Tim Walker’s ISIS

How refreshing to hear John Key confirm that yes, as he warned might very well happen, New Zealand now has ties with the Islamic State.

It seems a number of our misguided youth feel compelled to either pledge their allegiance to, or join up with, then perhaps die for, the aforementioned armed forces.

I do have to wonder what this kind of revelation does for the attitudes of that deluded portion of the nation’s population who liked to believe that given New Zealand’s wonderfully peaceful nature along with its delightfully unobtrusive presence, we have nothing to fear from the rest of the world’s armies or, more to the point, terror groups.

I recall around eighteen months ago, at the height of the nation’s indignation at revelations we were being spied on by the GCSB, I wrote a delightfully ribald article essentially mocking the shit out of those good NZ citizens who believed that, despite not personally engaging in anything the least bit unlawful, this oh-so-sinister and terribly worrisome Government Bureau would encroach on their otherwise peaceful lives.

It seemed that the greater NZ population were unable to comprehend that simply being a non-belligerent nation located well out of the way of the rest of the world way down here in the Pacific, does not make us impervious to the nefarious acts of other countries; in fact such an isolated stance might very well have the opposite effect.

Eighteen months ago, Prime Minister John Key, in his special way, did try to warn us of the possibility that terror groups had the potential to infiltrate NZ shores; I think many of us refused to believe it on the basis that if we didn’t know about it, it wouldn’t be real.

It is real. There are normal NZ citizens out there who genuinely believe that the ISIS fight is the good fight.

Wake up New Zealand. We are involved.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by John Rambo

Photography by Will E Apiata

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