Radio National Interview on "Spying, Lying and Democracy" (Monday, September 2, 2013)

Radio National Nights interview on the topic: 'Spying, Lying and Democracy' was very frustrating. You can listen to it at: http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player/2567865 

My own performance in the interview was the pits. Not only did I fail to make the basic point that spying and lying about spying have always gone together, but I only got through around a third of the material. I've also made these points on Facebook which means that they can be easily accessed by the NSA directly via Prism (enabling direct access to Facebook’s US based servers) but not, according to New Zealand Prime Minister John Key in his Campbell Live interview on 14th August, by the GCSB (Government Communications Security Bureau) or SIS (Security Intelligence Service). Yeah, right...

This interview can be viewed at: http://www.3news.co.nz/John-Key-defends-the-GCSB-bill/tabid/817/articleID/309018/Default.aspx


This interview is best considered in conjunction with a reading of the following articles from The Guardian website at: http://www.theguardian.com/world/the-nsa-files

Three key points I didn't get to make (if you'll excuse the pun). First, Key repeatedly stated that the GCSB only had requests from the SIS to provide information on 88 individuals during the last decade, that is 9 per year. But even if this is true it does not mean that the GCSB is only collecting data on nine New Zealanders a year. It would hardly need to employ 300 people and have a budget of $63 million (in 2012/13) if its surveillance activities were that narrow. 

Second, towards the end of the interview Key said that the GCSB had told him that to listen to every phone call and read every text message today, the GCSB would need to employ 130,000 people (only 30,000 people more than the NSA actually does employ by the way), and have a budget of $6.6 billion. This may well be true but the whole point of Snowden's revelations are precisely that they don't have to if they can use a search engine (like XKeyscore) to identify and access the material that is of interest to them and then focus on that.

Alternatively, if they are engaging in information sharing with the NSA then they could request and/or have information provided to them on a relatively small number of individuals in New Zealand. But this does not mean that the NSA is not monitoring the Internet activities of hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders. In fact, it most likely is doing precisely this. And as well as infringing upon our right to privacy in a big way, it also strikes me that this constitutes a fairly major encroachment on New Zealand's 'national security', something that the SIS and GCSB are meant to be defending.

Third, Key stated on several occasions that it is 'factually totally incorrect' to claim that the GCSB is engaged in wholesale spying. But these statements would only be try if one is prepared to accept what many would consider to be an unacceptably narrow definition of spying, that is, as only occurring in cases involving the detailed investigation of particular individuals. But what Snowden's revelations make clear is that the NSA and other allied intelligence agencies are not just spying in this narrow sense but much more worryingly engaging in historically unprecedented mass surveillance. It is this mass surveillance that enables these agencies to identify and focus on the vastly smaller number of individuals that their search engines flag as of interest to them.

The upshot is that Key’s performance in the Campbell Live interview was truly impressive as an example of political spin. Without directly lying about anything, he made a series of statements that encouraged the public to draw inferences that are false. For example:

• The SIS only request information on a small number of individuals per year (may be true), therefore the GCSB is not engaged in the surveillance of the electronic activity of a large number of New Zealanders (almost certainly false).

• The GCSB does not have the personnel and funding to listen to everyone’s phone calls and read all their text messages (certainly true), therefore it is not engaged in the wholesale surveillance (either directly itself or else through information sharing with the NSA) of the electronic activity of a large number of New Zealanders (almost certainly false).

Centre-Left Makes Major Gains in Latest Polls

The passage of extremely unpopular GCSB Bill make turn out to mark a turning point in the popularity of the Key-Led National Government, with the most recent polls showing a major surge in support for the Greens. 

http://tvnz.co.nz/politics-news/centre-left-gains-in-latest-poll-greens-surge-5526222

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/political-polls/news/article.cfm?c_id=1502763&objectid=11111563

Majority Clearly Oppose GCSB Bill

Even the Key led National Government, which has made a fine art out of political spin, is struggling to spin its way through the passage of the extremely unpopular domestic spying GCSB bill. 
NZ current affairs show- Campbell live - conducted a poll. "Here's the results – 11 percent of you supported the GCSB bill. That was 5879 votes. And 89 percent of you opposed it. That was 46,790."
http://www.3news.co.nz/Campbell-Live-GCSB-roadie-poll-end/tabid/817/articleID/309661/Default.aspx 

Democracy’s Past, Present and Future: Identifying the Historical Antecedents of Socialist Participatory Democracy

I delivered this paper at the 15th Conference of the Association for Heterodox Economics conference held at the Centre for Socio-Economic Research (Cf SER)
London Metropolitan University.Email me if you want a copy of the paper- brian.roper@otago.ac.nz.

Abstract

The present crisis of global capitalism and liberal representative democracy underlines the importance and necessity of investigating democracy’s past as part of the struggle for a more democratic future. Yet most contemporary liberal political theorists proceed on the assumption that the only viable model of democracy to have emerged thus far in history is liberal representative democracy. Indeed, the term ‘democracy’ is generally used as if it applies exclusively to liberal representative democracy since no other previous or possible form of government can be legitimately described as democratic. In my book – The History of Democracy – I demonstrate at length that this assumption is highly disputable on historical grounds and that the history of democracy is more complex, varied and inspiring than liberal depictions of democracy suggest, with Athenian, liberal and socialist forms of democracy being worthy of recognition and consideration. Specifically, in this paper I focus on the historical antecedents of socialist participatory democracy arguing that these antecedents can be identified in Athenian democracy, liberal representative democracy, and the tragically curtailed revolutionary experiments with socialist participatory democracy. The central argument is that socialist democracy, if it is built in the future through a process of collective societal transformation, will be built on the historical foundations of what has come before. This is the one limited line of defence of the feasibility of socialist participatory democracy that will be explored in this paper. There are many potential objections and counter-arguments ranging from the standard Austrian school critique of central planning to the critical rejection of the classical Marxist conception of a radically democratic workers’ state by deliberative democrats and autonomist Marxists that in order to keep the discussion within manageable limits cannot be considered here.

 

The contents are as follows.

Introduction

1)  The Collapse of Stalinism and the Turn Towards Liberalism in Contemporary Left Political Theory

2)    The Social Dimension and Central Institutional Features of Athenian Democracy

3)    Liberal Representative Democracy: Democratic Principles and Civil Liberties

4)    The Historical Mission of Capitalism and Representative Democracy

5)   Socialist Participatory Democracy: Building on the Achievements of the Past to Make the Future

Conclusion

"The History of Democracy" A talk at the Bookmarks Bookshop, London

I spoke about my book to a small gathering at the world's best socialist bookshop- Bookmarks- in London on Thursday, July 4th. People raised some really interesting questions and made some thought provoking comments. Even sold a few copies of the book!
Big thanks to Jon and Andrea for making it possible and to David for helping with advertising.

Democracy Against Capitalism

I’ll be speaking on this topic in Toronto Monday June 24th, 7:00pm at:

Beit Zatoun

612 Markham Street

Toronto

Co-sponsored by the Centre for Social Justice and New Socialist Group

Socialism 13

Socialism 13 is a large conference held in Chicago from June 27-30 that brings socialists and activists together from across the United States and internationally from Canada, Central and Latin Amercia, the United Kingdom, Greece, and Australia, New Zealand and many other countries.

I'll be speaking, along with Mike Corwin from Austin Texas, on Marxism and Democracy.

The conference website is here: http://www.socialismconference.org/about-s13/

The organisers introduce the conference as follows:
"Millions of people have come to the understanding that capitalism is no longer working. From extreme weather caused by climate change and the relentless drive to slash workers’ living standards to the epidemic of police brutality, the signs of a society in crisis are all around us. The question isn’t whether society has run amok; the question is what to do about it.
The Socialism 2013 conference will bring together hundreds of activists from across the U.S., and around the world, to tackle the many discussions and debates that confront anyone interested in changing the world. How can women’s liberation and LGBT equality be won? What will it take to win real justice for immigrant workers? Can organized labor make a comeback? What lessons can be learned from the revolutions shaking the Middle East? Why is Marxism relevant today?
Featured speakers include teachers on the front lines of the fight to defend public education, anti-racist fighters against police brutality and the New Jim Crow, trade unionists, Marxist authors, radical historians, and much more. Start making your plans to attend."