Anti-Bases Activist to Tour New Zealand in July

BASES OF EMPIRE
The Global Spread
Of US Military & Spy Bases

CORA FABROS
Touring NZ
July 7 - 18, 2008

Cora Fabros, from the Philippines, has been a high profile activist, domestically and internationally, for more than 30 years with the anti-bases, anti-nuclear and peace movement. She has been to New Zealand before, as a guest of the Anti-Bases Campaign. Cora will be touring New Zealand as the Asia/Pacific Coordinator of the International Network for the Abolition of Foreign Military Bases.

The US has been on a global war footing since 2001 and sees the Asia/Pacific region, NZ’s backyard, as being of immense strategic significance. This is the region that Cora will be speaking about. In countries such as Japan (particularly Okinawa) and South Korea the huge US presence there covers the full range from nuclear warfighting bases to conventional combat bases to a whole variety of spybases. Despite having been kicked out of the Philippines by the world’s most successful anti-bases campaign in the early 1990s, the US military is now permanently entrenched back in that country, which it has designated “The Second Front In The War On Terror”. Guam, which is a US territory in the Pacific, has been turned into a major US nuclear warfighting base in recent years. Australia hosts a variety of US bases and has given the US permission to build its first new spybase there in 40 years. And, of course, New Zealand hosts one medium level US military transport base (at Christchurch Airport) which is a cog in the chain of regional US bases; and two “New Zealand” spybases, at Tangimoana and Waihopai. The latter is NZ’s single most important contribution to all US wars.

2008 is election year in both NZ and the US (this only happens every 12 years). The Anti-Bases Campaign believes that it is vital that NZ’s continuing role as a small but very important satellite of the US military and intelligence empire be thoroughly ex-posed and that voters demand that the Government finish the job begun when this country became nuclear free and out of ANZUS in the 1980s. Cora Fabros’ tour is vital in providing an international context for how we aid and abet that empire. US bases and the struggle against them are a huge issue for many of our neighbours.

For local date and venue details contact:
Dunedin — Kay Murray (03) 4542057, 021 1672843, email: ksimmondsmurray@xtra.co.nz
Christchurch — Murray Horton (03) 3663988, email: cafca@chch.planet.org.nz
Blenheim — Steffan Browning 021 725655, email: sjb@steffan.co.nz
Wellington — Sam Huggard (04) 8033054, 021 1810508 email: samhuggard@yahoo.co.nz
Palmerston North — Dion Martin (06) 3569658 w, 021 776029 w; email: dion.martin@ndu.org.nz
Auckland — Del Abcede (09) 3787543, 021 02376019; email darobie@hotmail.com

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