GUEST BLOG: Murray Horton – Anti-Bases Campaign Still Calls For Closure Of Waihopai Spy Base

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Waihopai spy domes to be dismantled due to irrelevance

The Waihopai spy domes will be decommissioned and dismantled as they have become “virtually obsolete”, the Government Communications Security Bureau says.

The two radomes at the spy base – which resemble two oversized golf balls among the vineyards of the Waihopai Valley south of Blenheim – have for decades been a focal point of protest against New Zealand’s participation in United States-led conflicts and the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing arrangement.

Minister for the Intelligence Agencies Andrew Little on Wednesday evening said the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) no longer needed the radomes, as they yielded less and less intelligence.

“There’s other forms of signals intelligence gathering that they can do now, online and what have you, that doesn’t necessitate a technology that’s represented in those domes.”

Here’s the key sentence in this news report: “The Waihopai base itself will continue to be used, as will a GCSB base at Tangimoana, in Manawatū”.

Anti-Bases Campaign (ABC) is not surprised that Waihopai’s radomes and satellite interception dishes will be dismantled. They’re 1980s’ technology, dating back to the era of landlines, fax machines and video cassette recorders.

Since the 1980s ABC has consistently called for Waihopai to be closed. Not to be made a more modernised, efficient spy base, using different spying methods, which is what Andrew Little has announced.

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So, Waihopai will still be a spy base, albeit without its most conspicuous physical features that stick out like dogs’ balls.

Meaning that ABC still continues to call for the closure of Waihopai.

And we will back at the spybase to do that in person on Saturday January 29.

Murray Horton

Secretary/Organiser

Anti-Bases Campaign

7 COMMENTS

  1. Will the gweens be there? To rename the whenua with a pronoun and assign an identity now that the big bad manly balls will be removed?

  2. Andrew Little is talking about change on the basis that the old white balls and technology is old-fashioned. What next then??

    • A more enhanced version of what they are already doing. It’s amazing what can be done with big data and machine learning now. Plus these days, everyone compiles their own personal dossiers with an amazing level of detail, from political affiliations to sexual preferences to what they had for breakfast, and places them online for the benefit of security services & corporations worldwide. Steaming open letters & intercepting satellite communications are so last century.

  3. Well done ABC for decades of reminding us about the spy network Aotearoa NZ is ensconced in.

    It is not just the domes that are past their useby–5 Eyes itself is a Cold War relic of the Anglosphere. Arrogant US and British Imperialism, with faithful deputy dogs Canada and Australia, and tag along honorary pretend deputy dog New Zealand.

    Labour Governments just like National Govt.s toady up to Uncle Sam and the poms in a cultural cringe form of wannabe deep staters. Ministers like Little all fall for the wood panelled offices and quiet reactionary chatter and briefings of what passes for the NZ Deep State.

    Time to put them all out of their misery and Aotearoa NZ become a Republic and leave 5 Eyes.

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