New Zealand’s neutrality has been put on the table for this election cycle by the Maori Party. On the issue of War and Peace, the Maori Party are a lone voice. On an issue where others are silent, raising a lone voice, is called leadership.
From the Graph provided by Martyn Bradbury.
highest priority concern – Inflation/Cost of Living 65%
That’s now. That ranking will change very swiftly, when war breaks out.
Afterall, issues of War and Peace are the biggest policy decisions any nation or people will ever have to decide.
At the outbreak of a hot war in the Pacific – The two categories of concern in Martyn’s graph, cost of living and war or peace, will not exactly flip places, but will significantly change in the rankings relative to each other.War in the Pacific?
Couldn’t ever happen again?
The same thing was said about war in Europe.
Politics and trade between New Zealand the rival power blocs in the Pacific, are sort of carrying along all right now, but at the outbreak of war in the Pacific; New Zealand will be caught between, the Superpower bloc that our export led economy is tied to – And between, the Superpower bloc that our our military and spy agencies are embedded with.
Talk about, a ‘rock and a hard place’.
Side with China, and turn New Zealand into an international pariah and a client state beholden to Peking.
Side with the US, our export led economy will be ruined, and we will be drawn into a war not in our economic or national interests.
Part I.
TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com
Let’s not get caught with our pants down on the matter of war and peace.
Democracy and democratic decision making takes time.
Once war starts, history speeds up, cascading events rapidly follow each other so fast, that it will be too late to properly and democratically decide the issue of War and Peace, and the decision will be made for us.
Let’s get ahead of the curve.
On the election of a Labour,, Green, Maori Party government
Let us build on the bi-partisan support for New Zealand’s wildly popular nuclear weapons free status, Let us back the Maori Party political demand for New Zealand neutrality and say “No” to all military alliances.
Let’s demand that the LGMP government distance New Zealand from AUKUS and all other military and intelligence entanglements with foreign countries.
The mouse that roared
#1 Free New Zealand from all foreign military entanglements. Cut all ties with 5 Eyes, with Echelon, ban all military exercises and war preparations with other militaries.
#2 Declare New Zealand a neutral country.
#3 On the formation of a LGMP government, a diplomatic team be dispatched to the UN to place before the UN Secretary General, the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council for New Zealand’s neutral status to be tabled and voted on to be officially ratified and internationally recognised. Any country that dared vote against New Zealand becoming a neutral country will reveal who our real friends and enemies are. (My guess – none would dare)
In the event of war in the Pacific, sailing under an internationally UN ratified neutral flag all our shipping and trade be afforded safe passage by UN mandate, from attack by both sides involved in the conflict.
Part II
New Zealand – Switzerland of the South Seas.
Against all the odds Switzerland remained Neutral for the duration of WWII and the Cold War.
In the middle of Europe and surrounded by hostile nations on all sides, how did they manage to do it?
Being surrounded by high mountains helped.
Building huge defensive and highly expensive defensive bunkers and redoubts also helped.
Being open for business to all sides also played a part.
Unlike Switzerland, New Zealand is not surrounded by the European Alps, but something way better, hundreds of kilometers of open ocean. New Zealand is the most remote major inhabited land mass on the planet.
There would need to be a restoration of compulsory military service, and virtually all military-age man would need to serve in the Reserves until retirement. Military spending would have to rise substantially.
Refusing to have fallout shelters is already an appalling civil defence oversight, regardless of neutrality.
There would have to be some type of strategy to prevent the United States from simply overthrowing this new neutral government, which it would certainly attempt via a Color Revolution. (i.e. in an effort to prevent the fall of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, to save N.S.A. Ironsand Station, and to avoid losing an ally in the coming war on China.)
How does this fit with Hipkin’s speech, which is effectively Labour policy? Assuming a 3 way coalition, is it likely that two parties with around 15% total vote can force a radical change in foreign policy against the wishes of the other 85%Seems highly undemocratic, and also not sustainable.
More particularly, is Labour going to suddenly change? In such a coalition, they will be two thirds of it. While foreign policy might be a minor interest for voters, senior politicians know that it matters more than that. I simply can’t conceive that on the basis of 15% of the total vote, there could be such a radical change.
If TPM and Greens want this, they need at least 30% of the total vote.
Well of course when push comes to shove we absolutely do not have an independent foreign policy .Winnie tried a couple of times to get a FTA with Russia going (to lessen our dependence on China) but for political reasons(if I remember Crimea and maybe the novichok farce)our negotiators had to hastily disembark the plane heading to Moscow.
Do you think we’d have got a FTA with the UK signed if we’s been stubbornly neutral ?I
don’t think so
Well Pat, you may not welcome this , but I’m absolutely all the way with you there
I also reckon our isolated position places us as perfect honest brokers for peace conferences and mediations, we could have universities devoted to international law, innovative environmental solutions, regenerative agriculture,labour laws, philosophy for the new technology.Because as sure as hell we need ethicists and serious thinkers before the avalanche of AI
I love your idea of neutrality.I think we should all be going to candidate meetings and make our foreign policy an electoral issue, which its never been
One aspect not covered is how New Zealand will be able to function when the trade routes for goods in and out are cut. How resilient is New Zealand in self sufficiency? The Swiss traded across land borders. New Zealand will have to trade across a hostile sea lanes.
Best new enterprise to start would be horse farms. Without imports of fossil fuel we will have to resort back to horse power. Am sure one could think of many examples of what will become out of reach without imports and the exports to pay for them.
Society would look completely different and a return to regional power structures almost certain. Defense of your local patch will be important? Cities would empty as the need to grow food and distribute it effectively becomes constrained by ever tightening, slow and inefficient distribution channels.
You seem to have an understanding of the position Ukraine should have taken. And yet you’re screaming out for nato to send more firepower for the human sacrifice of Russians and Ukrainians.
Yes, he’s outrageously inconsistent but I’m with him 100% on this one.
But he’s quite blind on USA’s culpability in encouraging the expansion of NATO, threatening Russia’s security and engineering the Russia vs Ukraine conflict.
I’ve been watching this China – USA thing with us in the middle for a while with sadness. There is no easy way out and it seems thsat educated and/or comfortably off NZs pay no attention to vital political matters that don’t interfere with their comfortable future plans. The lower classes are locked into their own war, battling with government and other aloof forces just to stay on their feet and functioning during the day and to have a warm, dry and safe place for the night. But easy-peasy the economy flows on rather polluted, not really palatable, but then we can always go on holiday, a trip, if we have the means. Only it’s a trip-wire. I continue to watch, trying to be objective and aloof myself. But wonder if we are the filling in the burger or dumpling, is it meat of the kiwi or vegetarian or cheese? Smile, say cheese, snap!
New Zealand may indeed have a moat but it’s a moat that needs to be crossed- so having a strong navy able to patrol our remotest parts will be necessary even if there is no war. We would also need to boost our manufacturing capability and domestic surveillance. We are nearby US-Australia Lines of communication so in wartime (during a prolonged war) we would potentially have a battle of the river plate scenario on our doorstep. A comparison to Switzerland is less useful than say a comparison to Urugay-south america in 1939. We don’t have the shipping to bring consumables in or take our products to the world -they would need to come here. Ripe plunder once they leave our territorial waters. New Zealand is remote from war but that remoteness means being very self sufficient when you don’t have allies to subsidise you.
“Allies” [read USA] will only engage here militarily if it’s in THEIR interest to do so, and it’s close to certain they’ll do the same, regardless of any alliance, if they [USA] perceive the same advantage to themselves.
There is no rock or a hard place. The choice is simple. Choose peace and fruitful trade with a country that has no history of imperialism or choose more of what we have always been a part of – war, imperialism, colonization and so forth. We have a choice – now – and believe it or not, the majority of the world choose, certainly prefer, peace. Its time to turn our back on our Western roots – the peaceful option is now available to us….choose it – peace.
And while I will admit, that Chinese imperialist power projection beyond their own borders is a relatively new phenomenon, the Chinese central authorities have been treating their internal provinces as colonies of the metropolitan centres for decades. The whole imperialist system of oppression internalised. Internal passports, temporary work visas, all the trappings needed to control the people in the provinces to travel or work in the huge metropolitan centres, with no chance of residency or full right to citizenship. Forced to be separated from their families, working and living in huge factory dormitories while they labour for the imperialist central authorities, and then sent back (deported home) when their temporary work visas expire.
https://clb.org.hk/en/content/migrant-workers-and-their-children
There were an estimated 292 million rural migrant workers in China in 2021, comprising more than one-third of the entire working population. Migrant workers have been the engine of China’s spectacular economic growth over the last three decades, but they remain marginalized and subject to institutionalized discrimination. Their children have limited access to education and healthcare and can be separated from their parents for years on end.
…150 Chinese workers at Foxconn, threatened to commit suicide by leaping from their factory roof in protest at their working conditions CREDIT: Photo: Club.china.com
The workers were eventually coaxed down after two days on top of their three-floor plant in Wuhan by Foxconn managers and local Chinese Communist party officials.
Foxconn, which manufactures gadgets for the likes of Apple, Sony, Nintendo and HP, among many others, has had a grim history of suicides at its factories. A suicide cluster in 2010 saw 18 workers throw themselves from the tops of the company’s buildings, with 14 deaths.
In the aftermath of the suicides, Foxconn installed safety nets in some of its factories and hired counsellors to help its workers.
The latest protest began on January 2 after managers decided to move around 600 workers to a new production line, making computer cases for Acer, a Taiwanese computer company.
“We were put to work without any training, and paid piecemeal,” said one of the protesting workers, who asked not to be named. “The assembly line ran very fast and after just one morning we all had blisters and the skin on our hand was black. The factory was also really choked with dust and no one could bear it,” he said.
Several reports from inside Foxconn factories have suggested that while the company is more advanced than many of its competitors, it is run in a “military” fashion that many workers cannot cope with. At Foxconn’s flagship plant in Longhua, five per cent of its workers, or 24,000 people, quit every month.
“Because we could not cope, we went on strike,” said the worker. “It was not about the money but because we felt we had no options. At first, the managers said anyone who wanted to quit could have one month’s pay as compensation, but then they withdrew that offer. So we went to the roof and threatened a mass suicide”.
The worker said that Foxconn initially refused to negotiate, but that the workers were treated reasonably by the local police and fire service.
A spokesman for Foxconn confirmed the protest, and said that the incident was “successfully and peacefully resolved after discussions between the workers, local Foxconn officials and representatives from the local government”….
The same colonialist methods of exploitation honed against their own people are now being carried out in Africa and other overseas territories.
Peaceful? non-imperialist? My arse they are.
And you think we should ally with this imperialist power against the Western imperialists?
As long as you keep burying your head in the corporate media, you are always going to believe that we are the good guys. It’s like you are telling indigenous people, that we didn’t colonize you, we just brought freedom and democracy to your shores.
Never come across a Union guy that is so enamored by capitalist-class media before, happily lapping up their endless – devoid of verifiable proof – storylines. A Union guy that easily believes in the big boss’s news machine, strange thing. Thankfully, this ain’t about you or me…this is about serious shyt, namely war and trade. And again, this serious stuff is easily sorted.
Pick the side, trade with the side that doesn’t want war, even better, if possible, a side with little history of war. That’s it, sorted, bearing in mind, of course, that I am assuming that New Zealand is still the New Zealand that I have always known, a country that prefers peace to war. Although we do need to keep in mind that what we Kiwis prefer and what our elected representatives do, are often poles apart now days.
But the choice to say no to war is now an option available to us, no matter what our corporate class media may have us believe. Choose peace.
My message is simple, Pat….the war drum is beating, but we do not have to be a part of that. We do not have to march to the tune of the country looking to start a war in the Pacific, the very same country that is behind the war in Europe, and has its fingers in every other war in the world. We do not need to throw our economic security away in order to appease their need for war. Europe is struggling while the drummer boy, the USA is thriving in relation. We can’t afford that same equation to play out here in the Pacific.
Thankfully, there are large sections of the world that want no part of the European war, and I will suggest, that they will feel the same way about any war in the Pacific also. We can be a part of this side too…we only have to choose it. Fortunately for us, this will also be the choice that will be the least economically painful for us as well.
Bring on peace and prosperity, by saying no to the war drummer! There you go Pat, that’s the message, from a chap who’s name has been around long before the likes of Facebook, upending the naming game, came into being. Thankfully, for now, one does not have to opt in to every corporate way of doing things.
Only a boodthirsty pro-war troll would urge us to choose sides in an inter-imperialist war.
Case in point:
“We can be a part of this side too…we only have to choose it. Fortunately for us, this will also be the choice that will be the least economically painful for us as well.” AO
Personally speaking AO I think you will have a hard sell to get New Zealanders to fight and die for the Chinese imperialists in the coming conflict with the US imperialists.
Much better we not take sides with either imperialist power.
There’s only one imperialist power in play here Pat, I thought that was obvious – silly, silly me. Still, the iddy biddy snippets you’ve found to try and justify your view of China is, well, speaks for itself. Bigger point being, again, we do not have to side with the only imperialist power capable of cowering the world, certainly the Western world at least, into backing their actions. We do not have to be a part of it – anymore. And that point is key because it is not China banging the war drum, it is not China encouraging us to more than double our military budget, in hard economic times at that, it is not China projecting military power all over the world. We all know the true power, the only power at play here and no amount of turning what I am saying around or re imagining of a country’s history, by you, changes this fact. Likewise, there are countries not used to saying no to the world’s sole superpower, now backing away. This is the side, this is the option now available to us too. And we don’t even need to declare neutrality to do this either, how about that then.
Unlike the USSR, Russia is not a superpower. Russia was a basket case country after the fall of the USSR, until Putin came along and turned things around. This is his greatest crime in the eyes of the West. Russia was meant to be cash cow for elitist Western enterprise. Putin put a stop to that. This is what the Ukraine war is about – weakening/eliminating Putin – and seizing back control of trillion dollar Russian assets. This is imperialism in action and we choose to be a part of it.
As for the rest, the UK is chief poodle to the USA while the EU, like the entire West, including us, is under the thumb of the USA. France is interesting, they are not too happy with the USA, at the moment, after they scarpered their arms deal with OZ.
And now we have China, designated a baddie to the West simple because their economic might threatens US hegemony, thus, we must do to them what we have done to everyone else before they do to us, what we have done to everyone else….is our stupid Western way of viewing them.
All this aside, there are factions looking to break free of US hegemony….I say we ought to join this club.
In a just world Pat would attack Western imperialism with the same vigor as China but alas Poor Pat the “unionist and activist” never bites the hand that feeds him. Time to retire old man and I say that in the kindest way, one thing the Ukrainian war has done is expose western hypocrisy which Pat is a fanboy of. In short Pat your credibility is shot.
(Cue angry rant from an old white male)
Keep up Pat, here’s the reason China is becoming unstoppable and a viable alternative to Western Hypocrisy, wealth theft and endless wars the Global south is rising.
Exerpt:
….everyone listening to us right now cannot function for 24 hours without cobalt. And as you noted in your remarks, roughly three-fourths of the world’s supply comes from Congo. And it’s mined in conditions — you read the bit, the sentence that links to Leopold. It’s mined in conditions that are like the colonial times, where the people of Africa are reduced to brute labor, their lives are not valued, their labor is not valued, their humanity is not valued. And that’s the reality that exists at the bottom of cobalt supply chains….
Exerpt:
….your listeners and viewers should understand, cobalt is toxic. It’s toxic to touch. It’s toxic to breathe. So I have seen thousands of women with babies strapped to their backs inhaling toxic cobalt dust day in and day out, 10-year-old children caked in toxic filth, exposing themselves to toxic cobalt. And the ore that these children are digging that has cobalt in it often has traces of radioactive uranium. So, the public health catastrophe on top of the human rights violence on top of the environmental destruction is unlike anything we’ve ever seen in the modern context. And the fact that it is linked to companies worth trillions and that our lives depend on this enormous violence has to be dealt with….
Exerpt:
…China dominates and controls mining production on the ground. And what I’ve seen with my own eyes, and what any Congolese person living in the Katanga region will tell you, is they pay no heed to the human rights of the Congolese people, and they pay no heed to environmental protection. Mining companies, especially the Chinese ones, dump toxic effluents in the earth, the air, the water. I have seen villages with children playing in the dirt, covered in sulfuric acid powder that is wafting over the entire countryside from mineral processing plants at Chinese mining companies. And as I’ve mentioned a few times, millions of trees have been clear-cut. And I never met anyone in the Congo who said they saw anyone planting one tree to replace them. The waterways, lakes and rivers, have also been polluted, so fish stocks are polluted. Animal stocks are polluted. Vegetables are polluted. Everyone there is being slowly poisoned to death by cobalt mining operations. That’s the truth that the stakeholders at the top of the chain don’t want us to know. But that’s the truth the Congolese people are desperate to share….
If only there were wars declared and noone went.
Luxon like Key before him pro US clusterf*ckery & half his caucus pro Netanyahu through the conservative catholic fundamentalists who were pro Zio Ngarod fundamentalists.
We already have US base next door oved ditch. Solomons just sold their port & souls more or less to China.
Ding Ding time as Penny Bright RIP used to say.
Its going to be an almighty mess Can almost smell the white phopherous on their breath now too.
#Notoclustebomnanywhere
There would need to be a restoration of compulsory military service, and virtually all military-age man would need to serve in the Reserves until retirement. Military spending would have to rise substantially.
Refusing to have fallout shelters is already an appalling civil defence oversight, regardless of neutrality.
There would have to be some type of strategy to prevent the United States from simply overthrowing this new neutral government, which it would certainly attempt via a Color Revolution. (i.e. in an effort to prevent the fall of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, to save N.S.A. Ironsand Station, and to avoid losing an ally in the coming war on China.)
New Zealand doesn’t have any shipping that we could fly the UN neutrality-mandate flag over, and UN mandates are no protection.
Our shipping is on Chinese and European owned shipping companies, who would lose insurance cover the day after war breaks out.
How does this fit with Hipkin’s speech, which is effectively Labour policy? Assuming a 3 way coalition, is it likely that two parties with around 15% total vote can force a radical change in foreign policy against the wishes of the other 85%Seems highly undemocratic, and also not sustainable.
More particularly, is Labour going to suddenly change? In such a coalition, they will be two thirds of it. While foreign policy might be a minor interest for voters, senior politicians know that it matters more than that. I simply can’t conceive that on the basis of 15% of the total vote, there could be such a radical change.
If TPM and Greens want this, they need at least 30% of the total vote.
Well of course when push comes to shove we absolutely do not have an independent foreign policy .Winnie tried a couple of times to get a FTA with Russia going (to lessen our dependence on China) but for political reasons(if I remember Crimea and maybe the novichok farce)our negotiators had to hastily disembark the plane heading to Moscow.
Do you think we’d have got a FTA with the UK signed if we’s been stubbornly neutral ?I
don’t think so
Well Pat, you may not welcome this , but I’m absolutely all the way with you there
I also reckon our isolated position places us as perfect honest brokers for peace conferences and mediations, we could have universities devoted to international law, innovative environmental solutions, regenerative agriculture,labour laws, philosophy for the new technology.Because as sure as hell we need ethicists and serious thinkers before the avalanche of AI
I love your idea of neutrality.I think we should all be going to candidate meetings and make our foreign policy an electoral issue, which its never been
One aspect not covered is how New Zealand will be able to function when the trade routes for goods in and out are cut. How resilient is New Zealand in self sufficiency? The Swiss traded across land borders. New Zealand will have to trade across a hostile sea lanes.
Best new enterprise to start would be horse farms. Without imports of fossil fuel we will have to resort back to horse power. Am sure one could think of many examples of what will become out of reach without imports and the exports to pay for them.
Society would look completely different and a return to regional power structures almost certain. Defense of your local patch will be important? Cities would empty as the need to grow food and distribute it effectively becomes constrained by ever tightening, slow and inefficient distribution channels.
Anarchy is a most likely scenario.
Hells bells Gerrit, you are thinking. And you’ve connected the dots of what is likely to happen in the case of conflict.
You seem to have an understanding of the position Ukraine should have taken. And yet you’re screaming out for nato to send more firepower for the human sacrifice of Russians and Ukrainians.
Yes, he’s outrageously inconsistent but I’m with him 100% on this one.
But he’s quite blind on USA’s culpability in encouraging the expansion of NATO, threatening Russia’s security and engineering the Russia vs Ukraine conflict.
Richard, I agree. The inconsistency comes from doing whatever the government says to do and having zero principles.
Freedom & democracy always justify the means.
I’ve been watching this China – USA thing with us in the middle for a while with sadness. There is no easy way out and it seems thsat educated and/or comfortably off NZs pay no attention to vital political matters that don’t interfere with their comfortable future plans. The lower classes are locked into their own war, battling with government and other aloof forces just to stay on their feet and functioning during the day and to have a warm, dry and safe place for the night. But easy-peasy the economy flows on rather polluted, not really palatable, but then we can always go on holiday, a trip, if we have the means. Only it’s a trip-wire. I continue to watch, trying to be objective and aloof myself. But wonder if we are the filling in the burger or dumpling, is it meat of the kiwi or vegetarian or cheese? Smile, say cheese, snap!
New Zealand may indeed have a moat but it’s a moat that needs to be crossed- so having a strong navy able to patrol our remotest parts will be necessary even if there is no war. We would also need to boost our manufacturing capability and domestic surveillance. We are nearby US-Australia Lines of communication so in wartime (during a prolonged war) we would potentially have a battle of the river plate scenario on our doorstep. A comparison to Switzerland is less useful than say a comparison to Urugay-south america in 1939. We don’t have the shipping to bring consumables in or take our products to the world -they would need to come here. Ripe plunder once they leave our territorial waters. New Zealand is remote from war but that remoteness means being very self sufficient when you don’t have allies to subsidise you.
“Allies” [read USA] will only engage here militarily if it’s in THEIR interest to do so, and it’s close to certain they’ll do the same, regardless of any alliance, if they [USA] perceive the same advantage to themselves.
There is no rock or a hard place. The choice is simple. Choose peace and fruitful trade with a country that has no history of imperialism or choose more of what we have always been a part of – war, imperialism, colonization and so forth. We have a choice – now – and believe it or not, the majority of the world choose, certainly prefer, peace. Its time to turn our back on our Western roots – the peaceful option is now available to us….choose it – peace.
Wha-dya-know, a pro-war troll who thinks we should side with the Chinese imperialists in the coming inter-imperialist conflict.
Funny how imperialists always claim that they are not imperialists.
“The choice is simple. Choose peace and fruitful trade with a country that has no history of imperialism” AO
Well, that is total absolute bullshit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Liberation_Army_Support_Base_in_Djibouti
And while I will admit, that Chinese imperialist power projection beyond their own borders is a relatively new phenomenon, the Chinese central authorities have been treating their internal provinces as colonies of the metropolitan centres for decades. The whole imperialist system of oppression internalised. Internal passports, temporary work visas, all the trappings needed to control the people in the provinces to travel or work in the huge metropolitan centres, with no chance of residency or full right to citizenship. Forced to be separated from their families, working and living in huge factory dormitories while they labour for the imperialist central authorities, and then sent back (deported home) when their temporary work visas expire.
https://clb.org.hk/en/content/migrant-workers-and-their-children
There were an estimated 292 million rural migrant workers in China in 2021, comprising more than one-third of the entire working population. Migrant workers have been the engine of China’s spectacular economic growth over the last three decades, but they remain marginalized and subject to institutionalized discrimination. Their children have limited access to education and healthcare and can be separated from their parents for years on end.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-CJB-9896
…150 Chinese workers at Foxconn, threatened to commit suicide by leaping from their factory roof in protest at their working conditions CREDIT: Photo: Club.china.com
The workers were eventually coaxed down after two days on top of their three-floor plant in Wuhan by Foxconn managers and local Chinese Communist party officials.
Foxconn, which manufactures gadgets for the likes of Apple, Sony, Nintendo and HP, among many others, has had a grim history of suicides at its factories. A suicide cluster in 2010 saw 18 workers throw themselves from the tops of the company’s buildings, with 14 deaths.
In the aftermath of the suicides, Foxconn installed safety nets in some of its factories and hired counsellors to help its workers.
The latest protest began on January 2 after managers decided to move around 600 workers to a new production line, making computer cases for Acer, a Taiwanese computer company.
“We were put to work without any training, and paid piecemeal,” said one of the protesting workers, who asked not to be named. “The assembly line ran very fast and after just one morning we all had blisters and the skin on our hand was black. The factory was also really choked with dust and no one could bear it,” he said.
Several reports from inside Foxconn factories have suggested that while the company is more advanced than many of its competitors, it is run in a “military” fashion that many workers cannot cope with. At Foxconn’s flagship plant in Longhua, five per cent of its workers, or 24,000 people, quit every month.
“Because we could not cope, we went on strike,” said the worker. “It was not about the money but because we felt we had no options. At first, the managers said anyone who wanted to quit could have one month’s pay as compensation, but then they withdrew that offer. So we went to the roof and threatened a mass suicide”.
The worker said that Foxconn initially refused to negotiate, but that the workers were treated reasonably by the local police and fire service.
A spokesman for Foxconn confirmed the protest, and said that the incident was “successfully and peacefully resolved after discussions between the workers, local Foxconn officials and representatives from the local government”….
The same colonialist methods of exploitation honed against their own people are now being carried out in Africa and other overseas territories.
Peaceful? non-imperialist? My arse they are.
And you think we should ally with this imperialist power against the Western imperialists?
As long as you keep burying your head in the corporate media, you are always going to believe that we are the good guys. It’s like you are telling indigenous people, that we didn’t colonize you, we just brought freedom and democracy to your shores.
Never come across a Union guy that is so enamored by capitalist-class media before, happily lapping up their endless – devoid of verifiable proof – storylines. A Union guy that easily believes in the big boss’s news machine, strange thing. Thankfully, this ain’t about you or me…this is about serious shyt, namely war and trade. And again, this serious stuff is easily sorted.
Pick the side, trade with the side that doesn’t want war, even better, if possible, a side with little history of war. That’s it, sorted, bearing in mind, of course, that I am assuming that New Zealand is still the New Zealand that I have always known, a country that prefers peace to war. Although we do need to keep in mind that what we Kiwis prefer and what our elected representatives do, are often poles apart now days.
But the choice to say no to war is now an option available to us, no matter what our corporate class media may have us believe. Choose peace.
Pick the side, trade with the side that doesn’t want war, even better, if possible, a side with little history of war. AO
And which side would that be?
It’s not what you say it’s what you do.
Vote Nixon for peace in Vietnam
https://www.americanforeignrelations.com/O-W/The-Vietnam-War-and-Its-Impact-Nixon-s-peace-with-honor.html
Vote for Hitler the peace candidate
https://www.americanforeignrelations.com/O-W/The-Vietnam-War-and-Its-Impact-Nixon-s-peace-with-honor.html
Little history of war?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X50iFxhUWiU&ab_channel=DhruvRathee
https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/india-china-soldiers-tawang-clash-explained-rajnath-singh-8321880/
AO, even by the admittedly low standards of the average anonymous one sided pro-war troll, you’re so full of bullshit as to be totally unbelievable.
My message is simple, Pat….the war drum is beating, but we do not have to be a part of that. We do not have to march to the tune of the country looking to start a war in the Pacific, the very same country that is behind the war in Europe, and has its fingers in every other war in the world. We do not need to throw our economic security away in order to appease their need for war. Europe is struggling while the drummer boy, the USA is thriving in relation. We can’t afford that same equation to play out here in the Pacific.
Thankfully, there are large sections of the world that want no part of the European war, and I will suggest, that they will feel the same way about any war in the Pacific also. We can be a part of this side too…we only have to choose it. Fortunately for us, this will also be the choice that will be the least economically painful for us as well.
Bring on peace and prosperity, by saying no to the war drummer! There you go Pat, that’s the message, from a chap who’s name has been around long before the likes of Facebook, upending the naming game, came into being. Thankfully, for now, one does not have to opt in to every corporate way of doing things.
Only a boodthirsty pro-war troll would urge us to choose sides in an inter-imperialist war.
Case in point:
“We can be a part of this side too…we only have to choose it. Fortunately for us, this will also be the choice that will be the least economically painful for us as well.” AO
Personally speaking AO I think you will have a hard sell to get New Zealanders to fight and die for the Chinese imperialists in the coming conflict with the US imperialists.
Much better we not take sides with either imperialist power.
There’s only one imperialist power in play here Pat, I thought that was obvious – silly, silly me. Still, the iddy biddy snippets you’ve found to try and justify your view of China is, well, speaks for itself. Bigger point being, again, we do not have to side with the only imperialist power capable of cowering the world, certainly the Western world at least, into backing their actions. We do not have to be a part of it – anymore. And that point is key because it is not China banging the war drum, it is not China encouraging us to more than double our military budget, in hard economic times at that, it is not China projecting military power all over the world. We all know the true power, the only power at play here and no amount of turning what I am saying around or re imagining of a country’s history, by you, changes this fact. Likewise, there are countries not used to saying no to the world’s sole superpower, now backing away. This is the side, this is the option now available to us too. And we don’t even need to declare neutrality to do this either, how about that then.
“There’s only one imperialist power in play here Pat,” AO
“….there are countries not used to saying no to the world’s sole superpower,” AO
The world has only one superpower? must be the craziest statement yet.
If, the EU, France, the UK, and Russia aren’t superpowers, what are they then?
Unlike the USSR, Russia is not a superpower. Russia was a basket case country after the fall of the USSR, until Putin came along and turned things around. This is his greatest crime in the eyes of the West. Russia was meant to be cash cow for elitist Western enterprise. Putin put a stop to that. This is what the Ukraine war is about – weakening/eliminating Putin – and seizing back control of trillion dollar Russian assets. This is imperialism in action and we choose to be a part of it.
As for the rest, the UK is chief poodle to the USA while the EU, like the entire West, including us, is under the thumb of the USA. France is interesting, they are not too happy with the USA, at the moment, after they scarpered their arms deal with OZ.
And now we have China, designated a baddie to the West simple because their economic might threatens US hegemony, thus, we must do to them what we have done to everyone else before they do to us, what we have done to everyone else….is our stupid Western way of viewing them.
All this aside, there are factions looking to break free of US hegemony….I say we ought to join this club.
Oops! wrong link supplied to Hitler the peace candidate.
The thing is AO, you can say that China is for peace all you like.
And you would be in some bad company, some very bad company, Because it’s not what you say it’s what you do.
Vote for Hitler the peace candidate.
https://wdc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/tav/id/2622/
https://www.nobelpeacecenter.org/en/news/hitler-as-a-nobel-laureate
In a just world Pat would attack Western imperialism with the same vigor as China but alas Poor Pat the “unionist and activist” never bites the hand that feeds him. Time to retire old man and I say that in the kindest way, one thing the Ukrainian war has done is expose western hypocrisy which Pat is a fanboy of. In short Pat your credibility is shot.
(Cue angry rant from an old white male)
Keep up Pat, here’s the reason China is becoming unstoppable and a viable alternative to Western Hypocrisy, wealth theft and endless wars the Global south is rising.
https://www.unz.com/mwhitney/the-one-chart-that-explains-everything-2/
“…China is becoming unstoppable and a viable alternative to Western Hypocrisy, wealth theft and endless wars the Global south is rising.” FINGRINN
WRONG!
China is becoming a carbon copy of Western Hypocrisy, wealth theft and endless wars the Global south is being crushed under.
Only a brain dead idiot or bare faced liar would make the claim that today’s China is not an expansionist neo-colonialist, imperialist state.
Democracy Now
The War On Peace Report
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/7/13/cobalt_red_kara
Exerpt:
….everyone listening to us right now cannot function for 24 hours without cobalt. And as you noted in your remarks, roughly three-fourths of the world’s supply comes from Congo. And it’s mined in conditions — you read the bit, the sentence that links to Leopold. It’s mined in conditions that are like the colonial times, where the people of Africa are reduced to brute labor, their lives are not valued, their labor is not valued, their humanity is not valued. And that’s the reality that exists at the bottom of cobalt supply chains….
Exerpt:
….your listeners and viewers should understand, cobalt is toxic. It’s toxic to touch. It’s toxic to breathe. So I have seen thousands of women with babies strapped to their backs inhaling toxic cobalt dust day in and day out, 10-year-old children caked in toxic filth, exposing themselves to toxic cobalt. And the ore that these children are digging that has cobalt in it often has traces of radioactive uranium. So, the public health catastrophe on top of the human rights violence on top of the environmental destruction is unlike anything we’ve ever seen in the modern context. And the fact that it is linked to companies worth trillions and that our lives depend on this enormous violence has to be dealt with….
Exerpt:
…China dominates and controls mining production on the ground. And what I’ve seen with my own eyes, and what any Congolese person living in the Katanga region will tell you, is they pay no heed to the human rights of the Congolese people, and they pay no heed to environmental protection. Mining companies, especially the Chinese ones, dump toxic effluents in the earth, the air, the water. I have seen villages with children playing in the dirt, covered in sulfuric acid powder that is wafting over the entire countryside from mineral processing plants at Chinese mining companies. And as I’ve mentioned a few times, millions of trees have been clear-cut. And I never met anyone in the Congo who said they saw anyone planting one tree to replace them. The waterways, lakes and rivers, have also been polluted, so fish stocks are polluted. Animal stocks are polluted. Vegetables are polluted. Everyone there is being slowly poisoned to death by cobalt mining operations. That’s the truth that the stakeholders at the top of the chain don’t want us to know. But that’s the truth the Congolese people are desperate to share….
We could arm our citizens as a deterrent to foreign invaders, works for Switzerland.
If only there were wars declared and noone went.
Luxon like Key before him pro US clusterf*ckery & half his caucus pro Netanyahu through the conservative catholic fundamentalists who were pro Zio Ngarod fundamentalists.
We already have US base next door oved ditch. Solomons just sold their port & souls more or less to China.
Ding Ding time as Penny Bright RIP used to say.
Its going to be an almighty mess Can almost smell the white phopherous on their breath now too.
#Notoclustebomnanywhere