How Much Love We Could Show: Norway's response to terrorism was to call for more openness, more democracy and, yes, more love. When it comes to the power of government, Thomas Jefferson warned, "the people themselves are its only safe respositories".
THE UNITED STATES Department of Homeland Security,
dangerously overloaded with surveillance and interception powers, could not
save the Boston Marathon. But, then, no one could have saved the Boston
Marathon. Short of imposing a monitoring regime of Orwellian proportions – one
which would utterly obliterate all civil rights and democratic freedoms – no
state can promise its citizens absolute safety.
The world is a dangerous place.
Assailed by its dangers, the most important thing a
government can do is make sure that by its actions it does not contribute to
the world becoming a less free or a more oppressive place.
When New Zealand experienced its last terrorist attack – the
bombing of the Rainbow Warrior in
1985 – the first response of the David Lange-led Labour Government was not to
bring down a series of draconian “security” measures. His instinct was to allow
the NZ Police to get on with their job.
Note that: the NZ Police.
Not the NZ Security Intelligence Service, and certainly not the Government
Communications Security Bureau. Those agencies had proved completely worthless
as protectors of New Zealand’s national security.
In spite of our membership of the UKUSA Agreement, and after
years of loyal (some would say sycophantic) service to our Cold War “allies”,
not one of them saw fit to warn us that a French “Black Ops” team was about to
launch a deadly attack on a British registered vessel moored peacefully at an
Auckland wharf.
A Deadly Blow: Neither the SIS, the GCSB, nor any of New Zealand's so-called "allies", provided the New Zealand government with the slightest warning that the French were planning to attack the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior when it docked in Auckland. The culprits were identified by the NZ Police - aided by the New Zealand people.
And the NZ Police – magnificently assisted by a host of Kiwi
sticky-beaks – did a splendid job. Indeed, if our Aussie “mates” had held the
French “getaway boat” in Norfolk Island (as the New Zealand authorities had
requested) then we would have nabbed the whole gang.
Why were the Police so successful? Because New Zealanders
trusted them. When the Police asked for help in apprehending the people who had
done this (because, let’s not forget, French saboteurs’ bombs had taken the
life of Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira) everyone who harboured even
the slightest suspicion of “Swiss” newly-weds, or who’d noticed anything
remotely out of the ordinary on the night of 10 July 1985, did not hesitate to
call the cops.
No gang of terrorists can escape the surveillance of an
entire nation. “National Security” only has meaning if we are all,
collectively, determined to preserve it.
In 2011, the Norwegians gave the world additional proof. The
response of Norway’s government to the shocking slaying of 77 of its citizens –
many of them teenagers – by a right-wing racist terrorist, Anders Behring
Breivik, was very different from that of the United States Government in the
aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
At a memorial service in Oslo Cathedral, the Norwegian Prime
Minister, Jens Stoltenberg, declared: “We must not allow this attack to hurt Norwegian democracy: the proper
answer to such violence is more democracy, more openness … No one has said it
better than the [young woman] who was interviewed by CNN: ‘If one man can show
so much hate, think how much love we could show, standing together.’”
And stand
together they did. In Oslo, on 25 July 2011, more than 200,000 people gathered
to show their solidarity for the victims of Breivik’s savagery, and to
demonstrate their commitment to Norway’s proud traditions of social and
political democracy.
“Every government
degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone”, wrote the author
of the American Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson. “The people
themselves are its only safe depositories.”
How depressing
that John Key, so strong an admirer of all things American in every other
respect, should place so little value on the words of America’s most
illustrious Founding Father.
How unfortunate
that the example of his own country’s, and Norway’s, democratic response to
terrorism has been lost on him.
How disappointing
to see our liberties sacrificed to the Prime Minister’s reactionary notions of
security.
And, how
extraordinarily insulting to hear Mr Key justify empowering the GCSB to spy on
his fellow citizens with some uncorroborated story about Weapons of Mass
Destruction. (As if that alarmist excuse had not failed its deceitful
fabricators’ once before!)
It was Benjamin
Franklin who wrote: “Those who would give up essential liberty to
purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Another American Founding Father we’d all do well to heed.
This essay was
originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The
Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 19 April 2013.
