God defend New Zealand because Luxon sure as Christ can’t!
We’ve managed this week in New Zealand to do what we do best!
Ignore things and hope they go away.
This is what we are ignoring.
The incredible circumnavigation of Australia by a 3 ship fleet of Chinese warships (which may or may not have been supported by a Chinese Nuclear Sub) has been ignored in New Zealand for a wonderful array of reasons.
We have a mainstream media who are really are Seven Sharp level stupid and don’t comprehend what is going on and have no gravitas to actually catch our attention even if they did understand it.
We have a National Party who are little more than a front for Chinese business interests and one of their largest supporters, the Dairy Industry, has tied us into economic servitude to our Chinese Overlords, so they have ZERO interest in saying anything.
And we have a Left we are so frightened of being called xenophobic colonialists that we see no evil hear no evil speak no evil when it comes to China in favour of hating on the Great Satan America with whataboutisms comparing the West’s freedom of navigation in the South China Sea as comparable to them sailing into the Tasman Sea and live fire testing weapons with no warning.
No. It. Is. Not.
It is not ‘the same’ as the West patrolling Taiwanese waters or the South China Sea, because those decisions have been granted by International Courts that have ruled against China’s inane insistence that everything they wants is theirs.
You can’t compare us protecting International Trade Routes that have international Court weighting with China sailing a fleet down here to live test drills in the Tasman Sea.
Seeing as no one else is being critical, allow The Daily Blog to be.
These two Chinese military ships had more missile fire power on them than the entire Australian Navy combined!
Let that sink in.
This is real Grey Zone military projection directly into our neighbourhood!
China is a great power and great powers gonna do what great powers gonna do.
And that is whatever the fuck they want!
This was a clear signal to Australia and NZ that China at any time could shut down the sealanes between NZ and Australia.
Pretending that is not hyper aggressive on behalf of China is like pretending Trump was polite with Zelensky.
We are being threatened and challenged directly. Hilariously we are too laid back culturally to have noticed.
China is going to have to shoot an All Black or bomb a brewery before NZers would ask ‘what did we do to deserve that?’.
Note in that example we will question why it’s happened rather than any actual action
The Sleepy Hobbits of Muddle NuZilind wake for no one!
There are of course political winners, losers and Hootonisms.
WINNERS:
Rocket Labs
As I have been arguing for years, Rocket Labs has made us a legitimate military target with no debate whatsoever!
Rocket Lab ‘ready to serve’ Pentagon
Rocket Lab is poised to launch a satellite from Mahia Peninsula for a US company which is looking to bolster military and spying operations.
BlackSky’s plan is to add laser optic links later to its Gen-3 satellites to give “war-fighters real-time access to imagery during time-sensitive military operations worldwide”.
This comes shortly after Rocket Lab won a part in a mega-deal to help develop hypersonic weapons for the Pentagon, prompting the firm to state it was “ready to serve the US Department of Defense”.
BlackSky’s first Gen-3 satellite recently completed encapsulation onto an Electron rocket at Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 1 in in New Zealand. Photo: Supplied
The New York-listed, New Zealand-born company has also completed a design review for 18 military satellites in a contract worth more than $800 million, for the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), which is putting up a web of low-orbit satellites for missile tracking and battlefield comms.
That deal, which was signed last year, cemented Rocket Lab as a “prime” – or lead – defence contractor in the US.
It’s good that there is growing skepticism about Rocket Lab…
Rocket Lab: Peter Beck defends spy satellite work, ex-director speaks of leaving
Rocket Lab’s meteoric rise in the global space industry hit turbulence recently with its first operational mission loss. Meanwhile, questions continue over its launch of US intelligence satellites from New Zealand soil.
Stuff reporter George Block sat down with co-founder and chief executive Peter Beck at the company’s Auckland factory. He also spoke to the company’s seed investor and former co-director Mark Rocket, who parted ways with the company in 2011 after it started taking defence contracts.
…the problem is that this debate isn’t going far enough because what the vast majority of New Zealander’s have no idea about is how Rocket Lab and the National Party have made us, for the first time in NZ’s history, a genuine military target.
Rocket Lab fires rockets into space for the secretive National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) this is their charming patch…
…nothing erodes faith in the check and balance of extreme power quite like a giant orange space octopus proclaiming that nothing is out of its reach. Unbeknownst to most NZers, Rocket Lab is a Military Industrial Complex franchise, not some plucky Number 8 Wire Dad Shed schlock that Rocket Lab like to project to the sleepy hobbits of Muddle Nu Zilind…
Rocket Lab’s link with the CIA’s venture capital firm was revealed in 2016 by US investigative journalism site The Intercept, but has not been reported by the New Zealand media.
Although it operates independently, In-Q-Tel invests on behalf of the CIA and the broader US intelligence community in companies whose products may have national security applications.
A document obtained by The Intercept shows that Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck spoke at a summit of In-Q-Tel portfolio companies in February 2016. Other speakers included then-FBI director James Comey. Beck earlier wrote about Rocket Lab for In-Q-Tel’s quarterly publication in 2015.
In contrast, Lockheed Martin’s investment in Rocket Lab is mentioned routinely in press coverage and was the subject of a jibe by departing Vector chairman Michael Stiassny to the Vector AGM last week.
However, the extent of Rocket Lab’s defence industry work has gone essentially unremarked. Details of this work had been removed from Rocket Lab’s website by the time the regulatory regime enabling the company’s activities in New Zealand came into law last year.
Put aside the zero public debate of whether or not we should get this close to the American Military Industrial Complex in the first place and note that no one ever explained to the NZ public how allowing Rocket Labs to launch US military satellites immediately upgrades NZ to being a legitimate military target!
Because of this, Chinese Subs and Russian Subs will legitimately sit off the East Coast of NZ targeting the launch site.
THIS is why we needed to buy 4 P-8s! Because America is able to launch military satellites from NZ, which makes us a target and we need to defend that target with sub hunting planes!
New sub-killer planes may never fire in anger but Govt wants the option
Defence Minister Ron Mark has announced the Government will buy four Boeing P-8A Poseidons to replace the defence force’s ageing fleet of P-3K Orions. The purchase has been a longtime coming.
The P-8s, known as submarine killers, mark a new era in defence procurement, with one expert calling this the most significant defence purchase in a generation.
…so under National, we signed up to a military space programme through our 5 Eyes network that has now made us a legitimate military target which we need to buy sub hunting planes and torpedoes for???
When will it be made clear to the rest of the electorate that we have done this and put everyones lives at risk by Rocket Lab making us a legitimate military target?
So are we going to talk about Rocket Lab welding us to Trump’s Military Industrial Complex?
China
They have managed to threaten the sea and air lane between Australia and NZ by just sending two ships with more missile fire power than the entire Australian Navy combined.
This as they directly encroach into the NZ Realm.
China wins hands down.
Possible Trump Victory
The Americans will demand to know how a 5 Eyes Member was blindsided by China in the Cooks and the millisecond Trump is told NZ won’t allow nuclear ships here, you can see how Trump may perceive sending a nuclear powered and armed ship directly into Wellington harbour would play out a s message of dominance to the Chinese WHILE slapping us as well.
Trump will see our military spend as pitiful, he despises Jacinda and he gets to look tough in the eyes of China by forcing us to accept a nuclear war ship after they’ve just done live firing in the Tasman Sea.
Will Luxon stand up to Trump when he calls to tell him he’s sending a nuclear ship while threatening us with Tariffs if we don’t accept it?
Like fuck he will, Luxon will roll over in a heartbeat and sell us all out when Trump calls and threatens tariffs if we don’t accept an American Nuclear Warship.
LOSERS:
Dairy Farmers
The Corporate Dairy Farmers of NZ who control the National Party have placed all our Cows in one Beijing paddock, (thanks to John Key), and we are economically subservient to China – thanks to those NZ Corporate Dairy Farmers and their Quisling National Party representatives.
There’s not a fucking thing we can do that doesn’t immediately threaten the interests of those Corporate Dairy Farmers which means National is impotent in standing up to China because if they do, Mr and Mrs Corporate Farmer will be screaming at their local National Party MP about China interrupting their contracts.
NZ Media
Because our media rooms have been so gutted of actual journalists and filled with social media ‘journalists’ who are focused on feelings, clicks and shares more than actual Fourth Estate accountability, the content they generate is incapable of covering something as extreme as China sending a 3 ship fleet to test weapons in the Tasman Sea.
Seven Sharp is the totem poll of stupid, I mean how does Jeremy and Hil’s cover geopolitical threats with credibility?
They can’t.
We don’t understand the threat we face because the failing Mainstream Media are too busy trying to cater to consumer clickbait than informing citizens.
The NZ Left
Some of our woke are so conflicted with criticising anyone who isn’t white that they are claiming NZs anger at the Cook Islands is colonialism and our reaction to China live-firing in the Tasman Sea is somehow hypocritical because…….. colonialism?
When anyone dared suggest a lab leak for Covid, the NZ Woke screamed xenophobe!
When anyone challenges Chinese Grey Zone warfare in the Pacific, the NZ Woke scream xenophobia!
And when anyone points out the brutal repression of the Uyghurs, the NZ Woke go very quiet because they aren’t sure who to scream at until they’ve checked their hierarchy of victimhood.
National are beholden to Chinese interests and the Left are beholden to woke activists screaming xenophobia at them so China’s threat is never honestly appraised by either side.
HOOTONISMS:
Hooton wrote one of his best columns ever on Friday with a scathing assessment of the NZ China relationship, it’s worth heavily quoting…
China flotilla about keeping NZ and Australia in our box – Matthew Hooton
China’s aggression towards New Zealand finally underlines it’s not a cuddly panda only wanting to buy our milk powder and holiday in Queenstown. As a great power, it is by definition dangerous and bent on global hegemony.
We shouldn’t take it personally. To assure their security, all great powers first seek regional hegemony, then global hegemony.
The only real question for small countries like New Zealand is how to respond, now that China’s imperialist ambitions are playing out to our west, northwest and northeast, including colonising part of our realm.
Ideally, small countries want great powers out of their regions.
Sensibly, that’s been modern New Zealand’s general policy, and pre-European New Zealanders might have been wiser taking a firmer line in the 1700s.
Our rational aversion to great powers contributed to our own search for independence after World War I, and is why we supported other Pacific states’ aspirations to become independent of the UK and France.
But it’s not so simple. Great powers will always do what they do. If no other great power is playing in a region, then one will surely show up.
Small countries’ best strategy, then, is to identify those great powers with the capability to protect them and keep the rest out, and then choose the one they are least suspicious of and which they think most closely aligns with their values. That’s what Māori sought to do in the 1830s.
Until the fall of Singapore in 1942, the UK continued meeting both tests for New Zealand and Australia. After that, it was the US.
…Hooton is right, but his solution is that we get further into bed with America, which with Trump in charge is just insanity.
He does however describe the Chinese relationship with us very well…
China has been shrewder, flattering both the Bolger and Clark Governments with the so-called “Four Firsts”, including the historic free-trade agreement in 2008.
It seemed like a good idea at the time. China opened its markets to our exporters, paid higher prices for our primary products than others would offer, and encouraged its people to take holidays and become students here.
Desperate and naive, we went all-in with the cuddly panda, even though such privileged access made us a bit lazy through the 2010s, reducing pressure to innovate and improve productivity.
China’s objective was to subvert the weakest Five Eyes member and, more recently, the weakest of Nato’s Indo-Pacific Four, which includes Australia, Japan and South Korea.
It placed assets in our two main political parties and attacked our government and private-sector IT infrastructure.
Its embassy has increasingly taken the tone of a Soviet embassy in Eastern Europe during the Cold War.
Over the decades, it has established a powerful lobby in New Zealand, led by former politicians, diplomats, exporters and opinion leaders who have done well personally out of the Chinese Communist Party and in some cases remain on the payroll of organisations it controls.
They may dress in corporate-wear rather than dungarees and Mao caps, but they should be treated the same as the extreme-left organisations and activists the USSR infiltrated and funded during the Cold War.
…correct.
And his conclusion is also correct…
New Zealand’s particular problem is, with our finances in such a mess, we have no room to make even the minimum defence investments to remain allies with Australia and quasi-allies of the US, Nato, Japan and South Korea.
Unless we raise taxes, cut the welfare state or borrow even more, we cannot fund the 2% of GDP on defence that is now the entry-level requirement.
And 2% is only the start of what will be required for the democratic world to successfully check China and Russia’s ambitions.
The UK announced this week it will reach 2.5% within two years. The US is talking about 5%. If we can’t or won’t pay the entry fee, then we might be best very soon to just submit to China the way other economically failing South Pacific states already have.
…where I disagree with Hooton is the need to make a choice between China and America when there is another solution we aren’t discussing.
NZ being an actual Independent State with a military focused on protecting what we have here rather than international adventures designed by Great Powers.
We need to comprehend that the benign environment we have become accustomed to is changing as rapidly as the climate and we need to plan for that with a rise in our military, aid and diplomacy budgets to 5% GDP.
I don’t want to be a vassal of America or China, I want us to stand on our own land and defend our own interests.
There is a price to pay for independence and there is a cost in remaining wilfully blind to what is going on.
Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.
We have bet all our chips on America and it would be extremely difficult to change towards neutrality- besides, for the US neutrality = enemy. They will not accept neutrality. The Sinophobia being whipped up by the media over the last few years has been extraordinary. Hooten talks about “China’s imperialist ambitions” – name them! Taiwan? Invaded and settled by the Nationalists upon their defeat by Mao in 1949, and renamed Taiwan, it had been a province of China since 1683, with a period of Japanese occupation in the early 1900’s. Tibet? Ok, anywhere else? Now let’s look at the close to 100 regime change operations of the US since WWII and the millions of deaths as a result of their ‘Nation building’ escapades. Who is the imperialist? Any country who challenges the US politically, economically and/or has resources they desire, is subject to covert regime change (CIA) and, if unsuccessful, overt regime change in the form of military intervention. So the real question is: Do you support a multi polar or unipolar world for your future security? Put this in the context of US governments of the last 40 years (or longer) and the current US regime.
” This was a clear signal to Australia and NZ that China at any time could shut down the sealant between NZ and Australia.”
Great! About fucking time. What 99.9 % of Aucklanders fail to comprehend is that Auckland, dear old lamb of a thing that it is, is there courtesy of our farmers and mostly south island farmers.
Australia is, in fact, our exported, primary industry agri-goods competitors. Australia, in cahoots with crooked kiwis have all of us bent over like wee things which bend over for their masters. Before we export to what was one AO/NZ’s traditional trading bros we must now ask Australia if we can. And Australia will then get back to us via all the Kiwi crooks and perverts who now live there. Are you not tired of that? Of Australia being our masters and abusers? Fuck Australia ! Chinese boat people! Come back?
Australia is America’s new ‘Pearl Harbour’
https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/australia-could-soon-be-hosting-nuclear-armed-us-submarines/
At the outbreak of war between the US and China, Australia would be first place the Chinese would need to flatten.
So of course the Chinese need to test their ability to project their power into this region, and test their logistics and weapons systems and military deployment so far from home.
Neither America or China want to fight major land battles on their home territories.
In the age of AI precision guided hypersonic missiles and fleets of cheap attack drones, aircraft carrier surface fleets are now obsolete sitting ducks.
The new war to control the Pacific region will be fought from below the waves.
In preparation for the coming war for control of the South Pacific region, successive Australian governments have let their country be turned into a strategic forward staging ground for America’s sub-sea nuclear fleet.
It must be a big relief, especially for the Americans, that in the event of war, Australia rather than California, or Hawaii would be China’s most important strategic chess piece to target to take out of the war.
The US and China don’t need to go to war near their home territories, their militaries can fight it out down here instead.
Given our geographic position as an Island nation we need to protect our shoreline. Surface patrol vessels are easy targets but submarines are more elusive and unintrusive. I support heavily investing in an armed naval submarine capability that regularly patrols our economic zone. If an attack was to be made on Australia or in the Tasman/Pacific we would be able to retaliate quicker and more effectively.
Why on earth would we care if hostile American bases in Australia were taken out?
That would unquestionably be good for New Zealand’s security. Same as if the bases in Nelson and Harewood and Mahia got taken out.
Who mentioned Australia? Those NZ bases just require a realignment. We can have our own submarines for our own purposes which can be environmental as well as military.
“ And when anyone points out the brutal repression of the Uyghurs, the NZ Woke go very quiet because they aren’t sure who to scream at until they’ve checked their hierarchy of victimhood.”
Okay that was funny
what about the oppression of Maori right here and now .People in glass house should not throw stones eh
Why would Pacific Island countries trust the West more than China? Afterall the Chinese have not come down here and carried out nuclear tests in our backyard, nor driven indigenous people off their islands to do so. Nor have they kidnapped Pacific Islanders and forced them to work as literally slaves on Queensland plantations.
and NZ orchards and factories and any other shit job we can make them do .
“This was a clear signal to Australia and NZ that China at any time could shut down the sealanes between NZ and Australia.”
Then what were New Zealand and Australian warships doing in the Taiwan straits last year just 40 km off the coast of China?
Shit Trump might give rocket lab a few nuclear war heads to sick on a few rockets to be launched from a mobile site anywhere in NZ .tHAT MIGHT BE THE BEST WAY TO BECOME A NUTRAL COUNTRY .Im sure we could buy some from another supplier and away we go and we would not need to invest another cent on defence .Instead we could spend 4 billion per year in fixing the poverty problem that is nz .