NZ: The Final Atlas Network Puzzle Piece Has Arrived

Written By: - Date published: 6:41 pm, January 16th, 2025 - 3 comments
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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 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: Police officers arrest Just Stop Oil activists near Earl’s Court in London. Photo: Anadolu Agency/Anadolu/Getty Images

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.

Repost from Mountain Tui Substack; Thanks to Dr Bex for raising this topic today.

3 comments on “NZ: The Final Atlas Network Puzzle Piece Has Arrived ”

  1. mickysavage 1
    16 January 2025 at 8:00 pm

    Good post MT.

    Protests over here have become more respectful and more law abiding recently. The need to escalate this is absurd. Unless the intent is to divide and divert from what they are trying to achieve which is essentially further pillaging and raping of the environment.

    Reply
  2. SPC 2
    16 January 2025 at 8:16 pm

    At one level, the language is designed to enable investigative surveillance (identify foreign agency).

    On the other the most real threat is to criminalise whistleblowing (as if this is acting for some offshore Assange) that impacts on our reputation (such as leaking Crown Law documents in the 1990's).

    There has to be a public interest defence.

    How it impacts on public interest journalism would be hard to spot (the MSM barely covered the bill, so do not seem to care).

    One would hope they will not move on foreign/international organisational (environment/conservation) movements that have branches here. But they could become the prime target of this current corporate regime.

    The reality of it will be in whether they prosecute, or it is on the statutes books like the old blasphemy law/sedition laws to scarecrow – enable covert surveillance and harrassment without court time – a form of PWO methodology.

    Reply
  3. Tom Hunter 3
    16 January 2025 at 8:51 pm

    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.

    True. Which is one of the reasons I so despise the Tories.

    But you let your argument down when you fail to point out that the same attitude and related laws from them have led to people being arrested by cops, and jailed far too often, because they said mean things about Muslims and immigrants on Instagram, Facebook and such.

    I can only assume that you didn't mention those because you're ok with people goring the others ox?

    Countering Foreign Interference?

    Sounds an awful lot like "Russian Collusion" and I and other RWNJ's have been hammered about that for eight years now, with bugger all support from the Left about the "Deep State" which was such a feature of the 1970's left.

    The gallery said there was only “minor damage to the frame” and the painting was unharmed.

    Would they have protested differently if it would have been possible to damage the Van Gogh? What price the Earth and the future of humanity?

    Perhaps that philosophical attitude is the real worry?

    Reply

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