As of mid -March 2025, Western mainstream media speak as one, saying ‘Putin’ doesn’t want a ceasefire, he wants to continue the war’.
However Putin and the Russian Federation are simply reiterating the conditions for peace they have made for the past 3 years; which would be of course be of no surprise to NATO or to Western media- but they pretend they are. MSM seem to imply that Russia should simply say ‘yes’ to a temporary ceasefire while Ukraine is then rearmed by Europe and the US after its devastating defeat in the Kursk salient and along the line of combat in Eastern Ukraine, continues to plan to be part of NATO and continues to conduct war crimes against Russian-speakers- both within Eastern Ukraine and also recently in the now liberated Russian Kursk salient.
Russia’s conditions thus include the elimination of the well-documented persecution and murder of Russian speakers in Ukraine, (which naturally means the elimination of the Bandera-cult extremists who have attempted to implement their ethnically ‘pure’-Ukraine fiction.) Ukraine is, and has always been over the past 500 years, with its constantly shifting borders, a place where multiple ethnicities have always lived: Romanians, Hungarians, Russians, Jews, Gypsies and Poles.
And while we hear, as we should, about the deaths of Ukrainian civilians at Russian hands, we hear nothing about the missile strikes on civilians in Russia by Ukraine, many of which do not appear to be ‘accidental’ .
Russia has consistently demanded that Ukraine return to its neutral status that it legislatively agreed to when it became independent from the Soviet Union in 1991. Russia has consequently also demanded that Ukraine no longer be massively armed by the West so that it can no longer threaten Russia’s borders.
The fiction by European powers that they can be ‘peacekeepers” on the ground in Ukraine is simply ridiculous. Countries that have aggressively supplied and targeted the other side in a war cannot subsequently become ‘peacekeepers’- they are co-belligerents, and remain so until the war completely ends. A co-belligerent therefore cannot ever be a ‘peace-keeper’ – this is just a simplistic ruse by the Europe to create a backdoor opportunity for Ukraine to become part of NATO and for the Ukraine to continue its fight with Russia. What is also never mentioned in MSM is that Europe does not have the military capacity-either in war-machines or troops, to be a significant threat to Russia. European ‘peacekeepers’ would therefore become a trip-wire for the US to become directly involved militarily if European troops were attacked in Ukraine.
The neocon and very influential in Washington ‘thinktank’: the Atlantic Council has naturally accused Russia of using the NATO issue as an excuse to keep fighting- somehow ignoring the fact that one of Russia’s stated key reasons for starting the war was precisely because of the NATO threat.
We are continually told by Western media that Putin cannot be trusted to make a deal- yet it is indisputably the West who have lied and cheated their way through the Minsk 1 and 2 peace agreements to enable Ukraine to keep fighting, and scuppered the peace agreement agreed to by Ukraine with Russia in Istanbul in 2022.
We are told that the US pouring millions into Ukraine before the Maidan coup in 2014 , and US politicians like Senators John McCain and Chris Murphy and US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland explicitly supporting the nationalist extremists on the Maidan, is all a myth. We are also told falsely that the deposed President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych was a corrupt dictator, when in fact he was democratically elected; (although indeed corrupt , like EVERY other Ukrainian president since independence).
Such evidence online in Western media’s reports and analysis is strangely hard to come by. Western media have demonstrated that they do not exist to provide bi-partisan evidence to allow people to make up their own minds about the history and current situation in Ukraine, they exist to ensure that the NATO narrative is the only narrative to be heard.
Plainly the ‘needs’ of Western politicians and businesses (and even University ‘analysts’) to explain this ‘unprovoked’ war by Russia in as simplistic and dishonest way as possible to ensure their financial gains and power, outweigh the needs of Western populations to be accurately informed of the realities of this awful war.
2024 was a year when the total duplicity of the Western world and its media was exposed about the state of the world for all the world to see
2024 was a year when the total duplicity of the Western world and its media was exposed about the state of the world for all the world to see -the political machinations and the true state of the environmental crisis…
For the last 70 years and more, the West’s politicians and its media have talked about their fight for freedom justice and democracy against a corrupt and evil non-West. Israel’s genocidal war has changed all of that. The West’s unequivocal ‘moral’ and military backing of the mass-murder in Gaza has exposed the high moral talk as just that- bullshit.
And it is not as if this wasn’t evident 50 years ago with the West’s genocide in Korea, then Iraq, or Libya to name just a few- but Gaza has exposed the true horror of what the West stands for in bloodstained clarity.
And in Ukraine, the West’s portrait of the war has gone from simply being inaccurate and simplistic to downright lies. Somehow we are led to believe that Russia will accept a ceasefire and freeze the fighting because President Trump says so- despite the years of lies to the Russians from the West about signed peace agreements and non expansion of NATO etc. e.g. The BBC’s ridiculous propagandist in Moscow, Steven Rosenberg , reinterprets facts to pretend that Russia’s economy is struggling and that 80% of the Russian public don’t support the war.
But even though all the evidence points to Russia pushing the Ukrainian forces back by tens of kilometers each day -despite the many billions in Western arms Kiev has received in the past 3 years -Western politicians and military commanders are convinced that Russia is desperate to end the war on any terms. And thus Western politicians and and media continue to pretend that the Russians are somehow primitive, almost sub-human beings, quite unlike those Western sophisticates in the capital of Europe and US. Sadly Ukrainians bought into that well-manufactured European myth, which resulted in the death and injury of more than half a million Ukrainian men to date. And if the reality does not square with our beliefs, we’ll bend reality to suit our beliefs.
In Syria we are told that the ex-Al Qaeda leaders of the new ‘democratic’ Syria are now the good guys, and we can forget all about their head-chopping adventures of the past.
And of course we simply don’t hear in the West how the French brutal colonial military are being pushed out of their African ex-colonial states one by one -as new African leaders expose French exploitation of their countries.(Gabon, Senegal, Cote d,Ivoire, Niger to name a few….)
What to me is most disturbing in all of this debacle for the West’s populations and then for the rest of humanity’s global populations, is the total lack of compassion, humanity or kindness in any of the decisions that caused both the rise of the West as brutal and exploitative colonial powers, and its inevitable fall through ideological rigidity and pure stupidity: this insane insistence on making money at any cost to one’s soul and one’s humanity and now for our very survivability on this planet.
When did humanity lose its way? I suspect it arose when man decided he was above all other living things-that those ‘others’ were simply to be exploited for his benefit, rather than co-inhabitants on this planet with equal rights and deserving of equal respect and kindness. Rather than relying on our inate ‘knowledge’ that we must respect all living things to be fully human, we have fabricated ideologies (thought-games) that constructed, and continue to construct, mythologies and rationales for our brutality and savagery against other humans and other species. Those who descend into those mind-games, have indeed lost their souls
Have you ever seen that kind of email header in your inbox? -hmmm-maybe not!
(Note: this post has been reproduced with the kind permission of changethatmind.com )
Our ‘modern’ society puts enormous pressure on all of us to consume and buy more; whether it’s the ads you see pop up on your smartphone as you scan the web, your social media accounts, your local newspaper or your TV, the billboards on your way to work or on the public transport you use-the exhortation to buy, buy, buy is constant and ever more insistent.
And our politicians extol the virtues of an ever bigger GDP, of ever more ‘progress’.
And we are all the victims of this propaganda war; we can’t escape, and we all succumb to one degree or another. We feel the need to have something more modern, something better something bigger, something more ostentatious, or even just keeping up with our friends, family or colleagues to have something at least as good as theirs. Why is that, do you think?
We’ve all heard that stuff about there’s only one Earth, but we all act like we don’t believe it and keep consuming enough for at least two! Maybe you’ve noticed how every year there’s a little less greenery, a little more concrete, or even how there’s far fewer bugs that splatter on your car windscreen, or that you don’t hear the birds you used to hear and see when you were younger.
Do you ever wonder why almost all the things we buy are inanimate things? -made of plastic, metal or dead plants?
So as our human population increases more and more, and every one of us wants more and more on this lonely little planet- what’s going to give?
And what can we do instead of consuming more and more?
‘Take the Jump’ has some great suggestions on how to decrease your footprint in the world…
What if we all reduced our consumption back to the level of what was being consumed in the 1950s in the West? How hard would that be?
And then there other parallel strategies that can also help reduce our footprint like reducing the stuff or ‘clutter’ in your home. ‘Homes & Gardens’ have some great ideas on reducing clutter. And there can be a certain pleasure in letting others get some enjoyment from the things you no longer need; whether it’s donating them to a charity or recycling agency, or selling them on Ebay or whatever your country’s equivalent online trader happens to be.
There’s no doubt our world is changing, and humans. inevitably, will have to change along with those changes- whether we choose to, or whether nature chooses for us.
Our making the choice for ourselves now is so much the better choice!
To a more fulfilled life and better world!
Paul at ChangeThatMind.com
Note that ChangeThatMind is not an affiliate of ANY of the agencies noted in this post; and thence does NOT receive any payment on any of the products not sold through this website!)
The following is my letter of complaint to Television New Zealand 1, who published the following report on the context of the Palestine/Israel situation on 16th October.(at 23 minutes into the news)
Your news reporter, Simon Mercer undertook what was supposedly intended as an historical outline of the issues for Israelis and Palestinians on TVNZ1 news last night in relation to the current hostilities in Palestine/Israel.
Simon talked about the lead up to 1948 when Israel militants took control of Palestine (the Nakba), but for some strange reason neglected to mention the 700,000 Palestinians who were forcibly removed from their homes in Palestine and moved at gunpoint to refugee camps by the Israelis and later the two prison camps in Gaza and the West Bank. Simon also failed to mention the thousands of Palestinians killed by the Israeli military in 1948 .
Simon also failed to mention the subsequent massacres of thousands of Palestinians in refugee camps by Israelis and their enablers since 1948 and the fact that every day since then (for 75 years) Israelis have been murdering, torturing , imprisoning and dispossessing Palestinians of their homes.
Western governments, particularly the US and UK and their media, have played a key part in colluding with these Israeli war crimes so that their populations are largely unaware of these events, and clearly TVNZ as an ‘independent’ news media outlet, also considers it important to omit these facts as well.
By doing so, TVNZ is colluding in the immensity of Israel’s war crimes over 75 years and allows that brutality to continue.
I would request that in the interests of no longer continuing to collude in war crimes, as well as the safety of the Palestinian people, let alone compassion for their constant suffering, that you publish a fair and balanced historical outline of what has really happened in Israel/Palestine since 1947, as well as the current situation
Please note I will be publishing this complaint on my blog, as well as your response.”
The recent tragedy of the attacks by Hamas on Israeli, are just one more example where NZ politicians rightly condemn the violent attacks by Hamas but do not condemn the root cause of them, the brutal 75 years of genocide against Palestinians by the Israeli government, military and their settler thugs.
As a New Zealander I have often made complaints to our State funded television broadcaster, TVNZ about their blatant bias towards a U.S. view of international events
Neither do our media or our gutless political science academics like Robert Patman ever report on the Nakba and Israel’s ongoing genocide. ‘For many Palestinians the status quo is not working for them“, Mr Patman says- not working?- you mean Palestinians are a bit annoyed about being murdered, tortured and imprisoned by a brutal racist regime for 75 years!-and the “international rule based order ” that Mr Patman so fervently eulogises about is the very one that has allowed the United States to brutally and genocidaly invade Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, Libya ad infinitum, as Mr Patman well knows- but of course to Mr Patman those are not important issues.
So one can see that our NZ academics are as a-moral and gutless as our NZ politicians.
And our New Zealand news media are also as guilty and corrupted in this process, as the following article about RadioNZ and its “Putin Propaganda’ concerns, clearly demonstrates. https://consortiumnews.com/2023/10/07/new-zealands-russian-edits-scandal-how-a-national-broadcaster-demonized-the-truth/. The RNZ journalist had re-edited propaganda articles from Reuters and other sources about the Ukraine war to instead provide factual information and greater background- and of course telling the real facts was just playing to ‘Putin’s agenda’ -as the RNZ CEO pointed out!
One of our main online news media in New Zealand, ‘Stuff’ recently posted an article about Hamas and Israel entitled ‘Hamas Apologists are Siding with Evil -End of Discussion’. The author, one Damien Grant is supposedly a ‘libertarian”- although clearly the liberties that Grant espouses dont apply to Palestinians. Disregarding all facts, Damien exhorts his readers to believe that Israel is not a genocidal entity that has imprisoned Gazans for 18 years- and for many of them; since 1948-is not an entity that rations food and water and all other services. Damien assures us that ‘For those in the territories, Israel allows as much self-governance as its security can tolerate”. In his most superbly farcical and tragically criminal statement Damien states ‘to be sure, sometimes their (Israeli) security forces respond to militant attacks that result in Palestinian civilian deaths, but no Palestinian music festival has seen hundreds attacked, murdered, and kidnapped’. Is Damien trying to suggest that Palestinians are permitted by their persecutors to hold music festivals? Perhaps while Palestinian families are searching for their next meal? Such is the level of ‘ignorance’ (to be charitable) that continues to condemn Palestinians to a life of imprisonment and persecution under Israeli rule.
What is obviously more important than truth and facts is to follow the ‘Rule Based International Order” ( or there will be repercussions…)
Growing up as a child in the mid 20th century in New Zealand, I learnt a common kiwi satirical saying. ‘I’m all right Jack’ referred to those us New Zealanders who believed everything was going well for them and they didn’t care how anybody else was managing. The “I’m all right Jack’ kind of guy would do anything he/she liked and didn’t concern himself with the consequences of their actions for others…Back then we lived in a relatively closed island community, shipping was the primary transport in and out of New Zealand and radio shortwave from the outside world, our society was a social welfare community; an understanding that our government and citizens had a responsibility to support and protect those who were more vulnerable than ourselves.
It was certainly not the perfect society; monocultural, intolerant of difference and non ‘white’ races, with hidden seams of family abuse and violence. Some things have changed for the better over the years, but the ‘I’m all right Jack’ culture-though no longer a phrased commonly used, is rampant as it is everywhere across the globe. It is an Ayn Rand socio/psychopathic kind of culture: I have a right to do whatever I wish, and to hell with the consequences for anyone else.
But today, more than at any other time in history, individual humans can no longer avoid the collective impact of their actions. There are simply too many of us on this planet – there is no other refuge, no unexplored wilderness, where we can go when things turn out badly.
The urgency for all humans, particularly those in the West, to dramatically change the way we live our lives has never been more immediate. Despite all the hype, we can not ‘grow’ our way out of our environmental catastrophe (climate change and biodiversity loss). Neither can we stop that catastrophe from ocurring; but we can at least even now limit the extent of the damage.
We must return to a simpler life; a happier more content life, and a life that celebrates all other living things. We can either choose this new direction or we will be forced upon us against our wills.
This planet will survive; the question is will humans and other species living here now, survive the cataclysmic changes to our world that are upon us?
All wars are, without doubt, pointless, tragic and foolish affairs that also play a significant part in destroying the remainder of our natural environment and a future for our children.
Western media are continuously playing a looped recording that Ukraine and its president Zelensky are defending the ‘free world’ – democratic ‘white” nations- against the evil Russian hordes. What is most interesting is that the language used in this messaging is consistent right across the Western media, regardless of the country you live in .
That the Kiev armies are undoubtedly shelling the former Ukrainian nuclear power plant near Zaporizhzhia: presumably to create more support for more weapons from the ‘white’ world.
That the Kiev government and its Western government supporters have been deliberately shelling civilian areas of the Donbass held by Russian speaking Ukrainians since 2014 , with over 14,000 deaths from shelling, and more recently with illegal ‘butterfly’ or ‘petal’ anti-personnel mines.
That real Banderite neo-nazis still play a significant role in determining Ukraine’s state and war strategy- despite many of them being killed or captured in Mariupol.
In the last few days we have also heard about the killing of the daughter of the ‘ultra-nationalist” Alexander Dugin. Dugin is, in my opinion, an obnoxious idealogue who has for many years promoted a Russia first meme. However nobody deserves to die because of their beliefs, (let alone their children) – be they Russian, Ukrainian or any other nationality.
What is however scary, is the identical use of language by Western media in describing Dugin as an ‘ultra-nationalist” – what exactly an ‘ultra-nationalist’ is, as opposed to simply being a ‘nationalist’, is somewhat unclear- but one is left with the clear understanding that only Russians can be ‘ultranationalists’ (or for that matter ‘oligarchs’) and never of course those Americans who have the ludicrous belief in the United States as the ‘exceptional nation’ who wanders the world doing good deeds for the benefit of those of us who are less enlightened.
Patriotism is one of the scourges of humanity; an absurd belief in the superiority of the culture and land to which you were accidentally born into. A scourge that blights and distorts the mind into believing that any action ; however intrinsically evil it is, is good as long as it benefits the country you were born in.
We see that evil in the blue and gold banners that enswathes everything in Ukraine, the United State’s ‘Stars and Stripes’, and the blue white and red flag of Russia, to name but three.
So now, as Westerners, we are told to hate all Russians, all Chinese, because they are a threat to our expensive lifestyles….And as true patriots, we should consume more, build more and destroy more , because we are the epitome of ‘civilisation’.
And all the while, we move ever faster into a new world where the climate is already more unpredictable and dangerous, where global warming and sea-levels continue to rise and rise for the next hundred, maybe thousand years, and where we ever more rapidly, destroy what is left of our living world.
And why?- because their media profit margins and their sponsors depend on more economic ‘growth’.
So it becomes clear that the only path to ‘de-growth’, and retaining some semblance of a live-able world for humans and other species, is one where Gaia herself creates that economic destruction.
When hurricanes, huge storms, enormous amounts of rainfall, oppressive high temperatures and sea level rise ( among many other ‘natural’ impacts), result in it being impossible to buy insurance for industry to sell your products or to have a market where people can no longer afford to buy your useless junk; only then will we start to see a return to a sustainable (but hotter) world where all species can live in harmony, and even some contentment!
Media have indoctrinated us all to believe that we need to consume more, do more, travel more – that we cannot live lives of contentment without all those things we need to buy and consume..
Pro-imperial thrust governed by decades-long membership in the Five Eyes, an electronic spying agreement between the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
It has become apparent that New Zealand is getting more entangled in the U.S. Empire than ever before. Don’t be fooled that New Zealand and America’s longest war—Afghanistan—is over and ended in abject withdrawal and defeat by the Taliban in August 2021.
Or that New Zealand was not invited to join the new AUKUS pact between the U.S., UK and Australia, to provide the latter with nuclear-powered (but not nuclear-armed) submarines. New Zealand’s nuclear-free policy might rule out any such subs using our waters but New Zealand, under this Labour government, has expressed keenness to be involved with other aspects of AUKUS.
The Waihopai spy base has been New Zealand’s most important service for the U.S. Empire for decades. In 2021 the Government announced that it will be dismantling and decommissioning Waihopai’s two most unmissable features, namely the giant white domes that cover the satellite-interception dishes within.
Both dishes and domes have been declared obsolete 20th century relics that are no longer fit for 21st century spying. They will be removed in 2022. But the Government has no intention of dismantling the spy base itself; instead, it will be modernized to use more efficient (and less glaringly conspicuous) methods of spying.
All of this, from New Zealand’s involvement in Afghanistan to operating Waihopai on behalf of the U.S. National Security Agency, is governed by New Zealand’s decades-long membership in Five Eyes, the electronic spying agreement between the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand (originally it was referred to by its formal title, the UKUSA Agreement; Five Eyes is a more recent name). But it is much more than that—Five Eyes is a de facto geopolitical bloc.
“The Price of the Club”
John Key explicitly cited the Five Eyes as the justification for New Zealand’s involvement in the the Iraq War: The New Zealand Herald reported: “Prime Minister John Key says New Zealand’s likely military contribution to the fight against Islamic State ‘is the price of the club’ that New Zealand belongs to with the likes of the United States, Australia, Britain and Canada in the intelligence alliance known as Five Eyes.”[1]
More recently, New Zealand’s Five Eyes partners have tried to make it an actual geopolitical bloc, issuing statements about China’s various misdeeds, e.g., in Hong Kong, and pressured New Zealand to sign on. In some cases, the Government has done so; in others it has asserted the increasingly threadbare claim that New Zealand has an independent foreign policy.
“’We are uncomfortable with expanding the remit of the Five Eyes,’ [Foreign Affairs Minister] Nanaia Mahuta said to reporters. ‘New Zealand has been very clear, certainly in this term and since we’ve held the portfolio, not to invoke the Five Eyes as the first point of contact of messaging out on a range of issues that really exist out of the remit of the Five Eyes.’”[2]
But that sort of thing is merely a skirmish, a question of emphasis. New Zealand is in Five Eyes, boots and all.
And the U.S., under Joe Biden, is keen to use blocs like Five Eyes as part of his “Indo-Pacific” strategy, the central policy plank of which is to contain China (whilst simultaneously confronting Russia on the other side of the world). When he took office Biden said “America’s back!” Yes, it is—back to saber-rattling and warmongering. And it wants its traditional allies (or satellites, as the West used to disparagingly call the Soviet Union’s allies during the Cold War) all on board and on message.
U.S. Grants Perks to New Zealand Capitalists Because of Five Eyes
To sweeten the deal, the U.S. is prepared to make Five Eyes membership an attractive proposition. So, Five Eyes has been expanded from intelligence and political ties to also now being explicitly about money and access to markets. The message from Washington is clear: Be in our “club” and we’ll make it worth your while.
This was spelled out in a fascinating article entitled “New Zealand Investors Won Carve-Out From U.S. Foreign Financing Rules.”[3]
“New Zealanders will now jump through fewer hoops to invest in American businesses and real estate, after the Government secured a temporary exemption to the country’s foreign investment screening rules. The U.S. decision represents another step towards more tightly binding together Five Eyes nations, with New Zealand’s intelligence-sharing relationship and defence cooperation cited as key factors for the decision…”
“The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, an interagency organisation which scrutinises the national security implications of investments into the country, announced earlier this month (January) that New Zealand had been added to its list of ‘excepted foreign states.’”
“In 2020, the Committee’s remit expanded beyond ‘control’ transactions, where a foreign investor would take controlling interest in a U.S. business, to cover investments in more sensitive companies, as well as the purchase of real estate near sensitive U.S. government facilities…While Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom secured exceptions from those expanded controls at the time, as well as a new requirement for mandatory filing, New Zealand did not, placing an extra burden on Kiwi investors….”
“In a fact sheet outlining the rationale for the change of heart, the U.S. Treasury Department cited New Zealand’s ‘intelligence-sharing relationship with the United States and its collective defense arrangement and cooperation with the United States’ as among the factors which earned it an exemption…. While the addition of New Zealand showed some willingness to expand the benefits of the carve-outs to new investors, the fact the group remained restricted to Five Eyes members did not provide any clear sense of whether it would offer an exemption to countries outside of the intelligence pact.”
So, there you have it. If fighting American wars in other people’s countries is the price of belonging to the Five Eyes club, then the U.S. is prepared to extend exclusive economic benefits to its junior Five Eyes allies to make it more palatable. Older New Zealanders will remember the infamous “guns for butter” phrase of Sir Keith Holyoake, Prime Minister during New Zealand’s involvement in the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s. It means sending our soldiers to fight in U.S. wars in order to, theoretically, gain trade access.
Sir Keith Holyoake with Lyndon B. Johnson, Vietnam War architect. [Source: nzhistory.govt.nz]
New Zealand never has succeeded in getting a free trade agreement with the U.S.—Donald Trump scuppered the former Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) as soon as he took office and that was the closest New Zealand has ever got to the “holy grail.” The Biden administration is prepared to offer an economic sweetener to New Zealand as reward for being the most loyal, albeit most junior, of the Five Eyes.
Rocket Lab and Five Eyes
Of course, the newest U.S. base in New Zealand is that of Rocket Lab (which operates out of both Auckland and the Mahia Peninsula). I have written several Watchdog articles in recent years about Rocket Lab (most recently in issue 157, August 2021, “Rocket Lab. Campaign Against It Blasts Off,” http://www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/57/03.html).
We (both CAFCA and the Anti-Bases Campaign) have consistently made the point that it is a U.S. facility for a privately owned American company, operating for the U.S. military and spies on New Zealand soil.
Illustration of Rocket Lab’s launch complex. [Source: spacenews.com]
Despite the best (worst?) efforts by Rocket Lab’s New Zealand political and media apologists to polish this turd, Rocket Lab itself makes no secret about what it is, what it does and who it serves. Nor is it shy to play the Five Eyes card. “In a 2008 profile published in Metro magazine, [Chief Executive Officer and founder] Peter Beck ruled out military work when discussing if there were payloads Rocket Lab wouldn’t carry.”
Beck is quoted as saying:
‘Of course, … we said right from the beginning if it’s involved in the military, we don’t want anything to do with it. The military can be quite a tempting cherry because a lot of money gets poured into it, but we’re about science, we’re not about killing people…’
His views have evolved, and he now believes military intelligence helps keep Kiwis safe.
“Beck had a very different reply from 2008 when asked if he had any qualms about sending U.S. spy satellites into space, given the intelligence they collect can be used in military operations. ‘You also have to remember that intelligence keeps us safe. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of bad actors in the world. I am a New Zealander, but you also have to understand that national security is a global thing.’”
“‘It’s not a singular country’s responsibility. New Zealand is part of the Five Eyes… it’s all very well to criticise national security until the very day that you need it.’”[4]
Rocket Lab and “Classified Defense and Intelligence Business”
Since I last wrote about Rocket Lab (August 2021), there has been no shortage of new developments. That same month it debuted on the Nasdaq stock exchange in New York, valued at US$ 5.2 billion. In September 2021 it was reported that “Rocket Lab shares jumped nearly 9% to US$ 15.29 (for a $US 6.5 billion market cap) in early trading on the Nasdaq after the company finally confirmed a major tranche of funding from the U.S. military and entry into an inner-circle of companies approved for security and defence missions…The Kiwi-American firm secured US$ 24.35 million (NZ$ 34m) from the U.S. Air Force’s new Space Force division to develop the upper stage of its Neutron rocket.”
Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck stands with a Neutron fairing half. [Source: businesswire.com]
“Rocket Lab said in a statement: ‘The agreement signifies Rocket Lab’s commitment to becoming a launch provider for the National Security Space Launch programme, which launches the United States’ most critical missions’… Founder and CEO Peter Beck said: ‘We’re dedicated to building a next-generation rocket that will transform space access for constellations through to the most critical missions in support of national security, and it’s an honour to be partnering with the U.S. Space Force to develop Neutron.’”
“Rocket Lab, which won a key R&D [research and development] contract with U.S. Department of Defense agency DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] at a key time in its young life, has long had close ties to the U.S. military which, along with NASA, has been one of its two biggest customers. And in an investor presentation before its Nasdaq listing, Rocket Lab said Department of Defense space systems spending represented a ‘[US]$968 million opportunity over ten years.’”
“In a reference to Rocket Lab’s new Launch Complex II within NASA’s Wallops Island facility in Virginia, it said ‘a secure facility will be completed this year (2021) to support classified Department of Defense and Intelligence Community business.’”[5]
NASA Wallops Island facility in Virginia. [Source: nasa.gov]
And the fact that Rocket Lab is an American company becomes more and more apparent. “Rocket Lab’s centre of gravity has shifted further away from New Zealand and towards North America after it announced it would buy United States space solar tech company SolAero for $US80 million ($NZ118 million). Rocket Lab will take on 425 staff as a result of the acquisition, which is expected to be complete by the end of March [2022].”
“That will take Rocket Lab’s total number of staff to more than 1100, of whom spokeswoman Morgan Bailey confirmed 525 were currently based in New Zealand. Rocket Lab, which is already headquartered in the U.S. and listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange, will manufacture and launch its next line of larger Neutron rockets in the U.S.”[6]
In February 2022 Rocket Lab announced that it will build a giant production and mission control complex in Colorado. This will be its fourth major facility in the U.S.—the others are in California, New Mexico and Virginia (from where it will exclusively launch its larger Neutron rockets). It has also expanded its facilities in both Auckland and Mahia.
New Zealand Government and Rocket Lab Join U.S. Drive to Mine Moon
The Government’s infatuation with Rocket Lab is taking New Zealand into some literally unearthly and legally dubious places. In mid-2021, New Zealand signed the Artemis Accords, which promotes the exploitation of the Moon and other space resources. “The legal status of space resources is contested. The world’s main space agreement, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, prohibits the ‘national appropriation’ of the Moon and other celestial bodies by any means. Some academics argue this rules out Moon mining for private profit. Others say it only precludes claims to land, not its resources.”
“This uncertainty aside, in 2015 the U.S. Congress passed a law allowing American companies to own and sell natural resources mined from space. In April 2020, the Trump administration declared that the U.S. doesn’t view space as a ‘global commons,’ denouncing the 1979 Moon Agreement, which sought to protect the moon’s resources as ‘the common heritage’ of mankind (although few states have signed up to it).”
“Announced shortly after Trump’s declaration, the Artemis Accords—which are advanced directly with ‘like-minded’ nations, rather than through the UN—seek to shape international law in line with this worldview, asserting that the extraction of space resources is not ‘inherently’ national appropriation under the Outer Space Treaty.”[7]
Bypassing the UN
“The New Zealand Space Agency believes its participation in the Artemis Accords—an international agreement to send people back to the Moon—will significantly boost the space sector. The Government signed up to the NASA accords in 2021, and New Zealand will play an important role in the project when Rocket Lab launches the CAPSTONE satellite to lunar orbit from Mahia Peninsula, likely in March [2022].”
“NASA’s CAPSTONE, or Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment satellite, will test the orbit planned to be used by a small space station that would act as a lunar gateway. The Space Agency noted that signing the Accords presented some risk to international relationships.”
“‘The Accords may be viewed by some nations as an attempt to bypass the UN Committee on the Peaceful Use of Outer Space process and the UN treaty-making process,’” the Agency said.”[8]
The reference to “some countries” is telling—neither Russia nor China has signed the Artemis Accords. But little old New Zealand has, jumping on board a Trumpian U.S. outer space resource grab (one which has not been reversed by the Biden administration), with a U.S. company standing to financially benefit from its involvement using its NZ launch site.
“There are some obvious reasons that New Zealand might want to side with the United States in this debate. Our relationship with the superpower is critical for our space sector, particularly Rocket Lab, which has numerous U.S. government contracts.”[9] So, there you have it. And the answer to the question posed in the subtitle of that North & South article is: “Yes.”
ABC Webinar on Rocket Lab and Five Eyes
As I detailed in my August 2021 Watchdog article on Rocket Lab, there is now a campaign against it. As part of the January 2021 Waihopai spy base protest, Anti-Bases Campaign (ABC) hosted a well-attended Blenheim public meeting. The three speakers were Ollie Neas, the journalist who has been writing critical analyses on Rocket Lab for years, Nicky Hager on Five Eyes and Green MP Teanau Tuiono.
About 30 protesters gathered in January 2020, 20 km outside Blenheim, in the annual demonstration to close down Waihopai spy base. [Source: stuff.co.nz]
This meeting was so successful and so well received by the good number of people present that ABC decided to host a Christchurch public meeting in September 2021 featuring those same three speakers, plus Sonya Smith from Rocket Lab Monitor in Mahia.[10]
Alas, the ever-changing Covid situation ruled out a physical meeting but ABC replaced it with a webinar, featuring all four speakers, plus me, which drew many more attendees—including from overseas—than we would have had at an in-person Christchurch public meeting. Sadly, it is not available online, as the speakers felt that they could speak more freely if it was not recorded.
ABC looked to take that further with Sonya Smith and Teanau Tuiono among the speakers at the Blenheim public meeting, which was part of the scheduled January 2022 Waihopai spy base protest. But Covid buggered things up again, and the whole event had to be cancelled, for the first time since 1988, with just a few days’ notice.
NSO Spyware and Five Eyes
There is more to Five Eyes than Waihopai and Rocket Lab. Its tentacles reach into all sorts of areas: for example, the notorious Israeli Pegasus spyware sold to governments by the company NSO. It has been used by some of the worst abusers of human rights to spy on journalists, dissidents and political opponents, with all sorts of dire consequences, including murder. NSO is such an outrageous outfit (most recently, it has been caught spying on its own Jewish citizens within Israel) that the Biden administration put it on a blacklist in 2022—a very rare U.S. move against any Israeli entity. Moves were announced to sell it to a U.S. venture capital firm.
The plan outlines cancelling or restricting most of the company’s former clients, effectively bringing the company’s revenues to zero. Instead of the current 37 clients, the company will reduce its sales to only five clients: the Five Eyes Anglosphere intelligence alliance of New Zealand, the United States, Australia, Great Britain and Canada.
“The company would initially focus on defensive cyber products as part of its rebranding effort.”[11]
New Zealand Has to Get Out of Five Eyes If It Is to Have an Independent Foreign Policy
Five Eyes will only continue to get more important in the geopolitical game playing—indeed, there is talk of it being expanded to include Japan and Israel. What is New Zealand doing in it?
If you are judged by the company you keep, then it does not reflect well on us. More and more, New Zealand is being sucked into the vortex that is the U.S. Empire, an empire that is increasingly using Five Eyes as yet another weapon in its quest to retain global domination. It is well beyond time for New Zealand to get out of it. There is no possibility of us having an “independent foreign policy” until that happens.
What’s More, Five Eyes Doesn’t Even Do What It’s Supposed to Do
Helen Clark was the Labour Prime Minister who ordered the New Zealand military into Afghanistan. Her reaction to the Taliban victory in 2021 was to call it “a catastrophic failure of intelligence in Western foreign policy.”
Prime Minister Helen Clark during a visit to New Zealand Defence Force’s Provincial Reconstruction Team in Bamyan province, west of Kabul in 2003. [Source: stuff.co.nz]
Yet, New Zealand is in the Western world’s self-proclaimed elite intelligence club, namely Five Eyes. Which proved to be absolutely useless in seeing what was going on in Afghanistan, a country which had been an adventure playground for Western spies for twenty years. So, why is New Zealand in Five Eyes, what use is it to us (or anyone else, for that matter)? Time for New Zealand to get out, time for Five Eyes to become four eyes. Or less if the other countries follow suit.
The war launched by the Russian Federation against Ukraine yesterday is a tragedy. All war is not only ultimately futile in achieving the aggressor’s stated objectives but is a tragedy for all those impacted by that war.
Russia’s actions should be condemned and an immediate halt to that aggression called for.
Russia believes, like all aggressors, that its cause is just; the elimination of those who have been attacking Donbass inhabitants for the past 8 years with approximately 13,000 dead, and the termination of any possibility of Ukraine joining NATO and acquiring nuclear weapons, as Zelensky has recently threatened to do, and thus becoming a long term threat to Russia.
More war does not justice make; it creates new grievances and more wars.; soldiers and civilians killed, loved ones bereaved, homes and livelihoods destroyed, and enormous environmental destruction with animals and other living things forever lost…
There were many options Russia could have pursued to reduce those threats, but they chose the path of war.
That is not to say that this war of aggression is any way unique in the world since World War Two, as many foolish Western people ( included celebrated local professors of international policy) have attempted to claim. Just 23 years ago, Belgrade in Serbia was ruthlessly and bombed by the ‘liberating’ forces of NATO for almost 3 months. Nor must we forget the wars of aggression that have been conducted by so many Western countries against those of other ethnicities: in Korea, Vietnam, Libya, Syria, to name just a few , let alone the support for genocide in Yemen and Palestine that continues today or the brutal sanctions of starvation on North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba and many other populations.. Those wars are of course not tragedies, because they are ‘our’ wars, and therefore ‘good’ wars.
I for one, foolishly did not expect the Russians to pursue the path of war in Ukraine. I hope that the fighting can stop right now and mediation between Ukraine and Russia begin to resolve the points of conflict that have been steadily rising between these two Slav brotherly nations since the breakup of the Soviet Union, but have deep roots in their histories..
We will all be soon confronting the very real global impacts of climate change and species loss in all our lives. Us humans need to work together to solve our petty issues and create a better and safer world for all living things.
Great analysis of the lead up to the Ukraine war by Professor Mearsheimer at Kings College.
The COP26 conference in Glasgow has highlighted the mendacity of politicians and their hangers-on, let alone the big industries that fund those politicians. Endless pledges of CO2 reduction with minimal evidence of action undertaken thus far are not good signs for our future on this planet. But is it surprising a reduction in CO2 and other industrial emissions is so hard to do?
Oil and Coal are the foundation of first world ‘prosperity’- (i.e. predominantly the production of inanimate things)- from its beginnings in the British coal fired industrial revolution . With the accessibility of a cheap energy source all things became possible, but specifically the capacity to more rapidly destroy our natural environment to produce inanimate things from which money could be made. They included the rapid development of more intensive agriculture using oil based fertilisers, the development of plastics, more concrete production for building construction, tar for roads, and coal and oil fired boilers to run our factories and produce electricity. Without oil and gas our modern economy would never have happened, and might possibly cease to exist without it in the future.
As Zehner (2012) points out, renewable energy sources like wind and solar have considerable value and often do reduce overall emissions (but not eliminate them or reduce biodiversity loss) but they cannot completely replace our current first world energy needs, nor are they reliable when the wind stops or the sun doesn’t shine.
We can, as Zehner notes, reduce our energy footprint significantly with more efficient use of the electricity we produce with smart meters, more efficient machinery, collaborative and non coercive ways to reduce or eliminate population growth in all countries , combined with alternative energy sources like wind solar and hydro, but ultimately we need to reduce our consumption of ‘stuff’ in the first world.
But reducing our consumption when it is driven by massive advertising from big and small industries and strong societal needs to feel somehow better about ourselves, will be an uphill task. As with most human endeavours, we believe we constantly need more of everything; a bigger car, a bigger house, more things to put around ourselves so that we feel safe and important. As the human population explodes, that ‘more of everything for each of us’ threatens the stability of the world’s biosphere at an ever increasing pace.
As just one example of the impact of surging populations, ‘foraging’ has become the in-thing for environmentalists- (taking our food from natural and not farmed places). However it is abundantly clear that if we all foraged, our natural world would be very quickly decimated. What were once ‘natural human responses’ to the natural world around us, are no longer viable because of intense human population numbers.
As has so often been said, we have pursued infinitely expanding needs on a finite planet- something has to give- and it is rapidly fraying at the seams right now…
This first world response to living- of mechanised over-indulgence of our world’s resources -has to change. We no longer have the options our forebears had; of moving on to other pastures to exploit it- we have nowhere else to go.
The numbers of humans on the planet mirror the the ‘hockey-stick graph of CO2 in our atmosphere. However we also need to acknowledge that most of that CO2 has been produced by a relatively small percentage of the global population- the ‘developed’ Western world, and also that most of China’s CO2 production (highest per country but not by capita) is the result of Western ‘needs’ for cheap ‘stuff’.
Reducing our consumption of ‘stuff’ might seem a terrible place to go; particularly those of us more susceptible to the propaganda of advertising -no more latest smartphone, car , shoes or electronics …but it will inevitably lead to us returning to our human/primate roots: a real connection to our living world not based on products and selling inanimate objects, but through our senses- our touch, taste, hearing and smell. And with that return; an acknowledgement that we can no longer ‘naturally’ exploit the living world around us- there are simply too many of us.
We must build a new world based on respect for the other living beings we co-habitate this planet with.
We can either willingly and cooperatively start this journey home, or Gaia will make the decision for us.
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Links
‘Green Illusions’ Ozzie Zehner, University of Nebraska Press (2021)
New Antarctica 