People from all around New Zealand will be converging on the super-secret Waihopai satellite interception spybase, in Marlborough, on Saturday January 25th.

We will be at the Waihopai spy base main gate at Waihopai Valley Road from 10 a.m. There will be speakers; information will be provided on the function of the base; and there will be a peaceful protest, calling for its closure.

The main guest speaker will be Green MP, Golriz Ghahraman.

The protest will make the point that Waihopai works for Donald Trump, which makes this country complicit in his downright unhinged behaviour. In 2020 Trump has added outright murder to his charge sheet and is intent on war with Iran.

This “transformative” Goverment has continued NZ’s membership of the Five Eyes spy alliance, which is the reason for Waihopai’s existence. NZ has not uttered one word of criticism of Trump’s most recent outrageous behaviour towards Iran. This despite Jacinda having said: "New Zealand has, and always has had, an independent foreign policy". The evidence shows 100% the opposite and nowhere more glaringly than at Waihopai. The fact is that NZ is the most loyal, albeit junior, satellite of the US Empire. NZ needs to only look at the very recent example of the betrayed and abandoned Syrian Kurds to see how Trump treats American “allies”.

One monotonously expressed defence of the Waihopai spy base (operated by the NZ Government Communications Security Bureau - GCSB) is that it defends NZ from terrorists. No, it doesn’t. That was dramatically shown on March 15th, 2019, when a fascist white foreign (Australian) terrorist murdered 51 people at the two mosques in Christchurch. The GCSB totally missed the worst act of terrorism on NZ soil. It was two country cops that ended the mass murderer’s rampage; the spies were conspicuous by their absence throughout the whole thing. That is because Waihopai and the GCSB define “terrorists” as per the instructions of their Five Eyes Big Brother, the US National Security Agency (NSA) and the American “war in terror” in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq. They turned a blind eye to the real terrorists already here.

Which begs the question – if this spy base can’t even protect us from terrorists, what useful purpose does it serve? Certainly nothing for the NZ people. For more than 30 years Waihopai has been NZ’s most significant contribution to Washington’s global effort to manipulate world business and diplomacy. And for more than 30 years the Anti-Bases Campaign has protested at Waihopai, calling for its closure.

Waihopai does not operate in the national interest of New Zealand. In all but name it is a foreign spy base on NZ soil, paid for with hundreds of millions of our tax dollars; it spies on Kiwis and foreigners; it is NZ’s key contribution to America’s global spying & war machine. It does not protect us from terrorists. Waihopai must be closed.

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