bush;
• Making nail bombs and napalm;
• How to throw Molotov cocktails;
• Live ammunition training in ambush and withdrawal;
• Interrogation training using loaded firearms pointed at trainees' heads;
  
• Blowing up power stations, gas plants, Telecom, petrol stations and the Waihopai Spy Station;
• "Kill Pakehas" for practice;
• Wanting to emulate the IRA's terror campaign;
• Using the "Al Qaeda manual" on terror tactics, and wanting to emulate Al Qaeda's horror.

UPDATE 2: Here's some talking points for you:

• This is not the full evidence, simply short and selective summaries of the 156-page affidavit used to obtain search warrants in the Manukau District Court. Should the Dom have published these few excerpts? Should they have published more? Or placed the whole document on their website?
  

And, based on these few transcripts:

• Were the police justified in their surveillance? In the level of force used in raids? Did they act too soon? Or two days too late?
• Any evidence here to justify charges of police racism?
  
• To what extent were these conversations just idle threats and throwaway remarks? How seriously should the police take "idle threats" when they're backed up with training, materiel and people motivated enough to carry them out?
• Is it obvious enough now why the defendants, their lawyers and the Minto Mob did all they can to keep all the evidence suppressed?
  
• "Peace" activists? If these were your "friends," would you be defending them?
  
• "I have nothing to hide," said Tame Iti on returning home. Really?
  
• How seriously should we take John Minto, Jane Kelsey, Nandor Tanczos et al who sat in court listening to these conversations being read out, and still insisted that there was nothing to answer for?
• How seriously should we take journalists who sat in court listening to these conversations being read out, and who still treated Tame Iti as a hero, and the rest of the rabble with kid gloves?

I'm inclined to agree with Scott's conclusion, that there's a few people who need to front up:

Go on, it's time for Keith Locke to express his view, as a self proclaimed peace campaigner now that evidence is out. It is time for the Maori Party to decide what it believes in - do you oppose political violence? Do you oppose murder? Do you oppose mass vandalism to destroy the economy? Do you oppose violent evictions of farmers from their private property? Or is your support for peace about as skin deep as your support for freedom? At least Maia inadvertently may be quite true in her post, as a friend of the fascist left.

Oh, and when you see the hikoi supporting those who support terrorism, you might tell them what you think of them. Methinks those on the hikoi might go home and reflect on who their friends are.

UPDATE 3: Lindsay Perigo praises the Dom for growing a pair:

"The Dominion Post's decision to take the 'publish and be damned' approach I yesterday urged on TV3 toward the evidence on which the police anti-terror raids were based is vindicated by the evidence thus revealed," says SOLO Principal Lindsay Perigo. "So are the raids themselves. And TV3 are exposed yet again as the abject fellow-travellers of those whom I have so rightly been calling the 'wannabe terrorists.'

Read the whole press release here.

"Nothing to hide"?

Tame Iti returns home to the plaudits of a fawning media and announces " I have nothing to hide."

Fine then, let's take him at his word -- except we can't. It would mean ignoring the efforts of his lawyers, his co-defendants and his supporters to shut down and suppress the evidence of what he was up to with his 100 trainees in those six camps with all those munitions.

If he truly has nothing to hide, then instead of patsy interviews with braindead interviewers eager for nothing more than a pat on the head and a signed photo with their hero -- the same sort of braindead fawning these same analysts did with David Bain -- let's see him instead agreeing to the release of all the evidence that's been compiled of his and his co-defendants' actions over the last two years.

Then we might be able to agree he has nothing to hide. Until then, then you know his word is worth as little as John Minto's.

UPDATE: Speaking of Iti's lawyers and milking the gullible, as I was, Annette Sykes, "the woman who clapped and cheered when the World Trade Center was attacked and destroyed is now running to an international body that treats North Korea, New Zealand, Syria, Sweden and Burma as moral equivalents." Notes Liberty Scott in 'The Immoral Plead to the Amoral,'

Sykes (who for some inexplicable reason can still command some respect in the media) is going to go to the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Peoples. A body which has as its full time, Western taxpayer funded job, to criticise Western governments for treatment of Indigenous peoples, whilst treating the corrupt ridden tinpot quasi-democracies of Africa as being great models of decolonised empowerment. You know, the type of body that throws stones at New Zealand but ignores Zimbabwe, because (after all) Robert Mugabe is indigenous...

How do you spell 'opportunism'?

"Very disturbing..."

The leak to TV3 of the transcripts of police surveillance of the 'Urewera 16' highlights again the problem of discussing a serious issue without the central facts of the matter, and of who exactly has been fighting to keep the facts from public view.

It also invites speculation about what motives might be for keeping the facts hidden.

Several commenters at Tumeke! have touched on this, on something that Minto's loose coalition of anti-colonial, anti-globalisation, anti-industry and anti-life protestors seem to have overlooked -- or it seems at least that they'd sure like it be overlooked -- and it's this: Despite repeated bleating about 'hidden trials' and 'suppressed evidence' and 'secret court hearings' and the like from these protestors and their Minto and Locke and Indymedia mouthpieces (it's worth noting that two-thirds of the editors of Indymedia are one-eighth of the 'Urewera 16') it's not the police or the prosecutors who want to keep everything under wraps, it's the defendants themselves.

Let's not forget that it was not the Crown prosecutors but the defendants' own lawyers who did their level best to ensure that the media couldn't report the evidence as it appeared in the just-completed bail hearings (The Crown itself took "the unprecedented stance of supporting the media's right to photograph and cover the entire hearing, with lawyer Ross Burns saying it had come under criticism for holding some earlier hearings in private. Because of 'the real and genuine interest' in the charges, it wanted all future hearings to be held in open." [Timaru Herald, 1 Nov])

And take note that it was the defendants' own lawyers who helped to stop TV3 using the leaked surveillance transcripts in their Friday night broadcast ("Lawyers for the accused discovered after '3 News' went to air that the files had been leaked. They contacted TV3 and threatened to seek an injunction" [Dominion])

And it was the protestors themselves who packed the courtroom for the bail hearings in what seemed to me a clear attempt to ensure that the public would find it difficult to ever hear just what was going down.

One commenter at Tumeke! argues,

if the allegations against [the defendants] are just a load of rubbish like the activists and their lawyers claim then why on earth are they so scared and trying so hard to suppress the intercepted messages?

Surely the public once they see all the Police evidence will see that it is just a load of rubbish won't they?

They claim they are completely innocent and that the Police raids were unjustified, so why not let the evidence the raids were based on out into the public domain so the public can see for themselves how unjustified the raids were?

Now, I don't for a moment join in the demand that the defendants must agree to wave their dirtier laundry around in public, but if they're going to claim the moral high ground in pretending that all was peaceful and nothing at all disturbing was going down, then they can't really have it both ways, can they.

Law is the loser on the day

No one comes out well from Solicitor General David Collins' decision not to prosecute the 'Urewera 16,' least of all the law and the lawmakers.

Several basic principles of British law that for centuries have acted as bulwarks of liberty have been exposed as damaged if not entirely absent from New Zealand justice: The presumption of innocence... the right to face your accuser ... the principle that justice must only be done, it must be seen to be done... in recent weeks all these fundamental legal principles have been more evident by their absence than their presence.

Starting with the last, in the absence of the evidence against the defendants being made public (which it now never will be), no one in the country outside the police the Solicitor General and the defendants know for sure just what the hell was going on. For public vindication, the police have to point to the only independent person to have seen all the evidence, the Solicitor General, and to his strongly worded vindication of their work, which stressed

that the police have successfully brought to an end what were very disturbing activities. That the police did so without a single shot being fired, injury or loss of life, is a tremendous reflection on the professionalism and integrity of the New Zealand police.

Let's just repeat that: The police have successfully brought to an end what the only independent person to review the evidence says were very disturbing activities. So we have a right to feel grateful, it seems, that the police were acting to prevent something very disturbing happening.

But just how disturbing were they?

Was the scale of the police operation justified?

Did they overreact?

Should we be scared?

Sadly, all these questions which have been hotly debated ever since this show began will never really be properly answered (and here into that vacuum will rush in much flatulent speculation, media moronry and a mah-jong of lawyers hungry for work) because the Act under which evidence was acquired and under which charges for the very disturbing activities would have been brought if they could be is so "incoherent,"as to make that impossible, according to Collins, meaning the evidence will never be made public and will probably have to be destroyed. The law is so bad that as Colin Espiner describes it:

For all the bragging from both major parties about the steps taken to protect us against terrorism, it now appears that Osama bin Laden himself could have been conducting operations from a cave in Ruatoki and the case against him would have been thrown out of court.

So we'll just never know, which is unfair to the police, to the defendants, and to us, the public. Justice cannot be seen to be done. It's reassuring that the independence of police and judiciary has been demonstrated (something some protestors might care to focus on), but less than comforting that without having seen the evidence for ourselves we're left instead to rely on the judgement of one man. David Collins.

We're back to the rule of men, not of law.

And this damages the defendants as well. They've been neither cleared by yesterday's ruling nor properly charged. Defendants properly have the right to face their accusers; the right to know what charges are being laid, and the right to answer those charges and (if they can) to clear their name. But because of an incoherent law, these defendants have lost that right, and we the public will never know whether they would have been able to clear their names or not.

The further tragedy is that they're entitled to the presumption of innocence instead of the whispering about them that will now take place to fill the vacuum, but because of that incoherent law we'll never know for sure whether they would be able to face the charge, and explain the evidence and to have their names cleared or not. They deserved that chance. And we deserved to know. Everybody loses because of bad law, because of an act that, in the words of the Solicitor General is

unnecessarily complex, incoherent and as a result almost impossible to apply to the domestic circumstances observed by the police in this case... A number of people could, on one view of it, [have] possibly come close to meeting the criteria under the act. If the legislation had been framed differently, it is possible that charges under the Terrorism Act may have been able to be brought.

That last sentence is hardly a ringing endorsement of innocence, is it; but the defendants will never be able to properly challenge the odour that it leaves.

So who's to blame for this "incoherent" legislation? It's partly due to the difficulty of drawing up law to stop an act of terror before it happens, rather than gathering evidence afterwards when the evidence can be counted in dead bodies. That said however, it's not beyond the wit of man to draw up such a law, and Winston Peters was commendably direct this morning in fronting up and saying who was fundamentally responsible. referring to himself and his parliamentary colleagues who were responsible for drawing up and voting for it he told Sean Plunket who asked him who's to blame, [audio here], "We are."

It's true.

It's essential that the error is fixed soon, but to be fair the same errors permeate far too much of New Zealand law, and not just this incoherent legislation: lack of clarity; lack of precision; law that is unpredictable in outcome; that ignores fundamental legal principles; or that ignores or explicitly overrides fundamental individual rights. These recent events show again the danger of law that is not objective-- ie., law that is clear, precise, predictable, contextual and rights-based. Harry Binswanger explains the importance of objective law:

Laws mean force; but "the rule of law" - objective law - means force limited, checked, supervised, tamed, so that it becomes the honest citizen's protector, not his nemesis. To achieve this goal, laws must be objective in both their derivation and their form. In regard to derivation, "objective" refers to that which is tied to reality by man's only method of knowing reality: reason. In regard to form, "objective" refers to that which is tied to reality by man's only method of knowing reality: reason. In regard to form, "objective" means that which has the character of an object in reality: a firm, stable, knowable identity. In both respects, legal objectivity stands opposed to the subjective, the arbitrary, the whim-based.

It is to the subjective, the arbitrary, and the whim-based to which New Zealand law under Geoffrey Palmer's influence has been explicitly directed for some time. Let us hope this case acts as a wake-up call to drafters of future legislation. The two problems drafters need to face with specifically the anti-terrorism legislation are these. First, in the words of a colleague:

The grounds, under NZ law, for 'terrorism' to exist are fairly narrow. To cut a long story short, the Crown would need to prove [for example] that Tuhoe was an 'ideology.' To give an analogy, if you are found in possession of flour, eggs, butter, milk, a bowl, a wooden spoon and an oven NZ law requires you to prove the person intended to bake a cake. Simple as that..a cake, nothing else. Their defence could be they intended to make pikelets or scones...and a Jury must take that possibility into account. It is a case of badly drafted law and insufficient debate in Parliament, in the heat of the World Trade Center bombings.

And second, in the words (again) of the Solicitor General:

The fundamental problem is that the legislation focuses upon an entity that carries out a terrorist act, and if individuals are actually developing towards ... carrying out a terrorist act, they aren't yet an entity that is carrying out a terrorist act, and so there is a tautology in the legislation which is extremely difficult to unravel.

It is essential that all such difficulties are unravelled swiftly, and before respect for the country's laws does.

"Branded as..." ?

According to the commentariat this morning the police should be harshly condemned for "branding" the "Urewera Sixteen" as terrorists. All sorts of commentators have declared that the police have "branded" them as terrorists, for which they now deserve compensation.

MAORI PARTY MP TE URUROA FLAVELL said the Ruatoki community had been traumatised by the raids, and "had been stuck with the terrorist label..."

LAWYER MOANA JACKSON: "The label of terrorist has`been bandied about..."

JOHN MINTO: ""They have been branded terrorists by the police and that's been bandied right across New Zealand through the media and that's absolutely unconscionable."

TUHOE ELDER PAKI NIKORA "We still can't understand why this brand of terrorism has been placed on him ... and is branded on us as an iwi."

PROTESTORS OUTSIDE THE LABOUR PARTY CONFERENCE LAST WEEKEND: "Helen Clark." "Terrorist!" [Repeat ad nauseum]

Trouble is, this is a group of people who've been interviewing each other. It wasn't the police who "branded" these people -- no policeman has called anyone a terrorist, and I would challenge anyone to find one who has -- the only "branding" of the type of which these commentators have accused the police has been by the commentators themselves in their noisy insistence over the last few weeks that they've been so labelled:

NIKORA (17 Oct): ""We are being branded as terrorists."

FLAVELL (Oct 26): "I s'pose the main fear is that they're seen to be and will always be remembered as the Tuhoe the terrorists..."

LAWYER MOANA JACKSON (26 Oct): "Maori must not buy into the police tactic of branding their people as terrorists..."

MAORI ACTIVIST MIKE SMITH (25 Oct): "“If there was any terrorism in Tuhoe it was state sponsored..."

SIGNS HELD BY PROTESTORS OUTSIDE COURTS AROUND THE COUNTRY: "Terrorists - yeah right."

SCOOP PROFILES (13 October): "Scoop.co.nz is continuing to profile each of the so-called terrorists..."

The question is, "so called" by whom?

What "police tactic" to "brand" people as terrorists?

If there was any branding done, it was a rush by the defendants' supporters to wrap themselves in the word and take a strong leap for the branding iron.

Protestors in particular were quick to object to the "label" of terrorism being used against those arrested, and very noisy in their own use of the word last weekend outside the Labour Party conference, but the fact is that the "label" was used mostly by them and their fellow travellers and the commentariat, NOT by the police.

Right from the very first day, for example, when the raids were carried out on October 15, Police Commissioner Howard Broad explained very carefully that the search warrants they actioned were issued

under the Summary Proceedings Act to search for evidence of the committing of offences against the Arms Act and possibly the Terrorism Suppression Act.

Police will be gathering and assessing all available evidence before making a decision as to the nature of the charges to be laid under the TSA.

We're aware that this is the first time that the Terrorism Suppression Act has been considered in terms of an operation. We are, therefore, proceeding with full care in talking to people and assessing information before we can determine whether there is sufficient evidence to seek the consent of the Attorney General through the Solicitor General to charge anyone under that Act. [video here of press conference Oct 15]

That was the only time the word was used by the Police Commissioner, and only (necessarily) in the context of those search warrants. As he explained this morning on Radio NZ [audio here], the word "terrorism" was only used by him in explaining the basis for the searches, and only every by the police force in that context. The fact is that no "branding" at all was done by police, either as a tactic, or a policy, or even by mistake. No "labels" were so applied. The police, as Broad said, were proceeding with full care in talking to people and assessing information before determining whether or not sufficient evidence existed to charge anyone under the Terrorism Suppression Act. They were entitled to some patience from the rest of us in doing that.

It was not the police who were hyperventilating -- it was the commentariat.

Perhaps instead of drop-of-the-hat hysteria commentators and politicians could instead learn to breathe through their nose on occasions, to wait for the evidence before judging, and maybe just adopt the level of maturity their age and positions and supposed acumen might lead us to expect they'd exhibit.

No terrorism prosecutions

TV3: Solicitor General says no to terrorism prosecutions
People arrested during police raids over alleged training camps in Bay of Plenty will not face charges under the Terrorism Suppression Act. The Solicitor General, David Collins QC, said today he had advised the Commissioner of Police that he was ‘unable to authorise’ the prosecutions under the Terrorism Act... However, he said that he believed police did have sufficient and proper basis for investigating the activities in question.

So what was all the protesting about, before the evidence was even heard? Newsroom has more, including a useful clarification of the reason for Collins' decision:

He says the key reason he is not prepared to authorise prosecutions is that there is insufficient evidence to establish to the very high standard required that a group or entity was planning or preparing to commit a terrorism act, as the term is defined under the current legislation.

Mr Collins was severely critical of the legislation and said it was unnecessarily complex and incoherent, and as a result it was almost impossible to apply to the circumstances of this case...

“The Terrorism Suppression Act legislation is unnecessarily complex, incoherent and as a result almost impossible to apply to the domestic circumstances observed by the police in this case,” the Solicitor-General said.

“Some may try to interpret my decision as a criticism of the police. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

He said he believed the police had sufficient and proper basis for investigating the activities in question.

He said he had examined many hundreds of pages of intercepted communications and a large number of photographs taken by the police as well as video footage and that not all of the evidence would become public.

Sounds like it was a somewhat reluctant decision, doesn't it. And sounds like we'll never know how much fire there was in relation to all the smoke.

All sixteen still face firearms charges, but presumably since the extensive evidence derived from surveillance okayed under the Terrorism Suppression Act will not be available to be used in court, those charges might be difficult to prove.

And maybe it's time to reconsider this reputation Geoffrey Palmer has for being a master-drafter of legislation?

Justice seen to be done

It's unfortunate that our courts seem to have forgotten the crucial principle that underpins their work: that justice must not only be done must must be seen to be done. When justice is kept under wraps, all sorts of nonsense appears in the vacuum.

In the case of the 'Urewera 16' we're naturally all as hungry as hell to find out if what we've heard only by rumour and innuendo has any element of truth, or if any of the criticism is justified. It all comes down to the evidence. Sadly however in allowing defendants' lawyers to have names, facts and evidence suppressed, the courts have ensured the vacuum will be exploited by the defenders of violence -- and if anyone can exploit a vacuum the likes of John Minto and Annette Sykes and Keith Locke can -- and all sorts of fatuous nonsense has been able to take root, some of the most fatuous being from the defendants' lawyers themselves. The weekend's Minto mob outside Labour's conference ("Helen Clark." "Terrorist." Repeat x 24) and the hand-wringing opportunism of Peter Williams QC are simply the most recent examples of the sort of sick nonsense that's proliferating in the vacuum where everyone's trying to claim the high ground in the benefit-of-the-doubt stakes.

It's clear enough from my own visits to the court last week just why the defendants want several years' worth of surveillance evidence to be kept from public view since almost every line is damning. So why do the courts consider us so immature that we can't handle hearing the evidence for ourselves in media repors, instead of hearing only the nonsense that its absence has generated?

UPDATE: He doesn't cover the suppression of evidence by the courts, but Graeme Edgeler tells you everything you need to know about bail, which is what last week's hearings were about.