Well have been taking part in a forum where the discussion stemmed from the terrorist raids in the Tuhoe area here in New Zealand in the last few years.
For those that are not in NZ, what happened was after police surveillance, the NZ police raided an area where the Tuhoe Iwi(tribe) is based. From memory 17 were arrested country wide, only two really with connections to Tuhoe, but the community was raided with roads blocked off where the training had allegedly taken place. Most of those arrested were from eco green groups & one person even had an arab name, which in itself is not suspicous but when connected to terrorism things take a different slant.
The first thing to come out was people say the raids were wrong as the charges were thrown out & new ones under another act were drawn up.
That is not what really happened, the charges were thrown out as they were brought under the new Terrorism act which the judge pointed out was badly written.
That is what happens when politicians listen to bureaucrats who have no idea what they are talking about. By not knowing they were not ready & rushed through bad legislation.
The same is happening with the new security personnel bill. Though not rushed the bureaucrats have no idea what they are talking about, so have produced some finely written toilet paper which will be shown to be inadequate & then some very rushed bad replacement will come into force.
Next some are complaining that they were not connected with any terrorists (depends on whose definition as there are so many it can range from work place bullies right through to organized crime & groups such as Al Qaeada, eco greens, anti abortionists) & their children were targeted.
If you let gangs, terrorist organization or drugs & you keep your kids with you then you can not expect otherwise as distasteful as that might seem. Basically it is your fault for putting your children in that situation. Bad parenting & poor community responsbility, no matter what rights you have to grievance as Tuhoe genuienly do.
In recent history there have been enough examples of children been used to carryout or assist terrorist attacks or activities. Vietnam children throwing grenades at vehicles or laying improvised IED's, South Africa kids throwing grenades into vehicles (participants in both have told me how hard it was to shoot towards children to keep them away), Northern Ireland people of all ages placing improvised IED's with magnets against vehicles used by security forces.
Whose terrorism? A classroom activity enlists students in defining terrorism and then applying their definitions to world events.: An article from: Radical Teacher
Whilst working in Iraq knowing this we were looking for the IED's & grenades. In Afghanistan it has been taken a step further with children been used as suicide bombers (so far apparently unsuccessful).
On a lessor level children are often used to carryout criminal activity on behalf of their parents or other adults. Only today a report came out of a 12 year old selling drugs at school on behalf of family.
In this situation in particular Maori have this habit of defending those issues which are destroying us as a people. Gangs/terrorism drug use, child abuse, domestic violence & the list goes on.
Terrorism: definition, justification, and applications.(Terrorism. The Philosophical Issues )(Book review): An article from: Social Theory and Practice
People such as police do not find it easy to point firearms at children as many of them are fathers, but like going into a hostage rescue situation you have to treat everyone as a terrorist until you are sure otherwise.
If I remember properly at the time the police also detained a school bus. Funny thing is when acting as enemy party on one exercise we used a school bus to elude friendly forces to move to a new area of operations. We train to learn from those sort of experiences.
On another exercise the enemy party stole a military ambulance & managed to use it to eliminate some high ranking officials. Rest of exercise & since Ambulances have got a good going over at least by NZ forcs.
In Iraq on more than one occasion insurgents used ambulance to good effect & there was always the rumour of a fire engine fitted as a suicide bomb.
Instead of complaining they should say, "why did we get targeted?" & What can we do to ensure it doesn't happen again?"
http://www.foxhoundsecurity.co.nz
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