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- Israeli Spy Scandal Needs Further Investigation
-
Point
Seven Petition – Action On Aid Is Needed Now
. On 6 February Keith Locke said the Government must investigate the circumstances surrounding the expulsion of an Israeli diplomat from Australia.
“We need to know whether last year’s attempt by a Mossad agent to fraudulently obtain New Zealand passports was run out of Israel’s Embassy in Canberra,” said Keith.
“The expelled diplomat was cross-accredited to New Zealand and visited the two Mossad spies jailed here. It is bad enough that Mossad was infringing on New Zealand’s sovereignty and laws. It is even worse if the Israeli diplomatic post responsible for New Zealand was involved.”
Keith said there was prima facie evidence the Mossad operation against New Zealand was run out of Australia.
“One of the jailed spies, Eli Cara, was based near Sydney, running a dummy tourism agency. He crossed the Tasman 24 times. In addition, the third Mossad agent, Zev Barkan, who managed to escape New Zealand, had been an Israeli diplomat in Austria and Belgium.”
Keith said the New Zealand Government must not be caught up in an Australian government cover-up of the affair.
“As long as Israel’s diplomats to New Zealand are based in Australia, it is our business whether Mossad is operating out of the Canberra Embassy.
“Phil Goff’s talk about fighting terrorism will be hollow if he doesn’t try to get to the bottom of this, the only terrorist-linked activity in New Zealand since the Rainbow Warrior bombing.
“It is possible that the fraudulent New Zealand passports were going to be used for an Israeli terrorist assassination. Mossad used a false Canadian passport in an attempt to assassinate a Palestinian leader in Jordan in 1997.”
Read
Keith’s release
.
. In supporting the aid community’s petition for 0.7% aid The Greens called on the Government to increase its foreign aid budget by $60 million a year for the next ten years so New Zealand can fulfil its international obligations to the world’s poor.
The call came in response to the launch of a petition by
point
Seven, a campaign being organised by twenty New Zealand aid agencies to push for New Zealand’s overseas aid, as a percentage of Gross National Income, to be increased from 0.23 to 0.7.
The Greens Overseas Development Assistance Spokesperson, Keith Locke, said on 3 February “So far, all we’ve had from the government is fine words about 0.7% being a desirable target. What about some action?
“The Government must set a definite timetable for reaching the 0.7% benchmark. Adding an extra $60 million annually to our aid budget would increase our contribution by around 0.05% of GNI each time, getting us to 0.7% by 2015, as the Government has promised.”
In 2002 at the UN Millennium Summit, New Zealand agreed, along with 188 other countries, to implementing the 0.7% benchmark by 2015. However, Mr Locke said New Zealand’s aid budget had actually decreased as a percentage of GNI since Labour came to power in 1999.
Mr Locke said this miserliness was at odds with the public mood.
“The generosity of ordinary Kiwis to tsunami victims shows we do care about suffering in other countries. Why is our government still dragging the chain in increasing the overall aid budget?”
Read
Keith’s release
.
Action
-
Point
Seven Campaign and Petition - Protest Against Spies And Spy Bases, Wellington, Easter, Saturday March 26, Sunday 27
. For information on the campaign see the
Council for International Development
point
Seven Campaign page
. You can also download a PDF copy of their petition from there – or contact them or us if you would like hardcopies to be sent to you. The Council for International Development would like signed petition forms to be with them by 31 March 2005 – so get onto it.
The Anti-Bases Campaign (ABC) is organising something a little different after many years of protests at the Waihopai spybase, in Marlborough. It has decided to focus attention instead on Wellington. Why?
- because it is home to the headquarters of the NZ Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), New Zealand’s biggest and most secret spy agency. The GCSB operates the Waihopai and Tangimoana spybases on behalf of the foreign powers grouped together in the super-secret UKUSA Agreement (which shares global electronic and signals intelligence among the intelligence agencies of the US, UK, Canada, Australia and NZ).
- because Wellington is the diplomatic and political capital of New Zealand. It is in Wellington, not the Waihopai Valley or Blenheim, where control of New Zealands intelligence agencies and foreign policy resides. There is a whole “Secret Wellington” to be explored and exposed. It is a secret world ranging from the HQ of the Security Intelligence Service, NZ’s best known spy agency, to the embassies and high commissions of our Big Brothers, such as the US, UK and Australia.
-
because it is the closest main city to the “forgotten” Tangimoana spybase. Details about Tangimoana can be found on the
ABC Website
The programme for the weekend is as follows:
Saturday March 26
Seminar, St Johns Presbyterian Church, corner of Willis and Dixon Streets.
9:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Bus tour of ‘Secret Wellington’ – with expert guides
1:45 p.m – 5 p.m.
Sunday March 27
Trip to Tangimoana spybase.
10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
The weekend will cost $30 waged (or $15 unwaged). Registration includes a seat on the bus for both trips. For further details and an e-registration form ,a href=”mailto:
cafca
[at]
chch [dot] planet [dot] org [dot] nz
“>e-mail CAFCA.
please register Early.
Action
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Consistency In Human Rights, Peace And Aid
was the theme of Keith Locke’s contribution to the address in reply debate at the opening of the 2005 on 3 February.He said: ”The Prime Minister, in her first speech for the year, said that: “we have forged an independent foreign policy record we can be proud of. We continue to place disarmament, human rights, and engagement in peacemaking at the forefront of foreign policy.” The Green Party certainly supports such an approach, and there is much we can be proud of in that respect.
New Zealand continues to promote complete nuclear disarmament as part of the New Agenda coalition of countries, we have done good peacekeeping work in East Timor and the Solomons, and we are among the best countries in the promotion of international human rights.
The speech in full is available at:
Consistency in Human Rights, Peace and Aid
. - Terrorism Suppression Act Review
-
Curiously, on the same day that Parliament debated a Motion to get the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Select Committee to consider, amongst a few other things “whether any amendments to this Act… are necessary or desirable” Parliament also debated the
First Reading of a Terrorism Suppression Act Amendment Bill
. Below is Keith’s speech regarding that Bill:The Green Party is opposed to this bill. Of course we are opposed to people financing terrorist acts themselves – real terrorist acts, bombing, injuring, or murdering people. They are crimes, and the perpetrators of those crimes must be punished accordingly. But are terrorist crimes any different from similar crimes that are not committed with a political, ideological, or religious purpose in mind? Murder is murder, whether one murders someone in a bank raid or in a politically motivated terrorist act. It is still murder and should have the same penalty.
Our Crimes Act already punishes people if they finance criminal activities or conspire to commit such activities. The Terrorism Suppression Act also at present penalises financing of such activities, although it problematically introduces different penalties for supporting such crimes of violence than exists in the Crimes Act.
The full speech is available at:
Terrorism Suppression Act Amendment Bill
.
. On Thursday night Parliament debated a Motion required by the Terrorism Suppression Act for the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Select Committee to review that Act. Keith Locke gave the following speech is support of that Motion.
The review of the Terrorism Suppression Act is most welcome. The Greens support it because around the world anti-terrorism legislation has been subject to much criticism.
Such legislation was also discussed in a major report commissioned by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, and delivered to him on 2 December. This was called the High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change. The panel said it had received widespread feedback that, in its words:
“The current war on terrorism has in some instances corroded the very values that terrorists target-human rights and the rule of law.”
The full speech is available at:
Terrorism Suppression Act Review
.
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