·WAIHOPAI WORKS FOR 1%

People from all around New Zealand will be converging on the super-secret Waihopai satellite interception spybase, in Marlborough, on Saturday January 26th.

We will be at the Waihopai spy base main gate at Waihopai Valley Road from 11 a.m. There will be speakers; information will be provided on the function of the base; and there will be a peaceful protest, calling for its closure.

The main guest speaker will be Greens’ Co-Leader, Marama Davidson MP.

The protest will make the point that Waihopai works for Donald Trump, which makes this country complicit in his volatile and downright unhinged behaviour. He is all over the place like the old proverbial. Trump would be a joke if he didn’t have control of the world’s biggest spying apparatus, biggest military and biggest nuclear arsenal.

This “transformative” Goverment has continued NZ’s membership of the Five Eyes spy alliance, which is the reason for Waihopai’s existence. Within the past few months, we have witnessed the Government falling in behind the US and Five Eyes, as the US agrressively confronts China and Chinese companies to reassert its military, political and economic dominance of the world. This despite Jacinda having said: “New Zealand has, and always has had, an independent foreign policy”. The evidence shows 100% the opposite and nowhere more glaringly than at Waihopai. The fact is that NZ is the most loyal, albeit junior, satellite of the US Empire.

Not only does the NZ Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), which operates Waihopai, systematically spy on New Zealanders – but it also routinely spies on any number of other countries, on behalf of the US National Security Agency (NSA). And the NSA spies on everyone – ultimately it is spying on behalf of Donald Trump. It is essential that more pressure is put on the Government to end the anti-democratic and destructive activities of this NZ spy agency. For more than 30 years Waihopai has been NZ’s most significant contribution to Washington’s global effort to manipulate world business and diplomacy. And for more than 30 years the Anti-Bases Campaign has protested at Waihopai, calling for its closure.

Waihopai does not operate in the national interest of New Zealand. In all but name it is a foreign spy base on NZ soil, paid for with hundreds of millions of our tax dollars; it spies on Kiwis and foreigners; it is NZ’s key contribution to America’s global spying & war machine. Waihopai must be closed.

Murray Horton,
Secretary/Organiser

Anti-Bases Campaign
Box 2258, Christchurch 8140, New Zealand
abc@chch.planet.org.nz
http://www.converge.org.nz/abc
http://www.facebook.com/AotearoaABC