Between The Sea And The Stars

 

THIS HAUNTING SONG Gortoz A Ran (I Am Waiting) written and sung here by the incomparable Denez Prigent and Lisa Gerrard, was chosen as the theme song for Ridley Scott’s 2001 movie Black Hawk Down.

 

As the West contemplates yet another foray into the broken world of Middle Eastern conflict, it is timely, surely, to contemplate the bitter lessons of Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq.

 

The song’s lyrics, translated from the original Breton, are printed below.

 

I was waiting, waiting for a long time

In the dark shadow of grey towers

In the dark shadow of grey towers

 

In the dark shadow of rain towers

You will see me waiting forever

You will see me waiting forever

 

One day it will come back

Over the lands, over the seas

 

The blue wind will return

And take back with it my wounded heart

 

I will be pulled away by its breath

Far away in the stream, wherever it wishes

 

Wherever it wishes, far away from this world

Between the sea and the stars

 

Video courtesy of YouTube

 

This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.

If Kobane Falls?

Under Fire: The fate of the Syrian border-town of Kobane has assumed an international significance. Its capture by the forces of the Islamic State would be a serious blow to the West's collective resolve to degrade and ultimately destroy this new and extremely dangerous radical Islamist project.

 

IF KOBANE FALLS – or should that be when Kobane falls – a number of terrible things will happen. Any Kurdish soldiers found alive in the Syrian border town will be killed. For propaganda purposes some will be beheaded, their deaths recorded, and the video clips uploaded to the Internet. Young Shi’ite women will be rounded up and sent deeper into the Islamic State (IS) where many will find themselves being offered to IS soldiers as “brides”. Any professional women (doctors, nurses, teachers, lawyers) found in Kobane will face instant execution by the Islamic State pour encourager les autres. All facilities for the secular education of women will be closed.

 

If Kobane falls – or should that be when Kobane falls – the strategic and geographical coherence of the Islamic State will be greatly enhanced and their victorious forces re-deployed to apply what is likely to prove decisive additional psychological and military pressure on Iraqi forces battling the Islamic State’s advance into Anbar province.

 

If Kobane falls – or should that be when Kobane falls – the resolve of those Western nations pledged to degrade and destroy its aggressive military potential will be further weakened. Turkey, a NATO ally of the US and UK forces already engaged in Iraq and Syria, will face furious international condemnation for refusing to deploy the overwhelming strength of its armed forces in defence of Kobane’s Kurdish defenders.

 

If Kobane falls – or should that be when Kobane falls – many people in the West will observe that if the Syrian people’s nearest neighbour is prepared to sit on its hands and watch while thousands of soldiers and civilians are slaughtered or sent into sexual slavery, then why should nations thousands of kilometres from the fighting be expected to expend blood and treasure on their rescue?

 

If Kobane falls – or should that be when Kobane falls – New Zealand’s Prime Minister, John Key, and his Cabinet will be faced with some extremely difficult decisions. They must weigh very carefully the costs and benefits of committing elements of the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) to the international coalition currently battling the Islamic State. If they decide upon a military commitment (most probably in the form of personnel belonging to the NZDF’s elite Special Air Service) then how long should it be for, and under what circumstances might it be curtailed? Should New Zealand remain engaged if the seemingly unstoppable advance of the Islamic State prompts the armies of Turkey and Iran to intervene? With the boundaries of the entire Middle East being re-drawn, what business would New Zealand soldiers’ boots have on any part of its disputed ground?

 

If Kobane falls – or should that be when Kobane falls – what are young Sunni Muslim men and women living in New Zealand and other Western countries likely to make of yet another Islamic State victory? Will they (as we hope) recoil in horror at the brutal battlefield behaviour of their co-religionists? Or will at least some of them attempt the ethical calculus required to determine whether the beheading of a Western aid worker is more or less reprehensible than the “collateral damage” inflicted by an American Predator drone unleashing its Hellfire missiles on a Yemeni or Waziri village? And will those same young Muslims not wonder why Saudi Arabia, in which 57 people have been beheaded in the last year alone, has not merited the same expressions of international outrage as the Islamic State?

 

If Kobane falls – or should that be when Kobane falls – wouldn’t it be a good time to ponder the reasonably obvious fact that in the eyes of many young Sunni Muslims the Islamic State is not the dwelling place of monsters, but the one location in the Muslim world where corruption is ruthlessly rooted-out; where the administration of the law is given over to ordinary people pledged to uphold and enforce the traditions of their faith; where the State is not the enemy of ordinary people but their friend, extending to them not the iron fist of tyranny but the solicitous hand recommended by the Prophet; and where, to be a woman is not to be paraded as a lump of sexual meat, but as a precious vessel to be cherished and protected. Isn’t it time we in the West asked ourselves: just how likely is it that young Muslim men and women are leaving their families and their friends, travelling thousands of miles and hazarding their freedom, their lives, their very souls – for monsters? Internationally acclaimed expert on the funding of terrorism, Loretta Napoleoni, has already asked herself this question. Her conclusion: “It’s not.”

 

The question New Zealanders should now be asking themselves is whether the fight against the Islamic State is their fight? Ethically, militarily, diplomatically and politically – what  should we do if Kobane falls?

 

Or should that be when Kobane falls?

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 14 October 2014.

On The Edge Of Darkness?

 



I AM INDEBTED to Gordon Campbell for drawing my attention to this excellent video of Eric Clapton performing live his haunting theme to the classic 1985 BBC political thriller, Edge of Darkness. Like Gordon, I cannot help regarding it as eerily appropriate to the times.

Video courtesy of YouTube
 

This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.

Daggers In The Dark: Why John Key Should Remain Minister-in-Charge Of The SIS and GCSB.

John Key's New Spymaster? Chris Finlayson has proved to be a politician of icy rectitude: an austere and unbending executor of his official responsibilities as Attorney-General. All well and good, it is an office well-suited to austerity. But John Key should think again before entrusting a person so confident in the unassailability of his own judgements with the awesome weaponry of the secret state.

 

JOHN KEY’S DECISION to hand off day-to-day responsibility for the national security apparatus to Chris Finlayson is deeply troubling. The tradition of making the Prime Minister the Minister-in-Charge of the NZ Security Intelligence Service (SIS) and, more latterly, the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), reflected the public’s expectation that foreign and domestic intelligence gathering must never be permitted to overstep the democratic boundaries. As the nation’s most powerful elected official, the Prime Minister is supposed to keep the spooks in line.

 

But now the Attorney-General – the country’s most important legal officer – is being asked by the Prime Minister to double as New Zealand’s Spymaster. Ominously, the responsibility for administering the law and supervising New Zealand’s national security apparatus is to be vested in a single individual. Inevitably, the biblical question arises: can Mr Finlayson serve two masters?

 

Historically, those charged with preserving the safety of the State have demonstrated little patience for formal legal protocols. In the words of the Roman jurist, Cicero: salus populi suprema lex – the safety of the people shall be the highest law. And when that safety is perceived to be under imminent threat, the first impulse of those in possession of the State’s defensive weaponry has almost always been to strike first and ask the judges later.

 

And if the Spymaster’s swift action results in the threat to the State being removed, then why should the courts be troubled with it at all? A spymaster is, of course, expected to declare absolute fealty to the Rule of Law and express nothing but horror at the thought of the Crown’s servants taking the law into their own hands. All quite right and proper. And yet, the State will have its reasons, as compelling as they are unacknowledged. What spymasters profess to believe, and what they actually do, have long been very distant cousins.

 

It is also worth bearing in mind just how difficult it is for those with the power to execute their judgements secretly to then have those same judgements subjected to wider  (even public!) scrutiny. Surely the expectation of any leader who sees fit to devolve such extensive authority upon a subordinate is that his servant will use that power to both protect and advance their master’s cause? And, surely, one of the best ways to protect one’s master is to ensure that he or she retains what the American’s call “plausible deniability”. To work from the assumption that there are some decisions best made and executed without the leader’s knowledge – or approval?

 

And therein lies the greatest threat to the liberties of the citizen. That an individual, having been given immense power within the State begins to use that power in ways that are accountable to no one – save the conscience of he or she who wields it. From Elizabeth I’s Walsingham to Joseph Stalin’s Beria to the FBI’s almost wholly unaccountable J. Edgar Hoover, spymasters have, practically without exception, regarded themselves as the system’s secret dagger: a weapon to be driven home in dark places, far from prying eyes, but always in defence of its most profound values. Often unacknowledged and frequently unthanked (at least in public) the Spymaster seeks no greater reward than the knowledge that he or she has kept the Crown/the Revolution/the Constitution safe from its enemies.

 



Sir Francis Walsingham: Queen Elizabeth I's spymaster.

 

And it is precisely for this reason that, hitherto, our prime ministers, by making themselves, alone, accountable for the exercise of the State’s secret power, have protected us from the rise of such individuals. Theoretically, it is an arrangement that denies our leaders all hope of “plausible deniability”. They know what has been done because they were the ones who gave the orders to do it. If the State’s secret dagger must be wielded, then better the blood be upon our leaders’ hands. That way, only the public, in full democratic array, has the power to absolve them.

 

Chris Finlayson has proved to be a politician of icy rectitude: an austere and unbending executor of his official responsibilities as Attorney-General. All well and good, it is an office well-suited to austerity. But John Key should think again before entrusting a person so confident in the unassailability of his own judgements with the awesome weaponry of the secret state. Let the Spymaster’s dagger remain in the Prime Minister’s hands – where we can all see it.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 9 October 2014.

Unfretful Voters

The People's Choice: The contemporary conservative voters’ faith in the policies of their Prime Minister is no more susceptible to being undermined by dissident journalism than their predecessors’ was by militant unionism. New Zealanders, it seems, will forgive many sins in the name of maintaining stability and preserving prosperity.

 

A HOT WAR in Korea. Record prices for New Zealand’s agricultural exports. Overseas shipping companies waxing wrathful over restrictive practices and unneedful delays. A belligerent trade union unwilling to back down. A National Government slowly recovering the use of its political muscles after 14 years on the Opposition benches. Mix all these factors together and something’s bound to happen.

 

And something did.

 

The Waterfront Dispute of 1951 is remembered now (when it is remembered at all) as a mighty industrial stoush. The Watersiders and their allies squaring-off against the ship-owners and the first National Government under Sid Holland – a man every bit as belligerent as the watersiders’ leader, Jock Barnes.

 

Not surprisingly, Sid Holland won.

 

But that was then and this is now. Sixty-three years on, who cares? In 2014, “organised labour” is a fading historical memory. Today, outside the public sector, barely one worker in ten carries a union card. For young, twenty-first century Kiwis, the tales of ’51 might just as well be the tales of Ancient Greece.

 

Except it’s not the tale of the Watersiders’ heroic defeat that I want to tell. That’s an old story and Dick Scott told it much better than I ever could in his book 151 Days. No, the story I’m interested in is the story of how New Zealanders reacted to the events of 1951. And that is a story with some very distinct contemporary echoes.

 

This is how the veteran broadcaster, Gordon Dryden, remembered 1951 in his memoir Out of the Red:

 

“In my view the emergency regulations introduced on 26 February 1951 slashed at everything I believed in about journalism. It became against the law to report both sides of the story of the biggest industrial dispute in New Zealand history. It became against the law to make donations to help feed the families of workers who were on strike. It became unlawful for opponents of the Government to hold meetings.”

 

Dryden, in 1951, “was much more concerned with the issue of press freedom and democracy.”

 

But these were not the concerns of a clear majority of New Zealanders: 54 percent of whom delivered a resounding endorsement of Sid Holland’s draconian regulations by casting their votes for the National Party in the Snap Election of 1 September 1951.

 

And it wasn’t only the ordinary voters who declined to be outraged by the National Government’s sudden and unprecedented curtailment of civil liberties. In 1951, New Zealand boasted dozens of daily newspapers, but not one editor or proprietor prepared to put his freedom on the line for the freedom of the press. Nor was there a single judge willing to tender his resignation rather than enforce a law which would not have been out of place in Stalin’s Russia.

 

But, that was then.

 

In August 2014, the investigative journalist, Nicky Hager, published a book exposing the manner in which a person employed in the office of the Prime Minister, and Judith Collins, the Minister of Justice, colluded with a prominent right-wing blogger and a slew of working journalists to undermine, discredit and attack opponents of John Key’s National Government.

 

The many thousands of New Zealanders who read Mr Hager’s Dirty Politics were convinced that its revelations could not fail to erode the voters’ support for Mr Key and his colleagues. Like Gordon Dryden, their concerns were about “the issue of press freedom and democracy”.

 

But, they were wrong.

 

The contemporary conservative voters’ faith in the policies of their Prime Minister is no more susceptible to being undermined by dissident journalism than their predecessors’ was by militant unionism. New Zealanders, it seems, will forgive many sins in the name of maintaining stability and preserving prosperity.

 

Not even the news that, just twelve days after the 2014 election, Mr Hager’s house was subjected to a 10-hour search by five police officers, responding to the complaint of the right-wing blogger whose hacked e-mails constitute the core of the Dirty Politics exposé, is likely to impair the celebratory temper of the conservative Kiwi voter.

 

In his celebrated essay, Fretful Sleepers, written in the months following the 1951 confrontation, the New Zealand writer, Bill Pearson, observed:

 

“The New Zealander delegates authority, then forgets it ... There is no one more docile in the face of authority.”

 

If that was true then, is it still true now?

 

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, 10 October 2014.

Anticipating Trouble

Keeping A Weather-Eye Out: If John Key truly wishes to challenge Richard (“King Dick”) Seddon’s record for political longevity, then he should weigh very carefully the costs and benefits of mobilising mass resistance during his government’s third term. Successful prime ministers will always anticipate trouble, but wise ones do not seek it.

JOHN KEY BELIEVED he knew what was in Nicky Hager’s book. He was wrong. Instead of containing a host of embarrassing stories about New Zealand spying on its friends in the South Pacific, and intercepting the secrets of its largest trading partner, Dirty Politics concentrated on matters much closer to home. For nearly a fortnight, the Prime Minister and his advisers struggled to deflect Mr Hager’s revelations. Ultimately, shutting down Dirty Politics required measures of unprecedented severity: the forced resignation of a cabinet minister in the middle of an election campaign.

 

The much ballyhooed “Moment of Truth” proved to be a very different story. Knowing in advance who was on Kim Dotcom’s guest-list made matters considerably easier for the Prime Minister. Long before the “moment” arrived, Mr Key had prepared his defences and rehearsed his attack-lines. Though Glenn Greenwald put on a very brave face for his fellow journalists, the Pulitzer Prize-winner was obviously discomforted by the fierceness of Mr Key’s counter-punching. One can only imagine the mighty sighs of relief (on both sides!) as his plane took off for Brazil.

 

Anticipating trouble is one of the most important skills a political leader can master. Even more important, however, is knowing how to deal with trouble when it arrives.

 

One of the many questions Labour Party members and supporters would no doubt like to put to David Cunliffe is why he was so very bad at anticipating events which were readily predictable.

 

Mr Cunliffe had been a Member of Parliament for nearly three years when Mr Hager’s third book, Seeds of Distrust, unleashed the so-called “Corngate” scandal in the midst of the 2002 election campaign. Would it not, therefore, have been prudent for the Leader of the Opposition and his advisers to prepare for a similar eventuality in 2014? Was there no one in Labour’s ranks sufficiently well-acquainted with Mr Hager to give Mr Cunliffe some idea of what was coming? Of course there were, but they were never asked.

 

Nor was Mr Cunliffe sufficiently flexible as a politician to take advantage of Dirty Politics when it was released. A politician more willing to risk all for the keys to Premier House might have seized upon Mr Hager’s revelations and forged them into a weapon of deadly political effect. But, the moment came … and then it went.

 

What, then, should the Prime Minister, and whoever is unlucky enough to be elected leader of the Labour Party, be anticipating over the next three years? What are the pitfalls Mr Key’s government should try to avoid? What potential problems will his opponents seek to exploit?

 

Education and the Environment would seem to be the most likely arenas of conflict for the National Government. Significant – and politically highly contentious – changes are proposed in the way both New Zealand’s education system and its environment (both urban and natural) are managed. Neither of these vital spheres are lacking in defenders.

 

The powerful teacher unions stand athwart all roads leading towards privatised education. Any attempt to expand dramatically the roll-out of “Partnership Schools”, or strengthen the Government’s “National Standards” regime in the primary sector, will almost certainly be met with concerted union resistance.

 

This may not be seen as altogether a bad thing by Mr Key and his colleagues. The opportunity to strike a crippling blow at the most powerful of the public sector unions may prove too tempting a trophy for a third-term National Government to resist. Plenty of helpful advice on how to beat public sector unionists will no doubt be forthcoming from the Canadian Conservative Party and the US Republican Governors of Wisconsin and Michigan.

 

Would the public rise in defence of the teachers and their unions? Twenty years ago the answer would have been “Yes”. But now? With the anti-union response to The Hobbit dispute in mind, Mr Key might just be willing to roll the dice.

 

Linked as it is in the public’s mind with dirty dairying, mining in national parks, deep-sea oil-drilling and the governments’ (both local and national) support for environmentally damaging and financially dubious irrigation ventures, the reform of environmental legislation will be a wager hazarded for much higher stakes.

 

With Labour crippled – probably beyond recovery – the Greens will be looking to use National’s environmental “reforms” as the springboard for establishing themselves as the only effective Opposition party. In alliance with Greenpeace, they will do all they can to put themselves at the head of a mass protest movement of young and old, rural and urban, Maori and Pakeha.

 

If John Key truly wishes to challenge Richard (“King Dick”) Seddon’s record for political longevity, then he should weigh very carefully the costs and benefits of mobilising mass resistance during his government’s third term. Successful prime ministers will always anticipate trouble, but wise ones do not seek it.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 7 October 2014.

Post Mortem At The Pub

Next Move? "Adapt or go under was the only choice Labour gave us, Trev, and now they must do the same.”

“SO, WHADDYA RECKON, TREV? Is Labour finished, or what? Can you stop crying into your beer long enough to give me a professional political post mortem?”

 

Trevor Bright was used to his uncle’s jibes, he’d been hearing them long enough. Ever since he’d announced that he was off to university to study politics, his Uncle Bruce had made a point of quizzing him on matters political – especially those relating to the Left.

 

“I’m not crying into my beer, Uncle Bruce. Anyone who kept an eye on the polls could hardly have been surprised by the election result.”

 

“Oh, go on with you, Trev! You were always telling me the polls were crap. They only contacted people with landlines, you said. Young people with cell-phones were never contacted, you said. National’s numbers were always 5 percentage points too high, you said. You’ve changed your tune a bit, haven’t you?”

 

“Yes, but I was only talking about a couple of specific polls, Uncle Bruce. The various ‘Polls of Polls’ got it just about spot-on. I looked at those on the Friday night and my heart sank. I knew the Left was in for a drubbing.”

 

“Drubbing? Nephew, that was more than a drubbing, that was a bloody massacre! I heard some bloke on the radio saying that Labour’s come full circle. That they polled about the same as they did the very first time they contested a general election, way back in 1919. Is that true?”

 

“I’m afraid it is, Uncle Bruce. In both 1919 and 1922 Labour polled almost exactly the same as it did a fortnight ago: 24 percent.”

 

“Except that back then Labour was the new kid on the block, wasn’t it? A bit like Values or the Greens – only much more popular. Sheesh, can you imagine how chuffed that lot would’ve been to get 24 percent on their first trot? But Labour’s not the new kid on the block anymore, is it Trev? It’s the 98 year-old geezer on the block. So I’ll ask you again: Is Labour finished?”

 

Trevor knew that there was a lot more to his uncle’s question that a mischievous desire to rark-up his  academic nephew. For many years Bruce Bright had been an active member of the Meatworkers Union. He’d been a leading delegate and was one of the union’s most formidable shed orators. When Uncle Bruce got going, you had to hold on tight to the furniture or risk being blown away. He remembered the Christmas dinner a few years ago when the onetime Labour supporter had really let it rip. It was an indictment he’d never forget.

 

“Labour did it to us, Trevor. Our own party. I remember watching the blokes walking out of the works on that last day; heads down, silent, gumboots scrunching the gravel. And there wasn’t a damn thing that I, or the Union, could do to help them.

 

“The Nats had always put the boot into working people – it was expected. But these bastards, the members of the so-called “Fourth Labour Government”, they’d done much more than that. Right under our noses, they’d restructured the whole damn country. Only when it was too late did we realise that, in the brave new world Roger Douglas had made for us, working people had only two choices: they could adapt; or they could go under. We were on our own.”

 

Trevor looked up from his glass of lager into the full force of his uncle’s gaze.

 

“I’ve a friend in Rongotai, in Wellington, Uncle Bruce, who tells me that in streets which used to return a solid Labour vote, people’s allegiances are now split between the local MP, Annette King, and the National Party. The funny thing is, Uncle, that the people in these streets: highly-skilled, self-employed contractors and their families – some of them living in renovated state houses – used to look upon Labour as ‘their’ party. But on 20 September most of them Party Voted National for the third election in a row. The tragic thing is that most of the families living in the un-renovated state houses didn’t vote at all.”

 

Bruce Bright blinked away tears and tipped back his glass.

 

“Good! Because it’s no more than they deserve. Adapt or go under was the only choice Labour gave us, Trev, and now they must do the same.”

 

This short story was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 3 October 2014.