Police noose tightens around activists before TPPA

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The cops are using the TPPA protests as a chance to try out new powers. The ratcheting up of tension is clear.

The Government told media Police were in riot training.

This week armed Police protected Key at his state of the nation

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and now we have activists being visited by the cops asking questions.

This is all a show of force by the Police, intimidation and threats, in the hope of being able to manufacture violence or a riot on the 4th.

All activists need to take cell phones and record everything the Police try at the protests and upload asap and let other activist groups know so they can amplify before the mainstream media start spinning the story for the cops.

There will be hashtags going out for all protests.

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We will not allow ourselves to be intimidated by cop thugs.

21 COMMENTS

  1. Believe people will dig their toes in and defy the pressure put on to frighten people off.John Key is making a mockery of democracy,it no longer exists in this country,Stephen Joyce is as bad as Key.
    The TPPA is being forced on NZ.

  2. I’ve been commenting on this over on The Standard OpenMike since I read this in the ODT this avo:

    http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/371216/cops-visit-activist-over-tpp-protest-plans

    This is a repost of a followup comment there:

    What’s changed? Well, in Dunedin this may provide some link:

    Superintendent Mike Pannett, who took over from acting district commander Jason Guthrie this week… Supt Pannett has just returned from four years in Washington DC, where he was chairperson of the Washington DC Liaison Office Association, which covered North, Central and South America.

    Supt Pannett is a member of the International Chiefs of Police Committee on Terrorism

    http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/371217/south-could-be-safest-place-world

    Detective Superintendent Mike Pannett, the New Zealand Police Liaison Officer in the United States, monitored “termination activities” against Dotcom’s Megaupload operations in nine countries from the FBI’s Multi-Agency Command Centre. Created by the FBI’s Law Enforcement Online (LEO) network in 2002, the Virtual Command Centre (VCC) enables enforcement agencies to post, track and spread information in a quick, secure environment.

    Fed from multiple inputs in the field, the VCC exists on a secure system for any designated audience members online… “Feedback on the New Zealand operation has been extremely positive from our international law enforcement partners including the FBI and the US Department of Justice,” Mr Pannett reported in the February Police online magazine, TenOne.

    http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1210/S00006/key-dotcom-and-hollywood.htm

    Detective Superintendent Mike Pannett, New Zealand police liaison officer in Washington, has been ordered to swear an affidavit, setting out full details of the monitoring he was a party to from the FBI’s Multi Agency Command Centre.

    Mr Pannett was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2009 before he was appointed manager of intelligence operations at the National Intelligence Centre based at Police National Headquarters in Wellington

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/northern-advocate/news/article.cfm?c_id=1503450&objectid=11084360

    It does seem strange that when the ODT asked the Dunedin police for comment on their allegedly having harassed an activist, they; “could not immediately be reached with a request for comment”. Yet the very next story to this in the online ODT Dunedin section was a puff piece about how an establishment minion was all set to bring to peace to the region in some unspecified manner.

  3. While I remain unconvinced that the cops with arms on the side of Symonds Street in Auckland (near the Grafton Bridge), as shown on the photo above, had anything to do with the State of the Nation speech of our ‘Esteemed Dear Leader’, I consider the actions of police chilling protesters a breach of human and democratic rights.

    This is scandalous, and it shows yet again, how this country is being run. A democracy does only function if you have informed citizens, who are also allowed to protest without being intimidated.

    As we have a largely commercially focused, government friendly and thus “neutered” MSM, people have little chance of being truly informed. As we have police do as that article reports, then we have intimidation of people, simply for “daring” to take a stand against government and its policy.

    Such is stuff that happens in dictatorships, and again, I dare say, we live in something that does in part resemble a very sophisticated kind of dictatorship.

    Most New Zealanders may read this in disbelief and consider it as unsubstantiated, but that is only because they do not use their rights much anyway and never protest or bother challenging government and its agencies.

    Those that are at the forefront of doing the latter, they know what I am talking about, as they may see clearer, what is going on in little New Zealand, the land where long white clouds are turning dark.

    • Is our government terrorising it’s people into inaction?
      And using the police to do it WTF!!
      Welcome to our tyranny

  4. I say this all the time. The load out is completely wrong. Any one walking around with that kind of kit wouldn’t be strutting around the streets like that in a real fire fight.

    You can tell the two pictured with AR’s are from the ameture hour brigade cause there both looking in the same direction. In any other ligitimate orginisation, they would get the smash for that.

    • Was thinking the same – no headgear, very minimal second line, the turnip on the left has his hand in his pocket. Most likely scenario, Key made the vanity request for heavily armed STG units on patrol looking all Robocop. Someone at HQ briefly cringed, then took a couple of noobs off traffic patrol and sent them up there with Bushmasters and as little spare ammo as possible, under orders to mill about looking ‘tactical’ in case he sneaks a peak out of the window to check out his ‘swat’ escort. Still, the woman looks like she knows a thing or two more than the turnip does when it comes to trigger discipline…

      • You as a Welshman should known about tactics as your forefathers had to deal with the invading English army across the bog swamps of southern Wales back in the 12th century.

        NZ is being toped up ready for police submission alright.

        • I mean it pains me inside to see green horns strutting around inner city Auckland with bushmasters.

          I don’t care who it is, if they are going to carry assault rifles. I dam well want them to be certified to shoot in heavily populated areas.

          Those to cops pictured give me no confidence in there weapons handling ability. And Shouldn’t have em

      • While I think it’s all tacticool and sheet, I think it’s totally unnecessary overkill. The mistakes in the pic are obvious, there for at some level the reasons for having a heavy security detail was not based on a tactical respons to a threat, but a show of force. The police shouldn’t be here to intimidate and scare people. they should be here to make people feel safe. I’m sure that may make some people feel safe, but to me it shouts police state and death of freedom, etc.

  5. Martyn, can you or anyone with understanding please confirm to everyone what rights we have if the police try to start breaking up the crowd?

    Ie if you are part of a peaceful protest but the police start trying to agitate the situation by telling people to move, can you stand your ground? Under what situations would you be obliged to obey them or face getting battoned and / out locked up?

  6. Police are paid to protect the public not work for the TPPA and Keys corporate agenda.
    What sort of democracy do we have when the PM uses police to prevent the public from expressing their viewpoint,

    Protests are our only defence from an overbearing threatening government,no different from North Korea.

    Police have no business trying to condemn people who have committed no crime.
    Key is overstepping the mark using police as a personal bodyguard to get his own way.

  7. John Key as overstepped the mark this time,the police are there to protect the public not as a political arm of National party.

  8. Sorry but; where’s the evidence for all this police intimidation of TPPA protest leaders? Is there some hard evidence like a leaked document or Police knocking on the doors of the Protest Leaders?

  9. This kind of police intimidation shows one thing very clearly: John Key is a scared man!
    He is scared because he realizes that for perhaps the first time in his political career things are not going as he planned. He imagined that the TPPA would be an easy sell to New Zealanders and he was wrong.
    He seriously underestimated the hostility of New Zealanders towards selling out to the foreign corporations. He assumed that his vacuous spin, which has always worked up until now, would get him through again. He has seriously miscalculated this time.
    However his arrogance will not permit any changes of mind so he will go ahead as planned. I always knew in my heart that National would sign anything the Americans plonked in front of them, no matter how bad it is.
    Other than the usual National sycophants like Federated Farmers and the Vichy Herald, even the majority of economists are dismissive of Key’s claims about how much New Zealand will gain from the TPPA.
    Key is reverting to default National government tactics – making it a law and order issue and trying to paint the anti TPPA lobby as anti-free trade traitors and commie stirrers.
    If the whole thing was actually about free trade I suspect most people would support it – but most of it isn’t about trade at all, free or not, it is about American corporate imperialism.
    The New Zealanders who promote this are the traitors and saboteurs. If Key really believes the majority of New Zealanders are with him on this one then his government should resign, go to the polls and make this an election issue.Wwe will find out once and for all whether New Zealanders really do support this cooked up sham of a trade deal, or not. How about it Mr Key? put your money where your big mouth is!

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