This whole thing about “JACINDA / LABOUR ARE CRASHING NEW ZEALAND OUT OF THE FIVE EYES BECAUSE THEY’RE SECRETLY IN LEAGUE WITH THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA – OR WISHING TO BE” meme is ridiculous.
Now, leaving aside the very legitimate points of hesitancy which New Zealand has over, you know, allowing the same five countries which majority-declared that Iraq ought be invaded for possessing “weapons of mass destruction”, to decide via declaration aspects of our core foreign policy for us …
… the stupid thing is that NONE of this is actually based on genuine concerns of a geopolitical nature. Helen Clark has already come out and shown some of the allegations about the previous Labour-led Government in relation to the Five Eyes to be simply untrue. The *current* Labour-led Government, in its previous term, pursued a fairly active *continuance* of rapproachment with the United States … and I stress that it was a *continuance*, because it actually *began* during the previous Labour-led Government’s 2005-2008 final term.
Meanwhile, as we saw not all that long ago – during the previous Parliamentary term in fact – all the outrage from certain corners of the commentariat was about how the Labour/NZF Government was actually seriously jeopardizing our relationship with the People’s Republic of China. Mysterious “definitely not bans” on certain of our key exports to the PRC ensued as a result, a Chinese diplomat made pointed remarks about poking out eyes in our direction, the list goes on.
I suppose you can forgive the PRC for expecting New Zealand to be a pliable little not-quite-ally. After all, it had faced zero opposition getting a *literal PRC spy* elected into our Parliament, who had then proceeded to arrange direct face-to-face contact and photo-ops for prominent members of the Government with the PRC’s head of secret police, etc.
Except … hold the phone ! That didn’t take place under Labour! That took place under National! The blue-coloured, (more-) neoliberal right-wing ‘conservative’ party. Those are the facts, well documented after they came out – and then supplemented by quite the cavalcade of additional supplementary evidence showing a web of influence and influence-peddling going on both under National’s watch and pervasive throughout the National Party itself.
So why is it that we’re only NOW hearing people in certain places jumping up and down about how New Zealand has purportedly – just recently – Sold Our Soul to the People’s Republic of China?
(Which further can’t be the case – if it were possible to do such a thing, the National Party would have (part-)privatized it and hocked it off overseas at the first possible opportunity along with the power-generation assets and the farmland, etc.)
Well, it’s simple. Across the world, a lot of people want to be annoyed with New Zealand and our present Prime Minister in particular. It’s right there in the obnoxious Telegraph piece which kicked off this whole kerfuffle once more – Jacinda is spoken of as “tiresomely woke”, and the headline blares that she (rather personally, which is curious – we are not a Presidential democracy, after all, nor a monarchy … except in exactly the same way the UK is) is the “West’s woke weak link”.
New Zealand has weathered – and continues to weather – the pandemic better than seemingly any other country in the Western world. From afar, we look (and I stress that it is just that – a look. Appearances *may* be bitterly deceiving) to have some sort of idyllic actually-sane-and-rational society all of a sudden (just don’t mention the housing prices). Jacinda has become a domestic symbol in polities across the globe for , no doubt , the sort of people who were once multi-coloured-hair-dye University campus “communists” who these days go about “cancelling” people.
In other words … in the (post-)Colonial Metropoles of yesteryear, they just can’t have it, this business of a *Colony* outperforming the Mother Country or the would-be (still) World Hegemon. It’s an embarrassment! And one doubled down upon when it comes to the sorts of people parading about with Her Graven Image in their own domestic contexts, to boot.
So how to attack Jacinda and our Labour-led Government? Why, it’s quite simple. They’re “Red”. Literally, that’s the party colour – and to a certain sort of (fifth) columnist, Red is quite simply a ‘red rag’ to a bull-scatology-artist. It’s easy (and fun, too!) to portray Labour as being COMMUNISTS – a “pretty communist” as the protest sign in 2017 held aloft by an agrarian opponent of Labour’s had it.
Except how can you POSSIBLY portray a fairly unremarkable in many respects middle-of-the-road modern neoliberal-consensus party as being THE DREADED RED MENACE these days ?
The obvious one would be via the Dancing Cossacks of the Modern Era – and I don’t mean the Muldoon kind, but rather the Reds Under The Bed formenting chaos in one’s domestic elections. The Russians, that is. Except that just wouldn’t fly as applies New Zealand – not that it shall likely stop somebody from printing bizarre contusions about Jacinda the personalized puppet of one Vladimir Putin, the Wellington-based KGB agent once upon a time.
But instead, it’s the PRC confection that’s been chosen for this purpose. Because at least THERE, there might LOOK like some sort of contusion and/or collusion occurring – if you seriously massage the facts so as to outright obviate many of them (and I am thinking in particular of New Zealand’s actual record of statements and engagements in the direction of the PRC over the past two years in this department).
Yet as I say – this is utterly un-about the actual situation of New Zealand under the current Labour administration. At least with regard to our relationship with the People’s Republic of China.
If it WERE about our rather problematic entanglement with the PRC, then we should have heard all about it with reference to the previous shenanigans occurrent under the National Party.
Except we didn’t – because the sorts of people who are these days up in arms about our Labour-led, indeed our Jacinda-led Government … tend to quite *like* the National Party and the sorts of noises *it* makes, so wouldn’t want to embarrass them and thus ‘let the side down’.
So instead, the party which has actually moved us AWAY from our far-too-close and actually-worrisomely-
For it quite plainly Doesn’t Fit The Narrative these chicken-hawk fish-and-chip paper-purveyors wish to broadcast about our country, our sovereignty, our aspirations, our vision, our future.
The contents of those headlines have been weaponized both at home and abroad by people who have just been LOOKING for something, anything, to have a go at what they think our Government represents. The lack of substance almost precisely becomes its enduring appeal – anything you like may be projected out thereupon.
You’re a right-whinger who wants to live-action roleplay Cold War Mk.II Electric Boogaloo? Ok, so wail about how the GODLESS COMMUNISTS are running New Zealand as part of the Sixty Ninth Internationale in confederation with “Red China”.
You’re a more middle-of-the-road sounding Anglosphere sort who secretly yearns for the days of the Sun never setting upon a certain opium-dealing empire? Well then – talk up the notion that New Zealand has quite literally ‘sold out’ both Her own people, and also our traditional mates across the Tasman into the bargain (and scrupulously, conspicuously forget about just how uneven that relationship has been both recently and in the past).
You have some problem with the local SJW brigade wherever you may so happen to be in the world at large? Turn “Jacinda”, the “Tiresomely Woke” “Weak Link” of the West, as the headline blares at you … into the proxy target for your outrage at them kids down the road tone-policing John Cleese. Or whatever it is these days.
Politics, particularly of the popular-elective variety and especially as conveyed through the conventional or even unconventional news media – is effectively an exaltation of the Symbolic over the Real. That’s all it comes down to, in the end. Symbolic choices, some of which may actually bear real consequences – provided the symbol is weighty enough that its bearers come to believe in it themselves.
And soon enough and sure enough – just as the Gulf War Did Not Take Place [to reference me some Baudrillard], or more especially as Iraq HAD Weapons of Mass Destruction … Or At Least, Saddam Was A Nasty Enough Guy That We Were Totally Justified In Rolling Him Anyway –
The ‘facts’ fade away into distant, diffident obsolescence and thence obviation outright. To be replaced with the inestimably more enduring general feeling, general perception, which suborns all else beneath its subconsciously-resonating yoke.
A propaganda campaign, you may say – carried out by none other than those former-yet-future (post-)colonial would-be world masters.
Whether of the Media or the more overt Imperial centers of power. Wherever they may so happen to be.
The external criticisms of the woke Ardern as the one who is trying to cosy up to China, surely doesn’t match up with the sentiment inside NZ that her government is less friendly to NZ-China interests than National would be.
While it can be assumed that it is Labour who is more likely to seek an independent foreign policy, which can also put us at odds with our “traditional allies”, it is National that is seen to be more pro-China than Labour, more pro-business with China and enjoys more electoral support from the NZ-Chinese community. Parking our current relationship with China on Ardern and her wokeness is incorrect.
Pure ranting dribble! The problem with New Zealand is it doesn’t really stand for anything and consequently is full of fragile Kiwis. Mahuta after twisting herself into a pretzel tying to play both sides for public consumption, only out of pure terror at getting on the wrong side of a totalitarian regime and having New Zealand’s only remaining export industry smashed. Unlike Australia New Zealand’s exports are easily replaced by others.
Except Oz exports are being replaced – apoart from iron ore.
Phil the term “totalitarian regime” I take is aimed at China or is it aimed at the USA. which is run by a cabal of billionaires with nearly half the people not bothering to vote, many in protest because the situation does not change with parties.
It would appear the the Chinese Govt has much wider support through its very different system of elections. Both countries have elections.
Newshub’s The Nation had a Muslim special this morning, where without evidence Tova called China’s treatment of religious minorities egregious, a panel guest called China bullies, and Foreign Affairs Minister Mahuta compared the situation in Xinjiang to the genocides in Cambodia and Rwanda. Not exactly warm sentiment. I see no one on the show once mentioned our treasured Five Eyes partner, America, bombing the Middle East Muslim world back to the stone age in their endless wars in recent years. The US president even called for a Muslim ban. The only thing that matters to mainstream media is exploiting the narrative which arrives on their desk every morning (today – China bad, tomorrow – Russia bad) through the use of hyperbole and breathless opinion and wild eyed automatons regurgitating incendiary rhetoric. Balanced, objective, evidence based truth telling should be the starting point for real journalists. Tova should zoom someone like Max Blumenthal or Danny Haiphong on the show, those willing to deep dive to reveal the facts, people and events behind the claims.
Our media follow the narrative given to international media by our Five Eyes partners, WMD over and over again.
EW
Yes your comment is well expressed but how the hell do we put up with the stream of outright lies in our news about events reported from the sources such as Reuters.
Most Kiwis appear to be deceived when you hear and read the innane repetition of false or skewed information ex Reuters – prompting cold war and worse. You can read opinions based on false information in most comment streams on TDB and elsewhere.
Look at another side and try not to get taken in by any unsubstantiated info.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxtzgHRHxQU
Yes, what about getting John Pilger on, Anne-Marie Brady, other luminaries, local journalists and people of the area of all faiths, really have it out
“At Least, Saddam Was A Nasty Enough Guy That We Were Totally Justified In Rolling Him Anyway –”
Two photographs stay in my mind from that era. Possible both in the same newspaper.
One of Blair and Bush smirking as they shook hands. The other a little Iraqi boy lying on a hospital bed with both legs and both arms blown off by a cruise missile.
Doesn’t matter a flying shit how you paint the situation. Perception is everything in politics, whether it is correct or not. At the moment, the Aussies, Brits, Yanks, and to a lesser degree, the Canadians see NZ as not playing in the team and we are kow towing to the CCP Chinese Criminal Party.
The CCP are using us as perfect propaganda against the other members of the Five Eyes, and other countries, claiming we are the perfect example of how the world should bow to them. The Australians are calling Ardern a closet communist, and referring to our country as “New Xiland.”
That pisses me right off.
This government had better smarten their act up fast, or our reputation and security will be at serious risk.
They won’t be getting my support for the first at the next elections either.
Perception is important but what eyes you view the world through determines your perception.
The 5 eyes have mainly fallen in line kow towing to US/UK to the US generated smearing of China. We have not gone along with that completely so are being bullied and threatened into working against our best interests of not smearing others. The US has much more to hide than any other nation yet we don’t smear them. Similarly with the UK and its shocking legacies.
Kirk showed what courage is when he confronted the environmental disastrous and immoral nuclear testing in the Pacific. He got international respect but not from the perpetrators of testing.
Lange held a firm line on nukes and NZ accommodating them. Once again international respect given but not from the perpetrators of nuclear hegemony.
So a bit of guts is needed to face bullies without shaking shitless until you comply and get walked over with the muddy boots polluting more than your international standing.
Calling of names usually passes and name calling from cowardly clients of US/UK camp followers must be recognised for what it is.
Being called “Xiland” may upset you if you let it. It might cause others to snigger with the irony of such small mindedness.
Our reputation internationally has gained in strength by not being a complete doormat.
If the CCP states facts fairly and with full context then what is to be feared.
As time passes fears become more easily put into perspective.
NZ has done no wrong.
We are needed by 5 eyes and they fear any sign of our minimal independence albeit not interfering with the spying role we play.
Ayson is on to it – he wants our Defence Minister to talk and sound like Ron Mark (the guy on the conference call of Five Eyes Nations Defence Ministers last year which apparently agreed on co-operation on democracy and human rights – something Cabinet had not discussed first). As he says Biden will send Kurt Campbell here (check his wikipedia page to confirm what follows) and he will ask us to join the Quad – a military dialogue group (not a formal defence pact) involving the USA, Japan, Oz and India (formed in 2007, security “friends” not part of NATO).
Talk of 5 Eyes minus 1 is to soften us up for Quad plus 1 (ya can all stay in 5 Eyes and be sort of independent, if ya join the Quad). Or ya can leave Five Eyes, and be replaced by Japan. Or ya can stay in Five Eyes and be less independent.
The story of the knight Circuit and his quest to slay the dragon.
Now that the (not so good or not so bad) King Joseph has replaced the white nativist barbarian tyrant rex Donaldus, Camelot has been restored. And once more knights have been gathered together and sent out on great quests.
One is the knight Circuit.
He of the great clan of the crooked mouth (renowned for their hatred of golf and golfers – they held a gathering of all the golfers of the land and by midnight ended the game of golf for many centuries – a bit like the red wedding).
He is wise. He knows that G is the 3rd letter after D in the English alphabet. And 10 is the 4th number after 7. He thus knows that D 10 is a stronger hand than G7.
And he knows the lay of the land and the importance of modernisation in the managing of flock security. Which farmers who know, what needs to be known, call quad bike safety.
But what is not known is whether the knight Circuit knows the mystery of synchroncity. For confrontation, without design for peaceful co-existence, leads to war.
Nuke vs nuke in Europe, and an area free of nukes in the south – led to a new balance without nukes in Europe. Was the example of the south required for this to happen, or was it memory of a past occasion? When one had missiles on the border of another nation until they moved missiles onto an island on another continent – then they agreed to have no such weapons close to the other.
For its only the wisest of knights who understand there must always be a way out of confrontation.
Forming security alliances (note 1914) does not always prevent war. I might posit USA with Germany and the UK with Austria-Hungary and Japan with Ottomon Turkey (either Hong Kong or nationalist Taiwan as Sarajevo/Balkans).
Of course one could pose the trade war with China (talk about one extreme to another – giving away economic supremacy because of greed for China market profits, then in regret going full metal jacket “GENOCIDE”) as a reprise of the policy applied by FDR on Japan.
What is known
The USA has recognised that China has a one China policy, but has not chosen to accept that this includes Taiwan (and claims to be nuetral on any Taiwan declaration of independence). Taiwan is not a nation state because the nationalists ruling the place did not declare one before the PRC was recognised by the majority of the UN as the government of the one China (1949-1971). Maybe that means recognition of any Taiwan autonomy is dependent on China’s assent.
Israel does not accept it’s occupation and settlement of the West Bank involves the territory of another nation state because none was declared there between 1948-1967. It’s cultural suppression/oppression involves taking Palestinian land and imprisoning those who protest this. Maybe this means Israeli recognition of a Palestinain state is dependent on them not being able to get way with annexing the land and then puting “the unwanted people” into refugee camps for the stateless awaiting resettlement.
There are those who support Taiwan autonomy and those who support a Palestinian state anyhow. But only in the USA is there pro pro eretz Israel sentiment and also resistance to a one China.
What is predictable
The dragon will plan to blockade Taiwan (until it agrees to talks, on Chinese terms, for future governance arrangements) with a ban all foreign shipping and airplanes within 200 miles. The US military will determine there is no scenario in which they can successfully challenge this – the only option being air attacks from a distance on any Chinese assets involved. Acts of war/escalation that achieve no purpose.
The American mistake
Promoting another colour revolution, democracy in Hong Kong – there was a deal done whereby by 2047 there was direct rule from Beijing – while also proposing the selling of weapons to Taiwan to perpetuate its resistance to one China policy on the mainland.
Then the effort to create military alliances for democracy and human rights – and cry FIRE, GENOCIDE. Cynical and obvious.
What is possible
The what does the US want and what does China want balance.
China wants one China and more (operating outside the world market system as an imperial economy)
Who but China wants them to have more?
Suggestions
The USA does not sell Taiwan weapons and declares its opposition to nation state independence for Taiwan if China ends any threat to take Taiwan by force and agrees to 50 years of continuing autonomy for Taiwan.
That safety valve called time.
The US ends sanctions on Hong Kong, if the people of Hong Kong have freedom of international movement (can come and go).
China commits to the free movement of shipping and the equal 200 economic zone rights rights of ASEAN nations whereever and whenever there is any claim made by China – as a sign of goodwill (after their covert aircraft carrier military buildup on atolls).
Ron Mark also embraced Israel with its human rights record. A man of principle?
Of course he didn’t need NZ govt approval nor direction.
I did not bother to read any of the ‘sky is falling’ articles in the MSM referring to the subject of this article which has confirmed my view that they would be right-wing propaganda from those suffering at the thought that a young female left leader could prove to be better at managing the biggest worldwide crisis in many years than the existing stale male right-wing failures.
Bonnie you are onto it.
Deep seated but very much controlling native thinking of many “White complying Male” power brokers and their sycophants..
I want to agree with the sentiment here. I know it is right.
But this is sooo badly written that it waffles about and affirms the opposite viewpoint in mere length and convolusivity of itself.
A 100% rewrite to 20% of the length would achieve more to validating the facts herein without labouring the reader (no pun intended) to the point of boredom.
Again, for those that don’t mind tl;dr – this:
http://www.kiwipolitico.com/2021/04/facing-facts/
and
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2104/S00089/mixed-sight-new-zealand-the-five-eyes-and-china.htm
Facts.
The fact is there are a lot of people still under their beds on their Muldoon mission searching for reds.
And some think they have found them.
Colour blindness leaves them confused.
Even a colour chart would not help them.
So if the story you present here is the true, what you’re saying is NZF and Labour knew what was going on and how to avoid this situation, yet they deliberately and publicly behaved in ways contrary to their aims? Well, that figures. The solution is obvious then: do it the right way. If they don’t know what they’re doing, or what is going on, the solution is this: stop trying to be “open and transparent” all the time, and use secrecy for things that are supposed to stay secret. It is contradictory for every MP to be a woke rock star spouting great speeches for the twitter-arena, when silence is the route to success. If ministers in leading roles won’t stop trying to impress an irrelevent public with information they can’t process or interpret, and they won’t step back from the cameras, promote some that will. That will match the persoanlity of the Labour’s Party, settle their support base, calm the farmer’s horses, fix innumerable issues in all areas, and save me the hours spent decoding the ramblings of a Morrinsville farmer in 2017. The next time Morrinsville has a problem, get them to call Marlborough. They have a better memory.
What a load of crap Left wing lies and propaganda.
“(Which further can’t be the case – if it were possible to do such a thing, the National Party would have (part-)privatized it and hocked it off overseas at the first possible opportunity along with the power-generation assets and the farmland, etc.)”
Correct me if I am wrong (which I am not because I just checked it) – LABOUR were the ones who set up and privatised the power companies from 1986-89.
Likewise Telecom, 1987-89 and Jim Bolger (National) was opposed to it
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/bolger-telecom-sale-a-mistake/VORMX4RZZZEUTKVGKVV4AAIWFQ/#:~:text=Telecom%20was%20split%20off%20from,Government%20was%20elected%20in%201990.
Oh wait, who sold off NZ Post? – You guessed it. LABOUR from 1987-89
Three of our main income earners for the government, and essential services whose role government is to ensure reliable supply. Not to mention the major employers in NZ. – Unemployment anyone?
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