In This Edition: Get A Conscience! - NZ's Best Response To Afghanistan Crisis - New Zealand's Stand On Terrorism - Who
Are The Real Terrorists? - Part II
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Get A Conscience!
Anyone who can publish the rhetoric you did about George [Bush] can have no conscience. To imply that it is our fault
for the attack on 9-11 is intolerable. Get off the Internet and find a cave with Osama!
Richard Engel
USA
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NZ's Best Response To Afghanistan Crisis
The Editor
Scoop
Dear Sir
Having been involved with peace issues for 20 years, I would like to see discussion on crises like the Afghanistan one
go beyond a Governmental reflex to do what powerful outside nations press it to do, versus protest that does not give it
much by way of alternatives it can offer. I hope you will help to get some fresh thinking going I this, and would like
to offer the following for publication in your "feedback" section.
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The conflict with Afghanistan is coming closer to home now that the Taliban has put Australia on its target list for
retaliation because its armed forces are being sent to assist the United States attack. New Zealand should be working
out a more constructive role rather than getting dragged with others into something that could get very big and
dangerous, without much sense of how to create peaceful solutions. As a conflict readily seen by millions of Islamic
adherents worldwide as one between a leading Western nation against their culture and religion, this has the potential
to lead to pervasive, on-going strife on a global scale.
New Zealand should take a lead at two levels. One, it should build up a liaison role between conflicting parties. We
have diplomatic representatives in Iran (also accredited from there to Pakistan), as well as in New Delhi, and of course
in Washington and the United Nations. These should be instructed to listen to the views of all concerned, and to look
for opportunities to press for dialogue going about peaceful solutions. All our diplomats should be specifically trained
in effective dialogue-promotion, ranging from quiet conversations through to more explicit mediation when the parties
are ready to accept this. It should be an explicit part of our diplomats' briefs to do this in relation to conflicts in
the earliest possible stages.
Secondly, I am shocked to discover how few here realise or take seriously that it is the United Nations year of the
Dialogue of Civilisations. There is an international institute for this in Iran, the country where the concept
originated. Our Government, academic specialists in Islam and South Asia, and the United Nations Association and other
relevant parties should be getting together to examine how to draw together people and resources in this country to
enhance understanding of the diverse cultures and religions of the world, both within New Zealand and beyond.
Yours sincerely,
John Gallagher
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New Zealand's Stand On Terrorism
Dear Editor,
The New Zealand government's move to enact new "anti-terrorist" laws gives cause to ask whether involvement in terrorist
activities is not already illegal in New Zealand, and if so, why additional legislation should be necessary.
The answer is that anyone who is a party to terrorism in New Zealand already commits an offence against the existing
Crimes Act. The new legislation is not needed to either punish or deter terrorists. It will have no effect upon
terrorist activity of any description. And, in fact, it is not intended to have any effect upon either global or
domestic terrorism.
New Zealand is nominally opposed to "terrorism", but its opposition has limits and conditions, which were clearly
revealed in the aftermath of the "Rainbow Warrior" affair. The New Zealand government's decision to free Alain Mafart
and Dominique Prieur, after they had been found guilty of carrying out the fatal bombing, was made in response to a
French threat, (which was tacitly supported by British and the United States governments), to obstruct New Zealand trade
if the two convicted killers were not repatriated to French territory.
Thus, for the New Zealand state, considerations of morality or sovereignty have never been permitted to prevail over
material interest. The former New Zealand Prime Minister Robert Muldoon once candidly observed that "New Zealand's
foreign policy is trade", and it is trade considerations which have led New Zealand not only to acquiesce in an act of
terrorism conducted on its own territory, but also to collaborate in a series of terrorist wars conducted by other
states.
New Zealand trained and financed the Indonesian state terrorists who ruled East Timor for the past quarter century; gave
diplomatic recognition to the ruthless Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia; maintained friendly ties with the apartheid
regime in South Africa; actively participated in crimes against humanity in the course of the Vietnam war; implicitly
supports Israel's attempts to expropriate and destroy the people of Palestine; and is now an accomplice in the terror
bombing of Afghanistan.
New Zealand has also, in the words of its Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr Phil Goff "fallen into line" with the "United
States, Britain, Canada, and Australia" by introducing so-called "anti-terrorist" legislation. But this legislation is
not intended to curtail the kinds of terrorist activity with which the New Zealand state is presently, and always has
been, associated, or the kind of terrorism which New Zealand has tacitly condoned in other states, such as the
long-standing United States and Israeli programmes of "targetted assassination" of political opponents.
The true intent is to restrict open political cooperation between the victims and opponents of the global rule of
western capital. Like the Emergency Regulations legislation enacted by a previous Labour government, the
"anti-terrorism" legislation is being put in place as an instrument for the subsequent systematic violation of the civil
rights of the New Zealand public.
The governments of the United States, Britain, and the British dominions (Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) want
"enduring freedom" to employ their military power in any part of the world, with or without invitation, and to ensure
the free movement of western capital into, and the free movement of profits out of, any nation on earth. This is the
only freedom which they are prepared to recognize. The freedom of people to live peacefully in their own country
according to their own faith, the freedom of people to return to their own homes, the freedom of dispossessed people to
find new homes in other lands, the freedom to of people to establish solidarity with and to direct charity towards
nations suffering under western domination - these are all freedoms which the New Zealand state and the western powers
are determined shall NOT endure.
At best, New Zealand is playing a pusillanimous role in this war, which is not a war against terrorism, but a war
against humanity. New Zealand has, as always in the past, put its own economic interests ahead of considerations of
justice and human decency.
This deplorable conduct is not an accident of history but is of the essence of the New Zealand state. For the person of
moral sensibility an appropriate response is the renunciation of New Zealand citizenship, and uncompromising defiance of
the intent of the so-called "anti-terrorist" legislation.
Geoff Fischer
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Who Are The Real Terrorists - Part II
(A response to…. Scoop Feedback: Who Are The Real Terrorists?)
Dear Editor,
Andrew McLellan's comments do not do him justice, and I am disappointed he has denigrated his response by allowing it to
become facile in nature.
While I totally agree with many of his points, it would have served him and his cause better had he confined himself to
the issues rather than letting his prejudices come to the fore.
I wonder if Andrew has read the recent report on the so-called Lebensborn (Source of Life) project allegedly carried out
in Norway during the Second World War.
Norway, supposedly the antithesis of what he sees New Zealand as being yet look what they were able to perpetrate.
A little more unemotional fact and less clap-trap next time please.
Mirek Marcanik
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