I HAVE had many careful meetings with sources during the last 20 years, but never anything as cautious and mysterious as this. I was heading overseas to meet the WikiLeaks team in the midst of heavy threats from the United States government and more imminent threats of police action.
I am grateful to PEN and the Society of Authors for inviting me to be part of protesting the suppression of freedom of speech in Iran. We are joining people around the world who are saddened and appalled by the news of repression in that country…. In doing this, and doing it wholeheartedly, I do not want to be a hypocrit or to be naive…
John Key and his colleagues are going to send the Special Air Service to Afghanistan. The current talk about whether National should do so is, unfortunately, academic. The decision is already made.
National’s campaign is hiding a front bench full of 1990s-style free marketers behind John Key’s well-scripted one-liners….
Nicky Hager was invited by the Pundit website to reply to a column by Matthew Hooton.
The Herald launched a campaign against the Electoral Finance Bill last week, saying it is repressive, curtails democracy and breaches human rights. Despite changes to the bill this week, the criticisms have continued. But they seem strangely one-eyed….
The Solicitor-General will shortly make a decision whether to approve terrorism charges against the Maori, peace and environmental activists arrested last month. Nicky Hager describes how the decision will be made and the factors the Solicitor-General needs to take into account….
The great weakness of much journalism is a process-worker approach to assembling quotation-based stories….
MPs have stepped back from proposals that would have lifted secrecy
surrounding party donations….
I would like to propose a New Year’s resolution for news organisations: sorting out the difference between genuine media commentators and giving regular media space to political party spin doctors….
Michael Bassett and Richard Long used their recent columns to criticise me and my book The Hollow Men but they barely mentioned, much less debated, the contents of the book. Nor did they acknowledge that they both feature prominently…..
The latest ‘debate’ about defence consists of the usual moans about the military being dangerously underfunded and ill-equipped…. but this says more about the feeble standard of debate than any reality concerning our military forces….
New Zealanders are being softened up to accept this country taking part in perhaps the most outrageous United States-led war since Vietnam….
Now that three years of Labour Government have passed, it is becoming clear what we can expect during the next three or six years of this government….
Frantic Government damage control followed the release last week of my book Seeds of Distrust. We were told the book was completely untrue and that I was a conspiracy theorist taking part in a Green Party dirty trick.
As the pressure comes on New Zealand to support war in Asia, let’s not fool ourselves that we would be fighting on the side of right….
The cost of military equipment is always hard to comprehend. How can a small frigate cost more than half a billion dollars, Army radios cost tens of thousands each and a few Skyhawk jets cost more than $200 million a year?
This is a very positive time to be serving in the New Zealand Defence Force. The peacekeeping mission to East Timor is arguably Defence’s most important and popular role in the last 50 years….