Written By:
- Date published:
6:00 am, January 31st, 2026 - 12 comments
Categories: open mike -
Tags:
Open mike is your post.
For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.
The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).
Step up to the mike …
So this is the reason why Luxon and co. are treading so softly, softly with the Trump regime:
https://newsroom.co.nz/2026/01/30/nz-in-talks-with-us-on-trump-minerals-deal/?utm_source=Newsroom&utm_campaign=77ff48378b-Week+In+Review+31.01.2026&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_71de5c4b35-77ff48378b-576240317&mc_cid=77ff48378b&mc_eid=a3285b1fcd
Does this mean much of our conservation land will be destroyed to allow America to access our mineral wealth – along with other counties – in their endeavour to win the economic war with China?
How long will it be before NZ and other countries present there are tossed out of Antarctica so they can destroy the world's fragile ecological balance by accessing the immense amount of minerals – plus oil- known to exist in the region?
Greenland was just for starters.
Reading the story you have linked makes it seem to me that we are trying to arrange deals so that we can get the minerals from overseas sources to use here, not that we have any intention of mining them here to sell overseas.
The minerals on the list that we have the ability to produce don't really seem to be in the category that are really required and that currently come from China.
https://www.mbie.govt.nz/building-and-energy/energy-and-natural-resources/minerals-and-petroleum/critical-minerals-list/critical-minerals-list-2025
To be fair to the current government: as useless, destructive, intellectually vapid, and morally bankrupt as they are, and as much as it sticks in my craw to admit it; their foreign policy approach is more-or-less the right one.
Treading carefully around a vain, thin-skinned, ageing autocrat with enough nuclear weapons to glass the planet isn’t endorsement; it’s basic survival for a small state with no real leverage. That same logic applies to minerals and geopolitics more broadly.
Antarctica is probably a special case. Everyone knows the minerals (and hydrocarbons) are there, and everyone wants them. But no one wants to be the first to openly break the norms that keep the Antarctic Treaty System intact. For now, restraint holds less because of moral virtue than because once one major power moves, the whole system collapses and everyone follows.
New Zealand can’t stop that dynamic.
At best, we can avoid accelerating it, support existing rules while they still hold, and not pretend we get to dictate terms in a great-power economic war. Greenland didn’t invent this logic . It just showed how quickly long-standing norms can get discarded when strategic resources and power competition collide.
That doesn’t mean we have to cave to US demands or allow conservation land to be strip-mined. But it does mean that when we say no, we have to do so carefully. In the current environment, there’s very little room for miscalculation.And even less for performative displays of foreign-policy “independence.”
PSA
Just discovered that using an eftpos card, instead of a debit/credit card avoids all surcharges.
Paying in cash also avoids paying a surcharge. Debit cards get a slightly lower surcharge than credit cards.
I'm trying to move away from using US-owned credit/debit cards as much as possible – can't be done online when sometimes only a credit card is possible, and EFTPOS is not an option.
Unfortunately only Visa and Mastercards are the only options for credit cards in NZ as far as I'm aware. If I can't boycott them totally, I want to use them as little as possible.
Trump has done a deal with Visa Rewards for the option of the rewards to be paid into a Trump account for later use for the child's future.
AI tells me the deal also applies to Mastercard.
So I will aim to use the credit and debit cards as little as possible, and am think to downgrade my credit card to one that doesn't include rewards.
I am also wary of the way big US tech scrapes info from the metadata they can access.
Careful with cash, it may be as bad, or worse, for the retailer than the card charges. Businesses have to pay to deposit cash, and electronic tills make it very hard to "disappear" the cash. Get into larger corporate retailers and the procedures for accepting larger amounts of cash are insane. EFTPOS is still free and generally the best option for both customer and retailer.
A good practice is to have two cards, one with Paywave enabled, and one with it disabled so the Paywave doesn't grab it as you swipe it. In some cases there's an unholy alliance between the card company, the terminal provider and the merchant to make transactions surcharge bearing, with each taking a slice of the surcharge. Easy to head that one off at the pass.
Banning the surcharges won't help, it'll just get included in the retail price and there will be no advantage to the customer in using eftpos or cash. Which is what the card companies want, they are the ones leading the surcharge ban.
The govt is planning to ban surcharges on instore payments with any cards – credit, debit or EFTPOS.
Yeah, and the cost of the charges merchants currently bear will just get added onto the retail price. Current system lets consumers choose payment methods that don't attract a charge. Banks and card companies don't like that.
Yes. But if you read my original post up thread, I have bigger concerns about the US card corporates. So I will aim to use them as little as possible.
They're at the intimidating journalists stage.
/
While it was overlooked at the time, the magistrate judge’s refusal to approve the criminal complaint against Lemon reportedly left Bondi “furious,” with the Justice Department privately vowing to find other ways to target the journalist.
[…]
All this strongly suggests “a politically motivated prosecution,” Seligman said, adding that by ignoring the magistrate judge’s ruling, Trump and Bondi are demonstrating that they “don’t care about the law and don’t care about the facts. They care about prosecuting their enemies.”
This saga underscores a few realities. First, it’s very likely that Trumpworld sees this as a way to extract pain from Lemon, in the form of money and time. “They probably don’t have any expectation that this prosecution will stick,” Seligman said. “But they do know they will put Don Lemon through the grinder in the meantime.”
https://newrepublic.com/article/205972/trump-ice-arrested-don-lemon
What was done to Assange was an example of how to make journalists suffer, without going as far as murdering them as in Gaza and elsewhere.
Haven't we been here for awhile now with a purge of anyone not willing to toe their line from the pentagon months back acting a visible sign to all.