The passing of the GCSB Bill

New Zealand transitions towards a fascist, surveillance state.

Seemorerocks

When I was growing up New Zealand was chiefly known as the country of 3 million inhabitants and 60 million sheep.  New Zealanders were insular and conservative, and fair-minded and a good deal more idealistic than today. 

We were active opposing the logging of native forests, apartheid and the visits of nuclear powered ships.

New Zealand would be lucky to make it into the headlines overseas from one year to the next.

Well, that situation has changed a lot.

New Zealand has attracted attention in recent times - all for the wrong reasons.

Firstly, because of a series of earthquakes and more recently for a food scandal involving botulism and China.

And last, but not least, because of the State's repressive treatment of KIm Dotcom, and of legislation to allow the country's overseas electronic intelligence agency, the GCSB, to spy on New Zealanders, intercept their every communication and share this with our rather dubious allies.

It reached the point where PM Key's storming out of a press conference the other day, when pressed for answers on the GCSB, was given prominence by Russian media but ignored by the country's main newspapers.

With the passing of the GCSB Act yesterday, New Zealand is essentially turning into a surveillance, police state.

It ought to be pointed out that New Zealand HAS been the victim of a terrorist attack.

It was not al-Qaeda, not China, nor even the Russians - but France who carried out the bombing of the Greenpeace vessel, Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour in 1985.

Since then, the only other terrorist act that I'm aware of was one carried out by the State - the Ruatoki terror raids in 2007.

It has to be pointed out that this was carried out, not by this Right-wing government, but by a Labour administration under PM Helen Clark - probably to prove to our American cousins that we were taking an active role in the "War on Terror"

The move towards repression has not happened overnight, but has been a progressive affair that finds its origin with a Big Lie - the 9/11 attacks, which two successive US administrations have used to replace the Constitution with the Patriot Act.

Make no mistake about it - this is the advent of fascism.  

If we want to see which way things are going in this country we should probably look to a country with similar legal and political traditions - Britain.

In recent days the British intelligence authorities intercepted journalist Glenn Greenwald's partner while he was in transit at Heathrow and held him (and interrogated him) for the maximum period of 9 hours - allowed under Section 9 of a terrorist act -  as a form of intimidation - an act so bad that even the White House publicly distanced themselves from it.

Not so the British government.

Their action was defended by the British government as "protection of the British public".

Prior to that the intelligence goons threatened the Guardian and trashed their computers.

Shades of John Key.

I don't believe that we are yet living under a tyranny. So far the fig leaf of democracy and legalism is being maintained.

I think Julian Assange and Edward Snowden have it right when they talk about turnkey tyranny.

Everything is being put into place so that when some key event occurs the switch can be flicked and - hey presto - all our liberties will disappear in an instant.

Some of us dissidents may be marched off to prison. For now we are being watched.

Forget about ''some future government". 

It doesn't matter.   Don't expect some future Labour government to act differently.

It is more a question of when things break down and the authorities become seriously afraid of their own populations.

If you are unsure about this I suggest you read Nafeez Ahmed' excellent article, Pentagon bracing for public dissent over climate and energy shocks.

New Zealanders have always been a fairly trusting lot (unjustifiably). With the passing of the GCSB Bill (the TV3 survey showed 89% of respondents opposed) there are some indications that the dust is, at last, falling from the eyes of a significant number of New Zealanders.

I hope it is not too late.