ABC Updates
4 June 2020
1/ Warbirds Over Wanaka 2020 Cancelled, So No USAF B-52 Bomber Visit
-
Coronavirus hasn’t been all bad news; there
have been some unforeseen good consequences. One of the multitudes of
New Zealand events forced to cancel by it was the April 2020 War Birds
Over Wanaka air show. Anti-Bases Campaign (ABC) had been alarmed to
learn that the "star" of the show was scheduled to be a US Air Force
B-52 Stratofortress bomber, making its first ever appearance in New
Zealand. Here is ABC's February 2020 press release when the visit was
first announced:
http://www.converge.org.nz/abc/press_release_files/press-release-2020-02-29.html
2/ RIMPAC 2020 War Exercise
- Despite the coronavirus
pandemic sweeping all before it, with giant global events such as the
Olympics falling victim, the US military and its satellites –
including New Zealand – are determined to press on with business as
usual. Every two years there is the US-led Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC)
military exercise, the world’s largest. As originally planned
for June 2020, it was going to be held in Hawaii, involving more than
26,000 troops from 25 countries, including more than 300 from NZ. This
would have been a perfect transmission vehicle for the virus to be
spread far and wide. Preparations for this were proceeding at the same
time as 2,700 sailors were being evacuated from a US aircraft carrier
infected with the virus. Even the world’s mightiest military is no
match for it.
The latest news from Cancel
RIMPAC Aotearoa is that it has been postponed to August 2020 and will
only be conducted at sea. But the exercise has not been
cancelled and New Zealand has not withdrawn. Maire Leadbeater, veteran
peace activist and ABC member, wrote to Defence Minister Ron Mark
urging NZ to withdraw.
Mark was having none of that
and a replied with a nonsensical assertion that such exercises allow
the “New Zealand Defence Force (to play) an integral part in
supporting that rules-based international order, for the benefit of
all people” (letter, 7/5/20). The activities of the US military can be
described as many things but “rules-based international order” is
definitely not one of them and definitely not under this President.
Mark went on to detail the role of the NZ military in the fight
against the virus in NZ, and its role in regional disaster relief.
That is all well and good but it is not what countries have militaries
for – which is to fight wars and dish out murderous violence as
directed by the State.
The same thing was seen in
the aftermath of the 2011 killer quake in Christchurch, which led to
the longest peacetime deployment by the Army in NZ history. You
can bet when those soldiers joined up it wasn’t with the intention of
guarding a fence around the ruins of central Christchurch for a couple
of years. In terms of responding to local, national or regional
disasters (be they quakes, cyclones or viruses) the same results could
be achieved better by a properly resourced civil defence agency and/or
a coastguard. You don’t need State-sanctioned killers.
3/ GCSB Given $220m In 2020
Budget
-
The NZ Government Communications Security Bureau (which runs the Waihopai
spy base) has existed since the late 1970s and Waihopai since the late
80s. In that time many, many hundreds of millions of dollars of
taxpayers’ money have been spent on the GCSB spies and its Waihopai
spy base. The most recent Budget (2020) alone allocated more than $220
million to the GCSB, a $50m increase on the previous year (no official
figure has ever been published about the cost of running Waihopai,
either for any individual year or in total).
4/ New Zealand's Military
Spending
“Shamefully, in 2020 New Zealand is ranked at number 13 in the Stockholm
International Peace Research Insitute (SIPRI) table ranking the
highest increases in military spending around the world. The SIPRI
figures, which are based on self-reporting by the Government, put the
2019 increase at 19%. However, the Government figures do not include
military spending across all three of the Budget Votes where it is
mostly itemised: Vote Defence, Vote Defence Force and Vote Education”.
“The increase in military
spending in the 2019 Budget - the first ‘Wellbeing Budget’ - when
compared with the allocation in the 2018 Budget was 24.73% (‘Wellbeing
Budget: Shocking rise in NZ military spending’, Peace Movement
Aotearoa, 29 May 2019,
https://www.facebook.com/notes/peace-movement-aotearoa/wellbeing-budget-shocking-rise-in-nz-military-spending/2230103127037044)”.
“The allocation for military
spending in 2019’s ‘Wellbeing Budget’ increased to a record total of
$5,058,286,000 (NZ) - an average of $97,274,730 (NZ) every week. By
way of contrast, more than 20% of children here are estimated to live
in a family with an income below the poverty line, and an estimated
one in one hundred New Zealanders are homeless”.
“Even before the COVID-19
pandemic, essential public services including health, education,
support for persons with disabilities and housing desperately needed
increased spending, yet the Government continues to prioritise
military spending - in addition to the increase in 2019’s Budget, in
June 2019 the Government announced that it would spend $(NZ)20 billion
over the next decade on increased combat capability, frigates and
military aircraft…”
2020: Still Funding Outdated Military Concepts
Peace Movement Aotearoa
updated this by analysing the 2020 Budget (“Welfare Or Warfare?
Military Spending In Budget 2020”): “Military spending in the 2020
‘Rebuilding Together’ Budget is a total of $4,621,354,000 - that is an
average of more than $88.8 million every week… While this is a small
decrease when compared with the record amount of military spending
allocated in Budget 2019, it does not go far enough. This year’s
allocation shows that despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the Government
still has the same old thinking about ‘security’ - a focus on outdated
narrow military security concepts rather than real security that meets
the needs of all New Zealanders”.
“Rather than continuing to
focus on outdated narrow military security concepts, we urgently need
to transition from maintaining combat-ready armed forces to civilian
agencies that meet the wider security needs of all New Zealanders and
our Pacific neighbours. Given New Zealand’s comparatively limited
resources, the desperate need for substantially increased social
funding domestically, as well as the urgent need for climate justice
in the Pacific and globally, it simply makes no sense to continue to
spend billions on military equipment and activities”.
“Fisheries and resource
protection, border control, and maritime search and rescue could be
better done by a civilian coastguard with inshore and offshore
capabilities, equipped with a range of vehicles, vessels and aircraft
that are suitable for our coastline, Antarctica and the Pacific, which
- along with equipping civilian agencies for land-based search and
rescue, and for humanitarian assistance here and overseas - would be a
much cheaper option as none of these would require expensive military
hardware”.
“If there is any lesson to be learnt from the
current pandemic, surely it is that new thinking about how best to
meet our real security needs is essential. Instead of relying on an
ideology that focuses on outdated narrow military security concepts,
New Zealand could - and should - lead the way. Instead of continuing
down the path of spending $20 billion plus (in addition to the annual
military budget) over the next decade for increased combat capability,
including new military aircraft and warships, this is an opportune
time to choose a new and better way forward”.
“A transition from combat-ready armed forces to
civilian agencies, along with increased funding for diplomacy, would
ensure New Zealand could make a far more positive contribution to
wellbeing and real security for all New Zealanders, and at the
regional and global levels, than it can by continuing to maintain and
re-arm small but costly armed forces”.
5/ New Inspector-General Of Intelligence and Security Apppointed -
https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/new-inspector-general-intelligence-and-security-appointed-0
6/ New Zealand’s Role In US Middle East Military Base
A recent edition of
Air Force News revealed that a senior NZ Defence Force (NZDF)
officer served a six month posting at the
Al-Udeid airbase base in Qatar, placing New
Zealanders at the heart of the main targeting and bombing centre of
that region, according to researcher Darius Shahtahmasebi
(Global Research, 4/2/20).
Shahtahmasebinotes
that although
the NZ government has declared the end of NZDF deployments in
Iraq, nothing has been said about the future of NZDF staff deployment
to a US military base at the centre of a large proportion of US
bombing missions in the Middle East. Operations of the base are
implicated in large numbers of civilian casualties. The Global
Research article says a recent issue of Air Force News
revealed that a senior air force officer, Group Captain Shaun Sexton,
served a six-month posting at the Qatar base (http://airforce.mil.nz/downloads/pdf/airforce-news/afn211.pdf).
The presence of New Zealand staff at the base has been kept largely
quiet by the New Zealand military. According to information released
by NZDF in response to an Official Information Act request, there were
five New Zealand personnel currently serving at the Al-Udeid Airbase.
Two of the personnel were involved with coordinating “air tasking” in
Iraq and Syria and missions in Afghanistan. The base was responsible
for 8,713 airstrikes (or weapons released) in 2018, 39,577 strikes in
2017 and 30,743 in 2016, including both manned and unmanned aircraft (Global
Research, ibid.).
In the article, the NZDF confirmed that New Zealand personnel work
across the region, including operations in Syria, but stated its
troops are not involved in combat operations. An NZDF spokesperson
said the organisation is confident its personnel on all operations are
conducting themselves in accordance with both domestic and
international legal obligations. Shahtahmasebi cites news reports of
operations targeting Mosul (Iraq) and Raqqa (Syria), run from the
base, that resulted in the destruction of large areas of the cities
and the “appalling rate of civilian casualties” with the deaths of
thousands (mostly unreported).
Of most interest are the three NZ personnel supporting intelligence
functions within the US Central Command Forward Headquarters at the
base. A 2019 Stuff Circuit report (https://interactives.stuff.co.nz/2018/02/the-base/)
suggested that NZDF personnel had been secretly operating at the
Combined Air Operations Center at Al-Udeid since at least 2016
(ibid.). The relationship between NZDF and Government Communications
Security Bureau (GCSB) personnel remains to be revealed.
Secretary/Organiser
Anti-Bases Campaign
Box 2258, Christchurch 8140, New Zealand
abc@chch.planet.org.nz
www.converge.org.nz/abc
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