SIS spying
January 29th, 2009 at 12:16 pm by David FarrarThe Press reports that the SIS has released files on individuals whom they no longer monitor. They should be commended for such openness – this seems an initiative of new Director Warren Tucker who is well regarded.
Obviously various current or former Marxists, communists and Maoists are upset about the fact their files reveal the SIS were monitoring them.
But the reality is the world today is very different to the 1970s and 1980s. The western world was, to be blunt, engaged in a massive struggle with the Soviet Union for global control. They communist states were enemies of freedom and the West, and posed a huge threat to our way of life.
And these people who were monitored were active in groups that were on the side of the communist totalitarian states, not our side. They won’t put it like that, but that was the reality. They never ever condemned the communist states – in fact they did friendship visits there and extolled how good they are.
Luckily the Soviet empire collapsed in 1990. We now have the wonderful luxury of having mainly put that threat between us. Today a communist is just a hardline economic socialist. The only threat they pose is to good economic policy, and that is not a matter of national security. It is appropriate the SIS no longer regards people active in communist groups as people who should be monitored.
But again it was different before the collapse of the Soviet Union. It wasn’t just about disagreeing on economic policy.
Now this is not to give carte blanch to everything the SIS did. Some of the revelations don’t put them in a good light and they themselves today probably don’t defend certain things. Again it is to their credit they they are releasing it. But just to make the case that the context in the 70s and 80s was vastly different to today. Unless you lived through it, you can’t no how much the world changed after that glorious summer where totalitarian communist states fell one after another until they were almost all gone.
January 29th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Spying on a ten year old? Did they kearn that trick from the KGB? What ten year old is a threat to our country? Get em while they’re young?
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Don’t forget Bush’s goon squad called Home Land Security!
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
The whole business of spying is very distasteful to me.
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
I guess the SIS can turn their atentions to muslim ten years olds now!
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
I was around in the ’70s and remember guys like Horton well. He was a much more radical figure then than the more mellow veteran nutter he is now.
I was taught by Wolfgang Rosenberg, who was a delightful man and his arguments in the Economics faculty with right winger Prof. Brownlee were always entertaining.
However, the Lockes were something else, spying on a 10 year old who went on to become exactly what the SIS predicted show how good their decision making proces was.
I wonder why Keith Locke won’t talk about his file? The only unreconstructed Marxist left, hiding behind the pseudo respectability of the Greens, should have his whole file published. He is now an MP asking voters to trust him – we are entitled to know him for what he is!
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
If the SIS weren’t spying on these turkeys questions should have been asked.
Ryan Sproull – the whole business of subversion of a democratic society is distasteful to me. In the real world absolutes are few and far between.
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
“Don’t forget Bush’s goon squad called Home Land Security!”
Remind me again of any concrete examples of US citizens having their freedoms actually curtailled by the actions of the Dept Homeland Security in the States? Can you show me one anti-war protestor or activist who has been imprisoned? Silenced?
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
I suspect that most people, when objecting to totalitarian states, are objecting more to the totalitarianism than to the communism, because the way 20th-century communism worked out there was always a dictatorship running it.
Communism is pretty abhorrent to us now, accustomed as we are to having a wealthy economy to live in, with a good basic quality of life and the ability to get a lot more for yourself if you are willing & able to run the extra mile.
But to condemn communism utterly is, I think, a posthumous slap in the face of eastern Europe’s grinding poor of the last turn of the century. Imagine living illiterately in a mud-floored hut, with minimal access to food and water (let alone medicine) working for an employer nostalgic for the good old days when he used to own his workforce, AND trying to survive the lovely northern weather to boot. Under those circumstances I can’t blame anyone for getting excited about the promises Socialism was making to people…
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
Ratbiter,
To condemn communism utterly is a prehumous slap in the face of the Third World grinding poor who create so much of that wealth we enjoy.
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
Ryan – so are you saying that I’m really NOT an island, a self-made man, who owes nothing to anybody?
You dirty little commie sycophant, you!
(PS: It must have been the glare off my 52″ plasma tv that blinded me to this truth…)
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Being a communist today (like those pole smokers at the Standard) makes you the rational equivalent of people who still believe Elvis is alive.
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
In my view this is but a small example underlining what I consider to be the ultimate cure for all these machinations, namely complete and utter removal of the concept of privacy for all and everybody including institutions, organizations and governments. Only with a free and open exchange of information will a truly democratic and open society be possible where people/organizations can be judged on their actual merits rather than on spin and deception. Although it will take some initial getting used to, in the end nobody is really interested to learn all sorts of petty details about anybody else, if in the knowledge that the same petty details about oneself are available for everybody else to see. Note of course that this hypothetical model would only function if it applied generally. It is my thesis that we are in fact slowly developing this type of an open society, albeit through roundabout and slowly evolving means, such as social sites and direct interactive public communication. A quantum leap in this development might well be what the world needs in these dire economic and social times.
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
My SIS file is moved around by forklift.
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
I’m always fascinated when people who wouldn’t trust the government to make a sandwich without fucking it up suddenly imbue it with supernatural powers of responsibility and goodwill when it comes to spying on its own populace.
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Ryan – which of the third world grinding poor create so much of the wealth that we enjoy? I know it was a throw away line, but some on the left seem to genuinely believe that workers in the third world are getting a bad deal, and that the answer to that is to somehow enforce first world labour standards, and/or to erect trade barriers.
Personally I think this whole line of argument is founded on a complete misapprehension about how supply and demand works, how people view work safety and the like in the context where they are worried about starving to death, the alternative options those people have if they don’t have a job (even a bad job by first world standards), and the level of productivity of those workers.
Some of this also flows through into the views of some about the ability to increase wages in NZ without first creating the productivity improvements that would fund that wage increase. Which is likely to have a similar effect to that of increasing wages in third world countries without increasing productivity.
Bottom line for me, if we care about the poor, we need to help them become more productive, largely through improving education. Pay and conditions will follow from that.
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
Damn, wish they could spy on me. Could have a bit of fun.
A friend applied for a job at one of the top secret govt departments and some guy from the SIS dropped by my house asking questions about my friend.
The agent wasn’t exactly the kind of person I envisaged being a spy – he was a dork, the type that probably got bullied at school.
It is hard being friends with someone working at such an agency, they cannot discuss anything about work which is a good chunk of their life. I tried every trick under the sun to get some juicy info with no luck. I guess spies tend to hang more with each other i think.
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
I employed an programmer ex-GSCB a quite a while back. He survived on Chololate Thins, Coca-Cola and the dim glow of his monitor alone. He had a gun licence, a private pilots licence and also one of the best code-cracker brains I’ve ever come across. He knew all sorts of things about the workings of central european countries that I’d not expect anyone with a Comp Sci and compiler fetish to even begin to comprehend. Oh, and not everything he learned went ‘on file’ either!
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
What do you think the NZ Communist Party would think of the Standard writers? You really think they’d regard them as like-for-like Communists?
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
I expect it’s a badge of pride for these folk – imagine the horror if you didn’t warrant a file – “but…I was active…I fought for the cause..I went on marches…WHY DIDN’T YOU NOTICE ME?????”
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
Uncool people sometimes know stuff. Incredible huh?
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
When I asked for my file all I got back was two fossilised meat pies and a copy of Penthouse magazine with the pages stuck together.
No, seriously, I might just put in a request. I was an activist in the anti-apartheid, peace and unemployed & beneficiaries movements in the 80s and 90s, so might have been a person of interest to the SIS even though I never thought the Soviet Union would be a great place to live.
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
There was a big stink at Auckland University in 1965 when political studies students ‘outed’ a SIS employee in their class. This almost ‘by definition’ made nonsense of the ???? rule (I cannot remember its name) where frank opinions expressed in political studies discussions are kept in confidence. The political studies professor and lecturers were also very uneasy at his presence in the class. He was also doing some discreet recruiting there. Section 5 of the University disciplinary statute was originally enacted following this incident:
http://www.calendar.auckland.ac.nz/statutes/disciplinary.html .
What was worse, ‘Outspoke’ an independent rival student newspaper out-scooped ‘Craccum’ with the story.
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
toad, you’d have to be kinda flattered if they had a file…as KiwiGreg alluded. DO IT.
Shadbolt is going to get his, but there’s more in his Bullshit and Jellybeans book, apparently.
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
Maybe i’m playing pointless semantics, but I don’t think ‘I am a government spy, spying on you, right now’ fits the definition of a “frank opinion”.
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Makes perfect sense to me to spy on a kid who’s deilvering propaganda newspapers for the enemy. You’d certainly find out where the cockroaches lived.
Le Grande Fromage: I think believing in communism today is worse that believing in Elvis, at least Elvis was once alive…
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
And these people who were monitored were active in groups that were on the side of the communist totalitarian states, not our side. They won’t put it like that, but that was the reality. They never ever condemned the communist states – in fact they did friendship visits there and extolled how good they are. DPF.
Nice to be so sure of yourself. What do you know that I don’t?
I do know that ASIO has a file on me, and no doubt so would the SIS had I lived in NZ at the time.
However, I was always on the side of freedom. I did not extoll communist states, nor did I ever visit one, unless you count NZ under Muldoon, and i did criticise communist states from time to time.
So, what was my crime that made me such a subversive? A belief in peace, an opposition to war, a faith in God and an adherence to “Turn the other cheek.”
ASIO, SIS, The department of Homeland Security, the STASI, are all cut from the same cloth and are all enemies of democracy and liberty.
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
I think people will be highly entertained and somewhat surprised at the revelations in my book, regarding the SIS.
Your average SIS agent is not what you might think but their methods *are* often very effective and most Kiwis would be shocked to realise just how much they know about “people of interest”.
I learnt much about how the SIS works and the rather cunning methods they use to obtain information when they need to.
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
Hmm, I probably came to their attention for distributing the HART newsletter ‘Amandla’ in the schoolgrounds at age 14 or 15.
‘Amandla’ was considered so subversive in those days it was banned from the schoolgrounds, so the teacher who caught me with a pile of them might have also dobbed me in to the SIS.
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
The department of Homeland Security, the STASI, are all cut from the same cloth
Guess where all those STASI operators went after they tore down the Berlin Wall, they were given future career opportunities by Uncle Sam, and I don’t mean jobs at Wall Mart when I say that.
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
An academic I work with received his SIS file last year, detailing his activism in the campaign to save Lake Manapouri – I’m sure he’ll be fascinated to know his efforts put him on the same side as the ‘enemies of freedom and the West’ and ‘posed a huge threat to our way of life’, and that spying on organisers of a petition that was signed by about a quarter of the country was a sound use of taxpayer money.
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
I’m sure my file would fill the head of a pin, oh well never mind.
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
He-Man, that was just a continuation of their policy from WW2 when a lot of SS went the same way.
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
side show bob – microfilm?
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
But wasn’t the tuxedo & aston martin a bit of a giveaway? I know an ex SIS guy, he’s got an impeccable military record. And a scar on his ear from a knife fight with a UK gangster who served with him – I doubt he was bullied at school.
If they looked like spies, they’d be of little use.
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
dpf said..”..Luckily the Soviet empire collapsed in 1990. We now have the wonderful luxury of having mainly put that threat between us..”
um..!..have you told redbaiter yet..?
..i don’t think he got the original memo..
..eh..?
..and he’s still up there on the front line..
..eyes blazing…
phil(whoar.co.nz)
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
# Ryan Sproull (1281) Vote: Add rating 8 Subtract rating 3 Says:
January 29th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
“I’m always fascinated when people who wouldn’t trust the government to make a sandwich without fucking it up suddenly imbue it with supernatural powers of responsibility and goodwill when it comes to spying on its own populace.”
I’m fascinated by the people who make the most fuss about being spied on, being the very ones whose ideal society, if imposed on the rest of us, would have around 1 in 10 people devoted to 24/7 surveillance of the other 9 in 10……..
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
gee..i wonder if me..a ‘deep green’/vegan/animal rights/publisher of ‘seditious’ materials..
..has a file..?
..you’d think it would be odds-on..
..eh..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Yep, that’s silly too. State socialists trust the state for everything except spying (at least until they’re running the show) and state capitalists trust the state for nothing except spying.
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
# MyNameIsJack (171) Vote: Add rating 0 Subtract rating 0 Says:
January 29th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
“He-Man, that was just a continuation of their policy from WW2 when a lot of SS went the same way.”
Reference, please, from someone other than that lying scum Noam Chomsky………
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 3:57 pm
Reference, please.
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
SIS members who screw up are made to work on philu’s file. That way they resign rather than going through the onerous dismissal procedures. Four people have worked on the file for the requisite twenty days without resigning. Three have been certified insane and one went on to become the world’s expert on nasal mucus.
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
philu (3773) Vote: Add rating 0 Subtract rating1 Says:
January 29th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
dpf said..”..Luckily the Soviet empire collapsed in 1990. We now have the wonderful luxury of having mainly put that threat between us..”
“um..!..have you told redbaiter yet..?
..i don’t think he got the original memo..
..eh..?
..and he’s still up there on the front line..
..eyes blazing…”
HEY…….!
What about me……?
Seriously, though, there is a book called “The Perestroika Deception”, in which the author alleges that the collapse of the USSR was a show, with the intention that the West would become softer and succumb more quickly and completely to “The Long March Through The Institutions”. I haven’t read the book and I don’t take that idea seriously; although I do believe that there is a “Long March Through The Institutions” and it is succeeding very slowly anyway regardless of what the USSR did or did not intend by way of collapse.
The worst may well result even in our own lifetime, what with the way business people and successful people are regarded by the young and ignorant as akin to the way Jews were regarded in Nazi Germany; I do not agree with a lot of what Ayn Rand wrote, but she was right about this. I mean the notion, originating from Marx, that anyone who has wealth, has it by means of having “taken it” from others who are not wealthy. The idea that anyone might become wealthy through providing something of value to others at a price at which they want to buy, is a foreign concept to them, and this is dreadfully wrong and could have fearful consequences in time.
Take Bill Gates; the people who rail at his wealth, you’d think they had had a gun pointed at their head and had been made to buy Bill Gates’ products, that they invariably use to criticise him; rather than having had many many more times utility value out of the Bill Gates product than the price they paid for it; that of course being the very reason so many people buy it and Mr Gates makes so much money.
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
OK Ryan, THIS is apropos:
“The Sick Mind Of Noam Chomsky”, By David Horowitz
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.aspx?GUID=19193155-11B3-4D95-BD7F-F30801D7C206
“…..It would be easy to demonstrate how on every page of every book and in every statement that Chomsky has written the facts are twisted, the political context is distorted (and often inverted) and the historical record is systematically traduced. Every piece of evidence and every analysis is subordinated to the overweening purpose of Chomsky’s lifework, which is to justify an idée fixe – his pathological hatred of his own country.
It would take volumes, however, to do this and there really is no need. Because every Chomsky argument exists to serve this end, a fact transparent in each offensive and preposterous claim he makes…..
“…….Chomsky’s message to his disciples in this country, the young on our college campuses, the radicals in our streets, the moles in our government offices, is a message of action and therefore needs to be attended to, even by those who will never read his rancid works. To those who believe his words of hate, Chomsky has this instruction:
The people of the Third World need our sympathetic understanding and, much more than that, they need our help. We can provide them with a margin of survival by internal disruption in the United States. Whether they can succeed against the kind of brutality we impose on them depends in large part on what happens here.
This is the voice of the Fifth Column left. Disruption in this country is what the terrorists want, and what the terrorists need, and what the followers of Noam Chomsky intend to give them.
In his address before Congress on September 19, President Bush reminded us: “We have seen their kind before. They are the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions, by abandoning every value except the will to power, they follw in the path of fascism, Nazism and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way to where it ends in history’s unmarked grave of discarded lies.”
President Bush was talking about the terrorists and their sponsors abroad. But he might just as well have been talking about their fifth column allies at home……”
But do read the whole thing…….
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
“SIS members who screw up are made to work on philu’s file. That way they resign rather than going through the onerous dismissal procedures. Four people have worked on the file for the requisite twenty days without resigning. Three have been certified insane and one went on to become the world’s expert on nasal mucus.”
I actually LOLed.
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
Then there is “The Top 200 Chomsky Lies”, by Paul Bogdanor
http://www.paulbogdanor.com/200chomskylies.pdf
By the way, I have on my own bookshelf, “The Anti Chomsky Reader” by David Horowitz and Peter Collier, which I recommend; several hundred pages of takeapart of the said Chomsky and his lies.
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
The communist states won the struggle last week when Obama was in augurated, so all that SIS spying was in vain.
http://kiwipolemicist.wordpress.com/2009/01/21/barack-obamas-inauguration-the-communists-have-won-the-cold-war/
Has Herr Helen got her file back?
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
See how apropos that was, Ryan? I had just said THIS:
“….The worst may well result even in our own lifetime, what with the way business people and successful people are regarded by the young and ignorant as akin to the way Jews were regarded in Nazi Germany; I do not agree with a lot of what Ayn Rand wrote, but she was right about this. I mean the notion, originating from Marx, that anyone who has wealth, has it by means of having “taken it” from others who are not wealthy. The idea that anyone might become wealthy through providing something of value to others at a price at which they want to buy, is a foreign concept to them, and this is dreadfully wrong and could have fearful consequences in time……”
And then the Horowitz quote I dug out for you, said THIS:
“…….Chomsky’s message to his disciples in this country, the young on our college campuses, the radicals in our streets, the moles in our government offices, is a message of action and therefore needs to be attended to, even by those who will never read his rancid works. To those who believe his words of hate, Chomsky has this instruction:
The people of the Third World need our sympathetic understanding and, much more than that, they need our help. We can provide them with a margin of survival by internal disruption in the United States. Whether they can succeed against the kind of brutality we impose on them depends in large part on what happens here.
This is the voice of the Fifth Column left. Disruption in this country is what the terrorists want, and what the terrorists need, and what the followers of Noam Chomsky intend to give them…….”
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 4:37 pm
Phil,
I’m looking through the list of “lies”. A lie is an intentionally false statement, and many of these appear to be mistakes or incidents of ignorance. I’m not sure how you would actually produce evidence of him lying, or anyone, without demonstrating that he knew the truth as well as saying something that was untrue.
As for the Frontpagemag article, which part of…
“The people of the Third World need our sympathetic understanding and, much more than that, they need our help. We can provide them with a margin of survival by internal disruption in the United States. Whether they can succeed against the kind of brutality we impose on them depends in large part on what happens here.”
…is an intentionally false statement, rather than expressions of an attitude you don’t happen to share?
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
PhilBest (4161) Vote: 1 0 Says:
January 29th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
# MyNameIsJack (171) Vote: Add rating 0 Subtract rating 0 Says:
January 29th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
“He-Man, that was just a continuation of their policy from WW2 when a lot of SS went the same way.”
Reference, please, from someone other than that lying scum Noam Chomsky………
I could say, do your own research, but here isone citation, and there are many more.
[edit] Nazis or Nazi collaborators who worked for the US secret services after the war
Klaus Barbie (1913–1991), the “Butcher of Lyon”, Hauptsturmführer and Gestapo official. Recruited by the US Counter Intelligence Corps in 1947, he also worked for British intelligence. Participated in Luis García Meza Tejada’s 1980 “Cocaine Coup” in Bolivia. Sentenced in France to life imprisonment in 1987 for crimes against humanity.
Otto Albrecht von Bolschwing (CIA agent in West Germany, recruited by the Gehlen Org, former assistant of Adolf Eichmann)
Alois Brunner – Believed by some to live in Brazil or Syria under alias Dr. Georg Fischer. Responsible for the deaths of 140,000 Jews, head of Drancy internment camp near Paris. Worked for the Gehlen Org after the war and then fled to Syria.
Reinhard Gehlen (1902–1979) (See above)
Walter Kopp (ibid)
Mykola Lebed (1909-1998) (Ukrainian), lived in Yonkers New York, worked for the U.S. Intelligence Agency after his collaboration with the Nazis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex-Nazi_Party_members#Nazis_or_Nazi_collaborators_who_worked_for_the_US_secret_services_after_the_war
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
It would take me a long time to look into every one of these “200 lies”, but here’s one:
The author (Bogdanor) references Chomsky’s claim from a 2004 AK Press publication, and references Henry Dobyns being discredited in a 1998 book by David Henige, giving the impression that at least six years before Chomsky wrote the words, the claim had been discredited.
The tiniest bit of looking further finds that the AK Press publication was a collation of earlier articles, and that this particular quote is taken from one published in 1984, 14 years prior to Bogdanor’s reference on the data being discredited.
Now, I wouldn’t now say that Paul Bogdanor lied about Chomsky. I would say that he made a probably understandable mistake.
So, down to 199, at least. But, as I say, notice I don’t call Bogdanor “lying scum” for his mistake.
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
peterwn (275) Vote: Add rating 2 Subtract rating 0 Says:
January 29th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
“There was a big stink at Auckland University in 1965 when political studies students ‘outed’ a SIS employee in their class. This almost ‘by definition’ made nonsense of the ???? rule (I cannot remember its name) where frank opinions expressed in political studies discussions are kept in confidence. ”
Chatham House rule.
Vote:“When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed”.
(http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/about/chathamhouserule/)
January 29th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
Russian UN Rep: The Soviet Union will be pleased to offer amnesty to your wayward vessel.
USA Un Rep: Soviet Union? I thought you guys broke up.
Russian UN Rep: Nyet! That’s what we wanted you to think, hahahahahaha!
“The Simpsons” Simpson Tide (1998)
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
PhilBest: An excellent book detailing what happened to many high up Nazis post WW2, with great detail on those who worked for the USA in intelligence, and also those who worked for the USSR/East Germany, is The Beast Reawakens by Martin A Lee (an investigative journalist). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beast_Reawakens for details on it.
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
aardvark: What book, and when is it available?
(And do I get a free copy for providing you with an invitation for shameless self-promotion, thus enabling you to duck criticism?
)
The first radio award I ever won was for a doco on the SIS. It was the first time they’d talked to anyone in the media, apparently.
Flushed with my win I told another journo “off the record” how I’d noted the rego of the car they sent to collect me (a Vauxhall Viva!!), tried to figure out the frequency the 2-way was tuned to (no digital encryption in those days!) and as many of the car regos in the underground carpark, plus as much other info as I could glean from their offices. She then ran it all as a sidebar in the Listener. It took awhile to go to sleep after that, fearing I would awake with no memory of who I was, on a freighter bound for South America
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
I hope the likes of Marie Leadbetter and Keith Locke, realise that had they been activists in the soviet Union they would never had access to their KGB files, let alone been alowed to be activists in the first place.
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 7:17 pm
“The Sick Mind Of Noam Chomsky”, By David Horowitz
Yeah that isn’t a hit piece by a long shot, i mean the title is totally credible.
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 7:18 pm
“Communism clearly doesn’t work.
Look at Russia!
They were a mess under communism.
And such a paradise before and after.”
http://www.angriestricecooker.com/092205.htm *
NZ worrying about communist spies (China excepted – though they’re running away from economic communism these days) is like National worrying that the Workers Party might steal some of their key constitunency seats.
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
*As a BA student I had Marx in about 7 of my papers over the 4 (ahem) years it took me to complete that valued qualification. Any hopes of a personal faith in a socialist utopia were crushed by my political theory lecturer who explained how a planned economy was a fatally flawed economic system, even in a perfect world.
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 7:44 pm
Rex, there’s a link to more information on my book (Missile Man) in the top right hand portion of my website.
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 10:19 pm
Banana, never mind the title, if you have a problem with that document, please let us know which of the Chomsky quotes ( all with sources given ) he didn’t actually say…
Vote:January 29th, 2009 at 10:54 pm
# Put it away (165) Vote: Add rating 0 Subtract rating1 Says:
January 29th, 2009 at 10:19 pm
Banana, never mind the title, if you have a problem with that document, please let us know which of the Chomsky quotes ( all with sources given ) he didn’t actually say…
Actually i do mind the title and it was what i was commenting on so why do i need to debate the contents of the .PDF with you.
Vote: