Posts by Rich of Observationz
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The Terrorism Suppression Act didn't create a new offence of committing a terrorist act
Thanks Graham - I saw it defined such an act and that it did create an offence of terrorist bombing.
Why these offences are neccesary when we have laws against murder, arson and criminal damage does rather escape me, really.
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Wait. You're happy with a law that doesn't catch terrorists until after they've committed their act? You don't want to, y'know, catch them before they set off their bomb?
Yes, I am. I don't want to be "safe" from the infinitesimal chance of being killed in a terrorist bomb if the price for that is a law that throws people in jail for bad poetry.
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I've read through the Terrorism Suppression Act and it doesn't seem unclear to me.
I think the intent of Parliament when passing it, amongst other things, was to:
- criminalise membership of an established terrorist organisation (typically, one that was already committing acts here or overseas)
- introduce a new offence of committing a terrorist actWhat they deliberately didn't do was to make vague plotting, threats and fantasizing an offence, as other countries (like the UK) have.
Which I think is a good thing. It means that there is a small chance that somebody will one day manage to commit an act that would have otherwise been foiled. But terrorists of any competence would be able to avoid detection until at least the moment of action - so only incompetent terrorists would be caught. I would hope that most targets would be reasonable protected against such incompetents.
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Some of the material they have been charged with possessing (Napalm, Molotov Cocktails) are not actually proscribed by the arms act.
It's illegal to have an explosive without proper cause, etc.
But petrol (jellied or otherwise) isn't an explosive as Lewis Page discusses in this Register article. Maybe they could get him over as an expert witness.
(He could give a few lectures while he's here. With demonstration bangs - I'm sure we'd get a good turnout)
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the police still hauled the (white) guy behind the counter into court.
Politely. After being bailed throughout the entire course of the case. And he got discharged without conviction I think.
My understanding is that it's not illegal to use a gun in self-defence, but it is illegal to keep a gun to hand for that purpose, which is why the gun shop guy got charged.
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And the media who made up lurid claims of IRA handbooks, napalm bombs, and conspiracies to murder George Bush, Helen Clark, and John Key...
You can trace it all back to Bomber :-)
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Question: is there only an offence of "conspiracy to murder" or can one be convicted of planning to cause injury or damage?
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people with guns with anti-government ideas
Like half the farmers in the Waikato? I bet a lot of them don't renew their gun licenses on time and get nothing more than a polite call from the local firearms officer.
White farmer thinks he can shoot at people intruding on his land - reasonable self-defence
Tuhoe think they can shoot at people intruding on their land - terrorism(Just to be clear, I don't think anyone should be allowed to have a firearm that's intended to shoot at people. But there's a massive double standard here).
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True documentary footage from a UK classroom:
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The thing with technological change is that it does obsolete certain learnt skills.
When did anyone last do long division? Log tables formed a large party of my high school maths course (although that was basically teaching a transient technology, rather than a fundamental skill that has faded from use).
In 1990, if you wanted to write an essay, you really needed to have memorised much of the material as looking it up in books was slow and impractical. Now, if I want to check the way law education works in the US, wikipedia has the information a click away. I need a framework of knowledge (that someone told me it was different, for instance) but the exact details can be instantly retrieved.
In a few years, we'll have computer software that transforms scribbled notes into readable prose, so I'll be able to type:
??% NZ sch lvrs illiterate
and get the result
5% of New Zealand school leavers are illiterateThat's going to alter education yet again.