NZ: The Final Atlas Network Puzzle Piece Has Arrived
Slipped in under the cover of night (and the holiday period)
The final Atlas Network playbook puzzle piece is here, and it slipped in to Aotearoa New Zealand with little fan fare or attention. The implications are stark.
Today, writes Dr Bex, the submission for the Crimes (Countering Foreign Interference) Amendment Bill closes: 11:59pm January 16, 2025.
As usual, the language of the bill is opaque and positively crafted.
Ostensibly, it’s to protect NZ interests, but independent journalist Mick Hall reported on it on his Substack and Consortium News last month. He noted experts say:
The legislation [is] effectively the reintroduction of old sedition laws inherited from the British colonial state. Those laws were used against communists, trade unions and indigenous communities.
I’m not going to belabour it - it’s late. Probably too late.
Everyone is tired from submissions and no-one expects so much to counter from its own government.
The government is successfully “flooding the zone with shit” - of the opaque variety - and outside of independent media and Substack writers, including Dr Bex and Mick Hall, our media and writers didn’t have the time and resources, or simple vested interest, in highlighting the bill & implications of it.
On the Regulatory Standards Bill, Jane Kelsey, emeritus law professor at the University of Auckland and Melanie Nelson worked to help us understand over a year’s worth of writing.
Auckland based lawyer and former Clark Government minister, Matt Robson, did try to highlight the risks of the Crimes (Countering Foreign Interference) Amendment Bill:
.. the danger of being convicted even in the absence of intent to commit any offence will leave academics, politicians, journalists and others second-guessing their words and actions and the propriety of whom they are talking with
And, Hall’s article notes:
Chairperson for the NZ Council for Civil Liberties, Thomas Beagle, told In Context he also had concerns that legitimate political activism could fall under the scope.
Want to see what these things look like in practice?
In the UK, after 14 years of Tory conservative rule and Atlas Network “junk lobbying” and politicians, it’s become one of the most strident anti-climate and anti-environment protest jurisdictions in the Western world.
England arrests climate activists at three times the global average rate.
This year, 5 environmental activists were jailed for four years each.
Their crime?
Peacefully blocking a motorway in 2022.
Two more environmental protesters were jailed in 2022 for terms of two years and 20 months respectively.
Their crime?
Throwing tomato soup at a Vincent Van Gogh art piece in London. The gallery said there was only "minor damage to the frame" and the painting was unharmed.
Artists, art workers and historians had begged the judge for clemency to no avail.
Think about this:
This has implications for the seabed mining protestors, the local activists in Northland who are trying to stop sandmining, academics and unionists, peaceful activists who write or act. Intention doesn’t have to be proven - only inteference.
For a year, I’ve thought to myself, the only missing piece of the Atlas Network playbook is criminalizing peaceful and environmental protests.
That day is here.
And it’s not a great one.
Just done my submission. It really does seem that the powers of government are up for sale to corporations and rich pricks - we can fight a rear guard action again each of these Bills but we know that they will not listen, so bring on the change of government and/or a revolution!
OMG!! The totalitarian society is here. Putin and his like have taught Atlas Network and their lackies, this appalling government well!