Who is going down with the ship?

Kia Ora,

An interesting few days & few discussions in amongst been very busy.

First is a discussion with someone much more experienced & qualified than me who has had to carry out a number of courses to be 'recognized' in the NZ industry, even though those courses do not come anywhere near his military training or experience.

Our conversation turned to the Rugby World Cup 2011 & the training required to get the NZ industry up to standard required.

He related that recently he had run some simulations for someone & when they through in terrorist situations, no one knew what to do.

Basically it is not  just the training that is needed it is, as I have said before, a change in mindset & for that you don't need a bit of paper, but real time training & practice.

In short  at this point in time the only way NZ will be ready is by making the standard only ex NZ, British or South African military or ex British or South African Police to begin with.

The hardest part of the mindset comes from the fact that NZ does not see itself as a terrorist target or had many attacks, so in the industries minds eye the worst they can see is some drunken brawls & maybe a bomb threat or two(even then they are not ready).

With Terrorism it is too late once it has happened to think about training or changing the mindset, but it seems that something has to occur before it will happen here.

Today there was an article in the "Press" about a recent release of the US military's vision of the future issues.

It wasn't rocket science to work a lot of it out & in fact much of it says exactly what I have been saying in these blogs. You just look at history & it shows you what is going to happen.

To quote Winston Churchill again "the further back you look, the further forward you see." Just the tools used change.

One point it makes is one I have been on about since leaving the army & entering the NZ security industry.

More & more they see a convergence of the criminal activities of Organized crime & Terrorists.

That directly relates to the mindset of the NZ security industry which constantly tells it's people to ignore crime or suspicious activity.

Terrorist attacks are preceded by criminal or suspicious activity either by the terrorists or someone such as organized crime. Crime is also seen to more often in the future to been used to finance terrorist operations sine the world is now activily looking for connections to finance.

So if you impact crime & suspicious activity, then you impact on the ability for terrorist networks to operate.

It happens to some extent at times here in Christchurch where the boy racers are attracting the attention whilst in the background criminal elements are carrying out crimes. They have often been given drugs as part of the arrangement & this was known to be going on in 2001.

How do we know all this, because good training coupled with experience in the industry & that gained in particular by the British in Northern Ireland & expanded on by experience in Iraq, show one that it happens & two we can counter much of it by good basic security with a good mindset. Something lacking in the NZ industry at present.

                                          http://www.foxhoundsecurity.co.nz