Wednesday 16 December 2020

Be Careful What You Wish For.

This Is What Counter-Terrorism Looks Like: Has the New Zealand Left forgotten already the enormous fuss they made about the ill-fated “Operation Eight”. How appalled they all were when the Police and other elements of the security services moved against a group of left-wing activists observed training in the Urewera Ranges with semi-automatic weapons and Molotov cocktails? Have they forgotten their outrage at the illegal use of surveillance equipment? The interception of e-mails. The heavy-handed raid on Ruatoki?

THERE’S A CURIOUS disconnect between the Left’s support for the Muslim community and its deep-seated mistrust of the security services. On the one hand, they are demanding that white supremacists be hunted down and brought to justice – by any means necessary – while, on the other, they are wary of expanding the already extensive powers of the secret state. The problem, of course, is that it’s very difficult to achieve the former without promoting the latter. It is, however, far from certain that the Left understands this.

One of the most consistent themes to emerge from the Left’s response to the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Christchurch Mosque Attacks is that of the authorities’ failure to identify and neutralise Brenton Tarrant’s terrorist operation. Unspoken in these critiques (most probably because those making them are unwilling to acknowledge the full implications of their own demands) is the expectation that, in order to guard against such a terrible crime ever happening again, the Ardern Government will oversee a significant expansion of the National Intelligence Community’s (NIC) counter-terrorist capabilities.

But what, exactly, would that look like? By what means could the activities of a Brenton Tarrant be detected? He had planned his operation with considerable care, always conscious of the need to avoid attracting the attention of the authorities. He understood the acute vulnerabilities of a democratic society and exploited them ruthlessly. Most particularly, he took advantage of our system’s fundamental assumption that people are motivated by good (or, at least, not illegal) intentions. By the time a society like our own realises that it is dealing with someone whose intentions are homicidally destructive – it is far too late.

To its credit, the Royal Commission recognised this core truth of the Christchurch Attacks: that only the intervention of pure chance could have prevented Tarrant from carrying out his deadly mission. The Left, however, remains unsatisfied. It refuses to accept that Tarrant was essentially unstoppable. With all its powers, surely the secret state could have intercepted Tarrant’s electronic communications? A proper network of spies and informants, buried deep in the white supremacist movement, would have had no difficulty in picking-up on this new member of the gun club; this obsessive body-builder at the gym; this traveller with the interesting collection of stamps in his passport.

But, what sort of society would that be? A society in which the state is permitted to eavesdrop on any and every communication without the benefit of a judicial warrant, would hardly merit the title of “democratic”. Likewise, any society in which every new face, every unguarded comment, is noted, recorded and reported to the security services by a vast secret network of spies and informants. A society, in short, bearing a striking family resemblance to the society of the (East) German Democratic Republic (GDR) and its state security (Stasi) protectors.

Is that really the direction in which the Left would like to see Aotearoa-New Zealand travel?

The scary thing is that it’s not entirely clear that such a society is not the Left’s ultimate goal. Not when its extreme antipathy to white supremacy and its determination to protect vulnerable groups from its “hate crimes” and “hate speech” are factored into the equation. After all, it was the Socialist Unity Party’s (as the GDR’s communists called themselves) fear of fascism, both within the GDR and across the border in the Federal Republic (West Germany) that led to the creation of the Stasi and the building of the Berlin Wall.

Is it really too fanciful to suggest that, just as the East German working-class sought protection from any resurgence of the recently defeated Nazis, so, too, does Aotearoa’s diverse multicultural society require protection from the hateful manifestations of white supremacy?

It is so very tempting to buy into the goals and methods of counter-terrorism when the terrorists are people you despise. Think back to the early 1960s, when the Black civil rights movement was being beaten, bombed and murdered by the Ku Klux Klan. Recall the enraging photographs, published in Life magazine, of lounging Southern sheriffs, obscenely confident that their murderous suppression of African-Americans would go unpunished by the all-white juries empanelled to determine their guilt or innocence. Remember the increasingly shrill demands from liberal Americans that the FBI must “do something” to shut the Klan down. The unspoken assurance being that, whatever the FBI's “something” amounted to, the federal government would turn a blind eye.

And it worked. Of course it worked! Paid informers, midnight abductions, threats of torture, infiltration, disinformation, fostering extreme paranoia, deliberately inciting factional strife: such tactics always work. And when the Ku Klux Klan began to eat itself and its members started ratting each other out to the Feds, well, liberal America just set its jaw, shook the FBI Special Agents’ hands, and murmured “Well done.”

It is, however, important to remember that although the FBI’s Counter-Intelligence Programme (COINTELPRO) may have started with the Klan, it didn’t end there – no siree! Having shut down the southern white supremacists, the FBI turned its attention to the burgeoning left-wing movement against the war in Vietnam; the Black Panther Party; Students for a Democratic Society. Because, that’s the thing about counter-terrorism in a capitalist society: it may crack down on the Right out of a sense of duty; but destroying the Left is something it will always do happily – for the pure pleasure of watching it burn.

Has the New Zealand Left forgotten already the enormous fuss they made about the ill-fated “Operation Eight”. How appalled they all were when the Police and other elements of the security services moved against a group of left-wing activists observed training in the Urewera Ranges with semi-automatic weapons and Molotov cocktails? Have they forgotten their outrage at the illegal use of surveillance equipment? The interception of e-mails. The heavy-handed raid on Ruatoki? Their message to the National Intelligence Community, then, was admirably clear: “Stop trying to turn New Zealand into a police state!”

Ah, yes, but Operation Eight was directed against the Left’s friends and comrades – wasn’t it? Thirteen years on, what would the response be if the news media broke a story about a group of heavily armed white supremacists undergoing military training in a remote South Island pine forest? How many on the Left would complain, I wonder, when scores of heavily-armed and armoured police officers descended on the little Canterbury town of Geraldine to apprehend the fascists?

Hopefully, the outcry in defence of New Zealanders’ civil liberties would be just as loud in 2020 as it was in 2007. Hopefully, the insistence on the presumption of innocence would be just as great.

Every state possesses the means to keep its citizens under strict control. The democratic trick is to ensure that it receives no encouragement to use them. If governments are incited to believe the worst of their citizens, then those citizens will not be slow to live up to their masters’ expectations.

Be careful what you wish for.


This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 15 December 2020.

32 comments:

Trev1 said...

Socialism in the Postmodern age, when the idea of objective truth is no longer current, goes hand in hand with totalitarianism. This is especially true where those institutions that mediate between the State and the individual, in particular the church or family, have broken down. The Left's obsession with identity politics and political correctness or "wokeness" as it is now called mean that today's Socialists are willing to invoke whatever powers the State may possess and more to crush their opponents or non-believers. First up is the suppression of free speech beginning with those who espouse ideas that challenge your own beliefs. No surprises then that we are now headed in this direction. In New Zealand this will mean three years imprisonment for the offence of "hate speech" whose definition will be determined on a case by case basis after the alleged crime has been committed by a State appointed judge. Kafka has risen.

Simon Cohen said...

Excellent article Chris.

PaulVD said...

Thanks, Chris. This is the only blog I know of where I can read a left-wing view of society that offers clear-eyed honesty about political choices, rather than empty hugs or pointless hatred of the "other side".
The modern left seems always in danger of falling into Trumpism, that any abuse of State power is okay if it benefits the "correct side". The dangers of that should not need to be spelled out, but they do.

Brendan McNeill said...

Chris

We are rapidly moving towards a high tech surveillance state with little regard for individual privacy, most of which we have given up voluntarily in any event. We already have facial recognition technology in place domestically, and the ability to track an individual’s movements through their mobile phone data. Personal preferences can be determined through credit card usage, and if you combine that with the ability of ‘big tech’ who know your politics from your web browsing and social media posts, then it becomes very easy to create an accurate personal profile on every New Zealand citizen.

Combine that data with artificial intelligence, and a search for ‘key indicators’ would reveal any number of reliable ‘suspects’, be they child abusers, or political dissidents. The average person using the internet today has created a detailed audit trail that will have implications from job losses through to the cancellation of their banking facilities. This is already happening. Every prospective employee has had their social media profile thoroughly checked for many years now, and what I’m describing is simply an extension of that vetting.

There are white supremacists out there, and if there weren’t then the media would have created them. Yet I suspect the problem of far right radicalisation is much smaller than we have been led to believe compared to other forms of extremism. I still recall our former PM John Key advising New Zealanders during peak ISIS, that there were up to 40 Muslims on our SIS terrorist watch list – something we can no longer publicly discuss apparently, given the appalling tragedy of March 15 at the hands of a lone and dysfunctional Australian.

We don’t know what the future holds, but we do know that we are being carefully monitored 7/24.

Anonymous said...

My understanding is that Mr Tarrant did not belong to any white nationalist group and that other than a gun license he flew under the radar that any surveillance would have picked up. He may have said some things to people privately, but that was it. The secret police may have found him by having access to all his internet traffic, but how many New Zealanders want to accept the all their computer time is logged and analysed in the hope the system will find a neonazi or the like? I suspect there would be widespread active protests if the government proposed to have the security system know everyone's browsing habits. And without it, you won't catch the lone wolves, no matter what their cause is.
Chris Morris

Kat said...

Anyone that uses John Key as an adviser is in need of a rethink...to put it politely.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

I see Brendan is espousing the typical conservative/racist "lone and dysfunctional" trope when discussing white Christian terrorism. Not surprising. It would be nice if you did a bit of research on the man before you spouted this egregious nonsense Brendan. It's simply the way that the extreme right try to minimise the impact of and excuse right wing white terrorism. All of these acts are apparently committed by loan actors who are somehow mentally disturbed. Whereas all Muslim terrorism is the result of deeply entrenched and organised terrorist groups. This is the purest of pure bullshitery. A minimal amount of research would have shown you that the guy was in touch with right wing groups all over the world, and spent time on various disgusting right wing websites like Stormfront.
Incidentally, if we do have 40 Jihadists at work in New Zealand, they must be the most incompetent group of terrorists in the world given that we haven't had any Muslim terrorism. (Apart from an attempted plane hijacking by a woman who actually was "lone and dysfunctional) I refuse to believe that they couldn't slip the bounds of SIS surveillance in order to blow themselves up somewhere. It's not as if the SIS is particularly competent. They've shown their incompetence in public a number of times, God knows what they've covered up.

AB said...

"Unspoken in these critiques (most probably because those making them are unwilling to acknowledge the full implications of their own demands) is the expectation that, in order to guard against such a terrible crime ever happening again, the Ardern Government will oversee a significant expansion of the National Intelligence Community’s (NIC) counter-terrorist capabilities."

Not really Chris. Whomever is surveilled/monitored, due process should apply. All "the left" is arguing for is that the Security Services are less biased in their identification of where the actual security risk lies. i.e. they are currently biased towards surveilling people on the left who are seen as posing some threat to the current accumulations of wealth/power and to the mechanisms whereby that accumulation is set to continue. The Security Services appear to have been unwilling to monitor to the far right, because ideologically, the far right is uncomfortably adjacent to those centres of wealth/power they are inclined to protect.

Nick J said...

GS, I think you do protest too much. Can you deny the gunman was lone? The Police say so, no accomplices arrested, no evil plotting group assisiting or directing him. So lone seems reasonable.
How about disfunctional? He was obviously not a fully functioning psyche or he wouldnt have acted that way. That said wtf is meant by disfunctional?

What Brendan described about the ability of the digital footprints we all generate to be examined would have probably unmasked him. This is increasingly making Orwellian surveillance a reality. Do you GS regard this too as the purest bullshittery or does it concern you?

Guerilla Surgeon said...

Nick. I somehow doubt that Brendan had considered your points. But he does manage to stereotype just about everyone that he fears. Muslims = terrorists, social Democrats = communists, poor = feckless – and so on.
But if you look at the question this is a trope that occurs time after time, where right wing terrorists are described as poor deluded people. And Muslims are "obviously" organised. We know that this guy kept in touch with fellow neo-Nazis all over the world. They encourage each other. And most of these lone wolf efforts are the result of stochastic terrorism. As are many acts of Muslim terrorism. And yet none of the Muslims are ever described as lacking a fully functioning psyche. Personally I think that anyone who shoots masses of people, all blows themselves up as lacking something in the psyche department.
And of course the surveillance society concerns me. I don't see why you should assume it doesn't. I was merely commenting on Brendan's stereotypical response.
But let's remember who encourages the surveillance society, its not just Orwellian, but the extreme right as well. In fact the right in general seems to favour this. One of the most surveilled countries in the world is Britain, which has been under a Tory government for years now.
And it's big business that collects all our data and profits from it. If I remember correctly if the police had done their job and had a look at his Facebook pages, he would never have got a license for an MSSA. The difficulty is one of the minor reasons why I never bothered. The scrutiny used to be intense. Obviously not in his case.
There's always going to be a balance between surveillance and danger. Where do you stand?

Simon Cohen said...

Dear old Kat. In an interesting and sensible discussion she for some reason has to make a totally inane comment.

Brendan McNeill said...

Dear GS

Some facts: Here in NZ, we have imprisoned two Muslim ISIS supporters for the possession and distribution of objectionable jihadist material; they are not a figment of John Key's imagination:

https://www.loc.gov/law/foreign-news/article/new-zealand-two-men-sentenced-for-possession-of-isis-material/

We have also had at least one Kiwi Jihadist travel overseas and be killed, his parents claimed he was radicalised at the Christchurch mosque. All references to this have been taken down from Stuff, and I cannot find the articles now on a google search. It was news that no longer fitted the narrative.

Tarrant did appear to support right wing extremist groups, however in his manifesto, which I read before it was banned by our chief censor, he described himself as an eco warrior, and expressed admiration for the Chinese Communist Party. In other words, he was all over the place when it came to expressing a political ideology. It was a long rambling document that most people could have found something they agreed with, and a lot they didn't. To be completely clear, nothing justified his actions.

Personally, I wish the SIS well in their fight against all forms of extremism. That doesn't mean I wish to give up all of my privacy in support of the cause.


Nick J said...

GS, where I stand is for our privacy to be paramount as a matter of principle. If the organs of state are going to surveille that principle of privacy should require warrant to breach on reasonable grounds.

Im totally anti the capture of data on social media platforms or other electronic media for commercial or state security usage (excepting my above conditions).

I know it is nice to think that we could prevent crime by deranged nutters from the Right / Left / Islam / Mars BUT id suggest that we have done so reasonably effectively prior to social media. My fear is that opening social media to preemptive policing will lead to abuses such as thought policing. Can you imagine the wet dreams this technology would have given Himmler or Beria?

Guerilla Surgeon said...

The possession and distribution of objectionable material? Gosh how terrorist of them. And he's you are free speech advocate – why we are not pounding the drum loudly on their behalf?

“The origins of my language is European, my culture is European, my political beliefs are European, my philosophical beliefs are European, my identity is European and, most importantly, my blood is European,”

"He visited many sites of historical battles between European nations and the Turkish caliphate."

"He also changed his profile picture to a meme of an Australian "ocker" brandishing a beer bottle with the words "Hold still while I glass you" written across the image. A meme popular among a group of Australian white supremacists on Twitter."

Tarrant described himself as an "ethno nationalist eco fascist"

"In his writing, Tarrant echoed views expressed by Anders Breivik, the Norwegian right-wing terrorist who killed 77 people with a van bomb and gun massacre in Norway in 2011.
He specifically mentioned Breivik by name, claiming he had "brief contact" with the mass murderer and had received a "blessing" for his actions from Breivik's associates."

"The dossier also praised United States President Donald Trump as "a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose", and addresses grievances about the left's "march through the institutions"."

Dunno Brendan, he sounds very much like a fascist/Christian extremist to me.

Brendan McNeill said...

Dear GS

I'll settle for your honest admission that you just "Dunno".

Kat said...

GS its obvious Brendan has been in deep trauma since learning that those crushing imprints on the leader of the oppositions knees as she posed for the cameras in front of the alter of the bleeding heart of Jesus failed to resonate. And then there is the squeak in the yarmulke from the back pews who needs to show some respect to his elders. Merry Christmas...keep the faith.....

John Hurley said...

Have a listen at 28:00
Lois of Manawatu. Intuitions calling
https://www.magic.co.nz/home/news/2020/12/paddy-gower-joins-sean-for-a-full-hour---a-half-to-discuss--hate.html

When Trumps said Mexicans are bringing crime, it was about that he was signaling affect for the American people.

Think about Jacinda's "in our borderless world"; "what if we change what us means" (blah, blah)
https://unherd.com/2019/10/was-john-lennon-right-about-love/

John Hurley said...

I see the far-right expert Professor Paul Spoonley wants to raise the age of super. It isn't that I disagree but as a proponent of mass-migration and "diversity dividend" he has been at the forefront of the things that disrupt our society (including a social contract).

He claims working class credentials
https://youtu.be/VjqRa3x65pY?t=1554

more than once
https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/our-new-society/

according to his CV he got a BA in 1973
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/hawkes-bay-today/news/how-migrants-can-help-build-bay/WMZG5QCUA5JUFXBZESZ7C2P4WE/

Perhaps he had a holiday job at "varsity". As a rule students were laborers at the works although I met a student politician who got a job as a seaman of all thing (unions).

It isn't as though mass migration isn't consequential
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/2018777249/what-s-driving-nz-s-declining-fertility-rate

and Spoonley has been vocal in disassociating migration and house prices while promoting parent reunification and stressing (alleged) economic benefits.

John Hurley said...

Brendan McNeill
https://web.archive.org/web/20140727140346/http://stuff.co.nz/world/middle-east/10310496/A-kiwi-lads-death-by-drone

John Hurley said...

One thing that bothers me is that Jacinda wants to turn an eye to Youtube. The report said Tarrant followed Stephan Molyneau. Newshub did a hit piece on racial differences in IQ. Of course that comes with various disclaimers but to anyone who looks outside the bubble (A New Radical Centrism, Jolly Heretic, Jordan Peterson, Jon Haidt etc,etc) it seems fairly sound (Jamaicans are the fastest sprinters, Indians the slowest - I think). It would be a crime if social cohesion is about protecting the narrative. We have been in a gated institutional narrative ever since Labour decided a state could be divided into "many peoples".

BTW Paul Spoonley and Robin Peace have devised a new strategy for maintaining social cohesion based on a linguistic model of how grammar works. I don't understand it but it suggests dealing with the "atomised" people on line (as we are here a bunch of strangers).

Peace is on RNZ A Slice of Heaven wagging the finger: "if we are going to make migrants feel at home we are going to have to learn their languages" FFS. This is what happens when all opposition has been stymied and all the MSM are part of the support crew.

SOCIAL COHESION: WHAT DO WE MEAN?
Belonging involves a sense of being part of the wider community, trust in other people, and common respect for the rule of law and for civil and human rights. New Zealand is home to many peoples, and is built on the bicultural foundation of the Treaty of Waitangi. New Zealand’s ethnic and cultural diversity should be recognised, celebrated and valued.
https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/handle/2292/51770

Imagine?

Guerilla Surgeon said...

Thank you Brendan for giving me a teachable moment. I'm using your reply as an example of how some people are immune to evidence against their cherished beliefs.

Brendan McNeill said...

John

Thank you for the link to the article about the young man being radicalised at the Christchurch Mosque. Of course Stuff have removed it from their website post March 15 because it didn't fit the narrative, but the 'web archive' keeps a copy it seems.

We can have multiculturalism, or we can have social cohesion, but it appears they are mutually exclusive aspirations, particularly if you look at those nations that are 'further on' in the experiment than we are. Think France, Germany, Belgium, Sweden and the UK as a few examples.

We have been repudiating our cultural inheritance for the best part of 60 years to the extent that we now celebrate everyone else's culture but our own. It's difficult to avoid pessimism over our trajectory. Of course, if all cultures produce the same outcomes, what does it matter?

Geoff Fischer said...

Brenton Tarrant was not "unstoppable". He was eventually stopped at the Lynwood masjid. He could have been stopped much earlier. He could have been stopped at the entrance to the Al Noor masjid if its imam and congregation had taken the appropriate measures to provide for their own security.
Brenton Tarrant did not "fly beneath the radar". He was known to the ASIO, the NZSIS and to the New Zealand Police.
He was able to perpetrate his atrocity because the staff of the security services were just doing their job, and the leaders of the Muslim ummah were not doing theirs.
Quite inexplicably, the victims were relying on the state security services to protect them from harm.
So "expanding the already extensive powers of the secret state" is definitely not the way to avoid any future recurrence of the Al Noor massacre.
Reducing the powers of the secret state would leave us all, Muslims and non-Muslims, a whole lot safer.
The New Zealand government won't do that of course.
It is our own people who must acknowledge the reality that the secret forces behind the colonialist state are truly, shockingly and irredeemably evil, and that the only way in which we can keep ourselves safe is by tearing down those institutions of the secret state and bringing all their members to account in a court of law.

Anonymous said...

Chris is absolutely right. We would be very dumb to give the state more surveillance powers, just as we'd be mad to introduce so called hate crime laws.
There is very little risk of any kind of terrorism in NZ in my opinion. Same as before the Tarrant atrocity. It was very unlikely then and remains so. Driving or swimming or eating too much is several 1000s times more of a risk to us.
Along with giving more power to the state we must oppose the Islamic world’s push to have 'Islamophobia' made an offence as though it is racism. It clearly is on the radar of many who want to see some kind of equivalence established between it and say, Anti-Semitism, one of the worst kind of racisms.
Whereas, fearing Islam is pretty rational, and attacking its ideology more or less a duty of thinkers I would suggest.
As that heroic women Ayam Ali Hirshi says: ‘Reject Islam. Embrace Muslims’. That is the humane way forward.
All Muslims are victims of this creed in my view and we should encourage those living in the West to give it up and free themselves from its oppression. It should be repeatedly made clear to them that apostacy and blasphemy are not offences in our society and any challenge to that will be fully opposed.
But what I have just written is in line to be made illegal under Labour's hate crime plans I gather, from listening to Little.
Left & Right should combine to oppose it. Freedom of speech is a treasure of our culture and we should value it as if our lives depended on it. They do.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

"to anyone who looks outside the bubble (A New Radical Centrism, Jolly Heretic, Jordan Peterson, Jon Haidt etc,etc) it seems fairly sound "

Yes, let's look outside the bubble to all those people who know very little about intelligence or education, and are generally regarded as wacky.

And just in case people still don't think that free speech has real-world consequences.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/opinion/300189381/online-nobody-knows-youre-a-terrorist-extremists-targeted-me

Chris Morris said...

GF
You wrote "He was known to the ASIO, the NZSIS and to the New Zealand Police." Other than the police approving his gun license, which they should not have without a real background check, how did the other agencies know him?. These news reports say the opposite to your claim.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/christchurch-mosque-attacks-nz-spy-chiefs-called-in-for-high-level-meeting-days-after-shootings/5YT3C7O75FUINL5K23ZVGSLG2M/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/08/christchurch-shooter-was-active-with-australian-far-right-groups-online-but-escaped-police-attention
Chris Morris

greywarbler said...

Geoff Fischer You are not indulging in hate speech, just the usual NZ sort of not accepting fault, looking for someone to blame. hat is the present approach under the neo liberal cult. Don't take any responsibility yourself it says - pass it on to others.

You have values about some things. The Muslims thought they were living in a country that attempts to value all things. But the Muslims hadn't realised how distorted our values are these days. It isn't cool to be concerned about others welfare, you just look after your own. If something bad happens to you, be like the Americans and sue anyone you can blame for millions.

The good society tries to prevent bad things happening. We blame the vulnerable, after jumping forward with flowers and grief then our small portion of kindness having been used up, we turn on the injured and afflicted. Yet Grace Millane who walked voluntarily into the arms of her killer, looking for a buzz, is venerated still - did you buy a memorial handbag? Cool, or other appropriate temporary slang. A weird society; typically western?

John Hurley said...

GS

And just in case people still don't think that free speech has real-world consequences.
........
Yes
Jordan Peterson answered "the Jewish question" by explaining that their population has a cohort 2 deciles above average "that's huge" - (something like that). That is to answer why so many Jews are influential in Universities (as presidents) etc.

Jews are now starting to realise that Critical Theory is a threat to them and are leading lights in evolutionary psychology whereas Professor Spoonley is a big fan of Neserine Malik's approach to hate speech (too much talk). She has no time for Jordan Peterson and his "pop sociobiology with it's genetic determinism"

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/stop-being-shocked

John Hurley said...

I see Professor Spoonley saying that the arguments on the "far right" (he being central) are becoming more sophisticated. He mentioned Camus and Whites being reverse colonised.

I'm not sure how he would waffle his way out of that. He also claims that back in 1987 "we didn't anticipate" the demographic disaster that is our nation. I call BS to that. Quote "it was racist" and

In 1986 a long-awaited review of immigration policy was tabled in Parliament by the Labour Government (Burke, 1986; Bedford, Farmer and Trlin, 1987;Trlin, 1992).


The immigration policy review in 1986 was part of a much larger agenda for change in New Zealand (Bedford 1996). It was not essentially a change in state policy with a primary focus on one region of the world, as Parr (2000:329) suggests, although clearly through the 1980s and 1990s immigration from countries in Asia was a highly topical issue for both politicians and the public. The attitudes of New Zealanders in the mid-1990s towards immigration may not have reflected the positive perspective on the value of diversity in our society that is contained in the Review of Immigration Policy August 1986. But this does not mean that the globalisation of immigration to New Zealand was an “unintended consequence of policy changes in 1986”. It was a deliberate strategy, based on a premise that the “infusion of new elements to New Zealand life has been of immense value to the development of this country to date and will, as a result of this Government’s review of immigration policy, become even more important in the future” (Burke 1986:330). The data on arrivals, departures, approvals, refugee flows and net migration gains and losses reported in this paper indicates that “the infusion of new elements” into New Zealand society is proceeding apace. There is no suggestion in immigration policy in 2002 that this will not “become even more important in the future”, as Burke (1986) assumed in the mid-1980s.

I suspect that we have been lied to over and over in the interests of making the abnormal (a nation of nations) normal. Especially polling (private truth/ public lies).

Geoff Fischer said...

Chris Morris wrote: "These news reports say the opposite to your claim".
They do, quoting the deliberately misleading and frankly implausible comments of the Five Eyes intelligence chiefs who organised a news blackout which began on the day of the massacre, continued through the Royal Commission Report and will persist into the foreseeable future (30 years hence, we are told).
If you were allowed to hear the testimony of New Zealand Police officers and if they were allowed to tell you why they granted Tarrant a firearms license, then you would know for a fact what any reasonable person could have surmised, namely that Tarrant was well known to ASIO, the NZSIS and the New Zealand Police.
If there had been a genuine Commission of Inquiry, police would have been subpoenaed to give evidence under oath and you would then know the whole story.
Why does Australia want Brenton Tarrant back on home soil?
The answer is for more or less the same reasons that France wanted Mafart and Prieur back in France.

Geoff Fischer said...

Greywarbler:
You suggest that to seek for explanations is to attribute blame, and imply that to attribute blame is just one step removed from hate speech. That is consistent with the position of the regime you support, a regime which manages to sail through tragedies, atrocities and disasters of all kind (Erebus, Cave Creek, Pike River, Tirgiran, Al Noor) without allowing any of its own personnel to be held in any way accountable for what took place.
Indeed, the principle of non-accountability is enshrined in your constitution. If the Head of State is accountable for nothing, who else in the regime can be held accountable for anything?
If I read your dissertation correctly, you seem to be working around to the colonial regime's bizarre argument that since no one within the regime should be held responsible for its acts and omissions, everyone else can be held responsible. So all New Zealanders (or at least all Pakeha New Zealanders) are responsible for colonialism, the housing crisis, the Al Noor massacre and every instance of criminal neglect or intent.
The regime considers itself responsible for nothing, while the people are clouded by guilt. A false rendering of the reality which can only be sustained through the most earnest efforts of the Chief Censor and the Orwellian Media Freedom Committee.
In regard to the Al Noor massacre you have held one person responsible, while throwing a blanket of secrecy and censorship over the whole affair. Those who guided, aided and abetted Brenton Tarrant will have their identities concealed for at least thirty years if the regime gets its way.
You try to make this sound virtuous. You make it clear that you are not one to cast blame. Very good. Neither are we. But we will not be party to the cover-up because we will not tolerate the recurrence of similar events in future. The regime eschews blame not because it is virtuous, but because it is culpable.
The advice I gave to our Muslim community before the Al Noor atrocity was that they faced a serious danger from which the NZSIS would do nothing to protect them, and that they should take their own measures for their own safety. That advice still stands.

Chris Morris said...

Geoff Fischer -
You have nothing to support your contentions at all - the fact that everything says the opposite you just airily dismiss. That would make you a full blown conspiracy theorist to believe what you wrote. No doubt you have a tin hat on so the GCSB can't read your brainwaves,