Monthly Archives: April 2015

Media Link: Anzac Day panel on future conflicts.

Posted on by
2

Commemorations of the 100th anniversary of the ill-fated assault at Gallipoli prompted Radio New Zealand to convene a special panel on the evolution and future of conflict since those tragic and futile days in 1915. I was invited to participate along with Professor Robert Patman and Col (ret.) Tim Wood. What is nice about these type of forums is that we had time to delve into issues in a more substantive way than is usual on commercial radio or TV. You can listen to the discussion here.

Others have pointed out how contrived, revisionist and jingoistic Anzac Day celebrations have become in Australia and NZ. Nowhere is this more evident than in the repeated claims–apparently common in NZ primary schools from what I have heard anecdotally–that the reason the Anzacs fought was to defend “freedom.” Well, I call BS on that.

Even if that were the case, apparently the defense of freedom does not extend to contemporary freedom of speech in the Antipodes given that an Australian sports broadcaster was vilified and sacked because he vented on social media his anti-imperialist views on the day of commemorations. His 140 character rants may have been ill-considered and a bit over the top, but they were his personal views expressed on his personal twitter account. Is not the defense of non-conformist, controversial and offensive speech the litmus test of that democratic right? Sadly, several NZ media figures joined the unthinking Australian chorus of the cretinous, indignant and self-righteous, apparently not considering that of all people media types should have the right to express personal views in a private capacity without risking summary termination.

Like many others, my reason for giving pause on Anzac Day has to do with the notion of sacrifice, often in futile and ignoble causes. From Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq, US, UK, Australian, Kiwi and other allied  soldiers have paid the price for the folly of their political leaders as much as the Anzacs did a century ago. How terrible it must be to be a relative of those killed or maimed in military adventures that do not lead to peace, prosperity or a more stable and civilised world or regional order (but which do enrich arms manufacturers and line the wallets of unscrupulous contractors and politicians associated with such conflicts). Surely the best way to honour such unrequited sacrifice is to avoid sending future generations to do the same?

Since John Key cannot be bothered to attend the funerals of NZ’s recent war dead, I doubt he has a full understanding of what sacrifice really means and why it must be honoured by avoiding involvement in futile and ignoble militarism. But as we have come to find out, the one thing that he does have in spades is no shame, so I have no doubt that he will continue to invoke, however obliquely, the Anzac and Anzus “clubs” when putting other people’s children into harm’s way.

Fear-mongering by frauds for fame and fortune.

Posted on by
13

So the Herald on Sunday published an article by a business lecturer from some obscure university in the UK (now apparently visiting at Auckland University) in which she claims that NZ is a  “sitting duck” for an attack on a shopping mall (I will not link to the article because the fool does not deserve any more attention). She compares the NZ terrorism risk level to that of the US, UK an Australia and says that we should emulate them when it comes to mall security, to include bag and ID checks before entering. The Herald on Sunday then followed up the same day with an editorial and a couple of other articles hyping the terrorist threat in NZ.

I will not go over the levels of idiocy marshalled up in this sorry excuse for reportage. Instead I will rephrase a comment I left over at The Standard:

“ …(T)he lecturer who penned the scare-mongering hysterical piece has no demonstrable experience with terrorism or counter-terrorism, much less the broader geopolitical and ideological context. She makes a false comparison with the US and UK, acting as if the threat environment here is equivalent to those of these countries and Australia, and states that NZ should emulate them when it comes to mall security. That is simply not true.

Moreover, just because al-Shabbab carried out one successful mall attack in Kenya and called for others in the US, UK and Canada does not mean that they have the capability of doing so anywhere else. In reality, those calls have gone unheeded and security authorities in those states have not appreciably increased their warnings about attacks on malls as a result.

Let us be clear: no mall in the US (and the UK as far as I know) requires bag and ID checks in order to go shopping. So the claim that they do is a lie. I mean, really. Can you imagine the reaction of the average US citizen to being asked to produce an ID before being allowed into Walmart or any one of the thousands of malls that exist in the US? Heck, they might pull out a firearm and say that their name is Smith and Wesson!

Anyway, the costs of of engaging enhanced security measures will be prohibitive for many businesses and even if adopted will be passed on to the consumers, which in turn could drive away customers in an age when they can shop on line. So it is not going to happen. The use of CCTV, coordination with local security authorities and hiring of private security guards suffices in the US and UK, so it surely can suffice here.

I will leave aside the democratic principles at stake, one of which is that you do not restrict the freedom of movement of everyone on the pretext of stopping a potential act of mass violence. And even if you were do do so, who is to say that evil doers would not switch targets to, say, transportation hubs or entertainment districts in downtown areas. Are we going to then go on to lock down every place where people congregate? Lets get real.

In sum, what we got from the Herald was an article that used a false comparison from someone who is clueless but who somehow got interviewed by a rube reporter as if she was an expert in order to justify a call for a hysterical and impractical overreaction, which the Herald then used to write a fear-mongering editorial that contradicts what our own intelligence agencies are saying about the risk of terrorist threats on home soil. Geez. Perhaps hyping up security and sacrifice in the lead-in to the Anzac Day commemorations has something to do with it?

There is only one indisputable fact when it comes to terrorism and NZ. Joining the fight against IS/Daesh increases the threat of terrorist attack on Kiwis and NZ interests, not so much here at home but in the Middle East where IS/Daesh has a broad reach. Although the Gallipoli commemorations will likely not be affected due to the security measures put in place by the Turks (who do not fool around when it comes to security), the risks to individual or small groups of Kiwis in the ME–say, tourists, aid workers, diplomats or business people– are increased as a direct result of NZ involvement in the anti-IS/Daesh coalition. The emphasis should be on their safety, not on that of local malls.

An absolutely wretched effort by the Herald.”

The problem is bigger than the Herald going overboard with its scare-mongering in the build up to the Anzac Day commemorations. Since 9/11 we have seen the emergence of a plethora of security and terrorism “experts” (including a few here in NZ such as the poseur who featured in the Herald article) as well as an entire industry dedicated to “countering” extremism, terrorism and a host of other potential or imaginary threats. Likewise government security agencies have pounced on the spectre of terrorism to justify expansion of their budgets, personnel, powers and scope of search, surveillance and detention.

There is, in effect, an entire terrorism growth industry hard at work conjuring up threats and scenarios not so much as to safeguard their fellow citizens but to enrich themselves via fame, fortune or power. In this they are abetted by a compliant when not reactionary and sensationalist media that does not bother to fact check the claims of many of these fraudulent experts (such as the Fox News contributor Steve Emerson, who falsely claimed that there are non-Muslim “no go” zones in the UK and France, or the charlatan Rohan Gunaratna, who claimed that there were jihadi cells in NZ ten years ago without ever having visited here, and who has now had to pay serious money in damages for defaming a Tamil community group in Canada).

Together, these various branches of the terrorism industry work to mutually profit by promoting fear and distrust while curtailing the rights of the majority in the ostensible interest of securing against the potential harm visited by a purportedly violent domestic minority. And they are selective when they do so: notice that all the hype is about Islamic extremists when in fact a large (if not THE largest) amount of political violence in Western societies, including NZ, is meted out by white, Christian extremists. Yet we do not hear dire warnings about neo-Nazis and white supremacists even though they have a proven track record of politically or racially motivated violent acts.

“Esoteric pineapples,”a commentator on the Standard thread that I made my remarks on, provided this very useful and informative link on the phenomenon. Read it and weep.

It is a sad day that NZ’s leading newspaper stoops to this type of tabloid rubbish. Shame on them. But at least it seems that many of its readers are not taken in by the ruse, which augers slightly better for informed debate on the true nature of the NZ threat environment.

PS: For the record, I do not consider myself to be a terrorism or security expert. I have a background in counter-insurgency, unconventional warfare and strategic analysis among other things, and have written extensively on those and other topics. But I have largely been pigeon-holed in the NZ media as one or the other in spite of my repeated requests to be identified correctly, which is another example of shoddy journalism.

Idle chatter.

Posted on by
10

Last year I wrote a series of posts outlining what in my view were the reasons the NZ Left was in major if not terminal decline. The posts began before and concluded after the 2014 election and can be found in chronological order here, here and here. There were plenty of people who disagreed with my take on things, with the most vocal detractor being that doyenne of the NZ Left, Chris Trotter. The second of my posts answered his original critique (link to his critique in the post) and he followed up some time later with another post in which he takes me to task for saying that the Left should not resort to Dirty Politics style tactics in order to prevail. He chided me for my idealism and noted that he dealt in pragmatics and pragmatism dictated that the Left should play dirty if it was to defeat the forces of darkness now reigning triumphant in this land.

Given that I have a fair bit of past practical experience with direct action politics, albeit not in NZ, I found the charge of idealism a bit odd. Given what he said previously about the Left’s continued viability and strength, even odder was Chris’s admission that Dirty Politics works and needs to be used by the Left if it is to succeed in the contemporary political arena. If the NZ Left were truly viable would it need to resort to playing dirty? I thought that was the province of pro-capitalist parties whose policies hurt the masses and have little popular appeal due to their elite focus.

Be that as it may, imagine then my surprise when I read this from the redoubtable Mr. Trotter. Therein Chris draws the parallel between the “clever and artistic” denizens of cabaret society in the Weimer Republic and what Dave Brown (in a comment on the post) pointedly calls the “chatterati” assembled to watch a panel discussion of media types–not all of them of the Left–gathered at a restaurant part owned by Laila Harre in order to to lament the demise of Campbell Live. Beyond noting that a well placed bomb would have eliminated the “cream” of Auckland’s chattering Left, he goes on to note the distance between them and the “very different New Zealand” that exists outside of Ms. Harre’s fine dining establishment and whose TV viewing preferences may not be akin to those sipping chardonnay’s inside. His tone is implicitly insulting of those he broke bread with as the media commentators opined about Mr. Campbell, other talking heads, themselves and the state of the NZ media landscape.

Now, I am not one to gleefully point out contradictions or reversals by others, such as that done by some Left commentators on the subject of the Urewera Raids. And I must confess that I am little more than a chatterer myself these days. But given the thrust of Chris’s latest post in light of what he has said before about the NZ Left, I have just one question to ask:

Is he still steering by the real?

Because if he is, then it appears that he has joined my side of the argument about the NZ Left and for that I salute him. Belated as it may be, it was time to wise up.

The issue now is how to move beyond the parlour talk of the chattering Left and into organizing a counter-hegemonic project grounded in effective praxis.  As I have said before that is a very big task and needs to be oriented around a discernible class line. The UNITE union is a small beacon of hope in this regard, but there is much more that needs to be done if anything remotely close to a Left resurgence is to translate into contestable politics. Labour and the Greens are too committed to centrist politics and working within the system as given to be anything other than reformists and passive revolutionaries. Real change can only come from the grassroots and rank and file, and those need to be cultivated via ideological appeals that feel immediate and achievable and which transcend the diversionary rubbish pushed by popular culture, corporate media and a government hell bent on dumbing down the quality of political and social discourse.

What is needed, in other words, is a legitimate war of position, however incremental it may have to be fought.

That is something the chattering Left simply cannot do.

Spy Fatigue.

Posted on by
6

The slow drip feed of classified NSA material taken by Edward Snowden and published by journalists Glen Greenwald, Nicky Hager, David Fisher and others in outlets such as The Intercept and New Zealand Herald caused a stir when first published. Revelations of mass surveillance and bulk collection of telephone and email data of ordinary citizens in the 5 Eyes democracies and detailed accounts of how the NSA and its companion signals intelligence agencies in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK spy on friend and foe alike, including trade partners and the personal telephones of the German prime minister and Indonesian president, caused both popular and diplomatic uproars. In New Zealand the outrage was accentuated by revelations about the illegal GCSB spying on Kim Dotcom and the government’s extension of its spying powers even after it was found to have operated outside its legal charter in other instances as well.

But now it seems that public interest in the issue has faded rather than grown. Revelations that the GCSB spies on Pacific island states such as Fiji, Samoa and Tonga as well as Pacific French territories, followed by news that it spied on candidates for the World Trade Organisation presidency on behalf of Trade Minister Tim Groser (himself a candidate), has been met not with street demonstrations and popular protests but by a collective yawn by the public at large.

Why is this so?

It appears that the New Zealand public is weary of the death by a thousand cuts approach used by Mr. Hager and his investigative colleagues. Beyond the usual array of diversions presented by popular culture and media, the reason for this disinterest seems to lie in the fact that the information released to date is seen as trivial, uncontroversial and tediously never-ending. Take for example the reaction to the news that the UK spied on Argentina after the Falklands/Malvinas War and carried on until 2011. Numerous pundits asked whether that is surprising. What is the UK expected to do when Argentina remains hostile to it and has never renounced its territorial claims over the islands? Similarly, others have pointed out that since New Zealand is utterly trade dependent, why not try to advance Mr. Groser’s candidacy for the WTO job using surreptitious as well as diplomatic means? Likewise, is it news that Australia and New Zealand spy on small Pacific neighbours who depend on them for a significant amount of foreign aid and are being courted by the Chinese? Why not given the levels of corruption and intrigue present in the region?

This does not mean that there are no constitutional, diplomatic, security and trade concerns raised by the Snowden leaks coming into the public domain. My belief is that there is much to be alarmed about in the Snowden files and they should serve as a catalyst or window of opportunity for a thorough review of the NZ intelligence community and perhaps even a renegotiation of the terms and conditions of its participation in Anglophone intelligence networks.

But the way in which it has been presented to New Zealand audiences has induced fatigue rather than fervour. Add to that the government’s strategy of obfuscation, denial and attacking the motives, ethics and character of the journalistic messengers, and the result is a jaded public with little interest in spies or what they do and whom they do it to. Cast against a backdrop in which personal data and private information is already bulk accessed by private firms and a host of social media platforms with profit-maximising in mind, the general attitude seems to be one of unconcern about what the guardians of the public interest are doing in that regard. In such a climate the old Nazi refrain “you have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide” resonates quite well.

Unless Mr. Greenwald, Mr. Hager and their colleagues have bombshells that they have yet to drop, it appears that like Mr. Dotcom’s much-hyped “Moment of Truth” last year, their efforts have fizzled rather than fired. For the sake of their credibility as well as the public good, it is time for them to stand up and deliver something of significance that transcends the Wellington beltway or if not, to walk away.

Should Mr. Hager and company opt to deliver a bombshell, they need to consider one more thing: what good purpose is served by revealing the foreign espionage activities of New Zealand and its closest intelligence partners? Even if it uncovers myriad spying efforts that have nothing to do with national security (and terrorism, that old canard), will it advance the cause of transparency and selectivity in intelligence operations and make some governments more responsive to public concerns about privacy? Will it curtail spying by the 5 Eyes partners or any other nation? Will it encourage whistleblowing on illegal government surveillance? Will it advance New Zealand’s interests in the world or force a reconsideration of its relationship with its security partners?

Or will it simply damage New Zealand’s reputation and relations with the countries that have been spied on?  Given that New Zealand is the most vulnerable of the 5 Eyes partners and is, indeed, almost totally trade dependent, the negative consequences of any potential backlash or retaliation by aggrieved states could be significant.

That is why the issue is important. The thrust of the most recent revelations have moved beyond domestic mass surveillance and into the realm of traditional inter-state espionage, which is not confined to the activities of the 5 Eyes partners and is an integral, if unspoken necessary evil of international relations. Given that the focus of the Snowden material is solely on 5 Eyes spying and not on its counterespionage efforts or the intelligence operations of other states, could it not seem to the general public to be a bit one-sided and deliberately injurious to continue to unveil only what NZ and its partners undertake by way of signals intelligence collection (as some in government and supportive of it have insinuated)?

In the end, will ongoing revelations about New Zealand foreign espionage serve the public interest and common good? Or will it have the opposite effect?

And will average Kiwis care either way?

 

A short version of this essay appeared in the New Zealand Herald, April 10, 2015.

Witty Banter

Posted on by
2

I am somewhat amused by the reaction to the Australians sledging of the Black Caps during the Cricket World Cup final. It is clear that, with a couple of exceptions, the Ozzie cricket team display incredibly poor sportsmanship, even to the point of racism on occasion. But what else is new? Why are so many incensed by their oafish behaviour?

Sledging, or trash talking as it is known in the US, is a sad but integral part of many sports. The more contact there is in sport the more trash talking there often is. Some athletic cultures thrive on trash talk–think boxing, American football or league.

On the other hand more ‘genteel” sports like golf, tennis or cricket are expected to provide a more civilised approach to the game. When athletes in these sports adopt more vulgar competitive approaches such as trash talking, they are quickly denounced. John McEnroe and Jimmy Conners in tennis, John Daly in golf, and an assortment of foul-mouthed cricketers have felt the wrath of those who feel that these sports are above the everyday fray.

That, I think, is the heart of the matter. It is a class thing. It is acceptable and considered normal to trash talk in “common” sports played by working and lower class people. But when it comes to the sports of the upper classes and elites, of which cricket, polo and yachting are the epitome, it is unacceptable for players to descend to the level of the hoi polloi. At most, in between tea breaks and pressing their linens for the evening overs, cricketers were and are expected to offer no more to their opponents than witty banter. It does not matter if these sports are now played by non-elites (some of the Australian cricketers can barely string a sentence together, much less hold a degree). What matters is that the genteel image of the sport must not be tarnished by crass displays, verbal or otherwise (recall that Wimbledon still has an all white dress code for players and prohibits shorts on female players).

In effect, the definition of good  and bad sportsmanship is determined not by the nature of the game but by the classes from which it originated. What is acceptable gamesmanship in sports that originated in the working masses is not acceptable in those that had their beginnings in more privileged circumstances.

The outrage directed against the Australian crackers for their sledging is more about about maintaining the appearance of class appropriate propriety than about their very poor sportsmanship. Had their trash talking happened on a soccer or rugby pitch it would have been considered perfectly acceptable and perhaps even gentle ribbing.