Managing Policy Fade.
A conversation with Lew and Selwyn Manning prompted this rumination. It is not meant as a comprehensive organizational analysis but instead as food for thought, using the case of the UN and Fiji after...
View ArticleSome questions about the ambush.
It may seem insensitive to ask questions about the ambush that killed two and wounded six NZDF troops in Bamiyan, but I do not trust the government or NZDF brass to come clean on what really happened....
View ArticleBeefing up in order to leave.
In the wake of the most recent NZDF deaths in Bamiyan Province, the Prime Minister has decided to accelerate the timetable for withdrawal of NZDF from the Bamiyan Provincial Reconstruction Team to...
View ArticleMedia Link: The GCSB and the Dotcom case
I was interviewed by the RNZ Nine to Noon program on the subject of the GCSB involvement in the Kim Dotcom case. Nicky Hagar followed me. Although it now has been confirmed that the Police misled the...
View ArticleOn the need for intelligence accountability and oversight reform.
One thing has become clear after the revelations of multiple New Zealand intelligence agency failures, malfeasance and incompetence over the past few years. That is what happens when there is no...
View ArticleMedia Link: More on Huawei and the GCSB.
It must be the season for espionage scandals and potential threats. The NZ media has taken an interest so I get to play talking head.
View ArticleDrones in our future.
Although I have no technical expertise in the field of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), I have discussed in various fora the military, intelligence, domestic security and political implications of...
View ArticleBlog Link: Australian-Indian Strategic Cooperation in the 21st Century.
Australia and India are emerging great powers that are the core of the Indo-Pacific strategic architecture, yet they do not have as strong bilateral ties as history, culture, politics, common threats...
View ArticleFamiliarity becomes Contempt.
Johns Key’s answers to the “mystery” of the US Air Force executive jet parked at Wellington during Hobbit mania gives us a good indication of his attitude towards the public and the press. Although the...
View ArticleChanneling Wayne LaPierre on the subject of US school massacres.
Once again, the namby pamby pinko liberals have gone ballistic about a school shooting. The closet Muslim atheist commie gay-loving half-breed president cried crocodile tears about the deaths of some...
View ArticleBlog Link: Issue Linkage in foreign policy.
Media coverage of trade negotiations in the Asia-Pacific have largely overlooked the strategic perspectives underpinning different countries’ approaches to the subject. In this analytic brief I outline...
View ArticleWith stereotypes, timing is everything.
Richard Prosser’s xenophobic and bigoted remarks about Muslims (which are not racist, since he was targeting a religion, not an ethnic or racial group) has rightfully met with wide-spread opprobrium....
View ArticleMedia Link: More GCSB weirdness.
I was interviewed on Radio NZ about the controversy surrounding the appointment of Ian Fletcher as GCSB director. I had to leave out a number of important points like the need for objectivity and...
View ArticleDeconstructing the US Terrorism Meta-narrative.
Broadly speaking, the way in which terrorists have been depicted in the US has some interesting, contrasting themes. White native-born (male) individuals who commit acts of politically-motivated lethal...
View ArticleTrust in spies.
A recent TVNZ Colmar Brunton poll showed that 32 percent of those surveyed had little or no trust in New Zealand’s intelligence agencies, 32 percent had much or complete trust in those agencies, and 33...
View ArticleCRIB 19
Phil Goff is in the spotlight for supposedly leaking the results of a suppressed NZDF inquiry into the suicide of a soldier in Bamiyan Province, Afghanistan, on April 3, 2012. From what I can tell,...
View ArticleDisappointing.
Although I always knew that “hope and change” was a rhetorical chimera rather than a realizable objective, and understand full well that the US presidency is a strait jacket on the ambitions of those...
View ArticleImproving intelligence oversight.
Now that the Kitteridge and Neazor reports have been tabled, discussion can more fully proceed to the issue of intelligence oversight. The government has proposed bolstering resources for the Inspector...
View ArticleThe differences between hate crime and terrorism.
Coverage of the murder of a British soldier in London and a subsequent stabbing of a French soldier in Paris by presumably Muslim extremists demonstrates how governments and some media outlets misuse...
View ArticleWithdrawal from Echelon: a realistic watershed moment in intelligence reform...
In light of the attention brought to matters of intelligence collection and analysis in recent months, it is entirely reasonable for the Greens and Labour to demand a fill inquiry into the...
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