Chaz Doherty-Tuhoe Link to Zapatista Network

My research on the "Urewera 17" has uncovered clear links between Tame Iti's "quasi-military" training camps-the Mexican Zapatista rebels and their international support network, People's Global Action.

The links are particularly strong in regards the anarchist members of the "Urewera 17", but not quite so obvious regarding the Tuhoe/Maori component.

Chaz Doherty is a Tuhoe activist and a leader of Te Mana Motuhake O Tuhoe.

Doherty is also a lecturer at the School of Art and Design, Auckland University of Technology.

Since the October 15th 2007 police anti terror raids in the Tuhoe heartland, Doherty has consistently defended the arrestees and condemned police tactics.

A voice of apparent moderation, Doherty has been a consistent spokesman for the arrestees.

Tēnā tātou katoa,

To all of the distressed families who are missing their loved ones - kia kaha!

To all of you who are working so hard behind the scenes to keep families fed and supported during the absence of fathers, sons, mothers, and daughters - ngā mihi aroha ki ā koutou.

To all the people who are giving up their time and energy to support those Tūhoe in Ruatoki whose rights were violated by the New Zealand Police - ngā mihi nui ki ā koutou hoki.

Finally salutations to those of our Tūhoe leaders who are standing up and giving our people direction in these dark times you will always have our support.

Chaz Doherty is a close associate of Tame Iti and is believed to have been aware of Iti's Urewera training camps.

However it is Doherty's attendance at the Second Latin American & Asia Pacific Gathering, in Melbourne, October 21-22, 2006-that I find most significant.

This conference was organised by Australian Marxist-Leninists, socialists and anarchists to increase support for Latin American indigenous revolutionaries.

Australian speakers included;

Martin Kingham-Socialist Alliance, Bill Deller-ex Socialist Labor League and Communist Intervention, Bill Mundey-ex Communist Party of Australia, now with the Australian Greens, David Glanz-International Socialists, Carlene Wilson-Workers Power Australia, ex Auckland University Communist Left.

International guests included;

Gissel Gonzales (Bolivia), a leader of the Coalition in Defence of Life and Water in Cochabamba and a writer for the pro Zapatista website Narco News.

Maria de Lourdes Vicente da Silva (Brazil) a leader of the Landless Workers Movement from Brazil(MST), an ultra militant organisation affiliated to the Zapatista inspired Peoples Global Action.

Heriberto Salas (Mexico)-a represenative from "The People for the Defence of the Earth" which has led resistance against forced relocation to make way for a new airport in Mexico City. Recently Salas's movement has linked to the Zapatista's 'The Other Campaign"'

Chaz Doherty-a representative of the Tuhoe Nation in New Zealand


Chaz Doherty centre-Gissel Gonzales (Bolivia) left, Heriberto Salas (Mexico) right, Sina Ana Brown/Davis (Australia/NZ) front

Reporting the event, Melbourne based anarchist, Zapatista supporter and "Urewera 17" supporter Sina Ana Brown-Davis wrote;

Better to die standing, than to live on your knees."

Have just had 2 inspirational days of sharing common struggle and resistance to the colonial beast that has ravaged ( and continues) to ravage the world. Grassroots people Asia, Melanesia, Polynesia, over the South America. Humble revolutionaries imbued with a great love & respect for their lands peoples & way of life, actively resisting.

The greed for the plunder of our resources and destruction of our identity is similar all the world. Genocide keeps on perfecting itself, so you get a clear picture of whats in store for us if we dont assert our right to be and live as Maori on Maori land. NZ settler govt just keep perfecting killing us off slowly.

Chaz was a mercurial ambassador for Tuhoe and gave a moving korero about Mana Motuhake, and our colonial history & continuing resistance...It was good to be reminded that around this planet, we the colonised, the oppressed, exploited & marginalised are the majority and the time has come for us to stand up.

Far from an isolated bunch of malcontents, the "Urewera 17" and their supporters are part of an international revolutionary movement and should be taken seriously.

It is clear that many of them see themselves as part of the resistance movement against global capitalism- undergound heroes fighting an awesome and destructive power.

They will not go away because a few of them may end up being fined or briefly jailed on firearms charges.

Another Threat-Yippee!

Just got this anonymous comment on this post.

I told you before Trevor the childlover- a mask man ( a Markos resemblance) is watching you

I actually quite like this sort of comment for two reasons.

Firstly it tells me that my investigations into the "Urewera 17" etc are on track.

The misspelt "Markos" clearly refers to Zapatista leader Succomandante Marcos, the idol of the anarchists and Maori radicals involved in Tame Iti's "Quasi military" training camps.

If I wasn't uncomfortably close to the truth, these people would ignore me rather than indulge in this sort of behaviour.

If I wasn't upsetting my opponents there would be no fake Bebo page, no spoof blogs and no anonymous threats.

Secondly it illustrates my point that Labour's Electoral Finance Act is designed to intimidate dissenting voices.

If I had to put my residential address on this blog, I would be inviting retaliation from people like the commentor above.

As blogs are exempt (at present) that's OK, but virtually all other anti-government literature has to carry the authorisers residential address.

This renders anti-government activists (and their families) vulnerable to random nutters, malicious fanatics and the like.

Whether intended or not (and I believe it is) this will intimidate dissenters across the board.

Not a healthy situation.

Mike Moore Slams Anti Free Speech Law

Former Labour Party Prime Minister, Mike Moore on Labour's Electoral Finance Act

From the NZ Herald

Why should you have to register with the state if you want to oppose or support a political party, or promote public policy? Lawyers have suggested that cartoonists who seek to persuade readers could be covered, even theatre.

Even MPs who voted for the legislation can’t work out how to spend their own electorate allowances.

People are going to test this law, perhaps get a terminally-ill person in a hospice to be an agent. A heroic defence was suggested, that is the law of common sense. Unique in world jurisprudence - tell that to the judge or electoral commissioner who closed down an anti-Government webpage. The blogger wouldn’t give his address because he lived at home and might upset mom. Is this silly or sinister? Both.

My plea to the party I love is to just repeal the act. Accept it’s wrong in substance and principle before it hurts us further and does the exact opposite of what’s intended by encouraging big money to circumvent this law. J’Accuse.

Hat Tip KiwiBlog

NZAID Questioned Over Zapatista Travel Funding

Don Clarke has been director of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade's NZAID Global Group since the agency was established in 2002.

NZAID Global group has an annual budget of well over $300 million p.a.

I have just sent this email to NZAID.

Attention Don Clarke

Dear Mr Clarke

I note that the organisation that you were once the executive director of (1990/94) of and still work closely with, the Council for International Development recieves NZAID money.

According to the CID website

CID administers the Travel Fund at the request of NZAID to assist New Zealand NGOs to participate in significant international development conferences, meetings or workshops on development

Please note this allocation from the CID NGO Travel Fund listed in CID's 2007 Annual Report.

Latin America Solidarity Committee – Richard Jeffrey to attend the Encuentro of the Zapatista Communities with the Peoples of the World conference to be held in Chiapas Province, Mexico, 21-31 July 2007 $3,500

Could you please tell me why NZAID/taxpayers money is funding travel to Zapatista run "Encuentros"?

What does such travel contribute to New Zealand's foreign aid programme?

The Zapatistas have in the past, murdered Mexican civilians and soldiers.

Their current relations with the Mexican government are at best tense.

As Mexico is a friend and valued trading partner of New Zealand, why is NZAID funding travel to Zapatista events?

How does it serve New Zealand's interest to be giving taxpayers money to Zapatista supporters?

Is the Mexican government aware that mr Jeffrey's travel was funded by NZAID?

In case you are not aware Mr Clarke, the Wellington Zapatista Support Group is part of the Wellington Latin America Solidarity Committee, which is in turn a CID member organisation.

Your prompt reply to these questions would be much appreciated.

Trevor Loudon

Police To Prosecute Christchurch Father for "Assaulting" Son

The police are going after my old pool playing opponent Jimmy Mason.

This could have serious implications for Jimmy's family as no doubt CYFS will become involved.

From this morning's Christchurch Press

Professional musician Jimmy Mason has been charged with two counts of assaulting a child after an incident on the Bridge of Remembrance in central Christchurch last month.

The 49-year-old Christchurch man admitted to flicking his son's ear to reprimand him for riding dangerously near a busy street on December 19 when he spoke to The Press in an article on January 14, in which he complained about the way the incident was handled by the police.

Inspector Gary Knowles, the central city area commander, said that charges arose as a result of a review of the evidence after speaking to a number of witnesses.

Knowles said now the matter is before the court, no further comment would be made.

Mason has been summonsed to appear in the Christchurch District Court on 12 February 2008.

Labour's Anti Free Speech Law Silences Website

John Key Misses Obvious Answer-Apprenticeships

While National Party leader John Key, has his heart in the right place, today's policy announcements on addressing youth crime and educational under-achievement miss the boat.

Educational allowances for 16 to 18 year olds and boot camps for young offenders will simply end up subsidising dodgy educational ventures and giving the army a headache it doesn't need.

The real answer is to revive what National almost destroyed in the early '90s-the apprenticeship system.

New Zealand's apprenticeship system trained some of the world's best tradesmen for over 100 years.

It gave hundreds of thousands of young men and women a chance for a better future.

It gave them hope, discipline and a trade.

It gave young people an extended period of non parental adult guidance and kept many thousands of at "at risk" youth on the right track.

It gave this country one of the most skilled workforces in the world.

What was it replaced with?

A network of private and public training organisations designed to extract the maximum amount of student loan money out of vulnerable teens in exhange for certificates of dubious value.

A lost generation of kids, either unemployed, working in dead end jobs, or up to their neck in debt with student loans.

It also gave the country a huge skills shortage.

ACT campaigned to revive apprenticeships in 2005, but few were listening to ACT in that election.

Hopefully ACT will campaign on the issue again in 2008.

Please check out this 2005 three part series I wrote on apprenticeships and how to revive them.

Part 1 here, Part 2 here, part 3 here

Comments welcome.

China Arming Beyond Defence Needs-Why?

An overly diplomatic way of saying that China is preparing for war.

From AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The United States said Monday it was "troubling" that China's weapons systems capability exceeded the level Beijing defined as necessary for self-defence.

The head of the US armed forces in the Asia-Pacific, Admiral Timothy Keating, said he was told by Chinese leaders during a visit to Beijing that its so-called "area denial weapons" were "to protect those things that are ours".

But he said, "we find it troubling that the capabilities of some of these weapons systems would tend to exceed our own expectations for protecting those things that are 'ours'".

Keating said the United States had "intelligence that reinforces my opinion that China is developing, fielding and has in place weapons that could be characterized as having, amongst perhaps other purposes, an ability to restrict movement in and around certain areas on the sea, in the air or under the sea.

"I'll go back to the point we made a couple of times already -- that we understood PRC (China's) intentions, not just their transparency, not just the fact that these weapons exist. We know they exist," he said.

"It's why are they being fielded," Keating asked, speaking at a Washington forum of the US-based Asia Society.

The Pentagon fears China's area-denial arms, including missiles, can be used to attack US aircraft carriers and ships, reports have said.

"The PLA (China's People's Liberation Army) appears engaged in a sustained effort to develop the capability to interdict, at long ranges, aircraft carrier and expeditionary strike groups that might deploy to the western Pacific," according to the annual Pentagon report last year to the US Congress.

"Increasingly, China?s area denial/anti-access forces overlap, providing multiple layers of offensive systems, utilizing the sea, air, and space," the report said.

The United States fears a Chinese military buildup could blunt any US intervention in a conflict over Taiwan and challenge US naval access to the Asian region.

Hat Tip Zionist Anti Communist

US Communist Leader on Backing the Democrats

Hot off the Communist Party USA website



CPUSA leader Sam Webb on why the Communists and their allies are desperate to elect a Democratic Party President and Congress.

150,000 Hits

Thanks to my readers.

Obama-file 8 Baltimore Communists Back Obama

Obama-file 7 here

Baltimore, Maryland man, Tim Wheeler, is one of Barack Obama's biggest fans.

He is on the campaign trail with Senator Obama, blogging as he goes.

Wheeler canvassed for his idol in the recent South Carolina primary.

It is chilly and threatening rain but the media is predicting a record voter turnout of people fired up by Obama's message of hope. I rode down from Baltimore on a bus with 40 other volunteers. It was chartered by three members of the Maryland General Assembly who have kept us working diligently since we arrived. Nights we sleep on the gymnasium floor of the Y, strewn with mostly youthful volunteers from as far away as California...

I have been canvassing with a friend, Rev. Pierre Williams, a United Methodist minister in Baltimore. We got a vivid feel for just how deeply Obama's message is resonating here going door-to-door in a working class neighborhood yesterday.

Tim Wheeler was in Obama's campaign HQ as the primary results came in;


The Obama people are over the moon. I was at a precinct some four or five miles outside of Columbia, mainly a rural area. And it was a steady stream of voters all day. Overwhelmingly African American voters. There was a feeling of victory in the air.

I'm at the Obama headquarters and you can hear the cheering all over. It's really very exciting.

But who is this dedicated Obama-fan?

Is he a seasoned Democratic Party activist, or a new convert inspired by the charismatic young Senator from Illinois?

Tim Wheeler is neither-he is a second generation member of the Communist Party USA.

Wheeler is a member of the CPUSA National Board and has been a mainstay of the party's Baltimore Club since the early '70s.

From 1991 to 2003 Tim Wheeler served as editor of the party paper People's Weekly World. Currently he is the PWW's national political correspondent.

So what you say. Surely a communist paper has as much right to cover Obama's campaign as any other?

I have posted several times on the CPUSA's long term support for Barack Obama.

This is not historical. This is current. All over the USA Communist Party members and supporters are swinging in behind Barack Obama.

They have been working with and inside the Democratic Party to do so.

Go to the Obama'08 website and find the January 21 2008- Baltimore for Barack meeting minutes

You will notice that Tim and Joyce Wheeler are prominent members.

They are involved in organising local canvassing and visibility events.


Joyce Wheeler right

Joyce Wheeler is a retired school teacher and a long time Communist Party activist.

Two other prominent members of "Baltimore for Barack" are Jim and Margaret Baldridge.

Jim Paldridge is a peace activist and Communist Party member. He has also been active in the Democratic Party.

In 2004 Baltimore hospital worker, Baldridge ran as a Dennis Kucinich delegate in Maryland’s March 2 Super Tuesday primary.

From the Peoples Weekly World

“I see the poverty and unemployment up close,” Baldridge wrote in an open letter distributed to his neighbors. “A vote for Kucinich is a vote to take back our country from the Halliburton corporate looters, to make the rich pay their share of the taxes … Our school deficit cries out for a president like Dennis Kucinich who will deliver on the promise, ‘Leave no child behind.’”

Margaret Baldridge is a former executive secretary of the Maryland Communist Party. She has been active in the party since the early "70s and was a founder of the Baltimore Committee to Free Angela Davis and another party front the National Alliance Against Racial and Political Repression.

The Wheelers and the Baldridge's are the backbone of the Baltimore Communist Party.

In a small town like Baltimore it is inconceivable that the local Democrats do not realise that they have four prominent Communist Party activists working in their midst.

Do they know but do not care?

The Communist Party has been ifiltrating the Democratic Party for decades. In some areas the Communist Party virtually runs the local Democratic Party machine.

The Communist Party clearly favours Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton or John Edwards.

Why do the Communists favour Obama? How many Party members are working in the Obama campaign? Why do the Democrats not seem to care?

Obama-file 9 here

Syd Jackson's Libya Confessions

Before his recent death from cancer, Maori activist Syd Jackson gave an interview to his nephew, journalist Potaka Maipi.


Parts of it were read on TV1's "Marae" yesterday.

Syd Jackson spoke of his links with Libya, which he and wife Deidre Nehua first visited in April 1988.

He reminisced about getting his photo taken with former US Black Panther leader, Stokeley Carmichael and meeting US Nation of Islam head, Louis Farrakhan.

Jackson also spoke of returning to Libya on several occasions and meeting the man himself-Muammar Gaddafi.

"Fortunately the media never heard about that at the time, otherwise there would have been even greater horror on the part of those people opposed to that country and that regime."

Quite.

Another "Urewera 17" Activist Identified

Indymedia kindly gives us an update on the status of the "Urewera 17"

Sixteen people now face charges under section 45 of the Arms Act 1983. They are:

Emily Felicity Tuhi-ao Bailey, 30, Community worker and activist.
Ira Mangaimihi Timothy Bailey, 28, Artist.
Rongomai Peropero Bailey, 28, Graphic Designer.
Omar Hamed, 19, University Student.
Rawiri Kiyami Iti, 29, Machine Operator.
Tame Iti, 55, Mana Motuhake o Tuhoe Activist and Counsellor.
Te Rangikaiwhiria Kemara, 38, IT Consultant.
Tuhoe Kent Lambert, 59, Retired Social Worker.
Jamie Beattie Lockett, 46, Private Investigator.
Marama Hannah Mayrick, 24, Picture Framer.
Valerie Morse, 36, Unemployed Librarian and Researcher.
Moana Hemi Winitana, 53, Post Graduate Student.
Watene Paul McClutchie, 33, Father.
A woman from Auckland, 32, Professional Dancer.
A man from Ruatoki, 28, Father.
A Swiss national, 23, Musician.

Another person arrested during the operation, Moko Hillman 52, a father, has already been dealt with by the courts.

Hillman is the only one whose identity I did not know.

He is clearly the individual arrested on drugs charges.

Moko Hillman is a a long time activist and associate of Tame Iti.

In 1988, Hillman was arrested and jailed, with several Ngai Tamarawaho activists for his part in the occupation of the old Tauranga Town Hall-the land being part of a disputed Waitangi Tribunal claim.

Hillman is believed to have been involved with Tame Iti's camps in the Ureweras.

UN Marxist To Grill Government Over "Urewera 17"

From Indymedia

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights while Countering Terrorism has agreed that there are grounds to investigate the New Zealand Government over its conduct during the October 15 raids. This is the first time that a complaint from a group against a nation-state has been accepted by the Rapporteur. The complaint was lodged by lawyers acting on behalf of the Tuhoe nation and some of the accused in the case. It is based on some 14 specific instances of breaches of human rights.

The New Zealand government has now been issued a list of questions by the United Nations and it is required to provide a response to these within six months. The complaint was submitted pursuant to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. The grounds of the complaint are acute breaches of rights to privacy, freedom from discrimination and personal liberty, for which there is no available domestic remedy. The violations arise from conduct of the police, elected politicians and media, and pertain to what has been termed, albeit without objective or legal foundation, an ‘anti-terrorism’ operation.

Depending on the response of the Government, or the lack thereof, the Rapporteur may make a ruling on the complaint or decide to investigate further, possibly visiting Aotearoa New Zealand in order to interview victims of the raids, arrestees, lawyers and naturally, members of the police and Government.

The New Zealand Government likes to extol its human rights record to the world. Meanwhile, it conveniently ignores the condemnation of various UN bodies when they don’t suit the Government’s fairy tale of amicable race relations. In 2006, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous People visited Aotearoa New Zealand to investigate breaches of human rights as a result of the Foreshore and Seabed Act. Following the investigation, the Rapporteur issued a report detailing the violations of human rights which the New Zealand Government has roundly ignored.

Needless to say, people around the world are not blind to the New Zealand Government’s double-speak when it come to Maori. Statements from around the world, including the Canadian Postal Worker’s Union and the Zapatista Liberation Army indicate that support for the right of Maori to self-determination will not be denied.

The rapporteur mentioned in this case is Mexican Marxist Sociology professor, Rodolfo Stavenhagen.

This man's job is to aid indigenous revolutionaries and denigrate their opposition.

The Canadian Postal Workers Union is controlled by Zapatista supporters and is aligned to the the international Zapatista support network, People's Global Action.

How China Plans to Win Next Pacific War

A China/US Pacific War is a very real possibility-as early as later this year according to some US based China experts.

For those who charmingly naive souls who think that China is our friend, I post excerpts from this article in the latest US AirForceTimes.com

Hypothetical attack on U.S. outlined by China

Jan 25, 2008

In a hypothetical future scenario, the U.S. and China are poised to clash — likely over Taiwan.

The democratic Republic of China, commonly called Taiwan — which America backs and the communist People’s Republic of China considers part of its territory — frequently irritates Chinese leaders with calls for greater independence from the mainland. But while the American military mulls its options, Chinese missiles hit runways, fuel lines, barracks and supply depots at U.S. Air Force bases in Japan and South Korea. Long-range warheads destroy American satellites, crippling Air Force surveillance and communication networks. A nuclear fireball erupts high above the Pacific Ocean, ionizing the atmosphere and scrambling radars and radio feeds.

This is China’s anti-U.S. sucker punch strategy.

It’s designed to strike America’s military suddenly, stunning and stalling the Air Force more than any other service. In a script written by Chinese military officers and defense analysts, a bruised U.S. military, beholden to a sheepish American public, puts up a small fight before slinking off to avoid full-on war.

This strategic outlook isn’t hidden in secret Chinese documents. It’s printed in China’s military journals and textbooks. And for much of last year, Mandarin literates and defense experts — working for the Santa Monica, Calif.-based Rand Corp. on an Air Force contract — combed through a range of Chinese military sources.

They emerged with “Entering the Dragon’s Lair,” a lengthy report on how the Chinese People’s Liberation Army would likely confront the U.S. military and how the Air Force in particular can brace itself. In many cases, the theoretical enemy nation China’s officers discuss in these scenarios isn’t explicitly named but is unmistakably the U.S.

“These aren’t war plans,” said report co-author Roger Cliff, a former Defense Department strategist and China military specialist who spoke to Air Force Times from Taiwan. “This is the military talking to itself. It’s not designed for foreigners or even China’s general public to read.”

Element of surprise

When it comes to conflict with the U.S., Chinese military analysts favor age-old schoolyard wisdom: Throw the first punch and hit hard.

“Future conflicts are likely to be short, intense affairs that might consist of a single campaign,” Cliff said. “They’re thinking about ways to get the drop on us. Most of our force is not forward-deployed.”

China’s experts concede its army would lose a head-on fight, with one senior colonel comparing such a scenario to “throwing an egg against a rock.” Instead, the Chinese would attempt what Rand calls an “anti-access” strategy: slowing the deployment of U.S. forces to the Pacific theater, damaging operations within the region and forcing the U.S. to fight from a distance.

“Taking the enemy by surprise,” one Chinese military expert wrote, “would catch it unprepared and cause confusion within and huge psychological pressure on the enemy and help [China] win relatively large victories at relatively small costs.” Another military volume suggests feigning a large-scale military training exercise to conceal the attack’s buildup.

The Dragon’s Lair

Striking U.S. air bases — specifically command-and-control facilities, aircraft hangars and surface-to-air missile launchers — would be China’s first priority if a conflict arose, according to Rand’s report.


U.S. facilities in South Korea and Japan, even far-south Okinawa, sit within what Rand calls the “Dragon’s Lair”: a swath of land and sea along China’s coast. This is an area reachable by cruise missiles, jet-borne precision bombs and local covert operatives. Air Force bases within this area include Osan and Kunsan in South Korea, as well as Misawa, Yokota and Kadena in Japan. And in a conflict over Taiwan, any nation allowing “an intervening superpower” such as the U.S. to operate inside its territory can expect a Chinese attack, according to China’s defense experts.

China is designing ground-launched cruise missiles capable of nailing targets more than 900 miles away — well within striking range of South Korea and much of Japan, according to the report. Cruise missiles able to reach Okinawa — home to Kadena Air Base — are in development.

The Chinese would first launch “concentrated and unexpected” attacks on tarmacs using runway-penetrating missiles and, soon after, would target U.S. aircraft. Saboteurs would play a role in reconnaissance, harassing operations and even “assassinating key personnel,” according to another military expert.

Chinese fighter jets would scramble to intercept aerial refueling tankers and cargo planes sent to shuttle in fuel, munitions, supplies or troops. High-explosive cluster bombs would target pilot quarters and other personnel buildings.

Because the American public is “abnormally sensitive” about military casualties, according to an article in China’s Liberation Army Daily, killing U.S. airmen or other personnel would spark a “domestic anti-war cry” on the home front and possibly force early withdrawal of U.S. forces. (“The U.S. experience in Somalia is usually cited in support of this assertion,” according to the Rand report.) Once this hard-and-fast assault on U.S. bases commenced, the Chinese army would “swiftly divert” its forces and “guard vigilantly against enemy retaliation,” according to a Chinese expert.

Dumb and blind

The PLA also would likely use less conventional attacks on the American military’s vital communications network. The goal, as one Chinese expert put it: leaving U.S. combat capabilities “blind,” “deaf” and “paralyzed.”

Losing early-warning systems designed to detect incoming missiles would be, for the Air Force, the most devastating setback — one that could force the service to exit the region altogether, according to Rand.

China could also launch a nuclear “e-bomb,” or electromagnetic explosive, that would fry U.S. communication equipment while ionizing the atmosphere for minutes to hours, according to the report. This would likely jam radio signals in a 900-mile diameter beneath the nuclear fireball.

The PLA could also employ long-range anti-satellite missiles — similar to one successfully tested last January — to destroy one or more American satellites. However, the PLA has a host of less dramatic options: short-range jammers hidden in suitcases or bombs and virus attacks on Air Force computer networks.

U.S. Air Force options

Shielding against a swift Chinese onslaught is, according to Rand, as simple as reinforcing a runway or as complex as cloaking the orbit of military satellites.

In the short term, U.S. air bases inside the Dragon’s Lair should add an extra layer of concrete to their runways and bury fuel tanks underground. All aircraft, the report said, should be parked in hardened shelters, especially fighter jets.

Parking larger aircraft — bombers, tankers and E-3 Sentry Airborne Warning and Control Systems jets — in hard-shell hangars would be expensive and difficult but likely worth the cost, according to the report.

U.S. fighter jets remain the best defense against incoming Chinese missile attacks. But, given China’s taste for sudden attacks, surface-launched missile defense systems must be installed long before a conflict roils. Because the PLA is expected to strike quickly, the report said, waiting for the first tremors of conflict is not an option.

The Air Force also should fortify itself against Chinese hackers by using software encryption, isolating critical computer systems and preparing contingency plans to communicate without a high-bandwidth network. Though China maintains a “no first use” nuclear bomb policy, the U.S., according to Rand, should warn China that nuclear electromagnetic pulse attacks will be considered acts of nuclear aggression and could prompt nuclear retaliation.

Rand insists the Air Force must defend satellites — which support communication, reconnaissance, bomb guidance and more — against China’s proven satellite-killing missiles. This could be accomplished in the Cold War tradition of mutually assured destruction by threatening to retaliate in kind if the PLA blasts U.S. satellites.

“That might be the one restraining factor,” Cliff said. “They might not want to start that space war.”

Or, Rand suggests, the U.S. could invest heavily in satellite protection or evasion techniques, including stealth, blending in with other satellite constellations or perhaps developing and deploying microsatellites capable of swarming to defend larger satellites, which the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is working toward.

Could this really happen? The Chinese first-strike strategy is “more than hypothetical,” according to the report. But in the near term, at least, it’s considered unlikely.

Hat Tip Zionist Anti Communist

Obama-file 6 Bolshevik Barbara Bolsters Obama

Obama-file 5 here

Just before Christmas, US congresswoman Barbara Lee, became the first California Democrat to endorse Barack Obama.

,

I have posted before that Obama has been supported by three of the US's main Marxist organisations-the Commununist Party USA, the Democratic Socialists of America and the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism.

As Barbara Lee has been closely associated with all three, her ringing endorsement of Obama comes as no surprise.

Barbara Lee inherited her Congressional seat on the retirement of her former boss Congressman Ron Dellums.

Dellums, now mayor of Oakland California (and a Hillary Clinton supporter) has been a long time associate of the Communist Party USA.

Both Dellums and Lee were encouraged to enter politics by longtime Berkeley Councilwoman and CPUSA supporter, Maudelle Shirek.

Lee and Dellums are regarded as two of the most socialist Congressmen in recent history.

Dellums was until recently vice-chair of Democratic Socialists of America.


In 1983 Dellums was guest of honour at Chicago DSA's 1983 Norman Thomas-Eugene V. Debs Dinner-an event later associated with several Barack Obama supporters.

DSA has supported Barbara Lee's election campaigns.

From San Fransisco DSA;

The DSA national convention passed a resolution condemning the September 11 attacks, supporting in principle the selective use of multilateral armed force, and calling for a halt to the bombing. Its text, along with previous statements by DSA on the war, will presumably be available at the national web site soon. The Sacramento local and the anti-racism commission issued a prior statement... The East Bay local will be working for the re-election of Barbara Lee, the sole member of Congress to oppose a resolution granting sweeping, vaguely specified war powers to our illegitimate President.

Barbara Lee is also co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, a grouping of more than 70 left wing Congressmen and one US Senator, Bernie Sanders.

Several CPC members are linked to DSA (including Sanders) and many also have Communist Party connections.

From Detroit DSA

Since 1982, DSA has been working for progressive change. As a national organization, DSA joins with its allies in Congress' Progressive Caucus and in many other progressive organizations, fighting for the interests of the average citizen both in legislative struggles and in other campaigns to educate the public on progressive issues and to secure progressive access to the media.

Many commentators believe that CPC is an offshoot of DSA, certainly DSA played a role in its formation.

According to Chicago DSA

Congressman Bernie Sanders has been charging that these bail-outs to regimes which violate worker and civil rights are illegal under a law passed last year by Sanders and Representative Barney Frank, both leaders of the Progressive Caucus in Congress which DSA has helped to organize.

In 1991/92, the Communist Party USA split, with a third of its members joining forces with other Marxists to found the Committees of Correspondence.

Lee was briefly a member of the CoC national co-ordinating committee, alongside her long time friend, former Communist Party vice-Presidential candidate, Angela Davis.

In recent years many CoC members have drifted back to the Communist Party's orbit, including Barbara Lee.

As recently as December 2006, Lee appeared at Communist Party post Congressional election function in Northern California.

From the CPUSA's People's Weekly World

Dec. 3 was a day the People’s Weekly World can be proud of. Still celebrating the results of the Nov. 7 elections, readers held banquets and dinners in various places across the country, attracting elected officials, leaders of people’s movements and rank-and-file fighters for justice and democracy.

A highlight of the Northern California banquet in Oakland was...

Other honored guests included anti-nuclear-weapons leader Jackie Cabasso, the Blue Diamond Workers Organizing Committee and two Sacramento-based immigrant rights coalitions. All received certificates from U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee as well as from Friends of the People’s Weekly World/Nuestro Mundo.

Why would a militant socialist like Barbara Lee want to back a "moderate" like Barack Obama?

Obama-file 7 here

Nats Underestimate ACT's Man

The coolest looking party leader in Parliament


Nat blogger Whale Oil's calf underestimates Rodney's cunning and wile.

Learn Spanish for Fun and Propaganda

Like Paul Bruce, Julie Webb-Pullman and Jen Bell, Jorge Herrera (or Hererra)is a member of the Wellington based Latin American Solidarity Committee.


Originally from Mexico, Mr Herrera is also a Spanish teacher at the Wellington Worker's Educational Association.



Here's a little about Mr Herrera's WEA Spanish course;

Tutor Jorge Herrera.
Venue, Centre for Global Action.

Immersion – Mexican History and Language
Intermediate course conducted in simple Spanish. Participants will learn about the colonisation of Mexico as an example of the history of Latin America, while at the same time improving their language.

Immersion – The Zapatistas
Intermediate level. The inspirational struggle of the Zapatista revolution provides an excellent backdrop for learning language.

Immersion – Indigenous Peoples of Latin America
Combines language-learning with a glimpse into the many fascinating and diverse worlds of the indigenous peoples of ‘the Americas’.

Immersion – Latin American Politics
Many countries in Latin America (and/or the peoples within them) are standing up against US imperialism. An opportunity to engage with political Spanish.

If you want to learn Spanish in order to travel to a Zapatista "Encuentro" or socialise with the Cuban ambassador, Mr Herrera is the man to see.

New Zeel -Online Now

New Zeal has arrived!

I thought only mega-blogs were honoured with this kind of treatment.

My anarchist buddies have set up a piss-take of New Zeal-called...New Zeel.

It's run by some fascist clown named Trevour Loudoon.

It's a bit of a crack up, with informative postings such as;

"Taking the communism out of your sex life"

"All about NZ Libertarianism, exposed"

"Exclusive evidence that links leftists to Satan"

Check it out here.

There's no site meter, but I'll be gutted if the buggers get more "hits" than I do.

Jen Bell and the Zapatistas

New Zealand activist Jen Bell recently attended the Zapatista Women's Encuentro in Chiapas Mexico.


From World War 4 Report

To celebrate the 14th anniversary of their New Years Day uprising, Mexico's Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) hosted a Women's Encuentro ("encounter" or "meeting") at the jungle settlement of La Garrucha, Chiapas state. Officially dubbed the "Encuentro of the Indigenous Zapatista Women with the Women of the World," the meeting brought together women from throughout Mexico and several other countries around the globe.

From the Latin American Solidarity Committee Minutes

Meeting Sunday 9th December 2007, 272 Ohiro Road, Wellington. 5pm

Jen Bell attending Women’s Encuentro in La Garrucha – funds to be deposited in her NZ account so she can draw on them over there and deliver them directly to the health co-ordinator of the Junta de Bueno Gobierno at La Garrucha.

Zapatista Women’s Encuentro – Jen Bell is attending this event, and also going to do some human rights observing in Zapatista Communities. Decided that LAC would provide a letter of support endorsing Jen Bell as a LAC member in good standing for her volunteer activities in Zapatista communities. Also decided to send a message of support from LAC to the Zapatista women and women of the world at the Encuentro. Action: JWP to draft letters.

Jen Bell has been active in the Save Happy Valley Coalition with "Urewera 17" arrestee Tim/Ira Bailey.

She has also been active in the Wellington Zapatista Support Group with Bailey and Cuban linked "independent" journalist Julie Webb-Pullman.

In mid 2006 Jen Bell also travelled to meet the Zapatistas in Chiapas, with Bailey and Webb-Pullman.

Towards a Socialist USA

The Communist Party USA is going all out to tip the 2008 elections in favour of the Democrats-particularly the left wing of the Democratic Party.

Currently, the Communist Party and the equally radical Democratic Socialists of America have 73 friends in the US Congress-the exclusively Democratic, Congressional Progressive Caucus.

They also have many allies in the US Senate, but are blocked by a Republican president with power of veto and by a sprinkling of moderate or conservative Democrats.

The CPUSA controls much of the US union movement and has considerable influence in several national women's, Latino, black, gay, youth, peace, environmental and even religious organisations.

This is what the CPUSA calls the "people's movement".

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both come from the far left.

The CPUSA and its allies plan to mobilise every sector under their influence to deliver a leftist President and socialist controlled Senate and Congress come November.

The Party aims to destroy the "far right" Republicans and take the US well and truly down the socialist road.

Below are two videos lifted today from the CPUSA's website.





Twelve tedious minutes.

However, you have just seen the programme for a socialist takeover of the US government.

The most important Communist Party in the world today is not the 70 million strong Communist Party of China-it is the few thousand strong Communist Party USA.

The CPUSA has the power to deliver a socialist controlled Congress, a socialist led Senate and a socialist US President.

Never before has US socialism had so many "ducks in a row".

If they succeed and its likely they will, how will it matter?

I believe it it could spell the end of the US as a force for freedom and as an economic leader.

How will the USA stand up to a resurgent Russia and China and a belligerent Iran, if its entire government is dominated by socialists?

How will the USA turn around a faltering economy when militant socialists hold the levers of power?

If Russia and China come to dominate the world, how will the rest of us fare?

If the US economy nosedives, how will that effect what's left of the free world?

The next US election will be a crucial one for the entire Western world.

While I'm no great fan of the Republicans, a Democratic Party victory could lead us all to disaster.

Towards a Socialist Australia

Australia is about to veer far to the left.

While economic policy will remain fairly moderate, foreign policy, education, indigenous affairs, environmental matters and social relations, will all take a socialist turn.

While the Australian Communist Party is small and it's union influence comparitively limited, the far left is still powerful.

The Australian Labor party has several factions, many of which such as Socialist Left are rooted in the union movement.

Many of these socialists came to the ALP from Marxist-Leninism as the old CP disintegrated in the "70s and "80s sending hundreds of its former cadre into Labor.

I have already posted about the far left background of Australian deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

A Canadian blogger, adds his comments on the far left influence in the new Australian government;

From Once Upon a Time in the West;

Special Minister of State John Faulkner, for example, leads the Socialist Left, a far-left faction in the ALP.

The Socialist Left is also represented in Rudd’s cabinet by Minister for Finance and Deregulation Lindsay Tanner; Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government Anthony Albanese; Minister for Immigration and Citizenship Christopher Evans; Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs Jenny Macklin (a self-avowed Marxist in her youth); and Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research Kim Carr ("Kim Il-Carr).

OUATITW also quotes the Communist Party USA's theoretical journal Political Affairs;

It is predicted that three-fourths of the ministers in the new Rudd Government in Australia will be trade unionists. Amazin!

This came from the fact that the single most unpopular part of the Howard government was its draconian Industrial Relations policies.

Also, a main focus will be focus on the educational programs that essentially destroyed the teaching profession in Australia. It seems like right wing government, like Howard's idol, Geo Bush, [NYC Mayor Bloomberg not a distant 3rd] focus on destroying the ability of young people to think for themselves. This area will be a top priority for Rudd and the teachers unions.

The ACT, Australian Council of Trade Unions, will have in the drivers seat in these early days of the Rudd government.

Stay tuned.

Cubans Favour NZ Over Australia-No Surprises There

Cuba's new ambassador to New Zealand praises the helpful Clark government and criticises ex Australian PM John Howard.


He hints that relations with Australia may improve under the new regime led by Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard.

From Monday's Dominion Post

Cuba's man in Wellington says the capital was chosen ahead of Canberra for an embassy because of the Castro regime's frustration with Australia's pro-American stance.

With Cubans today voting in an election that could lead to Fidel Castro resuming complete power from his brother Raul, ambassador Jose Luis Robaina Garcia has expressed confidence in Cuba's one-party rule, gratitude toward New Zealand, and uncertainty about future relations with Australia.

The embassy, established late last year, is the communist state's first in New Zealand.

Since arriving in Wellington, Mr Robaina Garcia has made a point of promoting ties between the two countries - at the expense of Australia, where memories of John Howard's pro-American "deputy sheriff" role remain fresh.

Attitudes to Australia may change with the Rudd-led government, but for the time being "that is the reality".

It is an expression the former journalist turned diplomat uses frequently as he outlines Cuba's rigid political place in the world. Cuba holds five-yearly elections today - but Mr Robaina Garcia denies they are mock elections or, given its one-party state, without purpose.

"We need to unite the people in one direction," he said. "If people don't support Cuba's political system they have many ways to express that ... It is a secret ballot."

Even though 60 per cent of Cuba's population was born after the revolution, Mr Robaina Garcia, whose last posting was Beijing, doubts the political system will change. "We don't have another way. With Fidel or without Fidel we will continue the Fidel road."

The US trade embargo was opposed by New Zealand, which has supported United Nations resolutions for the sanctions to end.

Even though the Foreign Affairs and Trade Ministry maintains that relations with the Caribbean country "have traditionally been correct but not warm", Mr Robaina Garcia expressed gratitude for New Zealand's support "in the blockade matter". New Zealand supplies 70 per cent of the milk Cubans drink.

His feelings for Australia's recent stance are less charitable. "Australia had the Howard government, and we are very unhappy with this pro-American deputy sheriff."

The change of government had created a "totally different" situation but he would not comment on whether it would lead to warmer diplomatic relations.

Hat Tip Crusader Rabbit

NZAID Funded Travel To Zapatista "Encuentro"-Questions Need To Be Asked

The Wellington based Latin American Solidarity Committee (LASC, or LAC)is a radical organisation with some interesting links including to the Cuban government and Mexico's Zapatista rebels.

Like much of the New Zealand far left, the LASC is partially taxpayer funded.

Some of this comes through the Council On International Development, an umbrella group of New Zealand "aid agencies", which extracts large amounts of money from government departments, including the Foreign Affairs Department's NZAID for redistribution among its comrades.

While CID emcompasses some legitimate organisations, many are radical controlled.

LASC is a member of CID and receives NZAID funding from them, some of which it uses for strange purposes.

From Latin American Solidarity Committee Minutes

Meeting Sunday 9th December 2007, 272 Ohiro Road, Wellington. 5pm

Richard Jeffries’ Travel Grant application successful, accepted money, travelled to Mexico, however fell out with companions and failed to attend the Encuentro, report back to LAC, or provide a report to CID. CID called him to a meeting, did not receive adequate response, reported to NZAID, who advised LAC not eligible for another grant for 5 years.

Paul considers this could be appealed. Discussion around whether we should seek return of funds from Richard, decided this is CIDs responsibility. Decided to draft a letter to advise other groups of RJ’s unreliability, to be sent to Richard with an invitation for him to respond to it to LAC in person, before possible posting. Action: JWP to draft letter.

JWP is Julie Webb-Pullman of LASC and the Wellington Zapatista Support Group. Webb Pullman attended another Zapatista Encuentro (Encounter) in December 2006.

The "Encuentro" referred to here is almost certainly the the Zapatista organised international event that took place in Chiapas Mexico in July and August 2007.

The minutes later refer to another LASC affiliate, Jenn Bell, attending the Zapatista Women's Encuentro in December 2007.

So it seems that that NZAID, via CID, via LASC is funding travel costs to Zapatista revolutionary gatherings in Mexico!

The head of NZAID's global group which funds overeas projects is a Mr Don Clarke.

From 1990 to 1994, Mr Clarke was executive director of CID.

Before that he was closely associated with and probably a senior member of the Worker's Communist League.

The WCL worked closely with LAC.

In 1987 Mr Clarke himself travelled to Nicaragua with a group containing several LAC members to pick coffee for the Sandinista revolutionaries.

Coincidentally another member of Mr Clarke's "brigade" was the allegedly errant Richard Jeffries mentioned above.

Don Clarke is in charge of distributing hundreds of millions of NZAID money throughout the third world.

Why is some of this money going to the LASC?

Why is some of it apparently paying for travel to Zapatista gatherings?

The Wellington Zapatista Support Group is part of LASC.

Three members of the Wellington ZSG have travelled to Zapatista events in recent months-Julie Webb-Pullman, Jenn Bell and her friend "Urewera 17" arrestee Tim/Ira Bailey.

Was any of their travel funded by the taxpayer through NZAID?

Would any brave journalist like to ask Mr Clarke some probing questions?

Paul Bruce-Red/Green Radical

Wellington Regional Councillor, Green Party official and friend of Cuba, Paul Bruce is one of New Zealand's most dedicated socialist activists.


Paul Bruce has worked for Latin American and environmental causes for over 30 years.

In 1975 he joined the eco-socialist Values Party in Wellington.

Bruce was also Wellington chairman of Guy Salmon's then militant, Beech Forest Action Committee and the involved in the then Maoist dominated "aid agency" CORSO.

Bruce's radicalism was deepened by several years working in Latin America.

According to Bruce's bio for the Wellington Human Rights Festival;

While working in La Paz as a climatologist in 1976 and 77 for the Bolivian Government, Paul lived in Los Barrios and teamed up with community groups and a team of Doctors and agricultural advisors. Paul returned for a further 6 months at intervals over the following 10 years living with miners in Siglo XX and visiting new miner settlements in the lowlands.

He researched the impact of the neo-liberal reforms of 1981 and human rights abuses, and interviewed officials connected with the US Drug Enforcement Agency interventions in Bolivia and connections to the contragate scandals involving the carriage of cocaine to the USA, publishing articles in the Listener and several daily newspapers.

In March 1980 Bruce was elected founding Chairman of the Wellington Nicaragua Solidarity Committee-later replaced by Nicky Hager of "Hollow Men" fame.

In the early '80s Bruce was a volunteer aid worker in Peru.

In 1982 he worked on documentation of pirate whaling operations in Chile for Greenpeace and the New Zealand Foreign Affairs Department.

By 1987 Bruce was on his third visit to Sandinista controlled Nicaragua.

In July 1987 Bruce spoke at the South Pacific Conference for Peace & Justice in Central America in Wellington on the Bolivian situation.

The conference was sponsored by the Socialist Unity Party, the Socialist Action League and the Workers Communist League.

In the early '90s Bruce was an official in the Island Bay branch of Jim Anderton's Alliance Party.

In 2001 Bruce was an NGO representative to the Marxist run World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

In 2003 Bruce was on the co-ordinating Group for the equally radical, anarchist/socialist Social Forum Aotearoa held in Porirua.

Bruce is a founding board member of radical "aid" group DEV ZONE. He has also been active in Oxfam, the United Nations Association and Peace Movement Aotearoa.

On the environmental front, Bruce has been involved in ECO (Environment and Conservation Organisations), Soil and Health, Appropriate Technology for Living Association (vice president), Cycle Aware Wellington, Brooklyn Community Association, Transport 2000, Action for Environment, Pacific institute for Resource Management and the Sustainable Energy Forum

In recent year's Bruce's environmental work has focused on "climate change" (he is lead forecaster at Meteorological Service of New Zealand)
and "peak oil".

From the "Peak Oil" website ASPO NZ;

Paul believes that the fundamental cause of the big global problems threatening us are, continued growth and over-consumption. The rate at which we in rich countries are using up resources is grossly unsustainable, and that the reductions required are so big, that huge and extremely radical change in systems and culture are necessary.

I wonder what kind of "radical change in systems and culture" Paul Bruce has in mind?

Matt McCarten Praises US Primary System-Loudon Agrees With Him

Not often I agree with Matt McCarten but he's dead right on this one.

Some excerpts from Indymedia

To most of us, election campaigns are very dull. Even under MMP, it's still essentially a choice between a Labour and a National government, with a few hangers-on from other parties...

Consequently our politics have become more presidential in style and political reporting is more about the personalities and character of our leaders rather than about policy. Both major parties are pro-business and support the status quo. Both main leaders are moderate, competent and don't frighten the horses.

But this dullness of politics has resulted in less than one voter in 400 bothering to join any of our political parties. Our main parties once claimed membership of over 100,000 each. The truth is that internal party life no longer exists in any meaningful way.

I've always had a jaundiced view of the US electoral system. It always seems that the blandest politicians backed with the most money win. But the presidential primary selections for the Republican and Democratic parties currently underway have changed my view...

The excitement is about what's happening with the Democrats. There is no doubt one of their three front runners will be president at the end of this year. Up to now, there was widespread expectation that Hillary Clinton would get her party's nomination for president. It's not a big deal for us or for many other countries to have a woman lead the nation, but it is a huge breakthrough for the US.

But what has rocked the establishment is African American Barack Obama, who worked as a community organiser in Chicago just three years ago, and could quite possibly win his party's nomination...

But just as extraordinary as a woman or a black man being the likely new president, there is the third main contender, John Edwards, who publicly declares that he will be the first trade union president...

Initially, it confounded me how this could happen. But, unlike New Zealand, where our leaders are appointed by a small cabal of MPs in secret behind closed doors, their leaders are elected in public and this empowers voters to have a direct say in choosing their party's candidate for elected office.

It's an extraordinary feat in participatory democracy. When Americans register to vote, they have the option of nominating a party preference. These people are then invited to vote in that party's selection of their candidates. Here in New Zealand we do the opposite. Party candidate selections are carried out by small numbers of party members. In fact half of our MPs who get elected into Parliament via their party list, don't even have to face a selection meeting. They get into Parliament on the say-so of a party committee of less than 20 people. You can see why we get so many MPs who are drongos and party hacks.

In the party selections for the next US president last week, New Hampshire - a state with a similar population to Auckland - more than 500,000 party supporters turned up to vote on their preference for their party's nomination. Pro rata, that makes their voting turnout for party selections bigger than our turnout in last year's local body elections.

Imagine if all our political parties had to elect their party leaders a year out for general election through a series of primary selections in all electorates. Then imagine anyone could be nominated and that these elections were open to all voters who identified themselves as a party supporter or voter.

Imagine the turnout at these meetings if Winston Peters had challenged Jim Bolger when they were last in government together. When Rogernomics was at its peak, you could have had Jim Anderton taking on David Lange or even had Roger Douglas coming in too. Even in this parliamentary term it would have been better to have had Don Brash, Bill English and John Key going to a mass public vote to lead the National Party, than the dirty wee coup the latter two had to carry out.

Open selections would be messy, but more honest and transparent.

Anti-Smacking Law Damaging Foster Care System

Another negative side effect of Labour's anti-smacking legislation.

From the New Zealand Herald

A South Auckland foster care group says a quarter of its foster parents have quit because of the "anti-smacking" law passed last year.

South Auckland Caregivers Association chairwoman Allysa Carberry said the repeal of section 59 of the Crimes Act, which allowed caregivers to use reasonable force to "correct" children, had made a chronic shortage worse.

"A quarter of our members have left because of section 59. I could rattle off about 10 in South Auckland. I know of many, many caregivers who have been longstanding caregivers but won't do caregiving any more. It's too dangerous.

"These kids are really hard. They just don't care who they hurt, and you need really special people to take them on. If you have a kid that is yelling and screaming at you, what are you supposed to do?"

Child, Youth and Family Services has faced mounting problems finding foster parents in recent years, as the number of children in care has grown by 18 per cent in the past five years to 5049, while the number of single-income families with one parent available at home for caregiving has shrunk.

New Zeal

As someone with a little knowledge of the fostering system, this rings true to me.

I know one couple, very experienced foster carers, who will no longer take on difficult cases, because of the discipline factor.

CYF has long had a no smacking policy, which I believe has discouraged many foster carers from taking on children, particularly troubled boys.

Legally forbidding smacking will only make the problem worse.

What does this mean in the long term?

More damaged kids condemned to a life in state institutions.

Fewer deprived children able to enjoy the benefits of a loving family environment.

That's caring socialism for you.

Ein Volk! Ein Reich! Ein Green Party!

A reader contributed these quotes from fascist numero uno, Adolf Hitler.

They illustrate my point that fascism is merely a form of socialism which substitutes state control of property for state ownership of property.

"I want everyone to keep the property he has acquired for himself according to the principle: benefit to the community precedes benefit to the individual. But the state should retain supervision and each property owner should consider himself appointed by the state. It is his duty not to use his property against the interests of others among his own people. This is the crucial matter. The Third Reich will always retain its right to control the owners of property."

Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (1931)

"Let them own land or factories as much as they please. The decisive factor is that the State, through the Party, is supreme over them regardless of whether they are owners or workers."

from a letter to Herman Rauschning, quoted in Why Does Socialism Continue to Appeal to Anyone?, by Robert Hessen

"Why need we trouble to socialise banks and factories? We socialize human beings."

from a letter to Herman Rauschning, quoted in Why Does Socialism Continue to Appeal to Anyone?, by Robert Hessen

The Green Party doesn't advocate state owneship of private property, but they certainly advocate state control.

Green Party support for the Electoral Finance Act, which doesn't confiscate wealth, but limits how it may be spent, is entirely consistent with fascist philosophy.

If Hitler were alive today would he join the Green Party?

Time to Probe Strobe?

A new book by US journalist Pete Earley claims Soviet intelligence has recruited high ranking agents in the US and Canada.

In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, the Cold War officially ended, and a new world order began. We thought everything had changed. But one thing never did: the spies. From 1995 until 2000, a man known as “Comrade J” directed all Russian spy action in New York and oversaw all covert operations against the U.S. and its allies.

He recruited spies, planted Russian agents, penetrated U.N. and U.S. security, and manipulated events that influenced American policy, under the direct leadership of Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin. He was a legend, the man who guarded Russia’s secrets – secrets that he never revealed.....until now. Based on exclusive interviews with Russian spymaster and double agent, Sergei Tretyakov, Comrade J exposes how the “new” Russia continues to spy and undermine the U.S.

One senior US official named by Tretyakov as a Russian intelligence "source" was former Time magazine editor and US deputy secretary of State under Bill Clinton, Strobe Talbott.


From Congressional Quarterly

Tretyakov says Russian intelligence considered Strobe Talbott, the Clinton administration’s top Moscow hand, such a valuable source of inside information, and so vulnerable to its manipulation, that it classified him as a SPECIAL UNOFFICIAL CONTACT.

“I want to underline that he was not a Russian spy,” Tretyakov says of Talbott, who was a Rhodes Scholar with future president Bill Clinton at Oxford and a highly respected Time magazine correspondent before turning to diplomacy. “In fact, I suspect he was the opposite — an ardent American patriot.”

But a Russian official under the control of the SVR, then-Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Georgi Mamedov, Tretyakov alleges, was able to get inside information from Talbott by massaging his considerable ego.

“He became a valuable intelligence source,” Tretyakov says.

Talbott had been under suspicion of inappropriate contacts with Russian intelligence before.

From American Spectator April 1998

The Clinton administration has consistently turned a blind eye to Russian misdeeds and found excuses for Russian boorishness - sort of like a den mother offering milk and cookies to the neighborhood bully no matter how many times he beats up on Johnny. The architect of our Cub scout policy toward Russia is a former Time magazine journalist who has admitted to a close personal and professional relationship to an alleged top KGB agent during the Cold War - Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott.

Allegations that Talbott had been used by the KGB during his journalistic career were briefly aired at his confirmation hearing on Feb. 8, 1994 by Senator Jesse Helms, who was then ranking minority member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. And despite Talbott's equivocal answers, they were just as quickly ignored. Except for a single AP wire story, and a subsequent report in the Wall Street Journal (and of course, the Washington Times), not a single mainstream media organization picked up on Helm's queries that Talbott owed his journalistic career at Time magazine to a suspected KGB agent of influence named Victor Louis.


Citing U.S. intelligence reports and statements by KGB defectors, Helms asserted that Louis was responsible for leaking the memoirs of former Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev to Talbott in 1969 and for assisting Talbott at critical moments later in his career with inside Kremlin information.

Strobe Talbott still has influence as head of Washington based "think tank", the left leaning Brookings Institution.

Perhaps its time to probe Strobe, before President Hillary Clinton appoints him head of the CIA or Secretary of Defence?

Alleged Russian Spy Visited New Zealand

In 1996 claimed Russian spy Tariq Rauf, visited New Zealand.


Allegededly recruited to the Russian cause in 1990, the purpose of Mr Rauf's visit to New Zealand is unknown.

The taxpayer/French government funded Peace and Disarmament Education Trust granted $705 towards the cost of the trip under its Visiting Speakers Programme.

Expenses were covered for Mr Tariq Rauf’s visit to New Zealand. He was the Director of the International Organisations and Non-Proliferation Project at the Centre for Non-Proliferation Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies.

PADET funds the "peace" movement, indicating that a peace group or groups may have sponsored Mr Rauf's trip.

Does anyone have any more information on Mr Rauf's visit to Godzone?

Top UN Arms Verification Official Named As Russian Spy

From Congressional Quarterly Jan 19

The top U.N. official responsible for monitoring the clandestine nuclear programs of Iran and Pakistan is a Russian spy, according to a new book on Moscow’s espionage operations in the United States and Canada.


Tariq Rauf, second from left

The official is identified only by his Russian code name, ARTHUR, but other sources identified him as Tariq Rauf, 54, a Pakistani-born Canadian who is chief of verification and security-policy coordination at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The job “puts him in direct contact with both inspectors and countries around the globe,” a Canadian online magazine reported last year. “Rauf is responsible for ensuring IAEA scientists get into countries such as Iran and negotiating the access they need to completely verify the use of nuclear material.”

The allegations appear in “Comrade J: The Untold Secrets of Russia’s Master Spy in America After the End of the Cold War” by former Washington Post reporter Pete Earley, author of two previous books on Russian spying in the United States.

The book amounts to a blistering memoir by Sergei Tretyakov, a former top Russian intelligence operative stationed in New York and Canada during the 1990s, first with the communist-era KGB and then its successor, the SVR.

Rauf called Tretyakov’s allegation “nonsense.”

He had “never” worked “for any intel types whatsoever. I am a impartial loyal international civil servant,” he said by e-mail from the IAEA’s headquarters in Vienna on Friday.

But in the first of two telephone conversations earlier in the day, Rauf was far less dismissive, declining an opportunity to flatly deny the allegations. He refused to say whether he knew or had ever met Tretyakov, who worked under diplomatic cover.

“Comrade J” describes several other alleged Russian spies in Canada only by code name, but in such rich detail that it’s not hard to figure out who they are.

Tretyakov’s description of ARTHUR all but names Rauf as his spy.

“When Sergei had recruited ARTHUR [in 1990],” Earley writes, “he worked at the Canadian Centre for Arms Control,” a think tank for experts on nuclear weapons.

Later, ARTHUR was “a project director at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, part of the Monterey Institute of International Studies, a California think tank,” he relates.

A few years later, when Tretyakov became deputy chief of Russian intelligence in New York, he renewed his relationship with ARTHUR, who had become “a U.N. senior verification expert,” who specialized in the clandestine weapons programs of “rogue states” such as Iran, Libya and his native Pakistan.

“I know that he is still employed at the agency and I have no reason to believe he has stopped working for Russian intelligence,” the one-time master spy says in the book.

“He hated America.”

Rauf’s résumé is identical to Tretyakov’s description of ARTHUR’S career. They are one and the same, according to multiple sources.

A former Russian diplomat and arms control specialist who knew Tretyakov well in New York, reviewed the description of ARTHUR and said it appeared to describe Rauf.

“The fingered Canadian guy, well, you know only too well who could theoretically fit this reference,” he said on condition of anonymity.

Another former Monterey arms expert, when asked whether Rauf might be the spy code-named ARTHUR, said, “Yes, the name you provided is correct.”

When contacted for this story, Rauf said a Canadian newspaper reporter had presented him with the same allegations days earlier.

He said he had not decided whether to contest the allegations in court.

Author Earley said he had examined Tretyakov’s records — photographs, e-mail, even a restaurant napkin on which ARTHUR scribbled notes about Ukrainian missiles — to back up every allegation.

“If they want to sue us, fine,” said Earley of all the Canadians that Tretyakov describes as spies. “We’ll just run Sergei up there with our stuff and see what happens.”

More On the Fascism is Leftism Debate

A very good explanation of the socialist origins of fascism.

The word "liberal" here is used in the US sense-denoting big government socialism, rather than the ACT Party sense, meaning small government classic liberalism.


From Accuracy In Media

Conservative commentator Jonah Goldberg is tired of being called a fascist. In his latest book, Liberal Fascism, he fights back against the term that those on the right are often saddled with, reminding readers that the original fascists leaned more toward the left.

Goldberg, the editor-at-large for National Review Online, argues in his book that fascism under Benito Mussolini and Nazism under Adolf Hitler came from the same intellectual source as Progressivism, the birth-mother of American liberalism.

The term “liberal fascism” comes from a speech made by author H. G. Wells when he told a group of Young Liberals at Oxford that Progressives must become “liberal fascists” and “enlightened Nazis.”

“I’m not saying today’s liberals are Hitler’s cousins,” Goldberg said at his first discussion of the book held at the Heritage Foundation. “They’re more like his grand-niece once removed.”

The author claims the point of the book is to give an accurate definition and history of fascism, a word which he asserts is commonly misused.

“Many modern liberals and leftists act as if they know exactly what fascism is. What’s more, they see it everywhere—except when they look in the mirror,” Goldberg’s book reads. “Indeed, the left wields the term like a cudgel to beat opponents from the square like seditious pamphleteers.”

The side of fascism he attributes to American liberalism is not that associated with the works of George Orwell or the racism and genocide of the Holocaust. It is much less brutal, “smiley-face fascism,” as he puts it. He asserts that liberals hold political principles which are similar to those found in many fascist regimes.

They have a desire to form a powerful state which coordinates a society where everybody belongs and everyone is taken care of; where there is faith in the perfectibility of people and the authority of experts; and where everything is political, including health and well-being. Apparently, the Nazis were strong promoters of organic foods and animal rights, fought against large department stores, and promoted antismoking and public health drives.

“The Nazi war on smoking would make Michael Bloomberg’s heart jump,” Goldberg jokingly said.

According to Goldberg, fascism has a long history in American politics, spanning back to Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Goldberg even finds fascist tendencies within the presidencies of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Bill Clinton as each tried to create an “all-caring, all-powerful, all-encompassing” state. His book traces more recent signs of fascist ideology in the economic ideas of Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Al Gore.

So how did fascism become associated with the political right? Goldberg claims this stems from the propaganda surrounding Marxism. In the 1920s, fascist ideas were popular among the American left as many saw Italian Fascism as a “worthwhile experiment.” The German version that emerged in the 1930s had considerably less appeal.

“The American left essentially picked a different team—the Red team,” Goldberg writes, “and as such swore fealty to communist talking points about fascism.”

At the same time, Joseph Stalin, the General Secretary of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union, found it beneficial to label all ideas which he did not agree with as fascist; this included socialists who were disloyal to Moscow and, of course, the political right. Those loyal to his social doctrine also began to see communism and fascism on opposite ends when, as Goldberg asserts, both are in fact socialist in nature.

Goldberg asserts that Liberal Fascism is different from fascism of the past because today’s left are pacifists rather than militarists; their plan is to nanny, not to bully. Still, he warns that this method can be just as politically hazardous.

“Simply because the nanny state wants to hug you doesn’t mean it’s not tyrannical when you don’t want to be hugged,” Goldberg concluded...”