Sponsor's Message

Yes, just in case you missed it, the Maori Government of Aotearoa declared war on the NZ Government on the 28th of June.

The active force behind this attack on the "New Zealand Colonial Government" is the New Zealand Armed Intervention Force who, as you can see, even have their own website.

The site concerned is surprisingly a dot-com (www.nzaif.com) rather than a .org or .org.nz so perhaps they either don't understand how the Net naming system is structured or maybe they're just hoping to spin a dollar or two out of this move.

Hang on, given their stated objectives, surely they're entitled to a .mil.nz domain aren't they?

The NZ Herald reports that the group plans an attack on a high-profile target in the very near future -- which must surely put them on the wrong side of the war against terrorism.

You'd better visit their website pretty quickly because it's likely to disappear without notice at some stage in the future.

The site is hosted in the USA you see -- and the threats it contains will probably see the NZAIF categorised as a "terrorist" organisation by the US authorities.

Despite the fact that the FBI, CIA and other anti-terrorist agencies in the USA have proven themselves to be just a little slow off the mark in the past year, I suspect they'll soon wake up to the fact that a US company is hosting the website of a self-declared terrorist group and that website will vanish without trace.

If the NZAIF want to avoid this then they should consider hosting in a country that is somewhat less aligned to the war against terrorism.

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They might also want to consider using an email address a little more secure than those offered by Hotmail. Hey guys, try this one instead.

I also wonder if they realise that the version of the formmail script they're using is open to attack by spammers? Perhaps their focus is biased too much towards attack than defense?

It can't be denied that the Net is a great way to spread a political message (as our politicians have proven in recent weeks) but I think the NZAIF could have done a whole lot better than this.

The site is pretty ugly, is not particularly well implemented and bad choices have been made as to the domain name and hosting country.

I'm sure the "New Zealand Colonial Government" isn't too worried, nor will the SIS, police or military forces of the nation -- if the group's Net savvy is any indication of their competence in other areas.

I note also that they've not bothered to order any low-cost cruise missiles from me -- come on guys, the Net is a great tool for doing such research and making your military-spending go further :-)

A credible website might have gone a long way towards delivering the NZAIF's message in a more effective manner -- but they've dropped the ball I'm afraid.

In fact, the article in this edition (1.5MB PDF, 10th page) of Investigate magazine provides a whole lot more info than the group's own website.

As a footnote, I can't help but wonder this morning whether this story might be related to the NZAIF's activities and their planned high-profile attack.

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