Bruce Cotterill: Bondi terror, soft policing and why NZ needs a new security plan

This week’s column was half-drafted when it happened. I had intended a positive summary of the events of the year. After all, it was the first year in a while in which we made some political and economic progress.

But then Sunday night happened.

My kids both live in Australia. Bondi to be exact. And as we all know, someone else’s war just came to our part of the world.

Dave Patterson: Hezbollah and Iran Narco-Terrorists on US Back Porch

Dangerous Middle East networks thrive in Central and South America.

If you thought that Hezbollah was just Israel’s problem, think again. Iran’s proxy and Iran are well established in America’s southern neighbor countries, and, without intervention by the United States, they are there to stay. A tropical islet in northeast Venezuela called Margarita Island – also known as Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s “Terror Island” – is a safe haven for Hezbollah and Iranian operatives. They move freely, participating in narco-terrorism, human trafficking, money laundering, terrorist training, and arms trafficking.

Laurie Wastell: US Launches Airstrikes on Islamic State in Nigeria to Protect “Innocent Christians”

The Trump administration has launched airstrikes on Islamic State in north-west Nigeria in coordination with Nigerian authorities, killing multiple militants. While Nigeria insists the strikes had “nothing to do with a particular religion”, President Trump railed against “Isis terrorist scum… who have been targeting… innocent Christians”. The Times has the story.

Professor Jerry Coyne: U.S. charges six Hamas leaders with terrorism and conspiracy.....

U.S. charges six Hamas leaders with terrorism and conspiracy, and a Gazan peace plan that people won’t like

As the Washington Post and other sources report, the U.S. has charged six Hamas officials with criminal counts of terrorism connected with the October 7 attack on Israel:

Point of Order: We are assured we have been made safer against terrorists.....

.....but the Greens found grounds to grumble about the new law

The Government has further strengthened and clarified counter-terrorism laws, particularly around high-risk individuals, to make our communities safer, Justice Minister Kiri Allan said in a press statement after the Counter-Terrorism Acts (Designations and Control Orders) Amendment Bill 2023 passed its third reading in Parliament “with strong support across the House”.

But the Greens did not support the bill and Allan’s press statement is somewhat vague in explaining how the laws have been strengthened and clarified.

Point of Order: We know what the PM thinks of David Seymour.....

.....but how does he stack up alongside Vladimir Putin?

Ukraine loomed large in the latest announcements and the one speech posted on the Beehive website in the past 224 hours.

The speech came from the PM, telling us what she said in her address to Ukraine’s President Zelensky on the occasion of his addressing the New Zealand’s Parliament.

Heather du Plessis-Allan: Time to take an Australian approach to immigration

 

I think it’s becoming apparent to a lot of us that we need to stop being so soft and instead start taking a more Australian approach to immigration. 

Some say, this terrorist shouldn’t have been here.  He could have been booted out ages ago. 

Never mind the conversation about amending laws and what law he was charged under and whether he got the maximum sentence for his crime - actually none of that matters. Because he could’ve been deported. 

What happened is that the authorities tried to kick him out by revoking his refugee status. That predictably got tied up in an appeal and then paused for his criminal case and two years later he committed a knife attack. 

Barry Soper: Scott Morrison seems determined to turn NZ into a penal colony

 

If you've ever wondered whether the commonly held belief that Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison was responsible for the slogan 100% Pure New Zealand, then forget it.

ScoMo did work for Tourism New Zealand in the late 90s when the slogan was conceived and has claimed credit for it but those of us who were around at the time knew it came from those whose job it was dream up slogans of that sort,  M&C Saatchi.

ScoMo was brought to Wellington by the former dark ops Tourism Minister Murray McCully but ended his contract a year early after a whispering campaign with his political boss got rid of the three top men at the organisation.

Ron Smith: Postscript on Paris

What follows are comments on some of the issues raised in my 15 November posting (‘There is a war on’), which dealt with the ISIS attack on Paris.

Last Tuesday (17 November), there was a soccer match in Istanbul between Turkey and Greece.  Just before the kick-off an official call was made for a moment of silence for the victims of the terrorist attack in Paris, on the previous Friday.  It was greeted by whistling and shouts of ‘Allahu Akbar’ (‘God is great’).  They were celebrating!

Ron Smith: Losers

For some while now it has been evident that President Obama is reluctant to talk about ‘terrorism’ and, still less, about ‘Islamic terrorism’, or ‘Jihad’, or ‘the war on terror’, or all those other things that are so offensive to the political correct.  It is now becoming clear that this ideologically-driven denial is extracting a price.  Apart from the absurdity of continuing to refer to the Fort Hood shooting as ‘work-place violence’, it is now emerging that the various agencies responsible for home security have seriously dropped the ball in regard to the Boston bombing.

Ron Smith: Cinema and the secret world

I am not intending to expand into the arcane realm of the film critic but I am recommending, for those who have not yet seen them, two recent films that deal with the clandestine world of secret warfare.  The first of these is Argo, which was a great success at the Oscars, a few days ago, and the second is Zero Dark Thirty, which deeply offended the sensibilities of the politically correct, and rapidly disappeared from critical view.  Both of these were made with the officially approved cooperation of the relevant intelligence agencies.  Indeed, Zero Dark Thirty (ZDT) was intended to be part of the Barak Obama re-election campaign, depicting him as a fearless fighter against terrorism, until that project tripped over in Benghazi in September.  This was when al Qaeda turned out to be very much alive and well-capable of killing an American ambassador in his consulate.

Ron Smith: Terrorist rules

A commentator on my previous posting (of 19 November) explicitly makes the argument anticipated but dismissed there, that weaker parties in these irregular wars will tend to see themselves as not bound by humanitarian law.  He says: “Having and obeying the rules of warfare tends to be something that only the strong can do. Without supporting one side or the other it is obvious that Hamas or the PLO is not militarily able to take on the IDF in the open.  To do so would be suicidal.  Were I a freedom fighter (which in their eyes they are) I’d use the means I had available and stuff the rules.” (emphasis added).

It is easy to understand the sentiment that lies behind this kind of observation, and the commentator is right to observe that Hamas cannot take on the Israeli Defence Forces in conventional conflict, with any prospect of success.  But it is a long way from this observation to justifying killing arbitrary Israeli citizens (not members of the military forces), which is the dominant Hamas tactic.  This, as noted earlier, is simply terrorism and has been universally condemned (in United Nations resolutions, international conventions and humanitarian law) and it doesn’t matter whose ‘eyes’ we are using.

Ron Smith: A kind of terrorism

I am looking at the picture on the front page of the ‘World’ section of this week’s Weekend Herald.  It shows the vapour trails of missiles departing in the direction of Israel.  Around the picture and on the following page, there is extensive reporting of the human consequences.  You fire on your adversary from amongst the buildings of your own down-town (Gaza City, in this case) and then you protest when your adversary fires back.  What sort of nonsense is this?  And the media dutifully reports on it: “Innocents pay cruel price in conflict!”

If the people of Gaza are really concerned about this loss of innocent life, they should be protesting that their militia is firing from the cover of a civilian area, and thus exposing their civilian population to harm, when the inevitable retaliation occurs.  As a matter of fact, using civilian cover for military operations in this way, is explicitly forbidden by humanitarian law.  Both Geneva Convention No IV and the Statute of the International Criminal Court refer to utilising ‘the presence of protected persons (civilians), to render certain points, areas or military forces immune from military operations’.

Ron Smith: Iran in 2012

I’ve written about the Iranian nuclear weapon programme before. (In these columns, 6 and 19 September 2009, 6 April 2010, and 1 September 2010.). In some ways the situation has not changed from the first of these. Iran still does not appear to have deployable nuclear capability. On the other hand, its programme is continuing, despite escalating sanctions and the political difficulties those are causing. This is clear from recent reports from the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has referred to continuing enrichment activities (to which the IAEA has not been given access), and experimentation with weapon design and technology. Also continuing, are strong statements about the threat and ‘unacceptability’ of all this, from regional neighbours (especially Israel) and various of the European powers and the USA. So what are the prospects for 2012?