We can still smell the uranium on their breath – why NZ needs to distance America

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
20
23

5 years under this Government, and NZ has veered so far off the independent foreign policy forged from the Nuclear Free Legislation of the Lange Government, we may as well become the 52nd State of America (Israel being the 51st).

Like a person trapped in a bad romance, the Key Government refuses to acknowledge what America’s own allies are now angrily denouncing, that the United States has gone well outside it’s mandate in terms of ‘National Security’ and has become an Orwellian caricature of grotesque dimensions.

Having failed Broadcasting Minister Jonathan Coleman playing Defense Minister and grinning like a lobotomized buffoon in the glare of the International Media is bad enough, but having him laugh that America isn’t spying on NZ after the latest Snowden revelations of mass surveillance, makes NZ look like the patsy Key has neutered us into.

“New Zealand’s not worried at all about this. We don’t believe it would be occurring.” He said that even if it was happening, “quite frankly, there’d be nothing that anyone could hear in our private conversations that we wouldn’t be prepared to share publicly. I don’t think New Zealand’s got anything to worry about, and we have a high trust in our relationships with the US.”

He was speaking after lunch with US Secretary of Defence Chuck Hagel, one of the key masters of the national security community. Mr Hagel fell back on the standard refusal to “comment on intelligence matters”.

With the latest revelations from whistleblower Edward Snowden claiming the US National Security Agency is, or has been, bugging the phone conversations of 35 world leaders – key ally German Chancellor Angela Merkel among them – his silence was understandable.

On the other hand, the goofball antics of Dr Coleman opened a chilling window into the Key Government’s true attitude to personal privacy.

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Our simpering role as the 5th wheel in the 5 eyes spy kingdom should cost us a seat on the UN Security council and our depletion of an independent foreign policy should cost as our MANA. The acquiescence of our sovereignty to America has been most obviously exposed in the farcical and illegal case against Kim Dotcom and should be a source of deep embarrassment for us as a nation.

The Land of the Free, home of the brave is an out of control paranoid, militaristically aggressive, mass surveillance state who simply can’t be trusted in the Pacific to do anything other than mercilessly exploit every inch of control they can gain in their new cold war against China.

The TPPA isn’t a trade deal, it’s an economic leash that’s been perverted up the chain of command by ‘National Security’ interests which align with corporate interests. It will deregulate NZ for the manipulation of American Corporates and lock any future Government into their sphere of influence. This is about hegemonic control, not economic growth.

Rather than continue to be trapped in this abusive relationship, NZ needs to leave America and break up with a “it’s not me, it’s you” note. We must refuse to sign the TPPA, we must announce an end to the 5 eyes arrangement and we must pull America out of the Waihopai spy base.

America is building intelligence agencies in allied countries that are dependent upon America for the technological edge that gives them vast surveillance powers over their own domestic populations.

Over the last decade, funding for the SIS increased by 250% to $41 million in 2012. It now employs 232 full time staff. Over the same period of time, the GCSB increased its funding by 174% to $63m in 2012, and now has 294 staff.

Let’s not forget the intelligence agencies you haven’t heard about?

The Organised Crime Intelligence Unit, Financial Intelligence Unit, Strategic Intelligence Unit, National Bureau of Criminal Intelligence, Identity Intelligence Unit, Threat Assessment Unit, Police Terrorism Investigation and Intelligence Group and the Special Investigation Group. They’ve all been given vast new surveillance powers despite very few prosecutions in NZ for any of the things these agencies are supposed to guard against.

Do our intelligence agencies answer to Wellington or do they answer to Washington?

After the Snowden revelations, we simply can’t trust America and the sooner we start to pull away, the better for our country.

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20 COMMENTS

  2. Once again you speak the hard truth, thank you. I would go further still and say that we had better keep a critical eye on our elections next year. The way John Key and his bunch of ugly men kiss fat American nsa/state department arse I’m beginning to think that their relationship goes deeper than most people think. And that their breath smells not only of uranium. To the extent that the americans would prefer the Key gang stayed in power no matter what underhand thing they have to do to put them there. Wake up New Zealand America is NOT our friend. Lastly, to Jonathon Colemen, shut the f**k up a-hole, you are an embarrassment.

  3. Lange may have smelled the uranium on America’s breath, but Key can taste it on America’s scrotum. NAct have always been typical bullies – bash those they perceive as weaker and provide personal bidet services for those they perceive as stronger. I think it was Kissinger who said “America doesn’t have friends, it has interests.”

    We took a few halting steps to independence, but the snivelling NAct cowards have dragged us back into the embrace of Uncle Sam, just in time to make an enemy of China. Brilliant, Key, just brilliant.

  4. Just one thing I would take issue with. Edward Snowden is not a whistleblower. He was a good citizen reporting a crime – as a good citizen is duty-bound to do. That the crimes have been committed, the US government and its agencies haven’t troubled themselves to deny.

    What we are forced to infer from the outcome of Mr Snowden’s reporting of crimes committed by the State, is that the U.S. Government and its agencies are above the law, are above democracy, and are above the United States Constitution.

    Oh, yeah. The same can be said of New Zealand’s present govenment in this country. This Government has been quite blatantly throwing in the faces of even its own supporters just how beyond the law it is. It can spy upon New Zealanders with impunity; it can harass New Zealanders with impunity; it can deny elections with impunity; it can steal with impunity (check out the ‘Open Banks Resolution’), it can commit treason with impunity.

    This government is worse than useless, is worse than worthless: it is a positive menace to New Zealand.

  6. Edward Snowden is a traitor. David Lange was a fat useless drunk with some good ideas but no balls. I knew him so I can vouch for that, And you promote communism, why?
    America is the best hope for NZ to throw off the cloak of welfare-ism actooally.

    • Dear Monique
      Please crawl back to the sewer. WhaleSpew misses you. If the US and A could manage a decent society within their own borders, they might be worth looking at as some kind of example. They can’t. Case closed.

    • Tell me this, Monique Angel: if you discovered your Government was committing crimes – breaking its own laws, mark you – would you not report it? No? Why not? Yes? To whom?

      From your attitude, I will infer you would keep schtumm. Now, why is this? Cowardice? I don’t think so. Do you really think the Government deserves to get away with it? What do you reckon? The Government is always right? Then that makes you arrogant and stupid. The Government right or wrong? That makes you complicit in crimes committed by that Government.

      Recall that people who believed that went on trial for their lives at Nuremburg. They learned something different there from the presiding (American) judge.

      And what the hell is wrong with ‘welfarism’ anyway? Do you even know what it is? Incidentally, the USA has itself always run a non-zero level of welfarism itself. It would have suffered a bloody revolt long before now if it hadn’t.

    • @ Monique Angel – If it was up to me, I’d give Edward Snowden a medal. He’s a hero in just about every respect of the word. What’s emerging now, re the US spying activities around the word, is that Snowden was right and the US is lying and untrustworthy!

      Julian Assange is another one of the same order as Edward Snowden, who should be able to walk and talk as a free man, without hindrance or interference of rogue states, namely the US and its sycophants (count Key in here).

      Unfortunately like Snowden, Assange has to be in exile for his own protection, while the real perpetrating scum, the US and its vile supporters are still out there, inflicting their venom on trusting people and nations!

      • I’ve always regarded Assange as naive. Snowden didn’t have a third choice. He either went to Russia and revealed he was on the other side, or made his case before the court in his own country, the US. Christopher Boyce and others pretty much made the same point. Assange also was unbelievably naive to fail to see that Sweden was a defacto ally of the US from about 1949 and actually was always one of the most important US frontline allies with cooperation and assistance by the US in developing Swedish fighter aircraft and their engines and missiles at least as close as with France and Britain, Swedens cold war airforce being at least equal to any West European force. There are two Swedens the military, police and tech almost total in alignment with the US and the distinct Swedish social sector left leaning but not mixing with the right wing part of Swedish society. Interestingly in my minimal contact with the Labour left in the 1980s, MPs like Clark and Wilde definitely did not support the Swedish model of defence and were highly critical of it. In fact what they desired was more something like the Finland model, in defence structure and alignment. I was not really prepared to assist them in this, as I though such a left , army centred structure and allignment nonsense.
        Assange was even more naive that he could insulate himself by encypering . There is no way, you can protect yourself that way against NSA or the Russian or Japanese equivalents. Assange seemed to operate at 2 or 3 levels walls were NSA ten years ago would be at about 6 levels.
        The reality is that both China and Russia are military dictatorships. China has advanced technically by ripping Russian and US tech. China is actually 25 years behind the USA and Russia in tech, electronics, IC and the design of advanced combat aircraft and missiles. In terms of technology China is not an advanced country and those like Tim Groser who believe the future belongs with China are kidding themselves. Only if Obama bankrupts the US with Obama care and socialist medicine and social workers.

  7. IRRIGATION ACCELERATION FUND: How to transform New Zealand into America.
    As a former farmer, I would like to make your readers aware of the governments real American agenda, and that is to transform the primary sector here in New Zealand to closely match America’s agribusiness model. These are not endearing hobbit-style farms but mega-farms run by huge conglomerates or multinational firms with a an abysmal record for pollution and animal welfare. Reports from other farmers who have lived and worked in America often talked to me about appalling work conditions where migrant workers worked seven-day-weeks just for their board. Now New Zealand mostly hires migrant workers. http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/agribusiness/9102739/Migrants-filling-NZs-dairy-worker-void
    Similar stories of worker abuses, and dairy workers who weren’t paid anything, and who were working only for their lodging have already arisen here.

    The American agibusiness system is often owned by absentee stockholders. They employ less people, which means less care and attention to the animals they are charged to protect. It is a corporate system geared around maximum profit, instead of the family farm model that is deeply ingrained in our nations psyche. We think of the Southern man as depicted in the spieghts ads not an American investment group.
    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11124376

    Or giant businesses like Landcorp.
    http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/agribusiness/9299295/NZs-biggest-farmer-backs-foreign-investment

    Everyone here will already be aware of the American agribusiness model and the problems that go with it. http://www.independentsciencenews.org/environment/america-becoming-a-land-without-farmers/

    If not watch the fantastic documentary Food Inc.

    And it is already happening here. New Zealand is following in America’s footsteps.
    David Carter has been quoted in the past as saying “Reliable irrigation represents a major step in unlocking economic potential for New Zealand, having our tradable sectors growing strongly and delivering on the Government’s economic growth goals.”
    Primary Industries Minister Nathan Guy announced its most recent funding ($750,000 grant for irrigators) yesterday and said it (irrigation acceleration fund) would ”play a major part in realising the Government’s goal of doubling primary sector exports by 2025”. Double the size!! Major water quality issues have already resulted from the intensive farming here and we want to exacerbate the problem further. These irrigation schemes include areas that have extreme weather and temperatures that are not suitable for dairying – it would be nothing short of animal cruelty. Then they will introduce the idea by stealth about the benefits of factory farming by saying at least they will be inside.

    The South will never be the same again and no one is talking about it.
    About $80 million of asset sale money is going into future irrigation projects. Here is a recent article on this. http://www.odt.co.nz/regions/central-otago/279160/750000-grant-irrigators
    “The scheme will irrigate up to 40,000 hectares of South Canterbury farmland from the Waitaki River as far north as Otipua.” All the recent media articles seem to extoll the benefits. I have looked online as well as through various papers and all the articles are suspiciously one-sided. The most intensive transformation of this country and there is not even a simple pro-and-con argument?
    I can still smell the cow muck on our politicians gumboots…

  8. THANK for the posting. Monique darling, you are in the wrong place. Try Ferrar, or Luigi? he should fit the bill. This so called government is a disgrace and a total embarrassment to decency and demockary. We need leaders to defend our human rights, not breach them. Labour better get its house in order and offer real alternatives, and a practical pathway to benefit all Kiwi’s, particularly the Poor. Still waiting for the trickle down…

  9. Thank you Daniel for the background information on the depressing pathway that our present dictators dictate. Keep up the good fight for the increasingly uncommon good. We must not lose hope, and keep fighting the good fight.

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