LIVE: CAFCA’s Murray Horton on NZ independence and foreign policy

Graphic: Concept art for Planet of the Apes

Courtesy of the Pacific Media Centre and Asia Pacific Report
 
TIME FOR INDEPENDENCE FROM A CRUMBLING US EMPIRE - Murray Horton
The advent of President Donald Trump in the US provides an unprecedented opportunity to take a good, hard look at Aotearoa's place in the world.  And to ask the question - why are we still a loyal member of the American Empire?

As the old saying goes, you are judged by the company you keep.

CAFCA Murray Horton says it's time for this country to pull the plug, to finish the business started in the 1980s, which saw us out of ANZUS, and break the chains -- military, intelligence, economic and cultural -- that continue to bind us to the American Empire.

Speaker: Murray Horton, national organiser of the Christchurch-based Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA). Video in two parts.

• More information
• ‘Despicable’ Youi wins Roger Award for ‘worst transnational’ in NZ

People power prescription to cure the trans-Pacific free trade 'disease'

Bugs Bunny - alias a well-known local unionist - at the Rogers ... Photo: Nigel Moffiet/PMC

MURRAY HORTON, organiser and spokesperson for the Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA), treated Auckland to a double billing this week – well, actually a threesome if you count little Waiheke Island as well. His Christchurch-based movement has been campaigning to "expose and oppose" all aspects of foreign control of New Zealand for four decades. An impressive track record. And quality research that backs up the movement’s advocacy – leaving most news media floundering in its wake – is available on the websites www.cafca.org.nz and publication Foreign Control Watchdog, which is at www.converge.org.nz/watchdog.

Horton’s first star billing for Auckland’s advocacy faithful was at the annual Roger Awards – the Oscars of the global transnational notorieties and their murky impact on the New Zealand economy and justice. Chief culprits for 2010:

1. The Hobbit affair trio – Warner Brothers (received by none other than Bugs Bunny and the third time a media corporation has won the “worst transnational” prize), with the John Key government collecting the Accomplice Award for “caving in” to the movie moguls and film director Sir Peter Jackson taking out a special Quisling Award for being the New Zealander who “did the most to facilitate foreign control” in the country.
2. British-owned BUPA "couldn't care less" retirement home company
3. Imperial Tobacco – for its “despicable” and “deceitful” third-party PR campaigns.

The film studio threatened to make The Hobbit in another country after Kiwi contract workers began collective agreement discussions and the corporation forced a controversial deal that kept the $670 million production in New Zealand. The government agreed to give the film studio an additional $20 million tax break and change the law so there would be no possibility that contract workers could go to court and claim employee rights.

According to the judges panel, headed by Banks Peninsula writer and researcher Dr Christine Dan and including a trade unionist, an associate professor and another senior academic and former Green Party MP Sue Bradford: Warner Brothers "significantly outscored all the other finalists in interference in New Zealand politics and governance. No other corporation has been given such a red carpet treatment when it came to interfere in the way we do things here ..."

The report went on to cite one of the judges saying “an overt display of bullying that humiliated every New Zealander, and deliberately set out to do that”.

The following night, Horton was again in action - this time kicking off his “NZ NOT for sale” campaign with a seminar speech at AUT University’s Pacific Media Centre. After a devastating critique of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) and NZ’s shameful role in it, he prescribed a dose of"people power" as the remedy for the secret free trade deal “disease”:

Important as it is to lobby politicians and generally engage with that whole parliamentary process, that is a top down and essentially passive approach, asking our elected representatives to actually represent us. You don’t need me to spell out the whole history of betrayal, sellouts, compromises, and flat out lying that has involved in the past. So it’s not enough to trust politicians to do it for us, or even rely on a change of government to make it all good. We have to do it for ourselves, we need some People Power in New Zealand.

We’ve seen it in spectacular action in the Arab world this year but they are very different societies. Within our country we have seen the most magnificent grassroots mobilisation and community action in response to the seemingly never ending earthquakes crisis in Christchurch. There we witnessed ordinary New Zealanders – students, farmers, women, workers, the unemployed, brown, white – take charge of things in their own streets, neighbourhoods, suburbs and city, rather than helplessly waiting for somebody else to do something about it. Just to single out one group – I speak as a student activist from decades ago, and one who was cynical about the calibre of “today’s young people”.

I stand in awe of the Student Volunteer Army which mobilised somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 students to get stuck into the most basic of tasks, namely digging the city out from under the ocean of silt, and muck and shit that engulfed it. Now, what I’m talking about is an emergency response to a life and death catastrophe, and not what is commonly perceived to be a “political” issue. But there is nothing more political than spontaneously organising people at the grassroots level to take control of their own communities. New Zealanders care very deeply about their communities and our country, despite the best efforts of the ideologues to turn us into a dog eat dog society. That people power is a truly formidable force ....

We’re confronting the most powerful institutions in this country and in the world, but we’ve beaten them before and we’ll beat them again. They’re the ones who have to hide inside a fortress of secrecy and lies. We have nothing to hide and the truth is on our side. We are many and they are few.

Kia kaha manawanui!

Pictured: Sir Peter Jackson and a Hobbit; Murray Horton at the PMC. Photo: Del Abcede/PMC

• Warner Brothers take out Roger Award for 'worst transnational' in NZ
• Campaigner warns NZ over transnationals and trans-Pacific secret deals
• Full 2010 Roger Awards report
  

Post-quake life in the Christchurch suburbs

Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA) organiser, activist and writer Murray Horton pens his personal impressions of life in the suburbs after the 22 February 2011 earthquake brought death and devastation to New Zealand’s second-largest city. Authorities have confirmed 147 people dead with 50 unaccounted for. This is an edited extract from an email to friends and fellow activists received by Café Pacific. Murray, his wife, Becky, and a nameless stray cat live in the inner suburb of Addington.

By Murray Horton

BECKY and I are alive and well. We're living (camping, more accurately) in our house. It has no structural damage, unlike so many others. But it has sustained more interior damage than was the case with the September 4 quake. For example, we have evacuated nearly everything out of our lounge in case the chimney decides to part company with the wall, as it has now got more noticeable cracks where it joins the wall and the fireplace surround itself is coming loose.

Unlike September, this one sent things flying in all directions and knocked everything off the walls, smashing a number of things; including the office’s Chairman Mao clock (is nothing sacred?). Surrounding streets had cracking, slumping, ground rising, liquefaction and flooding (I witnessed water and silt start pouring from the ground as a huge aftershock struck as I was walking across our little neighbourhood reserve) but we have never had that in our street or on our land.

We were without power from Tuesday until Saturday, so had no internet access, nor did we get to see any of the TV coverage. Having no power was a blessing in disguise. One of the first huge aftershocks on Tuesday swung several of our light fittings so violently they hit the ceiling and smashed, showering the floor with broken glass and leaving naked wires dangling from the ceiling. Believe it or not, I was able to get not one but two separate electricians to come to the house and render them safe before the power came back on. These weren’t mates, just regular sparkies I found in the phone book.

Water on ... but just a dribble
Water started to come back on Friday but it is only a feeble dribble (better than no dribble, however). It will be a while before we can have a shower or wash clothes. We never lost the phone (good old analogue landlines … our cordless phones, answerphone et al, went dead).

Because we use bottled gas for cooking, we never went hungry. We dug a toilet in the backyard, even rigged it up for shelter and privacy. And from Tuesday to Saturday we slept under the dining room table. Now we’ve moved back into our bedroom – as Becky said to me today, if we die, we die. Of course, things are far from back to normal – we have low flying helicopters passing over us from dawn until dusk (we’re not far from Hagley Park and Christchurch Hospital); soldiers and police from several countries are manning the CBD roadblocks and curfew just walking distance from our home.

To all of those friends who brought us water, let us use their houses for computer, internet, mobile phone charging, showers and toilets, Becky and I are eternally grateful. To all of you who rang and texted from around the country and around the world, many thanks for going to the trouble of getting hold of us (which was not easy).

I’ll just tell you one of my quake stories. I was in the Canterbury Television Building [a building that collapsed with an estimated 100 people inside] at 10.15 that morning for an interview about the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, the US/NZ Partnership Forum taking place in Christchurch that day, and the opposition to the TPPA being organised by the New Zealand Not For Sale Campaign. It was the first time I’d set foot in that building since 2008. We (me, the young reporter and the cameraman) did the interview in a first floor meeting room, then we sat around afterwards and chatted. I probably left the building between 10.45am and 11am. The young guy (Rhys Brookbanks), who had only just started at CTV, is among those believed killed in that building’s collapse. I was one of the last to see him alive, as it turns out.

I don’t know what happened to the Zimbabwean cameraman. From there I went to Kiwibank in the Bus Exchange Building in Colombo Street to do the CAFCA banking (because there was supposed to be a CAFCA meeting that night, in Lyttelton). I was at work, in front of this computer, when it all kicked off.

You don’t need me to tell you that this was an event of indescribable violence (and I only experienced what happened at our place, which was bad enough, but very mild compared to the catastrophe that happened in so many other parts of town). Tuesday night was just one continuous earthquake as wave after wave of aftershocks slammed into the house, some of them with the force of runaway trains. In between times the ground just continuously rumbled and shook. Neither of us got any sleep and I doubt that anybody else in Christchurch that night did as well.

Tens of thousands of people have fled the city. Our little street has been significantly depopulated. Everyone knows people who have left. One of our closest friends and colleagues is among them. Those staying put are under great stress in many cases.

Both CAFCA and ABC (Anti-Bases Campaign) are scheduled to meet this week (all committee members have sustained house damage ranging from moderate to serious to uninhabitable). I have every intention of getting out the next Watchdog but there are plenty of others involved in that process who may have more pressing priorities. So it might well be a smaller than usual
edition.

The Roger Award is on schedule (the event to name the winner is in Auckland, April 4). I have every intention of undertaking my North Island speaking tour in April (the first time I got access to electricity, at a friend’s house, I went back to work writing my speech). And I’m going to speak in Dunedin in May.

Murray Horton
Organiser
Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA)
Christchurch, Aotearoa/New Zealand

Pictures: Searching for survivors, CTV.CN; Murray Horton at the Pacific Media Centre in 2009.

• Christchchurch Press earthquake coverage
  
• Murray Horton's Auckland talk on "New Zealand NOT for sale"

NZ spooks exposed by Asia-Pacific campaigners

ASIA-PACIFIC civil society and activist movements have been among targets of New Zealand’s spook organisation for more than four decades and the media has failed to ask the tough questions, say campaigners. Murray Horton, secretary of the influential Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA) and described as “the last radical” in a Christchurch Press profile, gave a devastating critique of the so-called “SIS files” at a packed Pacific Media Centre seminar this week.

Maire Leadbeater, spokesperson for the Auckland-based Indonesian Human Rights Committee and long a leading peace activist, described the infiltration of the Philippine Solidarity Network by informers leaking information to the NZ Security Intelligence Service (SIS). She also spoke about the problems caused by this espionage to a multinational “peace brigade” which travelled to the Philippines in 1989 during the post-Marcos period. The seminar followed recent revelations which showed the SIS had been spying on peaceful citizen groups ever since the Cold War. In Maire’s case, she had been spied on since she was aged 10. Her brother Keith Locke, Green MP and spokesperson on international and Pacific affairs, has also been spied on - since he was elected to Parliament.

The extent of this espionage was exposed when several people in the activist movements requested access to their supposed files – reportedly bound for the archives – in a new period of “transparency” opened up by the Director of Security Dr Warren Tucker.

Murray Horton was particularly scathing about the non-role of the Fourth Estate over the SIS papers, although once the issue became highlighted by the Press, many other journalists jumped to the task. It is also unclear whether selected journalists themselves might have been targets of the SIS: Says Horton:

We basically stumbled upon this ourselves – why weren’t journos asking these questions?

The seminar included Burmese, Indonesian and Filipino activists and journalists, some relating their experiences under surveillance by the SIS or other secret services. Many made the point that while the waste of resources by the SIS (its 2006 budget topped $23 million) was something of a joke in the NZ context, it had sinister and deadly overtones in many developing and totalitarian countries. Said Murray Horton:

It’s happening today and it’s costing lives. In a country like the Philippines, if you’re on the list, expect to disappear any minute.

The previous night, Murray Horton was wearing another CAFCA hat as organiser of the Roger Award for the worst transnational in New Zealand (25% or more foreign owned) – the judges conferred the 2008 prize (an ungainly and sinister looking contraption that has an uncanny resemblance to its namesake, Sir Roger Douglas) on British American Tobacco NZ Ltd. The judges' statement (from a team headed by Victoria University economist Geoff Bertram) declares: “Its product kills 5000 people every year and ruins the lives of tens of thousands.”

Ash (Action on Smoking and Health) director Ben Youdan – who “accepted” the dishonourable award on behalf of shamed BAT – says New Zealand is “waking up” to the sustained public relations campaigns by the tobacco industry. In his Stuff blog Frontline, John Minto quoted the judges saying: "[BAT] perennially refuses to take responsibility for the social and economic consequences of its activity, while maintaining a major public relations effort to subvert the efforts of the New Zealand government to reduce cigarette consumption in the community."

Picture of CAFCA's Murray Horton at the Pacific Media Centre by Alan Koon.

• NZ's spy agency 'law unto itself'
• The last radical
• The curious case of Warren Tucker
• NZ plugged into secret internet
  
• CAFCA
• BAT recognised as NZ's worst corporate citizen
• Scoop on the Roger Awards
• John Minto on the Roger Awards
  

NZ's spy agency SIS 'a law unto itself'

GREEN MP Keith Locke, spokesman on Pacific and international affairs and social justice champion of the underdog, has been the latest revelation on New Zealand's "spy on our citizens" controversy. The Security Intelligence Agency's stocks have sunk to a new low after it was revealed that Keith had been spied on since he was 11 - and for at least four years since he was elected a Member of Parliament in 1999. As he pointed out in the House what an "offence to democracy" it is that the SIS - not even upholding their own legislation which requires them to be watching people "involved in treason, espionage and terrorism" - should be devoting much of its efforts to spying on civil society dissenters. So far not much has emerged on similar spying against dissenting journalists (if it indeed happens). But watch this space. Keith's reflections in his parliamentary address-in-reply on Feb 10 are recorded here by Hansard:

KEITH LOCKE (Green): I would like to begin my speech by complimenting the Director of the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service, Dr Warren Tucker, for the new spirit of openness that he has conveyed since he took over a year or so ago. It is very good that he is allowing under the Privacy Act people like myself and others who have been involved in various progressive issue movements to look at their files, because what they show are some very bad practices in the history of the SIS in targeting dissenters. In my case it concerned my involvement in the anti-Viet Nam war movement, the peace movement against nuclear weapons, the anti-apartheid movement, and movements for human rights in Latin America, the Philippines, and elsewhere.

The horrific thing about that file is that it shows that the SIS had infiltrators pretending to be fellow campaigners who reported on everyone who was present at the meetings—public and private—and who was doing what, who was carrying the banners, who was going out, and even trivial details such as at 0900 hours so-and-so went out to buy a Sunday paper, and very detailed stuff. In my own case, my movements around the country, around the world, what car I was driving, romantic attachments etc were noted—all completely unjustified in terms of the law of the SIS, and in terms of any concept of fair play, whatsoever.

The records in my case go from when I was aged 11 in 1955, and the file [has] been updated and continued since I have been in Parliament, not only with news clippings but also with monitoring of my private conversations with constituents in the Sri Lankan-Tamil community back in 2003, before I went off on a peace monitoring trip to Sri Lanka. It is good that the Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA), and other groups have also got their files, which show a similar pattern over the years of the SIS of not upholding their own legislation—where they should only be watching people involved in treason, espionage, and terrorism and the like, but countering the activities of campaigners in the interests of the Government of the day.

In my case that countering meant trying to stop me from getting jobs, and conspiring directly with employers. It is recorded that I supported someone for permanent residence in New Zealand, and it was reported back to the SIS, which probably stopped that person from getting permanent residence because of my personal SIS personal file. So it had concrete effects, it was not just about being watched; it hindered the careers of myself and probably many, many others.

It is good that [Prime Minister] John Key has responded by asking the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, Paul Neazor, to look at the way in which files are set up, maintained, and closed. It is good that John Key says that I, and, hopefully, others who have received their files showing a similar pattern can cooperate with the inspector-general to really get to the bottom of this issue.

We need a much broader inquiry, but that is a good start. The surveillance of the SIS itself, or what might be called accountability measures or oversight, are very weak. In Parliament today my colleague Kennedy Graham tabled what he received from the official sources as the current membership of the Intelligence and Security Committee. It still lists the members of the previous Parliament, including Winston Peters. There has been no new committee set up over the past few months of this Parliament. When I have written questions in the past I have found that the committee meets only about an hour a year, enough time to hear a little report from the director of intelligence, and perhaps have a cup of coffee. It is not an oversight body, and that is why that over the years that the SIS has been able to be, effectively, a law unto itself, even spying on members of Parliament.

Under this MMP Parliament we represent a much wider range of views than was the case when we had a Labour-National monopoly, and the Green Party, in particular, represents movements outside of Parliament of people fighting for social change, environmental issues, and international social justice issues like I was involved in. It is a sad logic that if they are spying on all these movements for social change, and international solidarity movements that they are spying on MPs. It is an offence to democracy in this country, and, particularly, parliamentary democracy and the independence of Parliament from the executive, and that is why it must be opposed.

Meanwhile, strategic intelligence commentator and academic Dr Paul Buchanan (on leave from Auckland University and now visiting associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore), has profiled the SIS head in a Scoop article, "The curious case of [Dr] Tucker". He reminds us that Dr Tucker:

Assumed leadership of the SIS in November 2006. At the time the agency was under heavy public scrutiny due to its mishandling of the [Algerian theologian and politician] Ahmed Zaoui request for political refuge (where it manipulated intelligence data to manufacture a case against Zaoui, only to have it discredited and eventually withdrawn under legal challenge).

Since Tucker's appointment at the helm of the SIS, he has promised "more transparency and public accountability" in the spy agency's operations. But Buchanan notes that the SIS sems to have a recent fixation on human rights cam,paigners, environmental and indigenous rights activists and critics of the government and the SIS itself: "It's disturbing because many of those recently targeted by the SIS domestic espionage programme post no threat to NZ's national security."

Stuff reported on March 17, Green MP Keith Locke was unlikely to be the only person spied on by the SIS after entering Parliament - a practice a government watchdog says should now be scrapped. Prime Minister John Key asked SIS head Dr Warren Tucker to deactivate files on sitting MPs and consider a system to allow surveillance only when deemed necessary with consent from the Speaker. Pictured: MP Keith Locke at a rally in support of the people of Gaza in Auckland last month. Photo: David Robie

• Spying on MPs likely to stop
  
• The curious case of Dr Tucker
• SIS website
• CAFCA website
• Keith Locke's Green page
• Gordon Campbell on state espionage
  

APN shortlisted for 'worst transnational' award

A news media group - APN News & Media (ANM) - has been nominated as a "finalist" in the annual Roger Award for New Zealand's worst transnational corporation.
The 2007 finalists are:
ANZ
APN News & Media (ANM)
British American Tobacco (BAT)
GlaxoSmithKline
Independent Liquor
Pike River Coal
Spotless
Telecom
The criteria for judging is by assessing the transnational (a corporation which is 25% or more foreign-owned) that has the most negative impact in each or all of the following categories:
Economic Dominance - Monopoly, profiteering, tax dodging, cultural
imperialism.
People - Unemployment, impact on tangata whenua, impact on women, impact on children, abuse of workers/conditions, health and safety of workers and the public, cultural imperialism. Environment - Environmental damage, abuse of animals.
Political interference - Cultural imperialism, running an ideological crusade
The judges are: Laila Harre, from Auckland, national secretary of the National Distribution Union and former Cabinet Minister; Anton Oliver, of France, former All Black and environmentalist; Geoff Bertram, from Wellington, Victoria University economist; Brian Turner, from Christchurch, president of the Methodist Church and social justice activist; Paul Corliss, from Christchurch, a life member of the Rail and Maritime Transport Union and Cee Payne-Harker, from Dunedin, industrial services manager for the NZ Nurses' Organisation and health issues activist.
To celebrate the fact it is 10 years since the first Roger Award event (also held in Christchurch) and that 2008 is election year, CAFCA is holding a conference - Privatisation By Stealth: Why This Discredited Practice Is Still On The Political Agenda - on that same day (March 16), to precede the Roger Award event.
The Roger Award is organised by CAFCA and GATT Watchdog and is supported by Christian World Service.

• Inquiries - Murray Horton, Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA): cafca@chch.planet.org.nz
• CAFCA website: http://www.cafca.org.nz/

News media ownership in NZ - updates

An update from Bill Rosenberg about his media ownership in New Zealand monitoring file (cartoon by Malcolm Evans from a previous PJR cover):
A revised version of my paper "News media ownership in New Zealand" is now available, which includes updates to the 15 October 2007 version, including some suggestions from readers (many thanks). The changes are outlined below.
It is available either by clicking the above link or going to the CAFCA web site. I am unlikely to release another update for at least 2-3 months. If you do not wish to be notified of future updates, please reply to this message and I will remove you from my list (with no offence taken!).
The changes from the 15 October version:

• reporting some of the findings of the 2007 survey of journalists which are relevant to ownership pressures ("Profile 2007. The big NZ journalism survey: Underpaid, under-trained, under-resourced, unsure about the future - but still idealistic", by James Hollings, Geoff Lealand, Alan Samson and Elspeth Tilley, Massey University and Waikato University, Pacific Journalism Review, September 2007, 13 (2), pp. 175-197)
• a number of further takeovers (including NZ Life and Leisure, Marlborough Media), and launches (a new give-away newspaper in Dunedin).
• Sky/Prime winning the rights to the 2010 Winter and 2012 Summer
  Olympics
• updates and detail on digital TV, including the Stratos FreeView channel
• more on Alt TV, death of the Radio Pacific name, MediaWorks pushing the boundaries, Ironbridge
• numerous minor updates and corrections

For those needing the URL, it is as follows. As I release updates, I
will simply replace the document under the same name as the latest
version - mediaown.pdf - so links do not need to be updated.

Comments are, as always, welcome.
Bill Rosenberg

Bill Rosenberg's evolving media ownership file at CAFCA

Roger Award search opens for 'worst transnational'

Roger Award nominations for the "worst transnational corporation" operating in New Zealand are now open, announces CAFCA. The Roger Award has run annually since 1997. No prizes for guessing whom it is named after. It's organised by CAFCA and GATT Watchdog, both Christchurch-based groups, who rotate the annual organisation.

New this year is an Accomplice Award. Criteria, other details and the nomination form are available on the CAFCA website in Word (52 KB) or PDF format (65KB).

The judges for 2007 are: Laila Harre, from Auckland, National Secretary of the National Distribution Union and former Cabinet Minister; Anton Oliver, from Otago, All Black and environmentalist; Geoff Bertram, from Wellington, a Victoria University economist; Brian Turner, from Christchurch, President-Elect of the Methodist Church and social justice activist; Paul Corliss, from Christchurch, a life member of the Rail and Maritime Transport Union; and Cee Payne-Harker, from Dunedin, Industrial Services Manager for the NZ Nurses’ Organisation and health issues activist. They will be given a shortlist of finalists. The winner(s) will be announced in early 2008 at an event in Christchurch. Previous winners:

Progressive Enterprises (2006)
Bank of New Zealand and Westpac (2005)
Telecom (2004)
Juken Nissho (2003)
Tranz Rail (2002)
Carter Holt Harvey (2001)
Tranz Rail (2000)
TransAlta (1999)
Monsanto (1998)
Tranz Rail (1997)