Insiders.

ETA: the cult of savviness.

Nicky Hager could show that the NZDF?

It reminds me of an interview I heard with Bart Ehrman, who's a biblical scholar based in the Southern US specialising in copying errors in the New Testament. And he gives talks to general audiences about translation errors and redactions and medieval additions to the gospels, and religious people?

Feeling it. My copy arrived this afternoon and is is sitting by my keyboard staring at me. 439 pages, including 73 pages of endnotes in tightly-leaded six point type. By next week.

he gives the same lecture to priests of any denomination ? who preach at the churches attended to by the very freaked out people in his lay audience ? and they shrug and say, ?Yeah yeah yeah, we learned all?

I assume it's in there somewhere.

439 pages...

Most paperbacks I've met of these proportions are fantasy blockbusters where the type is much bigger.

Dammit, I had Other Stuff To Do this weekend!

I believe someone commented recently that it's still the best guide to this year's election. :)

Didn't see the whole thing but the footage of Key meeting Brethren and Brash flat out lying about it all was compelling. But the book conveys so well the calculated approach to deceiving the public from political operators and shady funders who have escaped unpunished and?

And me. Everytime some shit goes down, and some polly or lackey reporter trots out the "oh the SAS is there in a purely mentoring role" bs and my "I'm being lied to" radar starts screaming...

Significantly, the doco made some updates on what had happened since the book was published. And there's no shortage of material for a?

I've only just obtained a copy and started to watch it earlier this week. I had to stop as there was a very?

It's the same as the one that's available online from NZ On Screen since about May, right? Because that's the one I watched and I'm assuming I've seen it.

@Keith: Thanks for pointing out the press?

precisely my response to reading the book. fuckers

Peacekeeping is a great use of troops, but reconstruction may not be. Troops are not neutral, and once they undertake humanitarian work then the neutrality of NGO teams is thrown into question.

Which would include what Espiner was exposed to "in Afghanistan" innit.

"I think it would be shock, horror, surprise if you didn?t have intelligence facilities designed to keep New Zealand Defence Force personnel safe in an area of deployment.?

I?m not sure that is what Hager reports his sources as describing.?

As Stephen Judd said this afternoon, "Mateparae — credibility shot before he even began. If Jon Stephens' stories weren't enough, surely Hager's are about?

The PM, by comparison; his handwaving and 'relaxed' attitude to the whole thing is both disappointing?

His smarmy slighting of Hagar's character in passing was exactly what you'd expect from the morally challenged too.

It seems more likely to?

Solution: send our regional team of murder specialists over, with strict orders to not murder anyone. Wink, wink, nudge nudge. Like those English paratroopers?

What evidence do you have on this? The trouble is?

It is precisely the SOFA and ROE authorised by the respective governments of the day that was systematically violated by the NZDF (the authorisation of the GCSB to detail personnel to front line positions is more murky). The evidence in the book is pretty damning on this point.

And?

How about you read the book before you make judgments like that, John?

Yes, sir, control your language. There is a well known precedent of describing murder in the context of international toadying as "national defence". Because NZ is in dire risk from?

No. I was judging him on his comments yesterday and today on the command status of NZ forces. Status of command is one of the most fundamental principles a commander must maintain and his comments appear to show?

Slightly off-point, but much the same argument is made very compellingly by James Fergusson in his [[http://jamesfergusson.info/millionbullets.htm|study of?

Hager's beef (as was that of Jon Stephenson) is not with the field commanders or the troops but with the HQ brass. Hager editorialises a bit too much to my liking since I do not share his ideology, but he has been pretty clear about where the blame for?

Assuming everyone agrees that there is such a thing as just war, and that it is possible to have such in a war of invasion.

That's a whole 'nother oil drum full of off-topic worms...

There, fixed.
+anyone who thought we sent the SAS there to help build houses is seriously deluded.

Did anyone think that? I really doubt it.

He comes across as a glove-puppet with all that "I'm very relaxed about it?

But who's going to make that happen?

He did that a bit in The Hollow Men too — not everyone regards economic neoliberalism as axiomatically bad — but there, as, it appears, here, there can be little quarrel with his claims?

Seems a clear enough summary of some key issues (without me having read the source).

Hager has cut through that pretence with the evidence to prove what has always been surmised – that the real reason for such deployments was not to help the inhabitants?

__Military soldiers should not talk about soldiers dying to protect freedom and democracy on the battlefield if they are not prepared to defend those ideals when they brief politicians, take a call from a journalist or receive?

It remains a fact, though, that we have the term murder as a specific descriptor for unlawful killing, and we can have an all-day argument?

Fair. The whole thing is massively tangential to the point of this thread anyway (which I shouldn't have encouraged).

Well, that raises an interesting question. Let's flip the point around: if you were?

Because politicians are always honest brokers?

Except Hager doesn't challenge the government, he's apparently written a book (I haven't?

In Christchurch, Scorpio. Bought one there on Friday.

Whitcoulls in St Lukes, in New Zealand books, not big promo.

And yes it is an interesting book given the lack of media inquiry about what goes on.

I think Mr Hager is right, East Timor, the Solomons and Bosnia were involvements where us NZ public?

Masters of War. Pearl Jams version....