Lianne,
The Anti-Bases Campaign notes that you are opening the NZ Aerospace Summit at Te Pae on Monday September 5.
Aerospace is being sold to the NZ public as one of the up and coming glamour industries, both nationally and here in Canterbury.
But that glamorous facade obscures an inconvenient truth – an awful lot of the aerospace industry is committed to the militarisation of space.
And none more so than Rocket Lab, which is a major player in the Summit and whose CEO, Peter Beck, is a keynote speaker.
Rocket Lab is a US company (which started as an NZ one) using NZ as its base and launch site for satellites for the US military and spy agencies. In so doing, Rocket Lab directly drags NZ into US wars. Meaning that Rocket Lab’s Mahia Peninsula launch site is a US base (albeit a privately-owned one), as is its Auckland HQ.
A major investor in Rocket Lab is Lockheed Martin of the US, the world’s biggest corporate arms manufacturer.
The best place to get information about Rocket Lab is at the Rocket Lab Monitor site https://rocketlabmonitor.com/
I attended the recent Hiroshima Day commemoration at the Peace Bell and listened to your speech, wherein you spoke of your pride at Christchurch being a Peace City. And rightly so.
So, please don’t lend Christchurch Peace City respectability to the militarisation of space in general, and to Rocket Lab in particular. That company makes a mockery of the Prime Minister’s oft-repeated claim that NZ has a “fiercely independent foreign policy”.
We will be outside Te Pae on Monday September 5 with a banner saying “Keep Space For Peace”.
We urge you to boycott the Aerospace Summit. Or, if you do speak, to use your bully pulpit (to use an appropriately American expression) to call out Rocket Lab for what it is and to call for space to be kept for peace.
There is a Mayoral precedent for this – in 2019, Dunedin Mayor Dave Cull stunned a fossil fuel industry conference with a welcome speech that denounced fossil fuels
If it’s good enough for Dunedin to show the way, Christchurch can follow suit.
Best wishes,
Murray
Murray Horton is the Secretary/Organiser of the Anti-Bases Campaign
I have a number of problems.
Rocket Lab got government funding. It then flogged off to the yanks. So they make dosh but the government (us) never get the devlopment fund back, how does that work.
Indeed it is not a Kiwi company at all although it is still touted as such.
That guy, Peter Beck, who started it went to a local kuia without anyone else involved had a cuppa and said every time a rocket goes up we will give your iwi $50,000. And it was agreed upon. She has since said had she know that it would be used for military purposes she would never have agreed.
The Beck’s of the world have no moral compass whatsoever.
I will be outside Te Pae at the protest.
I think everybody knows that Aotearoa does not have an independent foreign policy and hasn’t for years, that woman in charge just needs to stop touting this!
There is a reason for the increased activity by the US and partnership countries focusing on using space as the new battleground.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/04/14/china-russia-us-space-race-catching-up/
It’s all part of Xi’s China Dream – World Domination
Imagine pretending that China stomping the American empire into the ground wouldn’t be the best thing to happen for humanity in centuries.
We live 10km’s from the Maramarua Rocket Lab launch testing site and when their is a launch the noise is undeniable and the birdlife reaction is chaotic.
The connection with the US intelligence sector puts us, yet again, on the wrong side of any global peace initiative.
But after watching the PM fawning over Biden in the White House we have political leadership in this country that toes the western establishment line.
Thank you Murray for your determined and passionate commitment to the truth re “The Rocket Lab con.”
Thank You Murray. I don’t know how may Kiwis have had the wool pulled over their eyes regarding the wisdom of having a virtual ‘bullseye’ centring on Mahia Peninsula. This is like walking around school with a sign on your back which says ‘KickMeHard!’ (you know, when some kind friend playfully slaps you on the back, in passing, and leaves a little note.)
“But, but, but…Communication, internet, netflix, whatever utter garbage Bezos has bought for us to watch and assimilate….” I tell you, SpaceX, neuralink, all for spying and deploying seeker drones anywhere, anytime and all autonomous, like ‘self-driving’, except when it isn’t.
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