It is hard to see how the NSA won’t retain broad powers to search the metadata, because the whole thrust of the agency has been to collect as much as possible for later searching by key words, etc. Only last week we discovered that the NSA has been collecting 200 million text messages a day from around the world.
It looks like Len Brown will be staying as Mayor of Auckland. This will be a defeat for the moral right, which has refused to separate the mayor’s private life from his political life.
Many people have criticised the wall of secrecy around negotiations for a Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement. They fear New Zealand’s negotiators will sign a deal which undermines our sovereignty and has a big social and economic downside.
We should not forget that until quite recently Mandela himself was designated as a terrorist by the United States, and had to get a special exemption from the State Department to visit Washington in 2008.
December 1st is a special day for West Papuans because on that day, back in 1961, the Morning Star flag was raised for the first time. The then Dutch colonists were sympathetic, because they had put West Papua on the road to independence. However the hopes for a free West Papua were dashed after Indonesia troops invaded the country.
Australia may think that, as America’s “deputy sheriff” in our region, it has a free hand to spy on anyone, and doesn’t need to apologise when caught. But as America has found out already, from both Germany and Brazil, spying on the leaders of friendly countries is not risk free.
Is life with John Key getting you down? Are you losing faith in New Zealanders’ ability to change things? Then I have an inspirational book for you. “Peace, Power and Politics: How New Zealand Became Nuclear Free” by Maire Leadbeater. Just out from Otago University Press.
GCSB Director Ian Fletcher has let me know, in a letter dated 31 October, that I was “not amongst the 88 [illegally spied on by the GCSB] and that the GCSB has not conducted surveillance of you.”