RSJS writes:
So New Zealand has terrorists, eh? Jolly good. Our emulation of America continues, we're one bucket o' fried cheddar away from being the fifty-second state. We even have drive-through (thru?) doughnut (donut?) shops. Bring forth the schoolyard shootings and NAMBLA.
I suppose that given the American's spot o' hazing to introduce them to the wide world of nothing-is-safe-motherfuckers (henceforth referred to as the 911 plane-parking debacle) was done with box-cutters, that masked coppers seizing rucksacks and greasepaint as offensive weapons makes sense. And I guess my sadly-deceased grandmother, were she still alive and sober enough to slur out a platitude, would note "it's better to be safe than sorry", but really this whole matter is quite shortly going to be publicly shown to be about as sensible as the Mooninite fiasco in Boston, Massachusetts.
I don't mean to demean the hard-working anarchists hemping it up in squats and teepees nationwide with a fistful of discarded food and a rag to wash windows with, but this country is pretty dreadful when it comes to fringe radicals changing the world around us. We don't have the numbers for the positive feedback needed to produce a chain reaction. I doubt we could even muster a Springbok riot these days. Witness the recent muddled Damn the Man dozen-man-march designed to show America that hijacking anniversaries for political ends was only good when carried out by a shrill besom wearing a megaphone and push-up bra. So a vast conspiratorial gang of bomb-chucking lefties, Tangata Whenua terrorists and tofu-chugging dissidents just smacks of the wet dreams of politicians, rather than the more likely gaggle of special-interest groups with ambitions and stoner kids with bong-smoke dreams.
What pisses me off the most? The fact that the shrilly anti-authority types touting big-business-powered plots and grassy-knoll-gunmen in the Government trying to disrupt everything from green activists to treaty claimants, might be right in this instance. A good but o' raiding shows the justification for stabby-proof coppers vests, bureaucratic fact-finding missions, a suspension of habeas corpus and probably a cause with a ribbon. I mean, I'm the biggest corporate stooge you're going to find, a greedy fat-cat lapping up the cream squirted from the multinational teats and all sorts of other gruesome mixed metaphors. And to think that my team are so desperate, and worse so stupid as to be caught out behaving like brute squads for their own ends? Fucking annoying. I expect more from my team, I really do. I'm going to write a sternly-worded letter to my MP demanding they get with the program and do a better goddamned job at vilifying their victims before sending the black-clad bovver boys in so the struggling masses yearning to be free can be shut the hell up and we pinstriped wage-slaves can have a few extra percent come Year End. I mean, what am I paying my taxes for?
So, for now, we must watch as yesterday's excitement gets watered-down into tomorrow's defensive posturing, and finally dissolves into next week's thing-the-government-won't-apologise-for and next month's nothing. And watch for panhandling aplenty as a whole bunch of dreadlocked fuckers are going to have to go replace their cargo pants at Doyles Army Surplus.
1 comment:
On the one hand, I'm all for these raids. I don't like hippies, and the more of them that are arrested for no real reason, the better. (Disclaimer: Sure, there might have been a legitimate reason for arresting them some of these people, but most of them look like their only crime was over-emphasising to their GPs how bad their glaucoma was on medical-marijuana day at the clinic. And I mean arresting Tame Iti for possession of Molotov cocktails? That's not proof he's a terrorist; he just had those lying around the house. I mean, it's Tame Iti - that's what he does...)
On the other hands, when the house I was hanging out in on Friday gets raided on Monday morning, I get a little leery.
Err... I mean, the house I wasn't hanging out in on Friday.
There, that will trick all of those nosy Echelon programs.
I'm worried about what I've heard about the anti-terrorist legislation that kicked into place with these raids: apparently (and I have to look this up for myself) it outlaws strikes if they have the potential to harm property, infrastructure, or the economy.
Check and check for the first two, but the whole point of a strike is to dick about with the economy; to squeeze employers or the community until they have to pay attention.
Now, I'm as anti-union as the next paid-up member of the ppta, and I neither like nor condone the vast majority of strike actions, but I do see the need for them. What this act seems to be saying is: you're allowed to strike unless your strike action does, y'know, what strikes are meant to do; you're allowed to strike, but the government is allowed to stop you if they think your strike might work.
Now, sure, that's too cartoonishly fascist an idea for anyone to actually take seriously. Obviously the government wouldn't do anything like that.
Just like the fact that no one is this country would ever be arrested for sedition. I mean, that's only on the books to stop wartime treason, and hasn't been used since world war one.
Except for when it was used a year or so back on Tim Selwyn...
If there is incontrovertible evidence that these hippies were involved in a dangerous terrorist plot to overthrow Big Government, then sure, waterboards all round, but I do worry about where this sort of path leads...
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