Author and Investigative Journalist
The latest ‘debate’ about defence consists of the usual moans about the military being dangerously underfunded and ill-equipped…. but this says more about the feeble standard of debate than any reality concerning our military forces….
A recent story in Britain’s Observer newspaper revealed that US intelligence agencies have been spying intensely on UN Security Council members as the US worked to secure backing for the war in Iraq. You might imagine that New Zealand would disapprove of these high level dirty tricks…
CONSIDER the achievements of the Afghanistan war in terms of “fighting terrorism”… Overall, future terrorist attacks on the US and its allies appear to be more, not less, likely as a result of this war. It is not hard to see why.
THE war in Afghanistan was fought by intelligence analysts sitting at computers and special force commandos roving in mountains and lowlands…. (This feature was the first expose of New Zealand military activities in Afghanistan and surrounding countries in 2001-2003, activities which until then had mostly remained secret.)
New Zealanders are being softened up to accept this country taking part in perhaps the most outrageous United States-led war since Vietnam….
Now that three years of Labour Government have passed, it is becoming clear what we can expect during the next three or six years of this government….
Frantic Government damage control followed the release last week of my book Seeds of Distrust. We were told the book was completely untrue and that I was a conspiracy theorist taking part in a Green Party dirty trick.
The conflict between Helen Clark and officials over the future shape of the defence forces has heated up again….
A $2.3 billion defence spending plan is stalled before cabinet after ministers rejected a bid by defence officials for a high tech military upgrade of surveillance aircraft….
As soon as the Labour-Alliance Government offered soldiers for the orwellian-sounding “War on Terrorism”, declaring “total support for the approach taken by the United States”, it began drawing New Zealand into the hidden agendas not only of the Afghanistan War, but also of what are, in effect, the early days of a renewed cold war.