Large American Pot, Meet Small Chinese Kettle

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IRONICALLY, THE CONCERN over Chinese influence in New Zealand is being raised against a backdrop of unchallenged American hegemony. Extending across the whole width of the nation’s political stage, this American backdrop has become so much a part of the play’s scenery that most Kiwis no longer notice it. The inclusion of a few Chinese props, however, is enough to induce something close to panic among New Zealand’s political class.

That this country remains enmeshed in the intelligence gathering networks of the United States National Security Agency, for example, is considered problematic by only a very small minority of New Zealanders. Between the Battle of the Coral Sea in 1942 and the passage of New Zealand’s anti-nuclear legislation in 1985, most Kiwis simply assumed that the United States would always be their country’s principal military protector. America’s strategic planners seemed to agree, because they never for a moment considered suspending New Zealand from the so-called “Five Eyes” intelligence-gathering alliance. Dropping us out of the ANZUS Pact was considered punishment enough.

Moreover, as Nicky Hager’s book “Other People’s Wars” make clear, from the moment New Zealand was suspended from the ANZUS Pact, elements of what passes for this country’s “deep state” undertook to rebuild this country’s damaged relationship with the United States. Senior civil servants like Gerald Hensley simply refused to accept the Fourth Labour Government’s foreign and defence policies.

With the Wellington Declaration of 2010, and the Washington Declaration of 2012, the rift between the United States and New Zealand became a thing of the past. It had taken Hensley and his successors 25 years, but the anti-nuclear rebel was finally back in what Prime Minister John Key called “The Club”.

For those of you wondering what the Wellington Declaration (signed by Hillary Clinton and Murray McCully) entails – here’s the guts of it:

“The United States-New Zealand strategic partnership is to have two fundamental elements: a new focus on practical cooperation in the Pacific region; and enhanced political and subject-matter dialogue — including regular Foreign Ministers’ meetings and political-military discussions.”

The content of the Labour-NZF Coalition government’s Defence White Paper, far from being a departure from existing policy, is clearly a reaffirmation of the previous National-led government’s re-commitment to the United States.

These diplomatic and military links are merely the most formal manifestations of US hegemony in New Zealand. Beyond and beneath them extends an intricate network of personal, cultural and economic relationships that binds together inextricably the American and New Zealand political classes.

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So many Kiwis have studied and worked in the United States. So many exchange students have come and gone. So many of our military and police officers have been seconded to serve alongside their American counterparts. So many of our best and brightest graduates have been shoulder-tapped for a stint in Washington or New York.

So numerous are these relationships that they could be said to constitute a veritable “fifth column” of American power in New Zealand society. Even if Kiwis elected a government committed to breaking free from the tutelage of the USA, the resistance from these US “assets” in our foreign affairs, military, business and media bureaucracies would be formidable.

Also to be considered is the all-pervasive influence of American “soft power” on New Zealand society. So much of the digital information we receive, the movies and television shows we watch, the music we listen to, the clothes we wear and the vocabulary we use in our everyday speech hails from the United States. Our directors and screenwriters head for Los Angeles and New York. Young Maori and Pasifika from South Auckland emulate the musical and dance styles of Black and Hispanic Americans. Even our news and current-affairs shows formats are borrowed from the US. How much of New Zealand culture is genuinely indigenous? Three-quarters? Half? A quarter? Less? Living in the shadow of a great power can be a profoundly disintegrative experience.

We have been here before, of course. Back in the days of “Mother England” when New Zealand made a fetish of being the most loyal of the British Empire’s “dominions across the sea”. British hegemony in the century between the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi and the Battle of the Coral Sea was no less all-encompassing than the hegemonic networks of the United States.

There was, however, one important difference between British and American rule. Up until 1973, the United Kingdom was happy to assign New Zealand the highly remunerative role of the Mother Country’s South Seas farm. The Americans, however, have never expressed the slightest interest in taking all the agricultural produce New Zealanders would be only too delighted to send them – quite the reverse, in fact. American farmers have worked tirelessly to keep the highly-efficient Kiwis primary exports out of their markets.

Which brings us to China: the one country which has been willing to open her markets to New Zealand’s agricultural exports on a truly massive scale. The country which, more than any other, kept New Zealand afloat during the Global Financial Crisis. The country which, in return for keeping our economy afloat, asks of us only two things: equal access to our markets; and tangible evidence of our respect.

To secure this reciprocation, China is doing no more than any other powerful state will do to achieve its national objectives. It is building relationships with its trading partner’s political and economic elites; and, it is projecting its soft power as far as possible into their society. In other words, behaving exactly as the British and Americans have behaved in relation to New Zealanders – albeit on a much, much smaller scale.

If New Zealand’s American “friends” are so anxious to have us remove the handful of Chinese props from our political stage, then perhaps it is time for us to replace their all-American backdrop with something Kiwi-made.

43 COMMENTS

  1. Big difference with China vs America. Chinese interests are all to willing to do business at a certain price. American interests some times don’t even know what the price is.

  2. The fanatically remainer, anti-Corbyn and pink neoliberal Guardian is publishing increasing hilarious and hysterical anti-Brexit stories, like this one – https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jul/18/dairy-products-may-become-luxuries-after-uk-leaves-eu without the faintest understanding that prior to the UKs entry to the common market the UK had a major competitive edge in cheap food prices from deals for efficiently produced food with their old empire like NZ. I am pretty sure NZ, Australia and Canada can replace European dairy products with a product of the same or better quality and at better price.

    From New Zealand’s point of view we should see Brexit as a massive opportunity to get back unfettered access to a market of 65 million rich consumers who like dairy and meat. The biggest advantage of diversifying our export markets to somewhere like the UK is we will no longer be reliant on those authoritarian butchers in Beijing who run China.

    Love live a hard Brexit!!!

    • After they joined the common market many British dairy farmers were not allowed to produce any more. A quota system was imposed and farmers paid compensation to leave their land idle. Lots of it. Britain can do a lot to recover her own production.
      D J S

      • Britain like New Zealand is struggling to coup with the challenges of the 21st century with 20th century technology. What the older guys from the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s and 90’s don’t say is it all gets wiped away, all progress gets lost. And we’re struggling with out attitudes. This is our last chance to become expert at market economics. Screw it up and no one is going to want to do business with any of us. It’s the kind of reputation no one wants.

    • > “From New Zealand’s point of view we should see Brexit as a massive opportunity to get back unfettered access to a market of 65 million rich consumers who like dairy and meat.”

      You can’t unscramble an egg. Moving meat and dairy from one hemisphere to the other was never a practical way for the UK to feed their population. As oil supplies dwindle, and countries look for ways to reduce their carbon footprint, trading high-volume commodities with countries on the other side of the world is never going to be attractive. For the UK, moving to trading with Europe was sensible for the same reason that Aotearoa trading with Australia is practical; it’s right next door!

      > “The biggest advantage of diversifying our export markets to somewhere like the UK is we will no longer be reliant on those authoritarian butchers in Beijing who run China.”

      So you think it would be better to be reliant on those authoritarian butchers in London that helped those authoritarian butchers in Washington invade two sovereign countries, excusing themselves with lies about “weapons of mass destruction”, and proceeding to murder civilians by the thousands? The Chinese state is certainly no saint, but it’s no worse than the UK or US. Besides, even if an economy dependent on export of high-volume commodities was practical in the 21st century, which it isn’t, “diversifying” would surely mean selling our commodities to a wide range of countries, not just one empire or another?

  3. There was historically a perception that communist China, a closed and repressive dictatorship , was a threat . Whereas US and UK were decent democracies , and safer to be friends with. We see the democratic structure of the US as coming under increasing question as their elected president is disparaged and vilified for trying to do in foreign relations what he was elected to do. Namely improve relations with Moscow. The people who really rule in the US are having to come out, and reveal how little power the elected president really has, and how much power the spy agencies do have. That doesn’t make China a democracy, but the difference in power structure is revealed as being largely one of method and perception, and more dependant on the individuals incumbent than the structure. At least in China you know who is making the decisions.
    We should have our independence. The world would respect us for it.
    D J S

  4. Yep, because the number of American colonists in No Zealand is quarter of a million and climbing, while there are only a few thousand Chinese here at most.

  5. This requires a much larger readership!
    The pervasive assault on NZ culture via all the routes you mention is so successful the larger NZ public doesn’t see it.
    This is the best essay on the subject I’ve read for a good long while.So heartening to see it outlined so well.
    Wish you still had a weekly column in the Press.
    Love ya to bits!

    • We love you also FRANCESA,

      We have been ‘colonialised’ since the first Maori landing party firstly arrived and took over from the small Island people of the Moriori.

      This past set of experiences has been both a ‘good and sometimes bad experience’.

      But we do need our Government to take control of our futures to ensure that the current ‘mix’ of peoples do not get out of control, to cause division and financial ruin to others.

      Living in unity needs constant ‘caring and nurturing’ and the NZ Government needs to work for all of us to ensure this.

      Good article Chris and very good feedback from everyone here also.

      A welll supported article and a ‘must read.’

  6. I think it goes down further than that Chris, and that is pure and simple racism.
    The “white” people of the world have always regarded themselves as superior to other races.
    Asian people were a bit slower to catch on to the international money-go-round of the “western” people but caught onto it they have, and what’s more they have quickly become better at it.
    America is used to being regarded as the world’s greatest economy, the great international lawmaker, the icon of international democracy.
    The position of USA is really more of being in the top position of the international Ponzi scheme which some people still call the world economy.
    China threatens to climb over the US and go to the top and boy doesn’t scare the s…t out of a lot of people!

  7. America is run by banks, corporations and opportunists, for the short-term benefit of banks, corporations and opportunists. The shift away from democratic processes commenced in the 19th century, and was complete by the mid 20th century, by which time the Federal Reserve, a privately-owned bank, was well established as the nation’s money-printer, and by which time the military-industrial complex was deciding what transport systems would be used, how food would be grown, what would be allowed on television or in ‘newspapers’, which country needed ‘regime change’ to facilitate American cultural, financial and economic invasion etc. Now democracy is in America is entirely phony (you cannot be elected high office without truckloads of money or massive corporate sponsorship).

    Since the overturning of legislation by the Clinton administration in the late 1990s the power of corporations and banks has grown immensely, as has the gap between the rich and poor. And since corporations and banks operate on a loot-and-pollute basis, with a focus on short-term profits, the infrastructure of America is collapsing, as its environment. Soon the industrial system of food production will begin to collapse, due to the extremely high energy requirements, the high chemical requirements, the denaturing of the soil and the extreme weather conditions associated with planetary overheating.

    Since WW2, China has morphed from a largely peasant society with a small and relatively primitive industrial base into a technologically advanced nation…. as demonstrated by the huge number of skyscrapers, factories, motorways and rail systems constructed every year: in one year China manufactures and uses more concrete than the US did in its entire history. And now it has the financial surpluses that allow rapid military expansion.

    By adopting the western model of development, China has set itself up for environmental and economic collapse, of course, since China has little in the way of energy resources and has a monstrous appetite for energy that can only be serviced in the short term by importation of fossil fuels from places like Iran and Russia. By burning humungous amounts of fossil fuels every day, China is starting to rival the US as the world’s greatest polluter. And China is just as vulnerable as any other nation, and more vulnerable than many, to the effects of planetary overheating. China will obviously ‘make hay while the sun shines’ in order to be able to defend itself from American hegemony, and in doing so exacerbate its long-term predicaments.

    The ‘shall we go with America or go with China’ argument is therefore fatuous, since neither has adopted sustainable models with respect to anything, and NZ is similarly on its was ‘down the drain’ as a consequence of overdependence on fossil fuels, overconsumption and desecration of the land and waters that are requirements for participation in global commercial activity.

    All the evidence points to global collapse occurring over the period 2020 to 2030, with the extraordinarily high temperatures, the raging fires and the unprecedented rainfall events that have been occurring throughout the Northern Hemisphere in 2018 being harbingers of that collapse.

    I say the Northern Hemisphere but in fact regions of our neighbour across the ditch are in dire straits, with the outlook for the coming months being for drier than normal across much of the nation.

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/19/you-count-your-blessings-farm-families-battling-drought-photo-essay

    Needless to say, in a confidence-based system in which loans and credit are regarded as paramount, we are required ‘the system’ to ignore all the evidence and pretend that everything is just fine and dandy, and that present political-economic arrangements have a future when it is abundantly clear they do not.

    Needless to say, thanks to the corrupt corporate-owned media, the vast majority (99.9%?) of New Zealanders remain utterly clueless about all the factors that will determine their futures. Propaganda continues to flourish because it is so successful.

  8. I dont really give a SHIT about notions of hegemony but I just wish the chinese wsould ceas and desist in their war against the natural world and the planetary environment. their harvesting of ivory and rhinoceros horn must stop

  9. The country which, more than any other, kept New Zealand afloat during the Global Financial Crisis.

    Which tells us that we’re doing it wrong.

    A countries ‘economy’ cannot be dependent upon exports to another country because that will, inevitably, destroy the real economy as we run out of resources. And, yes, that includes farming as it needs all the resources that make up the soil to grow plants. When we export the plants/meat/dairy we’re exporting those irreplaceable resources.

    The inevitable resort of being an export led economy is the destruction of the economy.

    The country which, in return for keeping our economy afloat, asks of us only two things: equal access to our markets; and tangible evidence of our respect.

    There cannot be equal access to our markets and they’ve done nothing to deserve our respect. On the former it means that we will be priced out of our own country (Tenants in our own land as John Key said) and on the latter they simply don’t meet our standards. Standards in working conditions, minimum wage, access to health, environmental protection and many others that would actually make free-trade a possibility.

    If New Zealand’s American “friends” are so anxious to have us remove the handful of Chinese props from our political stage, then perhaps it is time for us to replace their all-American backdrop with something Kiwi-made.

    Yes it is time that we did that and became in independent nation capable of supporting ourselves.

    • Certainly we and everyone else need to stop having stuff shipped here from all over the world that we could just as easily make here, and sending stuff all over the world that they can just as easily make or grow there. That applies to most international trade. It does not help the national economies except for a few individuals , and it isn’t environmentally sustainable.
      How come all trading nations are in debt. Except Israel that is subsidised by the US? If there is a trade imbalance one country should be in credit by the same amount as a partner is in deficit. But they’r all in deficit. Not to each other ultimately , but to the banks. It’s madness.
      D J S

      • Too true. For millennia trade was all about acquiring things that could not be found locally or made locally, and it was utter madness to transport stuff that could be acquired locally around the world…..which is why no one did it.

        What changed all that was the introduction of steam-driven machinery into factories in Britain; they facilitated mass production, which in turn undercut traditional methods of manufacture and also made it profitable to transport raw materials, such as wool, halfway round the world.

        In the modern world, international trade is dependent on massive disparities in wage rates and massive disparities in currency values. We would not be importing Chinese-made goods if wage rates in China were comparable to those in NZ, nor if the Chinese currency were no so grossly undervalued.

        Often overlooked is the fact that all international trade is dependent on the burning of humungous quantities of oil (or derivatives of oil) in ships and planes every second of every day, and that international trade is a major contributor to the planetary overheating we have been witnessing.

        It naturally follows that international trade has no long term future and in the not-too-distant-future people will be forced to acquire what they need (as opposed to what they want) locally. Sadly, as a consequence of all the development madness, stripping of resources, and fouling of the environment that has occurred in recent decades, in most locations the local environment will not support the population’s needs.

        Needless to say, as agents of international banks and corporations, governments (and politicians in general) promote international trade, international tourism, overconsumption, and all the other aspects of modern living that have no long-term future and which are contributing inordinately to planetary meltdown.

        Sadly, they (politicians) will keep making matters worse until the system ‘implodes’. The idiotic TINA philosophy still reigns supreme, even though there are dozens of far better alternatives to the way society is currently organised.

        • Well said; now dream up some local solutions, nut out a radical plan, get off your backside & take exemplary action to turn things around. I’m sure there would be many who would follow your lead.

          • i was ‘off my backside’ between 1998 and 2014, working day and night to wake people up to reality and get to ‘solutions’ implemented. It is now too late: meltdown is underway.

            Actually, I gave up activism in 2014 because is saw all too clearly that change-for-the better has been made totally impossible by the system and by those who inhabit the system.

            1. At central government, regional government and local government levels anything that challenges business-as-usual is removed from the public debate by the gatekeepers of dysfunction.

            2. The mainstream media is concerned with buoying up (maximising) consumption and anything that challenges ostentatious consumption is automatically censored out of existence.

            3. The general populace is by-and-large grossly uninformed/misinformed and apathetic. A large portion vigorously opposes sustainability.

            The sad reality is that politics in industrial nations is ultimately about avoiding all fundamental truth. And since the system is based on confidence, we should therefore expect that those in power to tell ever-bigger lies as the system progressively implodes.

            Eventually politicians will also become victims of their own ignorance, stupidity and cowardice, but not before they have pushed a large sector of the populace ‘off the cliff’.

            If you have any strategies to circumvent or avoid any of the above, please share it with us.

            • I agree that what Chris has called the ” neoliberal settlement ” is unlikely to be changed by reasoned argument or protest or politics while it rolls on. It is a juggernaut . But I do believe it is heading for a cliff.
              This because it is based on fallacy. IF and when it falls apart there will be a time of flux. The flaws will be objectively examined . That is when a better system could be set in place. It needs that there are some people ready with a thought out plan to explain simply and clearly to the electorate when they will be motivated to listen and seriously think about it. Don’t give up.
              D J S

            • AFEWKNOWTHETRUTH I appreciate your candor & struggle. I’m in total agreement with your reply. I dream of a visionary NZ that will lead the world in a very different direction by unilaterally becoming; a sustainable model of post-globalisation nationhood. I also have some ideas about how we could get the ball rolling.

              I’ve also developed a concept for a small autonomous regional homeland, within which a parallel alternative to today’s world could be evolved by a cooperative community of pioneering souls.

              I’ve shared many of these ideas during the course of my own activist endeavours & also here on the TDB. To be honest though no one is really interested in such radical ideas for many of the reasons you’ve pointed out & many others besides.

              Only when life affirming wilderness voices such as ours come together in solidarity will we be able to refine our dreams, articulate a mutual vision & broaden the struggle against the globalisation establishment. I’m up for it is anyone else is.

        • When ‘the world’ was the Mediterranean, Europe, Africa, Middle East and a bit further, there was international trade.

          Before steam. Before the Iron Age.

          There is plenty and enough archaeological evidence to prove that.

          Lapis lazuli from Afghanistan arriving in Egypt. Silk, spices, the vital metals for making bronze tools and weapons. Technology movement(and it was darned good technology, too).

          There’s something about a very large and traversible land mass – Eurasia – that leads to that kind of trafficking.

          • Exactly! Camel trains and sail boats etc. Materials or products that were not obtainable locally or could not be produced locally were traded (sometimes over long distances) at VERY SLOW rates. Even mineral oil from underground reserves that leaked to the surface was traded -a few hundred tonnes a year (versus the current 5+ million tonnes a day).

            Not to be forgotten is the fact that acquiring spices from the ‘East Indies’ without going through intermediaries was the initial driver for European exploration and colonisation.

            How different the world is now; all kinds of manufactured goods that were made locally just a couple of decades ago are now almost exclusively Asian-made and transported here; we sell wine overseas to obtain funds to purchase overseas-made wine. Traders and shipping companies and opportunists love that kind of insanity….and the ultimate price of that kind of insanity is planetary meltdown due to the increase in atmospheric CO2 (going up every year at a rate unprecedented in geological history).

            Meanwhile while the reserves of fossil fuels (which facilitate the functioning of the system) go rapidly down.

            It is difficult to imagine a more destructive and more unsustainable set of living arrangements those that now dominate the world…and that is why they will inevitably go kaput.

            We don’t know exactly when kaput will occur -maybe this year, maybe 3 years from now – but we do know that which is unsustainable cannot be sustained.

            We do know that the longer current arrangement continue the worse the mayhem will be when they do fail.

      • The antonym of trade is war. Large countries like the US and China can get away with war because they don’t need to rely on trade. Many small countries that have to trade with each other reduce the incidence of war.

  10. In short; we’ve never been a truly independent nation. We’re a little ex-colonial trading nation that is totally dependent on the rest of the world for our very existence, security, ideas & luxuries. Until we don’t need to rely on exports to maintain our standard of living & can sustain ourselves from what we grow, produce & manufacture, we will never be able too hold our heads high.

    Only an uncompromising national unity government with real soul & teeth will be able to achieve such things. Why our regressive bleeding heart, social/economic liberals are so against a little visionary nationalism when our country is in dire straits really dumbfounds me.

    If we’re gonna survive the downfall of ‘the world as we know it’ it will require a big picture vision, patriotic leadership & hard nosed pragmatism that puts our own interests before those of our foreign masters & the fifth column already deeply rooted in our cargo cult land.

    • @ JBG.
      Some of the things you write about have merit, with respect.
      However.
      I think there’re many real and actual reasons why we ‘can hold our heads up’.
      The volume of food our agrarians can produce is a bit big and I think we’ll always be in demand for that reason alone.
      What we 4.7 million are, also, is sitting, duck-like, on a large, beautiful country with the gob smacked look of a trailer park family learning they just won the Very Big Lottery. Without some serious muscle, we’re fucked. But just who’s muscle should we flirt with? I’m going with the devil we know. HRH QE2 to be precise. If we go for the yanks we’ll also have to go with Israel. If we go with the Russians we’ll also have to go with dancing bears. If we go with the Chinese we must eat chicken feet. If we go with the Australians we must be insane.
      We need a weapons programme.
      We need to divert some of the income we save when bennies die in the streets of the cold into a weapons programme, Kiwi style. Weapons that no one has a defence against. How about shit cannons? Actual shit cannons that shoot shit. They could shoot jerry brownlee shit? No living thing could go near that stuff. It’d be like cryptonite. It’d lie there for years with a kill zone of 500 Km’s. We could also shoot arse-hair balls. paula bennett’s arse hair would bring down F16’s. Bill english’s brain-fart trench gas? One sentence out of english would gas an entire region of all living things with ears. We could blind our foes with big screen broad cast, home grown sit coms and rom coms? An hour of that corn-syrup, flat lining script writing and the enemy would be blowing themselves up to escape the torment. If we really wanted to, we could unleash upon the world, weapons of such vile and horrible power that trump, nato, the EU and all those other fuck wits with their little diddles, dusty girl parts and big guns would build a wall around Nu Zillind then desperately pretend that we don’t, and never did, exist.
      I’m increasingly inclined, these days, to say; “ Let’s not worry, lets just party!”
      After all? What’s best? To go out in The Big Flash with a Mr Frownie Face ? Or go out with dilated pupils while being kissed, hugged and jumping to da beat? Because, I’m sure, what ever you go ‘out’ with is what you’re going to come back ‘in’ with. You’ve been warned.

      • CB says ‘You’ve been warned’. Is this some kind of existential threat? My soul is intimately entwined with the very make up of our nation & the bones of my ancestors lie in our hallowed earth. I have a dream, a vision of a future NZ & a plan of how to get there that would blow your tiny cookie fueled mind.

        I think an invincible missile defence system are the words you were grasping for in your comment.

        I appreciate your infantile toilet humour but you’re messing with a big picture, long term thinking, voice in the wilderness type character now, so I’d advise you to clean yourself up a bit & prepare yourself for the global death throe struggles to come.

        Viva the post-globalisation, Fortress NZ Confederacy.

  11. The Americans have been using the Mossad as an arm-length weapon in NZ to disrupt and interfere in New Zealand politics for years, and have been sending in their own agents to disrupt democratic protest since the days of the waterfront strike up until Occupy and beyond – and those actions have been largely supported by the NZ intelligence services despite the odd bloody nosed disagreement.

    I don’t know why anyone is surprised that the Chinese are now doing the same thing.

  12. Here’s just one practical example of the soft power Chris is talking about. I know a few people who have studied International Relations at Victoria University. This school trains most of the people who end up working at MFAT. Many of the lecturers are USAmericans, and they only seem to teach the “realist” school popular with neo-cons like Henry Kissinger. The “realist” school of IR teaches that the world will become a better place if every state ruthlessly pursues its own narrow self-interest. It’s based on the same faulty interpretations of game theory that underly neo-classical economics and its “rational economic actors”. Having MFAT staff trained exclusively in “realist” IR is disturbing in the same way as having our Treasury staff trained only neo-classical (“leave it to The MarketTM”) economics. It leaves them woefully under-equipped to write effective policy in a complex and ever-changing world, and slaved to the two main pillars of the Washington Consensus.

  13. Chris,

    It’s OK to trade with China because they want what we sell.

    But there’s a limit to how close we can allow ourselves to get with that Regime.

    Unlike the USA, there is no right of property ownership in China, it is highly xenophobic and it is a repressive dictatorship. The reason many of our best and brightest go to the USA is because the USA is a venue for doing creative and brilliant things. This is not the case in China.

    The reality of the matter is that there is only one superpower.

  14. I’m prejudiced. I’m arseholist. I fucking hate arse holes. ( I don’t mean actual bum holes. I mean as a metaphor. ) I don’t care what shape, size, colour, religion you are, so long as you’re not an arse hole. Give a little pussy far too much money ( think mike hoskings ) and they turn into dicks then arse holes.
    Kids ! Warn your parents! Contains objectionable material. Ba hahahahha ahaha hahahaha ahaha a a a a !

    Team America. World Police. “Fuck yeah ! “

    https://youtu.be/eCfU44cnbCc

  15. Top marks AFEWKNOWTHETRUTH Brilliant.

    I love reading your thoughtful reflections on our impending demise and yes we are already slipping down that slope.

    As we look at the oxygen content along with the CO2 levels are reaching crisi point to where oxygen levels will cauise respiratory colaspe to many with impaired lung capacity aready the rest of us will whither like grapes on vines.

    We should always remember as some already know, that if we abuse the resources given us in the environment, and take to much out of it; – ‘Mother nature’ will severely punish us all for it in the end.

    We are on a slippery slope to disaster I am afraid.

    http://scrippso2.ucsd.edu/
    quote;

    Atmospheric Oxygen Levels are Decreasing
    Oxygen levels are decreasing globally due to fossil-fuel burning. The changes are too small to have an impact on human health, but are of interest to the study of climate change and carbon dioxide. These plots show the atmospheric O2 concentration relative to the level around 1985. The observed downward trend amounts to 19 ‘per meg’ per year. This corresponds to losing 19 O2 molecules out of every 1 million O2 molecules in the atmosphere each year.

    • Thanks for the appreciative words.

      Over a decade ago I did a television interview, in which I pointed out that the economy is predicated on ‘stealing the future’ from the children, i.e. using up resources they will need to survive and ruining the environment to the point of causing it to collapse.

      Numerous books I wrote emphasised the same fundamental truth.

      Letters to government ministers, presentations to district councils and regional councils, radio interviews, local meetings, magazine articles….you name it, I have tried. None of it made a scrap of difference.

      What is scary is that the heatwaves, droughts and inundations currently experienced around the world (and the associated deaths and destruction and crop failures) correspond with an increase in average temperature of the Earth of less than 1oC, and ‘the powers that be’ fully intend to do nothing whatsoever to limit planetary overheating; in fact they continue to promote the consumption of fossil fuels, and in doing so will cause the Earth’s average temperature to rise by 2oC or 3oC or more over coming decades, render huge areas of the Earth that are currently populated into uninhabitable zones.

      What is even more scary is the ignorance and apathy of the general populace about all this.

      I now know

      None of it made any difference: NZ society, along with practically every other, remains fully committed to gobbling up resources and churning out humungous quantities of life-threatening pollution.

  16. Those who decry American influence in New Zealand are allowed to do it: unless, like under the last government, there’s some horse trading or mosquito swatting to get done.

    Because that’s how it is done: NZ spies are sent to France to spy on French elections; American spies are embedded and otherwise sent to NZ as students and so forth to disrupt what would be illegal for the NZ spies to disrupt the extent their foreign partners do it (and get away with it).

    To what extent China would engage in such horse trading is a scary thought, too. Perhaps they are less of a threat to New Zealand citizens ironically because the intelligence relationships are less embedded; because they will be pursing their own objectives, rather than the objectives of the NZ government and industry, which are covertly often violently destructive to the lives of New Zealanders who naively proceed to act on the basis that democracy and democratic change is something the New Zealand government values.

  17. Maybe in 100 years someone might find it funny enough to note, perhaps in Chinese, that both the left and the right are at the same time acting against their own interests: the left, arguing for a defense theatre that is unable to protect their protests, and the right, arguing for an economic arrangement that is unlikely to keep capital in the hands of their descendants, or even country. Perhaps both need to start caring about the later a little more. But I don’t see that happening.

  18. China has an enormous population and decades ago it encouraged population stabilisation via its one-child-per-couple policy.

    In recent times someone somewhere (a committee?) decided the one-child policy had to be relinquished; too many boys and not enough girls (abortion/infanticide) and insufficient young people to support future economic growth and future growth in consumption.

    The US would have a relatively stable population were it not for immigration -poor people trying to get a slice of the action. Although consumption is relatively stable per capita, it is enormous by world standards.

    India and host of other highly significant nations have both increasing populations and increasing appetites.

    Unsurprisingly, the consumption of the Earth’s resources continues to increase and the ‘day we nominally go into overshoot’ inexorably advances.

    ‘Earth’s resources consumed in ever greater destructive volumes
    Study says the date by which we consume a year’s worth of resources is arriving faster’

    ‘….The overshoot began in the 1970s, when rising populations and increasing average demands pushed consumption beyond a sustainable level. Since then, the day at which humanity has busted its annual planetary budget has moved forward…’

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/23/earths-resources-consumed-in-ever-greater-destructive-volumes

    (me again) Although it is blatantly obvious, I will write it anyway; international trade is what keeps the world in state of overshoot, and international trade is a major reason for the ‘ever greater destructive volumes’.

    Does anyone really think that a global economic system that is based on ever greater destruction [of the Earth and its natural environments] has anything other than a very short-term future?

    • People who work for money aren’t rare. People who work because of ideological conviction are. Any one experienced in managing there own properties will know that one good developer can be more productive than 10 or even 100 average developers. And when it comes to immigration and population controls, I dare say it’s more like 2000x’s.

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