by frog
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Published in Environment & Resource Management by frog on Thu, March 18th, 2010
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
One happy consequence of the decision in favour of the Ploughshares is the hemorrhaging of eyeliner that the bilious Michael Laws is experiencing on Radio Live. It’s a delight to hear him rant apoplexically, utterly distraught at a decision and completely unable to grasp what has happened.
My day is complete (and it’s only just begun!)
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You mean “Lhaws” ‘fly – “Laws” implies some understanding of law, which he clearly does not have.
The Kiwiblog comments thread on it is looking much like the David Garrett Appreciation Society too (with the odd informed comment interspersed among the redneck dross).
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Radio NZ has coverage here:
http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/national/ntn/2010/03/18/waihopai_aquittals
when will we get Keiths left-wing drooling?
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Thanks greenfly for sharing Law’s distress, thats a we gem of hope for the future, and I hope we see more media nutters in a similar state in the near future. Holmes? Ralston? Yes please!
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Farrar is another nutter. I’m surprised that he doesn’t just block all reasoned comments on the redneck homogenized blog. I gave up after the few posts I attempted got screened.
We can let reason get in the way of the cultivation of redneck opinion now can we?
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The Greens will be rated left-wise and the so called clergy will seen as melons in priests clothing.
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Toad – “redneck dross” – is that some kind of pink dandruff?
jh – Keith’s drooling? Many thanks for yours.
McTap – Farrar: literally too big for his boot (and I’m talking cars).
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The sad thing is that the 4000 Palestinians killed and injured in Gaza last year are the result of the unfair games and petulant behaviour and Israel still hasn’t been held to account. Get tough Uncle Sam!
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I think the public see this as a conceit and as the interviewee says on Catherine Ryans interview ” if your going to use a defence institution your going to have to have an intelligence gathering system”. The public will rightly perceive this as an attack on our defence forces.
Only simplistic thinking would lead one to such a conclusion. NZ was publically against the Iraq war, yet allowed itself to be involved in intel gathering for the US to prosecute that war. That’s what this is about, not NZ’s defence.
The Greens will be rated left-wise and the so called clergy will seen as melons in priests clothing.
Uncritical thinking leads to such erroneous conclusions. What else is new.
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“woolly thinking” + “flimsy”
http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/national/ntn/2010/03/18/waihopai_aquittals
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“A student who was arrested for throwing a stone during pro-democracy demonstrations is to be executed, Iran said yesterday.”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10632690
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I agree, our justice system is much preferrable to their’s.
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Celebrating the freedom of the Ploughshares, jh? The freedom confered upon them by a jury of 12 New Zealanders? Proud day, I say!
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jh’s ‘melons in priests clothing’ only makes sense when you remember that some priests are women.
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I was looking for a better metaphor.
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Not Catholic ones, ‘fly – but that’s another issue, and I suspect Father Peter Murnane would vehemently disagree with his church on that one.
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jh -
you are either confused or wilfully obtuse; the intel collected by Waihopai feeds directly into Echelon, the US global intel database.
NZDF, in any form, does not get any of the information unless deemed worthy by the Pentagon.
The removal of Waihopai spybase would not affect any NZDF military intel gathering in theis country, or overseas, as they generally do not have access to Echelon material.
MI6 might have some access, and feed such back to us, but that is only conjecture on my part.
‘fly -
what have you been doing, looking up priests’ frocks?
Having spent some time in Wellington District Court watching the case progress during the week, I have gained a huge respect for both Father Peter Murnane, and the Dominican Friars (not, as spelt by the Police in a transcription, ‘friers’) in general.
The Ploughshares supporters were all lovely people, who renewed my faith in humanity greatly; I’m sure the members of the jury were also impressed by the integrity of the defendants and their supporters.
Adi Leeson has seven children, all of whom were in Court in the public Gallery every day, and all were well-spoken, articulate young people I am proud to say I have had the opportunity to meet.
The support group was rounded out by members of CAFCA, Peace Movement Aotearoa, Peace Action Wellington, and the occasional MP and members of staff, all of which support was gratefully received by the family members.
This result is a great outcome for social justice campaigners in Aotearoa/NZ, and bodes well for future jury trials to come.
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1. Well I wouldn’t dig holes for nothing myself
2. More like what many in the world don’t want to know
3. If more auditors who signed off on dodgy books were shot …
4. There is this, don’t mess with our pride you little power semite attitude around DC now Bennie, what should we do (I think they got their pride hurt by the Chinese at Copenhagen and all they have is the yuan is undervalued whining in response)? They want to get all muscular at us – should we sell weapons to Taiwan and invite the Dalai Lama to Jerusalem?
5. How many people under 18 are there in jobs these days anyway – there is just nothing in this for business.
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6. Obviously spy bases around the world will now focus a little more on the surveillance of those protesting their existence and in increasing security during public protests. And prosecutors will try and arrange for the terrorists on display “show trials” to occur outside of Wellington.
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“woolly thinking” + “flimsy”
http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/national/ntn/2010/03/18/waihopai_aquitt als
Re the first comment, it’s a common ruse to say we have no choice but to do the bidding of the US. Don’t be sucked in. True, it’s a complex world, but that doesn’t make this view true. Nor is it our only option. I suppose you’d do away with our nuclear free status, jh? Same argument.
Re the second comment, I’m not sure I disagree. It is a very interesting ruling, the details of which haven’t been reported very well I’m told.
But note that these are two completely different issues that should not be conflated as you are doing. Even if they’d been found quilty, the arguments against hosting a base for a foreign power that assists them to conduct a war our country is against would be just as strong.
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A Brief Comment On Spy Bases And Civil Disobedience
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Paul G. Buchanan
May 5, 2008
With regard to the motives of the three protestors, their cause can be debated. Contrary to what Ploughshares believe, New Zealand derives strategic utility and material benefits from its participation in Echelon. In exchange for giving up a limited slice of its territorial sovereignty, it becomes a junior partner in a global intelligence-sharing network that gives it better access to, and early warning of, potential threat scenarios and critical developments abroad than it could obtain otherwise. It also accrues diplomatic and military benefits that are not publicly acknowledged but which are important to New Zealand’s stature in the international community.
The nature of the eavesdropping station at Waihopai is such that it primarily engages in strategic intelligence gathering as opposed to frontline tactical intelligence gathering. Broadly speaking, it trawls through electronic signals in designated areas of military and civilian security interest, passing them along to the larger partners for filtration and analysis. Its coverage is regional as well as issue-specific, depending on the intelligence requirements of the partners. As examples of the two different types of collection, New Zealand based SIGINT stations broadly monitor diplomatic as well as military communications in the Western Pacific (and elsewhere); conversely, during the 1982 Falklands/Malvinas War NZ-based Echelon stations were used to monitor Argentine Naval communications in support of British military operations, and may be monitoring Chinese submarine transmissions at present. In return, information of specific interest to New Zealand is shared with the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB)—which has physical and managerial control of the eavesdropping stations in New Zealand–and the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service (SIS).
Thus, the likelihood that the SIGINT collection stations in New Zealand are providing positional intelligence (such as GPS coordinates) or electronic intercepts for frontline actions by US and UK forces in Iraq—as the Ploughshares protesters aver—is low, albeit technically possible. Most of that form of real-time intelligence collection is handled directly by the US or UK themselves, such as through the US Army intelligence center at Fort Huachuca, Arizona or joint intelligence collection and analysis facilities on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean (using data obtained from SIGINT stations located in other parts of the world as well as non-satellite mobile platforms). Echelon is bound to have involvement in intelligence gathering in Afghanistan as well as the Middle East, but the Afghan campaign is a UN and NATO-led mission that New Zealand publicly supports, so opposition to involvement to that type of intelligence participation runs counter to the multinational, internationalist spirit of Kiwi diplomacy and foreign military operations. Likewise, Echelon is clearly involved in monitoring the communications of unconventional warfare groups as part of the so-called “War on Terror,” but that also responds to the interests of the international community as expressed through the UN General Assembly and Security Council resolutions.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0805/S00039.htm
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The Economist: Trading down, Industry’s move from the rich to the poor world is confusing the carbon accounts
The Economist: Chinese cities are greener than American cities
Fonterra forced to act to regulate pigs involved in dairy farming
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/business/3470815/Dairy-farms-getting-dirtier
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ODT
“it is plain fact that state borders do not deter terrorists and criminals in the digital age yet citizens continue to rely on the State to protect both themselves and the nation’s borders. The Waihopai station must be considered to be part of that obligation but it seems hardly ever to be considered that its activities may well be saving lives, including within this country’s borders.
However much some sincere objectors may dislike it and what it represents, can they offer a practical and reliable alternative to hold secure the safety of the nation and its citizens? ”
http://www.odt.co.nz/opinion/editorial/98160/the-luxury-peace?page=0%2C1
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First you’d have to show that shilling for the States is “practical and reliable” itself. It only seems to be until we have a real terrorist incident, at which point people making this argument won’t say, “oops, we were wrong”, but “we must need even more spy bases!”.
And of course, we’ll have to invite nukes into NZ. Supporting US foriegn policy whole hog is the only way to stay safe, right jh?
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None the less, JH’s challenge still stands…
can they offer a practical and reliable alternative to hold secure the safety of the nation and its citizens?
Your alternatives please…
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Frog; You don’t consider the Trades Hall bonbing a terrorist attack?
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ah…with an ‘M’ sorry
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samiam – is there any threat to this nation that requires us to spy on the world to prevent it?
The threats seem to exist to others and it’s only because of our help to them in their need (possibly collective security under UN obligations) which offers a reasonable purpose for it. Ceding collective security in the wider world as a role for the USA to determine alone without any accountability, or constraints on the way they operate, is the issue here.
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@ SPC
is there any threat to this nation that requires us to spy on the world to prevent it?
Should that read…
is there any threat to this nation that requires US to spy on the world to prevent it?
Well I don’t know do I, do you?
I guess vigilance is the best way to be sure.
if the world was full of happy folk spying would die of boredom. It isn’t therefore it doesn’t. Believe me I wish it were otherwise.
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On the surface, it looks like an assassination that was never solved. What info is there that would make it terrorism, and particularly international terrorism?
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Well I don’t know do I, do you?
I guess vigilance is the best way to be sure.
if the world was full of happy folk spying would die of boredom. It isn’t therefore it doesn’t. Believe me I wish it were otherwise.
Ah yes, it’s sad, but there’s no alternative. And vigilance, surely we need to be vigilant. Such simplistic arguments. The conventional wisdom never needs to prove itself “practical and reliable”. It is correct no matter what the outcome.
As for a real alternative, what interest would the West have in the Mid East if we weren’t addicted to their oil. Not enough interest to support invasions of their countries for sure. Might the removal of such a huge threat change their attitude towards us too?
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Why do we have the spy bases here – because of western collective security during the Cold War (which arose out of the post WW2 attitude of being prepared) – and our being included under the NATO-ANZUS American umbrella). As a committment to collective security against those bad commies (also members of the UN).
But given that, why was there not more debate about any continuance of their presence since 1986 and then after the Cold War ended?
Now the rationale is the “war against terrorism” – which can be linked to the West importing oil from the ME, an area not at peace with itself.
But to spy on everyone, to enable surveillance on what may be threats to someone somewhere, is a dangerous principle – if one cares about the civil liberties of people outside of this country.
Imagine if we applied the same logic to domestic security, would police surveillance all communications – in the off-chance of identifying any planned crime or past crime activity.
It’s not as if we even know what the focus of the surveillance is, and what is done with the information – for example the EU includes people who think corporate US has benefited (at their expense).
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Sam –
Well, there’s an inherent assumption there that the spies are chasing real bogeys, not just being a bunch of very paranoid control freaks who believe they know what’s best for the rest of us….
You are on the money with regard to the EU – many countries, not just the French, have come to the conclusion that they are paying dearly for the ‘safety’ of NATO bases in Germany, in lives and resourcing of their armed contribution to Bush’s invasion of Iraq; a deployment that many UN-peacekeeping nations are pulling away from now.
Obama’s shift of resources from Iraq to Afghanistan is hardly any more plausible than Bush’s deployment – it’s all still about the oil, and Al Quaeda (a CIA-developed group, the name means ‘the code’ in arabic, who were instigated to fight the Russian forces in the 1980′s…) are just a smoke-screen for US imperial designs on the middle-east.
The US Marines would not wade in just to stop Shia muslims from fighting Sunni Muslims, or Sufi Muslims. It was always about making sure that the USA had the world’s biggest oil stockpile before the downslope of peak oil took them off the map, and returned the Middle-east to it’s nomadic, camel-droving roots.
jh-
The actuality of Echelon is that it is an attempt by the USA military intellgence services to corner the market on all el-int (electronic intelligence data) that they can pull from the billions of communications delivered via satellite everyday.
Given the amount of asian business done from this country, and factor in all the asian international students, that’s a lot of cellphone calls routed via the chinese, korean and south-east asian satellite networks, on which the Waihopai dishes are primarily focussed.
This is not information that comes to NZ, it all goes straight to the States for decryption and analysis. We, NZ, are not getting any significant information out of this excercise, yet we offer an unspecified amount of military budget every year to the running of this base, and it’s slightly downbeat sister at Tangimoana, which is a very old radio transmissions interceptor.
It’s not about how secure we want to be; it’s about pandering to the prevailing NATO paradigm that says ‘do them before they do you’, and stockpiles huge resources for the military while underbudgeting every other state service by comparison; the global budget for arms, if re-applied to civillian pursuits, would easily wipe out world hunger, solve all the minor medical ailments that third world countries can’t get enough medicines for, and resolve the world housing crisis in one go, and still have money left over.
So is anyone keen to mention to John Key that if he really wants a tax cut for farmers, perhaps he could consider the fact that NZ doesn’t really need to keep subsiding the US military by hosting these bases?
Re-allocating that slush fund could keep a few rural schools and hospitals functioning, I’m willing to bet.
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The best example of this problem would be Israel. If you beat down, isolate and disenfranchise a group of people you can only expect deperate responses. Hamas is not the real enemy but a necessary name to put a face on an adversary. Their real enemy are just the disaffected youth, unemployed and people who have no forseeable future in the highly restrictive refugee camps (virtually) that the palestinians have been forced to live in for three or more generations. Their only weapons are stones, homemade rockets (that are unsophisticated and highly inaccurate) and suicide bombers. Terry Waite, who has more reason to understand the realities of the situation than many, has a great deal of sympathy for the plight of his former captors
Sophisticated electronic listening devices will reveal what useful information in these wars?
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The other thought I have is that much of the electronic spying is probably used against friendly states and probably even ourselves. I would also concur with Katie’s views on the Asian focus that are more to do with protecting commercial markets than issues of defense.
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Valis wrote:
“As for a real alternative, what interest would the West have in the Mid East if we weren’t addicted to their oil”
Assisting the Israeli conquest of Arab lands to aid the fulfillment of vague biblical prophecy?
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But actually, while that is a priority for Israel and some Americans, it’s unlikely it would be enough for the US to have given them the 4th largest military on the planet. But oil is, and Israeli motives are just in “happy” congruence.
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Nice piece in the Herald today by David Eames
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10632956
I swear I hadn’t read it before I posted @12.21pm!
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