Students enter Hunter building

Up-close: Victoria University security hitting and pushing, hitting camera. Kassie Hartendorp, Workers Party branch organiser for Wellington on megaphone.

Students against debt

Vic and barricade/occupation in Auckland – TV3

Victoria University security again

For information on the day of action protests visit click here.

Over 300 students gathered today to protest ongoing cuts and redundancies at Victoria University this afternoon.

More than one hundred students marched to deliver a letter outlining their concerns to Vice Chancellor Pat Walsh. At that point University security guards blocked access to the students, whose sole intention was to deliver their letter to Walsh or a representative. Security staff proceeded to push students down stairs and punched several in the head.

“I was just trying to slip the letter under Pat’s door; security came up and started trying to push us down stairs. There were people behind us; people could have got hurt if security had actually succeeded. Because of that, they started punching me in the head. I guess they’re not fans of non-violent protests…” Says student Sam Oldham.

A number of current and former students spoke beforehand including a recent PhD graduate, as well as a number of staff. Speakers highlighted issues of course and staff cuts as well as incompetent and short-sighted management running the university into the ground. It was put forward that senior management at VUW have cultivated a culture of fear and intimidation over more than half a decade, with staff fearful of speaking for fear of repercussions.

“I am disgusted that this culture of intimidation at VUW has extended to management condoning and supporting security staff violently attacking students. If we can’t be critical of uni policies and changes, how are meant to act as the critic and conscience of society?” Says postgraduate student Amanda Thomas.

Hundreds of outlines of students were drawn in chalk to represent the death of quality tertiary education. The sheer amount of chalking stopped security from immediately washing out any slogans they disliked, something that had been going on in the preceding two weeks. Security have claimed that chalking is “banned” at VUW.

Students are organising more actions to stop VUW management further damaging the institution. “I’m disappointed in the university, it is supposed to be a critical and creative space, but when we actually use those rights, we’re literally pushed down stairs,” says student Octavia Palmer.

Marae Investigates on dropped charges for Operation 8 defendants. Mana Party candidate, and lawyer for the defence, Annette Sykes challenges Maori Party MP Te Ururoa Flavell on the failure to act against the Crown: “You work with iwi leaders, you don’t work with the people.”

 Mana calls for all remaining charges to be dropped. More of Sykes’ take on iwi corporatism here.

On October 15th, 2007, the Armed Defenders Squad arrested 18 anarchists and Tūhoe, shutting Ruatoki down at gunpoint. On the 8th of November, the Crown dropped the terrorism charges used to justify their arrests. On Tuesday the 6th of September this year, the Crown announced its decision to drop the charges for 13 of the accused, leaving 4 facing “organised crime” charges.

In the last four years, the economic and emotional cost on the defendants has been devastating. While some cast this train-wreck as sheer incompetence, Chris Trotter even demanding sympathy for their legal failure, the Crown and the police clearly intended to shut down dissent. None who support Maori self-determination, or the right to resist oppression in general, can stay quiet about this abuse.

On Monday the 12th of September at 8:30am, 13 of the 17 defendants will be discharged from the Auckland High Court. Supporters are organising a solidarity demo in support of the remaining four. Drop the charges!

Solidarity demo on Facebook
“Operation 8” documentary

 Joel Cosgrove, Workers Party, Wellington

Anyone who reads the book will know more about New Zealand military and what it did in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Gulf than any politician in parliament  – Nicky Hager.

With his latest book Nicky Hager has blown away the tightly controlled political and military cover for New Zealand’s involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq. The book itself was published on Thursday and once it has been read and analysed The Spark will publish a wider analysis drawn from Hager’s explosive scoop.

With his previous books ‘Secret Power’, ‘Secrets and Lies’, ‘Seeds of Distrust’, ‘The Hollow Men’ and now ‘Other People’s Wars’ Hager has cemented his place as one of the most important journalists New Zealand has ever produced.

The following is a summary of the key points that Hager makes in his book:

•       One of the major themes running throughout the book is the control the military have exerted over the media through public relations methods. Leaked documents show the strategies hatched by the military leadership to keep key events and information from parliament, the media, and the public.

•       Right from New Zealand’s first involvement in Afghanistan, confidential critical reports have circulated amongst the defence force concerning the lack of strategy regarding New Zealand involvement in imperialist wars, as well as tactical deficiencies with regard to the New Zealand deployments.

•       Primarily New Zealand’s involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq has been motivated by diplomatic, defence, and trade concerns.

•       New Zealand’s involvement in the wars has been driven and led by defence staff, with a strong focus on rebuilding what is in effect the ANZUS alliance in all but name.

•       Officials and military staff developed a close and tight reign on any negative information coming out of the warzones, they resorted to misleading or outright lying to get a good story.

•       New Zealand troops have regularly engaged in combat activity or combat support. This activity was not confined to the SAS.

•       New Zealand Navy frigates and Air Force Orions’ were actively involved in supporting the US/UK invasion of Iraq.

•       New Zealand’s ‘reconstruction’ efforts in Bamiyan province were at best a fig-leaf and at worst an outright sham. Reconstruction projects were started afresh every 6 months and then left on the wayside with the end of each deployment. The successes hyped up in New Zealand were extremely over-exaggerated or downright lies.

•       There were undeclared US intelligence officers in the Kiwi base at Bamiyan who would often debrief New Zealand soldiers directly. New Zealand media were aware of their presence but as a whole, did not report on it, due to the perceived ‘irrelevance’ of raising it.

•       Hager has described this as the biggest leak in New Zealand history.

The response to this at Hager’s press conference and afterwards by the media and senior politicians has been illustrative. Guyon Espiner (TVONE political editor) stated that he was not surprised that U.S. intelligence officers were present in the New Zealand Provincial Reconstruction Team base and that he even ate meals with them and was briefed, pledging to keep information secret. He then proceeded to ask Hager if he had gone to Afghanistan, which Hager has not. However Hager’s 1300+ footnotes representing five years of research and interviews has far more authenticity and accuracy when measured against the public relations-parachute-reporting that has characterised the majority of the New Zealand media’s reporting of Afghanistan to date.

Vernon Small in a recent Dominion opinion piece was surprisingly frank when he said that: “In fact, I, and other reporters before me, were introduced to US intelligence and communications staff at Bamiyan and at other Kiwi bases and ate and chatted with them. The stars and stripes flies alongside the New Zealand flag at Bamiyan to advertise the US contingent.”

John Key’s response has been to roll his eyes, rubbish the work on the grounds of its authorship by Hager and state blankly that although he has not read the work, there is no evidence to back up Hager’s claims. This has been an almost carbon copy to his dismissal of Jon Stephenson who is the only other major New Zealand journalist writing independently and critically about New Zealand’s involvement in Afghanistan. The only major difference between Key’s treatment of either journalist is the malice and personal attacks poured on Stephenson.

Phil Goff’s response has not been much better. Refusing to call for an inquiry and describing the book as ‘spurious’, again without reading it. The general response so far from media has been to focus almost entirely on the revelation of the presence of U.S. intelligence officials in the Bamiyan camp, normalising and downplaying the fact by revealing a general knowledge of their presence, justifying it through the nonchalant shrugging of their shoulders at the apparent lack of need to report this to the general public.

Jerry Mateparae, the recent head of the Defence Force, who officially took up the role Governor General on the day of the book’s release, has denied or been unable to recall any of the issues raised in the book. Simon Wilson writing in the Metro (before the publication of the book) wrote, “Mateparae is a former head of the SAS, the Army and the NZDF, and has therefore been responsible, in one capacity or another, for the troops in the field and for advising the government on their activities, for the entire period of the Afghan war.”

Hager being interviewed on TV3's Firstline after the publication of Other People's Wars

This is an aspect that Hager has talked about. Either senior parliamentarians in both the Labour and National governments lied, or they chose not to know about what was going, or both. The denials by both military and parliamentary figures have been clear to say they did not know about CIA bases. Not that there were not bases, or that they were staffed by intelligence figures, just a very specific, very vague wave-off, that relies on Hager not being able to provide documentation that directly links any of these senior figures to the issues raised. Key himself has been clear to talk about the lack of a “smoking gun” in relation to Hager’s claims.

One of the leaks is a confidential 2010 Defence Force report which said the projects overseen by the Provincial Reconstruction Team  “…do not appear to be sustainable in any way”. This is a key aspect behind the change in presentation of New Zealand’s support for imperialist interventions. We are ‘peacekeepers’ who are ‘rebuilding’ in occupied lands, from Bosnia, to East Timor and now Afghanistan and Iraq. The language of intervention, invasion, and occupation has changed and been softened to hide away the realities of New Zealand’s support of American invasions which have killed hundreds of thousands of lives over the past decade. Hager’s meticulous documentation deals a striking blow to this notion. New Zealand’s involvement in Afghanistan is about closer ties to the U.S., it is not about ‘hearts and minds’ or provincial reconstruction, it is about providing intelligence and support for the US bombing and indiscriminate attacks on the Afghan people. When they say that the SAS are ‘mentoring’ Afghan troops it is now clear – even though it was obvious before – that it means being at the front of any attacks or operations, not unlike U.S. ‘observers’ in the Vietnam war.

Fran O’Sullivan, in The New Zealand Herald, wrote that there exists “…a culture of secrecy which means New Zealand journalists can obtain clearer information from military websites overseas than is made readily available at home” and said “… much of the official information which the Labour government chose to publish was hopelessly outdated.”

This is the other important aspect of the story which Hager hasn’t engaged on to the same extent. Namely the co-option of the media (as if they weren’t already coopted to begin with). Every journalist who has spoken of their trips to Afghanistan since the publication of Hager’s book has done so as a defence of the establishment and as an attack on Hager’s credibility. None of them thought that the presence of U.S. intelligence officials camped within the New Zealand base was at all at odds with the ‘peacekeeping’, ‘reconstruction’ public face of the mission. The reality is that the media are no longer reporting on the military but instead reporting for the military.
In part the reason for this is that as mainstream journalists, they are reliant on the government and dominant political parties for stories, gossip, and scoops. If they break this system of patronage, then they lose their place in the food-chain.

While various governments have not been able to cow either Stephenson or Hager, both journalists stand as a testament to the ostracisation involved when actually holding power to account. The role of people like Richard Long, who moved from Evening Post editorship to being chief of staff to then National Party leader Don Brash as well as the tight links between media, business and the political sphere shown by the fallout from the News of the World scandal in England makes this symbiotic relationship clear.

Since 2001, the Workers Party and its forerunner organisations have joined in the calls and the marches against the war and New Zealand’s involvement, and on occasions the Workers Party has played key organisational and/or political roles in that movement. Clearly Hagar has outlined how the political parties and senior military figures have learnt and developed their public relations strategies and tactics. We need to learn from this in order to counteract government propaganda and whatever other public relations approaches they attempt next.

Links:

Stephen Price is a media lawyer and advisor to Hager, who has written from his perspective on the book and the issues raised.
http://www.medialawjournal.co.nz/?p=498

Selwyn Manning (Scoop Editor) in an interview on the matter on 95BfM as well as an outline of the book/issues itself
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1109/S00006/manning-hagers-new-book-new-gov-general-controversies.htm

Audrey Young provides an outline of the story so far from her perspective
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/audrey-young/news/article.cfm?a_id=164&objectid=10748912

Nicky Hager’s press release announcing the publication and release of the book.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1109/S00013/release-of-nicky-hagers-new-book-other-peoples-wars.htm

Journalist Keith Ng focuses on the role in the media, as well as an interesting discussion within the comments section.
http://publicaddress.net/onpoint/other-peoples-wars/

A confrontational interview with Nicky Hager on TV3
http://www.scoop.co.nz/multimedia/tv/national/55767.html

An outline of the press conference and an audio recording of the Q&A after Hager outlined the general issues raised.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1109/S00007/images-audio-nicky-hagers-new-book-other-peoples-wars.htm

Dominion Post Political Editor Vernon Small plays down Hager’s claims and distracts from the core issues raised.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/5551660/Little-kept-from-media-eyes-at-base

Zetetic on the Standard focuses on the drivers behind the media herd mentality.
http://thestandard.org.nz/need-to-know/

Summary of the varied responses to Hager’s book
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1109/S00010/rnz-audio-reaction-to-new-nicky-hager-book.htm

Gordon Campbell opines on the book and the controversy surrounding it, as well as a video of the press conference.
http://gordoncampbell.scoop.co.nz/2011/09/02/gordon-campbell-on-nicky-hager%E2%80%99s-new-book/