Monday 28 May 2007

Protecting yourself from vandalism is good

A company endures sabotage, disruption and destruction of property and projects by a small group of goths and vandals.

The company pays a young numb nut to infiltrate the organisation and report on when protests and disruption were planned.

Who's in the right here? The vandals? Or those trying to protect themselves from destruction and disruption?

The Greens' Russel Norman is exactly wrong to be denouncing Solid Energy (the company) for infiltrating a spy into the Save Happy Valley environmental protest group (the vandals). Not just wrong, but downright hypocritical because as Trevor Loudon points out, Russel himself was weaned by Australia's Trotskyite DSP and its former incarnation the Socialist Workers Party, both "notorious in Australia for their relentless infiltration and manipulation of other organisations."

Read Trevor's lowdown on the tactics of the Trotskyites and Russel's involvement "for several years ... in an organisation that practised manipulation of other organisations as a matter of course": Is Russel Norman being hypocritical over "infiltration" allegation.

UPDATE 1: A surveillance state? Libertarianz spokesman Greg Balle makes the perfectly sensible point that this incident illustrates a key reason why State Owned Enterprises such as Solid Energy should all be privatised. Says Greg:
While Solid Energy remains an arm of the state, activities such as surveillance of citizens takes on a very sinister element, particularly as they have the might of the sate at their disposal to protect them against legal challenges to such dubious behaviour.

If the SOE's were private corporations they would not have the protection of Nanny State's skirts to hide behind and would be subject to the rigours of the free market of industrial espionage and information, as such they would be open to court action like any other private corportation. A Libertarianz government would privatise all SOE's, like Solid Energy, and return proceeds from the privatisation to taxpayers. Eliminating the rogue arms of the corpro-state indulging in spying, intimidation and monopolistic behaviour, would be a welcome benefit from the sale of these enterprises.
Makes perfect sense to me.

UPDATE 2: Trevor Loudon provides another instructive link indicating that The Greens' have more than just an emotional connection to this issue. Young Frances Mountier, who you've probably seen on your TV news leading the rabble opposing Solid Energy, is a graduate of Sue Bradford's Kotare School project (which has been mentioned here before). Explains Trevor:
The Kotare School is openly modelled on the Communist Party USA linked Highlander School in Tennessee, famous for training martin Luther King, Rosa Parks and many other prominent "civil rights" activists.

Kotare's Green Party trustees include MP Sue Bradford (Deputy Chair), Karen Davis (Treasurer) and Sue Berman. Gordon Jackman another trustee is the partner of Green party activist, Catherine Delahunty, who tutors at the school.

Several Kotare personnel, including Sue Bradford and Quentin Jukes have Workers Communist league backgrounds. The school teaches "social activism" based on the teachings of Brazilian Marxist, Paolo Friere. It has trained many prominent youth activists, including John Darroch from Auckland Radical Youth and Wellington Palestine Group activist Tali Williams.

According to Kotare's Spring 2006 newsletter

Kotare has a Youth Advisory group of people under 25 who have volunteered to give us feedback on how we are working generally and also specifically with younger people. We are meeting with them on November 11 and 12 to discuss our work. The advisory group members are Tali Williams from Wellington, Frances Mountier from Christchurch, John Darroch from South Auckland and Tui Armstrong from Whangarei. These young people have all participated in Kotare activities since the age of 15 and have active networks and great ideas!

So Frances Mountier has trained at a Green Party linked Marxist training school since the age of 15!

The phrase "brainwashed" comes to mind.

The real story here is that Solid Energy is fighting not just a bunch of irresponsible young protestors. It is also battling the Green Party, including several of its leaders and strategies learnt in Sue Bradford's Marxist training school.

One can hardly blame them for fighting back with a little bit of espionage.
No, one couldn't. I'd suggest that the Save Happy Valley Coalition are less interested in saving snails than they are in saving and promoting Marxism.

7 comments:

Matt Burgess said...

What could Norman's defence be: his causes justify such tactics, and anything's fair when you're up against the big boys.

I hope the media picks up this hypocrisy and presses Norman for answers.

Congratulations to the CEO of Solid Energy for saying he does not regret this. Nor should he. His responsibility is to his shareholders. It can't be any other way. If he was responsible to the public, his job description changes to "offend nobody", and given the public includes these green idiots not much would get done. The Solid Energy CEO may have already saved lives by obtaining forewarning of these idiots' activities. That is what makes this "spying" ethical.

Anonymous said...

Exactly what I thought when I heard the story.

These groups disrupt company operations and have the potential to cause problems.

Getting information on what they're up to is intelligent situational awareness.

Big bloody deal...

Matt Burgess said...

While Solid Energy remains an arm of the state, activities such as surveillance of citizens takes on a very sinister element, particularly as they have the might of the sate at their disposal to protect them against legal challenges to such dubious behaviour.

This is an argument that says state enterprises will be too likely to spy on the citizenry.

But it could go the other way: SOEs might be inefficiently reluctant to spy when the cost of being caught is effectively paid twice, once by the SOE and again by the government. The Solid Energy spying seems to me to be an example of a very sensible and practical case of protecting life and reputation - all hell would have broken loose had somebody been hurt. And, afterall, they were only collecting information, which is fundamentally different to undermining the organisation.

Still an argument against government ownership but I suspect public ownership may lead to not enough of this sort of activity.

Matt Burgess said...

By the way, the "spy" was on the cover of The Press today. He explained that he sent back some false information to Solid Energy.

Talk about putting your foot in it. He was only lying to a radical faction at first. Now he's really soiled his reputation by lying to his employer as well.

Good luck getting a job.

The perfect example of why you need a PR guy at a time like this.

Anonymous said...

I was amused that said spy confirmed on NR this morning that he paid tax on his earnings. Really?
He also stated that they paid him in cash. Did they take withholding tax from that? How did they account for the earnings?

Matt Burgess said...

This issue has really got me going with all its ironies.

Here's another one. Nicky Hager, of The Hollow Men fame, wrote the Sunday Star Times article that exposed this.

How ironic it is that he should expose Solid Energy's espionage when he himself used stolen emails from National to write his book.

This has outraged the Left but it has own goal written all over it. I really hope the media points out the hypocrisy of Norman or Hager.

As already noted elsewhere, "let he who is without sin..."

Peter Cresswell said...

Ironies everywhere, for sure.

Yet another is that (according to the recent Herald poll) Green supporters are likely to be drawn from the unemployed.

Which means that our taxes are paying both for the state-owned company, and for most of the snail-savers.