Defence Chief Tim Keating and the Prime Minister exhibit the “colonial” reflex in completely ignoring the villagers as a source of information. Bill English looked at a few American videos of the battle and considered that to be enough to reject any inquiry. Keating didn’t consider evidence from the locals as relevant enough to mention.
It’s still unclear whether the United States will accept an invitation to send a warship to the New Zealand Navy’s 75th birthday celebration next November.
Submitted by Keith Locke on 13 August 2015 to the official review being conducted by Sir Michael Cullen and Dame Patsy Reddy
In this submission I will address the following...
According a recent Herald-Digipoll 28% of New Zealanders don’t have confidence in our intelligence services. It will be good if their concerns are elaborated in submissions to the government’s intelligence and security review, scheduled to begin next month and run through until February.
New Zealanders should ask themselves: do they want our GCSB providing vital intelligence information to torturers and murderers? Because this is exactly what the GCSB has been doing.
Air strikes don’t make us as sick the stomach as the ISIS beheadings. Following an air strike we never see the blood-splattered bodies on the ground or hear the anguished groans of the injured. Most of the casualties of these air strikes are inevitably civilians,
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.
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.”