John Key's "terrorism" laws

Kevin Hester -

John Key is trying to create an atmosphere of fear around a non existent problem. We have more to fear from his obsessive attraction to the US, the most fear making and war mongering empire in history.

We have nothing to fear except fear itself. These laws will be used to quell dissent not to quell terrorism of which the only two incidences I know of were 1) The blowing up of the Rainbow Warrior and murder of Fernando Peiriera and the bombing murder of Ernie Abbott at the trades hall in Wellington almost certainly carried out by the security services in collusion with the NZ Police.

Seemorerocks -

Tyrants,from Hitler and Stalin to the non-entities that seek to rule over us today, have used vague, concocted and usually non-existent threats to extend their power over people. Every time the “people” have gone along with the fascist state

New terrorism laws a 'band-aid' - Key

The Islamic State's mastery of social media and its focus on pragmatism over grand statements makes it a bigger threat to New Zealand than al-Qaeda ever was, says Prime Minister John Key.

TV3,

4 November, 2014

Mr Key will tomorrow deliver a rare speech on national security, which he says will have two main parts: the first on how the Government plans to deal with people in New Zealand raising money for Islamic State (IS, also known as ISIS), or who may be planning to leave the country to join the fighting in Iraq and Syria.

Speaking on Firstline this morning, Mr Key his speech would give "a sense of the number of those people, and… a sense of what we're trying to achieve with some law changes that we're going to propose as a short-term band-aid to making sure we're in a better position to monitor those people."

The second part will focus on what contributions New Zealand can make to the international fight against IS. He warns if we decide to make a military contribution, it won't be short-lived.

"Your expectation has to be that they'll be there for a fairly long period of time. It's a nice idea to say they'll go for a rotation or something and they'll be back, but in reality you can see from Afghanistan where Helen Clark went in I think in about 2002, 2001 in Bamiyan – we were there for the better part of 11, 12 years. The SAS went back on numerous rotations."

READ MORE: Key: IS 'most significant threat in modern times'

Mr Key fears money raised here in New Zealand for IS could ultimately be used to fund attacks here, and the apparent lack of military equipment won't stop them.

"That's one of the different things about this group more than anything else that I've seen in the time that I've been Prime Minister – al-Qaeda, I'm sure they tried to reach out to people and they undertook activities, but it's different with ISIS," says Mr Key.

"They have mastered social media, they're tapping into a world of people who obviously want to engage and for all sorts of reasons that you or I could never really fully understand, but they live in a world where they're totally consumed by this stuff. They read everything they can, they watch everything they can and they follow the teachings and the lessons. ISIS, basically, part of its fundamental message is just undertake terrorist acts.

"So they'll, in their teachings, say if there's a rock, pick up a rock; if there's a car, drive the car. These are the people who will say use anything to undertake a terrorist act."

This differs from al-Qaeda's strategy of using sleeper cells, who usually only went into action when told and weren't necessarily involved in combat on a day-to-day basis.

"It's quite different from al-Qaeda where the instructions were from the top, it was highly coordinated, it was the sort of 9/11 that you saw," says Mr Key. "This is a very different, more localised risk."

Any "band-aid" legislation the Government introduces is expected to have an expiry date, as a wide-ranging review of New Zealand's security and intelligence agencies will take place next year.

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