Keith Locke speaks without removing feet

Keith Locke weighs in on the GCSB file (Thanks Chefen) and manages to out-do John Minto.

“Surely spying on Europe and Japan is not in the interests of the Clark Government’s foreign policy,” Mr Locke says.

Only two european countries were spied upon - France and East Germany. There were legitimate reasons for us to be interested in what the French were saying: Nuclear Bomb Testing in the Pacific, the Rainbow Warrior Affair and unrest in New Caledonia. If Keith does not believe it was in our interests to spy on the French in 1986 then he should tell his fellow Greens. As for spying on East Germany, seeing that Keith only saw good tidings in the fall of Afghanistan to the Soviet Union and the fall of Cambodia to the Khmer Rouge, we shouldn't be so surprised that he reflexively considers the Regime that gave us the Berlin Wall to have been a Good Thing. As for Japan, he eleborates:

"Is New Zealand intercepting Japanese communications with their whaling fleet?"

And this would be wrong because? Or doesn't Keith consider the preservation of innocent Minke whales to be a cause worth spying for? Or perhaps he considers the Minke to have the same scant value as human lives under regimes that he once shared an ideological bent with? In any case, the intercepted communications were diplomatic which precludes whaling fleets.

To put the issue in another way; in 1999, we were monitoring the communications of the Indonesian Military to find out what they were planning to do with East Timor after the referendum. This was crucial for our troops that were planning to deploy there and even more crucial for the people of East Timor because if we didn't know what General Wiranto & Co. planned to do then there was a good chance that we might have stayed away and left East Timor under Indonesian rule. If Keith does not believe that this was a good reason for spying then he should let his sister know.

And lastly:

"We don't believe it to be in New Zealand's national interest to be part of US operations to spy on countries like France and Japan. It undermines the generally friendly relations we have with them."

So the French were being friendly when they tested nuclear weapons in the Pacific? Were they being friendly when they sank the Rainbow Warrior in our harbour? If that was "generally friendly relations" then I hate to see Keith Locke's idea of low-level hostilities.