The Germans and the Dutch have suspended training Iraqi soldiers citing increased tensions in the area. What do they know that Ron Mark doesn’t? Cabinet is due to make a decision shortly on our long-planned decision to withdraw, and he seems to want us to stay. Labour’s policy at the election was to withdraw, it should prevail.
Mike Pompeo has just been in Britain trying to bully the UK government out of using Huawei for its 5G network. He and other officials have been heavying countries around the world. Its not working, but one thing is clear. It makes GCSB’s head Andrew Hampton’s assertion that its decision to reject Huawei was independent is simply not believable.
Anne-Marie Brady submitted to yesterday’s Select Committee Inquiry into foreign interference in our elections, making copious reference to her “Magic Weapons” paper of 2017. She didn’t mention another paper which casts a much different light on her independence and purpose
The Tax Justice Network has started a campaign to gain support for taxing capital as income to support and improve our public services. If you would like to support the campaign, you can sign the petition here or donate here. All funds donated will go to the campaign advertising.
Jacinda Ardern will get a very warm welcome in Beijing based on immense respect for her and for New Zealand. Xi Jin-Ping has just returned from a very successful visit to Europe, joining Italy to the Belt and Road initiative and buying 300 jets from Airbus. Pepe Escobar outlines the implications for Eurasia. Much food for thought.
Here’s another one for the select committee reviewing foreign interference. Visitor from Britain Charlie Parton of the Royal United Services Institute was on Morning Report this morning telling us to avoid Huawei because they are Chinese and different from us. At least he does us a favour by making it clear the matter is political not technical.
I’m glad Anne-Marie Brady will get the chance to present her “Magic Weapons” paper to the select committee examining the last election. At long last it might get given some proper critical examination, of its content as well as it provenance. In my opinion it reads like a long list of the blindingly obvious, mixed with a large dose of conspiracy theory. It certainly doesn’t show much sign of the sort of critical thinking one might expect from an academic.
Good editorial in the DomPost today supporting the students’ strike for their future environment. I can’t say the same for David Farrar on National radio yesterday opining they should strike at the weekend. For another lesson in patronising, watch Senator Dianne Feinstein’s treatment of the kids in California.
Ruth Dyson, in my opinion up in the top rank of great Labour women, has announced she will leave Parliament at the end of this term. Typically in advance and typically without fanfare. Her contribution to Labour and to the less fortunate in our country has been huge.
On Wednesday GCSB chief Andrew Hampton told a Select Committee there was absolutely “no pressure” publicly or privately on his decision to block Huawei. On Thursday US Secretary of State Pompeo publicly warned that “United States would not be able to partner with or share information with countries that adopt Huawei Technologies Co Ltd systems.” What a difference a day makes.
Spark wants Huawei’s 5G technology because its the best and the cheapest. The GCSB spooks don’t want us to have it because 5Eyes and because the US has yanked their chain. The Prime Minister says no decision has been made – the media and the world think it is a goneburger. We should support New Zealand’s Spark, not US corporate interests.
Polymath economist Professor Michael Hudson’s latest article is a geopolitical panoramic masterpiece, sparked by outrage at a series of concurrent events on January 31 which he predicts means that 2019 will be the “year of global fracture.” Definitely worth a read.
Before he was elected President, Donald Trump’s approach to United States illegal attacks on Iraq and Libya was that their only mistake was that the US didn’t “take the oil.” After becoming President, his approach to oil-rich Venezuela was “can’t we just invade them?”
Update: John Bolton confirms its about the oil.
Winston Peters went to Washington last December to see US VP Mike Pence and invited the US to engage more in the South-West Pacific without informing Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Patrick Smellie described this apparent oversight as “deeply worrying.” Even more worrying is what Peters said when he was there.
In Washington last week Winston Peters urged America to involve itself more in the Pacific, in a speech the Prime Minister was apparently unaware of. Referring to Africa, John Bolton outlined what that involvement would mean – American interests first and only. Dangerous with the neocons in charge of the playpen.
I like my Huawei phone. Apparently the US National Security Agency can’t break its encryption. That’s presumably the “security” issue why Spark is being blocked from using Huawei, and why Meng Wanzhou is held hostage in Canada at the behest of US neocons.
Tracy Watkins is in Korea paid for by the US to head off any support fro President Moon’s visit here. The US security chiefs are here in Wellington today with the 40-grit sandpaper. A high-ranking Russia “expert” from the UK was here last week because they thought Winston Peters wasn’t sufficiently outraged by the Skripal false flag affair. We’re in the gun in the information wars.
The GCSB ban on Spark’s use of Huawei technology means this government has gone from “honest broker” to poodle in a very short time. Pressure has been applied by the US and others, apparently fearing we are the “soft underbelly” of the Five Eyes spy network. Maybe its time we got out of that too – it was designed for war.
China certainly has interfered in New Zealand politics, most notably by the offer of a free trade deal which delivered huge benefits to our economy. Party and government officials all stressed to us that they were grateful for New Zealand’s support for their accession to the World Trade Organisation, the rule-based trade body. The US and Australia in contrast want to build a military base on Manus Island north of Papua.
On 11 November 1918 the guns fell silent across Europe’s slaughter. In the Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman described how that dreadful war started by accident. Daniel Ellsberg warns us now that accidents could happen again, this time in the nuclear age. Ellsberg says first strike is America’s policy, making accidental nuclear winter all the more likely.
In Politik’s 7 September issue we are told that Western diplomats in Wellington are surprised that Winston Peters has not accused Russia of the Skripal poisoning or joined some other countries in taking reprisals. Editor Richard Harman quotes a source to tell us that the British in particular were “pissed” at Peters’ response. Well dearie me. I’m with Winston, a wise old owl.
Things are coming to a head in Syria, with a key meeting on 7 August between Syria, Turkey and Russia to discuss future strategy re the Idlib enclave where terrorist groups have been concentrated. The US and its allies want to retain influence, having lost it to Russia. A shooting war based on a false flag is a real albeit disastrous possibility to maintain US “quagmire” policy in the Middle East to date.
Australian Guardian columnist Van Badham writes “the future of the left is bright if it looks like Jacinda Ardern and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes.” She concludes “We can hope the influence of Jacinda Ardern and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes spread, or we can ensure that it does. The stakes for the marginalised remain life and death.” Very worth a read.
The Independent’s Robert Fisk reports from Douma, where he interviewed one of the clinic doctors who said that the images that outraged Trump, May and Macron were real, but the cause was oxygen starvation from dust, not poisonous gas. Could it be that misleading images started a bombing war? What might this say about Western values?
In the second stage of a false flag attack, facts go out the window and the sole issue becomes “are you for us or against us.” Our media and National Party politicians are well into this stage in the Skripal affair. But as questions mount and skeptics proliferate from all sides, Jacinda Ardern and Winston Peters may well be wiser than media advisers by not following blindly the western herd. 26 countries is not the whole world. Update: Porton Down unable to establish Novichok of Russian origin.
In the days of the British Raj unsportsmanlike behaviour was condemned by saying “it isn’t cricket.” Australian batsman Cameron Bancroft hiding ball-tampering sandpaper in his trousers in a forlorn attempt to avoid the cameras showed that for Aussies “it is cricket.” We’ve seen it before of course with the Chappells. Heads must roll.
The possible poisoning of Sergei Skripal and the consequent hysteria have all the signs of another false flag operation, as we saw before the second American invasion of Iraq. The chain of circumstantial evidence has more holes in it than a swiss cheese, and while attempted murder (if that is what it is) is a criminal act Winston Peters and Jeremy Corbyn are sane voices calling for evidence before any attribution still less action.
The Lord Mayor of the City of London is visiting New Zealand. Its not Sadiq Khan, Charles Bowman is a PwC partner leading London’s financial centre lobby. He’s here to talk to business and regulators. He’ll no doubt be talking up more deregulation.
At a Union/NDP conference in March 2002 in Ottawa I saw wall-to-wall US TV attacking Iraq in my room. My caucus report that […]
“Wedger Wayne” Mapp in todays’s Spinoff does his best to stuff Jacinda Ardern into a Tony Blair “Third Way” box. Too glib by far. True in 2002 Blair did promise to eliminate child poverty by 2020; but poverty’s now the highest in 20 years in Britain. I’d back Jacinda to do much better. Besides, instead of Mandy she’s got David Parker.
What’s with the academic panic epidemic about China? Two in our media in the same week, referencing each other with vague warnings about the Chinese bogey. It’s not quite Lionel Terry in Haining Street again; more likely in my view a case of singing to someones else’s geopolitical tune. No prizes for guessing whose.
Issued alongside the Magna Carta on November 6, 1217, the Charter of the Forest is among the first ecological charters in history and among the first to assert the rights of ordinary people to the right to subsistence. 800 years old tomorrow.
Most viewed story on the Guardian website today: “New Zealand library cracks case of missing books.” Turns out some of Auckland’s 23,000 homeless were hiding bookmarked books in odd places so they wouldn’t lose their place. The library will now keep their books safe. Good on them. Finding homes for homeless must be a high priority for Aotearoa’s next government.
The massive artillery barrage at Passchendaele was supposed to cut the German wire and make advance easy. All it did was churn up the mud though which so many doomed New Zealanders slogged and died. A monument to military incompetence and political disaster. These days they prefer bombs, which are equally deadly and equally futile. Its time we said no more.
Policy is everything, Winston Peters said today. This should not be a surprise. Before every election, he has refused to give any hint of Party support preference until after the vote. But he will have thought a lot about what he might want, as it has long been clear that his Party would decide the outcome. So what are his policies?
Great read in London today – full page Guardian article headlined “I’ve got what it takes, says the charismatic Labour leader taking New Zealand by storm.” Send it far and wide.
