NZ has surplus armoured vehicles; Ukraine needs them. Why won’t we send them?
This week Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern denounced Russia over the atrocities discovered in Bucha, and promised more support for Ukraine.
That support included a second round of sanctions, looking at importation controls, and getting “our people supporting some of the efforts”.
That comes on top of our earlier donation of surplus military equipment; a total of 1066 body armour plates, 473 helmets and 571 camouflage vests. All very nice-sounding, but compared to what many other countries are doing, pitifully small, even mean.
The weird cry for NZDF to send weapons to Ukraine to kill evil Russians is strangely similar to the middle class Marxists screaming for police to bash the smelly lumpenproletariat nazis off Parliament’s lawns and is now extending to a new SIS Stasi to dob in enemies of the State who say mean things about you on line.
When did we go from peace loving kiwis to righteous violence?
Where is our ‘enemy to none, friend to all’ headspace?
It seems that ever since the Wellington Middle Class Marxists got spooked by the Dumb Lives Matter protest, any perception of threat is now met with a Trevor Mallard level over reaction.
Currently Stuff is calling anyone bad mouthing women online is a sure sign of a domestic terrorist.
This sudden rush of blood to the head is directing demands for us to give Ukrainians lethal military aid which when you consider the dangers of escalation with a dangerously bogged down and nuclear armed Putin is the antithesis of what we should be doing.
It’s like our feelings now rule social policy debate and drive actual policy implementation!
We feel angry and frightened by the Dumb Lives Matter protestors so send in the Army and riot police.
We feel angry and frightened by the images we see on TV, so send lethal military aid.
We feel angry and frightened by people saying mean things anonymously online so build me an SIS Stasi and designate anyone who posts mean things about me online as an enemy of the state.
We live at a time where logic, rational debate and facts are all heteronormative cis male privileges used to enslave women and POC so feelings are the new currency.
This is what we is now. A pumped up self righteous git spoiling for a fight at the end of the night.
How gauche. How 1970s of us.
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We don’t send them because our armoured vehicles are crap. They (the LAVs) have been parked up for years looking for a buyer.
A billion dollar purchase by Mark Burton, a Labour minister of Defence.
There were some issue when the LAVs were obtained. Didn’t one of those people involved in selecting them get a new career with General Dynamics or whoever made them shortly afterwards?
The number of them that were purchased and their rather hefty unit cost sort of precluded the purchase of other chassis types and didn’t really allow for more specialised systems to be considered later on. Especially when other systems werent even seriously considered to be in the running originally and the decision to get the Lav was almost a foregone conclusion when it went to cabinet for the final approval and it appeared that few if any had much of an understanding of what they were getting. For whatever reason.
Anyway my father in law was ex army and he took some interest in the matter.
You need to do at least a minimum of research before you display your total ignorance to the world.. An excerpt from the process that led to the purchase of these vehicles “Cabinet approvals in March 1998 and May 1999; the tender process that was undertaken in late-1999” .. From this ..https://oag.parliament.nz/2004/lav/part2.htm .. It was a NATIONAL PARTY GOVERNMENT that started the procurement process.. Your bigotry, and mindless bigotry aren’t useful in any way.. Your only saving grace is that the drivel you wrote isn’t any worse than most of the childish garbage that passes for rational debate in this hick town of a country..
Its the zeitgeist. Twitter, FB, instant images and inflammatory headlines designed for visceral response.
Very obviously reality is being subverted by unreality. Why? For the professional middle class its that unseen creeping fear that everything they hold precious is getting close to the edge. I smell their fear, anxiety.
….not to mention supplying weapons that can’t be delivered, to a hopelessly lost cause…..
The decision should be made on whether anyone thinks Ukraine can , with or without some extra equipment (if it can be delivered to where it is needed under complete Russian air control) possibly win a war against Russia.
If the answer is absolutely not , then all the extra weapons will do is prolong the conflict and increase the civilian casualties that will inevitably result.
The kindest thing the world can do is to encourage a settlement as soon as possible which recognises the realities of the situation.
The failure of the Minsk agreements and ongoing internal war against the Russian population of Donbas has to stop. And the Crimea, Donetsk and Lugansk are no longer part of Ukraine.
D J S
David, the aim of the US is to prolong this war as long as they can to grind Russia down. The Ukrainians are just fodder for the yanks.
@ G. And the banks.
indeed nato is prepared to fight to the very last ukrainian
The NATO countries are just passing off their old ready to expire tat anyway.No way do they want the Russians to get their hands on new systems, to reverse engineer and render useless any combat advantage.
Apart from Ben Wallace promising spanking new anti aircraft systems (to those two pranksters)
It seems Starstreak may have entered the field.
What a bonanza it is for Marie Kwondo type clearing of military clutter from the warehouses.
Let’s not get involved in another proxy US, NATO, EU war.
Let them all die.
Exterminate! You surely don’t want to set Spijke Milligan and his curries onto them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0n88tZQc4Q
But I need some light relief – is this just preparing us for a second half for the play-off that we will accept without protest, as it might otherwise be us v Australia and the whole of the Western World.
It seems that Russia has been trying to make its way in the international political scene and losing ground! Do they feel that they must get those southern ports and corridor by force before the other powers set up a permanent military presence there. It seems an all or nothing approach from Russia. Perhaps they heard it on the grapevine that a farewell party is planned for them and thought they would pre-empt it.
I’m about to write something so broadly I had to open the doors and windows.
Money, as such, is a logical fallacy. We’re conned into believing that money has a God-like status which beguiles those who want to have theirs, and yours too. In that ‘process’ of grabbing all and every money-thing, reality begins to warp and buckle. Fundamental natural systems begin to tarnish, buckle and fail as can be seen by climate destruction including ocean, air, and fresh water pollution. In the pursuit of ‘money’ we’re literally burning down our only home, lock stock and larder.
The logical fallacy that’s ‘money’, has created a vast network of consumer-humans who for reasons beyond their comprehension, go to the mall, exchange a $-fiction for stuff and things they didn’t know the needed until they got there, then they go home to where the novelty of the thing they just bought wears off so they throw it away. That, right there, is a madness.
In short; modern humanity living in a first world environment are being driven quite insane by a psychological anomaly, a logical fallacy, leading to a mass psychiatric illness as a direct result of a mass hypnosis.
The MSM can’t talk about [it], write about it, admit it or debate it because the MSM is as effected by it as the rest of us. I think that the broader humanity is in deep shit. The addiction to money is an unspoken terror which will lead to our destruction.
There is a solution, however. Don’t Do Debt. The Triple D’s. I just invented that. Don’t do debt and crush the banksters. Russell Brand would say, and I paraphrase, financial centralisation is a means of world domination. The World Bank, the WEF and the IMF would agree.
Here’s an example of what I’m trying to write:
Russell Brand; Youtube.
A new study reveals that the MSM have taken a hawkish view on the Ukraine conflict – but surely it can’t just be about their ratings, can it?
https://youtu.be/QglxaBzjUj4
Only 31% of Americans polled thought war with Russian over Ukraine was worth considering while 69 % said no. So perhaps the majority of Kiwi’s here DON’T “want to smash ’em”. Lets hear from them then?
Your quite right about debt CB. Ultimately the people have control if they could unite to exercise it. If everyone refused to go into debt the banking system would collapse overnight. Too much to ask of folk who can’t survive till next week without debt but if everyone just paid it off as they can and managed with what they can earn as i have done since my experience with debt 50 years ago a different and altogether less exploitative system for money would have to be invented.
D J S
it’s funny and maybe I’m a bit retro..but if I buy a big item I actually withdraw cash (if I can actually find an open branch or cash machine) go to the store and slap cash on the barrelhead a pleasure maybe subsequent generations have never enjoyed.
it was drummed into me as a child first pay you’re rent, second food, what’s left over is for ‘toys’ or beer vouchers, if you can’t afford it you can’t have it…all of which was reinforced by a mates mum regularly having to physically hide from the tally man.
Not saying I’ve never borrowed 50 off a mate but I’ve never owed the bank/loan company a brass farthing.
And can I just say: Brilliant photograph / analogy. @ MB.
I see ‘hollywood celebrity liberal’ sean penn is calling for the ukraine to use nukes….fuckin halfwit
Is there no concern that NZ is going to commit to one side in an increasingly ugly conflict and how will that look if maybe some of the claims against the Ukrainians are actually true. Why even back the lesser of two evils in a war across the other end of the world that’s none of our business.
Vengeful Kiwis are a result of Jacinda Ardern splitting New Zealanders into groups.
Never in our history have we been so divided.
Was it intentional by Ardern or more a consequence of her ineptness?
The whole point of the protests, well one of them, was to cause protest fatigue. Me thinks. Those protest leaders are all dodge. Anyone wearing cops down, as a group – dodgy. Vff members got suckered in by barbie doll deeks. They think it’s all a picnic but they’re being had. Big time. I’m unvaccinated but I wouldn’t join any of those groups for all the tea in cheena
Personally Matryn I think you are way too dismissive of dickless little incel types being nothing to worry about. I guess you could say there are as many feral females out there who threaten other females too. Either way I am not so clear it’s just ‘all talk’. I agree that terrorist is a stupid label but I wouldn’t want to trivialise what some of these women have to put up with.
The Ukrainians already have enough modern javelins, NLaws and a lot more better anti – tank missiles. Im sure Puti wont be so obsessed with tanks this time. They need more stinger missiles and especially drones now. It was reported that they also have ant-ship weapons.
Its just an uninformed media/NATZACT beatup about NZ sending our javelins over. NATO/USA have more that enough spare new weapons to give them. All we can do is send them more technicians and forensic staff and $$$$ to spend on what they need to protect their citizens.
NZ can show leadership here as Jacinda (and Labour) is the only recognised Government in the world to have best protected its citizens from a foreign invader, COVID – 19.
Bucha was a Ukrainian atrocity – let’s not forget this is a civil war as well as a proxy war between the US and Russia. So was the train station which was hit by the sort of missile that Russia doesn’t use but Ukraine does.
Oh dear, Esoteric. That comment will not be welcomed by the flood of righties who have been infecting this website lately.
The strange thing is that while we are mostly aware that Russia is now a right wing state governed by a right-wing religious bigot, many of these others dream up ideas of ‘Putin apologists’ ..
The dumb propaganda we are supposed to swallow: apparently the evil Russians have now been booby-trapping kids’ toys. Oh, sure – that is a great military ploy.
But never a hint that maybe we cannot have absolute belief in anything the Ukranians say.
The hourly radio news bulletin on Friday; an excerpt from an interview with an Ukrainian MP regarding here sending Javelin missiles, said MP almost breaking into tears requesting them.
The previous day, said MP demanding we should expel the Russian ambassador.
Breaking into tears for humanitarian support—understandable. Breaking into tears for a small country and military such as ours to provide missiles–cringe-worthy. Dictating how we are to operate diplomatically also an unpalatable affront.