New Zealand's Very Expensive Military Gamble

There is a particular kind of recklessness that masquerades as strategic vision. It does not announce itself as folly. It arrives dressed in the language of security partnerships, capability upgrades, and alliance obligations, and it is precisely this brand of recklessness that now defines the Luxon government's approach to New Zealand's military procurement.

The National-led coalition has committed approximately NZ$2.7 billion to the purchase of five Sikorsky Seahawk helicopters and associated military assets from the United States.

In August 2025, RNZ reported:

Watch: Judith Collins and Winston Peters reveal new $2.7b planes and helicopters

The purchases are the first that were forecast in the Defence Capability Plan unveiled in April, setting out an expected $12b in spending on defence assets over four years, $9b of that being new money.

The plan overall lifts New Zealand's defence spending to more than 2 percent of GDP over the next eight years.

There is a fundamental and largely unexamined question concerning these significant military acquisitions: what precisely does New Zealand receive in return for spending billions of dollars on American hardware, from an administration that has demonstrably withheld already-purchased, already-paid-for weapons from other allied nations the moment it suited Washington's political interests?

The answer, on current evidence, is very little. When the Trump administration ordered a freeze on military transfers, the consequences were not merely theoretical. Weapons already loaded onto trucks in Poland for onward delivery to Ukraine were stood down. Ammunition purchased using funds specifically appropriated by Congress for the purpose was simply not delivered.

Countries that had paid in good faith were left without the equipment they had contracted for and were offered no refund. These were not adversaries. They were partners, customers, and in several cases treaty allies who had done everything Washington asked of them.

New Zealand confirmed through MFAT that it had zero input into the Trump administration's Foreign Arms Sales Task Force priority partner list and did not even know whether it appeared on it. That the directive came with not only incentives but obligations: priority partners were expected to share production costs more substantially. New Zealand was apparently expected to pay more, without being consulted about whether it was considered a priority partner at all.

In April 2025, RNZ reported:

Officials don't know if NZ is on US priority weapons trading partners list

The NZ Defence Force is competing to get arms under its new $12 billion Defence Capability Plan in a world market where military spending is surging.

The NZDF talked with US lawmakers in April about potential opportunities to buy from the US, Official Information Act papers showed.

A foreign arms sales taskforce newly set up by Trump said it sought international input before launching its first six initiatives last month, including new legislation aimed to help lower the barriers that limit the proliferation of high-tech arms.

MFAT said: "New Zealand has not had any input into the taskforce."

 

That situation has since worsened. In February 2026, Trump signed a new executive order formally establishing an America First Arms Transfer Strategy, directing the Secretaries of Defense and State to develop clear priority partner criteria within 90 days and produce a prioritised sales catalogue within 120 days.

The order makes explicit that countries investing more heavily in their own defence and occupying a critical geographic role in US strategic plans will receive preferential treatment.

Despite increasing the military budget to 2% of GDP by 2032/33, as requested by the Trump administration, New Zealand has still received no public confirmation that it appears on that list. 

Official papers meanwhile show that 60 percent of the NZ Defence Force's $6 billion in arms currently on order is sourced from the United States. New Zealand has committed billions to a supplier whose formal priority framework it had no input into, whose criteria it may not meet, and whose list it may not even appear on.

This is the arrangement the Luxon government has chosen to deepen, at a cost of billions of dollars, during a period in which the geopolitical reliability of the United States as a supplier has been placed in serious and documented doubt. The pattern is not obscure. It is structural. American arms transfers have been converted from security commitments into instruments of political leverage, withheld when recipients pursue independent foreign policies, dangled when compliance is required, and apparently non-refundable in either case.

Meanwhile, the broader context in which New Zealand is making these procurement decisions has shifted considerably. The United States and Israel have conducted military operations across at least six countries in the past year, including strikes inside Qatar, a US Major Non-NATO Ally hosting the largest American air base in the region, without Doha's consent and with Qatar notified so late that it had no practical opportunity to prevent the attack.

The lesson for smaller allied nations is stark: allied status under the current Washington-Tel Aviv axis confers no guaranteed protection, and may offer no recourse whatsoever if the political winds change.

Against this backdrop, Winston Peters signed New Zealand's name to a joint statement expressing readiness to contribute to military efforts in the Strait of Hormuz, a strait closed in direct response to an American-led war launched without UN authorisation, and then spent the following week insisting the commitment meant nothing of the sort.

A functioning foreign minister cannot sign a document on a Friday and disclaim its meaning on a Tuesday. The commitment was made when New Zealand's name appeared on the paper.

What the Luxon government has managed, with impressive efficiency, is to spend billions locking New Zealand into military dependency on a supplier that does not consider us a priority, to sign documents attaching us to a war we had no hand in starting, and to do all of this without extracting a single meaningful concession in return. Not a tariff exemption. Not any guarantee of equipment delivery. Not a formal security guarantee. Not even confirmation that our name appears on the correct list.

Deference to Washington, as former Prime Minister Helen Clark and others have noted plainly, is not only distasteful. It is not working. And two and a half billion dollars' worth of helicopters, purchased from a government that views arms transfers as political bargaining chips, does not constitute a defence policy. It constitutes a very expensive gamble on the continued goodwill of an administration that has shown, repeatedly and in writing, that it does not feel especially obligated to honour its side of the arrangement.

New Zealand deserves better than that. It is not clear that this government has even noticed.

Trump's War Machine Is Picking Your Pocket

Trump Cheerleader - Greg Swenson

There's a particular kind of audacity required to sit before a global television audience, as the bombs are still falling and the Strait of Hormuz chokes on geopolitical recklessness, and declare that the American economy has never been in better shape.

That audacity belongs to Greg Swenson, founding partner of London-based merchant bank Brigg Macadam, Chairman of Republicans Overseas UK, and reliably one of the most polished purveyors of pro-Trump economic cheerleading available to international broadcasters.

Appearing on Al Jazeera's Counting the Cost, Swenson offered the full bouquet of administration talking points: GDP is growing, jobs are being created, America is a net oil exporter, and therefore the economic consequences of this catastrophic, unprovoked war of aggression against Iran are, essentially, nothing to worry about. Each of these claims deserves scrutiny, because each of them, on examination, is either wrong, misleading, or a deliberate half-truth designed to paper over a steadily worsening reality.

On 18 March, Al Jazeera reported:

Could the Iran war trigger a global recession?

Energy prices are surging as the Iran war disrupts supply, raising risks for the US, China and Europe.

All eyes are on the Strait of Hormuz.

The longer it remains closed, the greater the damage to the global economy.

Iran continues to block tankers from shipping close to 20 percent of the world’s oil supply.

That is roughly twice the disruption the world suffered during the energy shock of the 1970s.

Big oil shocks have historically led to considerable economic turmoil, high inflation, stagnation and recession.

Oil and gas prices are already surging, and economies are expected to slow.

On GDP, Swenson was almost certainly citing the Q3 2025's headline-grabbing 4.4% annualised growth figure, conveniently neglecting to mention that Q4 2025 came in at a feeble 0.7%, the weakest quarter in over a year. That weakness was partly a consequence of the administration's own government shutdown, which the Bureau of Economic Analysis estimates subtracted a full percentage point from growth. Full-year 2025 GDP expansion of 2.1% represents a decline from 2.8% in 2024. This is not a story of economic momentum. It is a story of deceleration dressed up as dynamism.

On jobs, the situation is, frankly, scandalous. The Bureau of Labor Statistics initially reported 584,000 jobs added across 2025, already a modest figure. After receiving complete state-level data, that number was revised down to just 181,000 for the entire year. That is the weakest non-recessionary performance since 2003. It represents a collapse from 1.46 million jobs in 2024, and it sits alongside the second-largest negative payroll revision on record.

Federal employment alone has shed 327,000 positions since January 2025, largely due to the administration's own mass redundancy programme. Economists have taken to calling this a "jobless expansion." When a banker on television tells you more jobs are being created, you might reasonably ask: compared to what?

The net oil exporter claim is perhaps the most cynically constructed of the three. PolitiFact rates this assertion "Half True": the US exports more petroleum products than it imports in aggregate, but it remains a net importer of crude oil, taking in 6.2 million barrels a day whilst exporting barely 4 million.

The refinery mismatch, namely US infrastructure built over decades to process heavier Middle Eastern crude, means that regardless of domestic production volumes, American consumers are paying at the pump for the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Gas prices have already risen by nearly a dollar per gallon, reaching a national average of $3.88. Only 27% of Americans approve of Trump's handling of fuel costs. The "net exporter" talking point isn't an economic argument. It is a confidence trick.

Swenson is not alone in this enterprise. Senator Lindsey Graham appeared on Fox News to describe Trump's illegal war as "a good investment," adding that once "this regime goes down, we're gonna make a ton of money." This is the authentic voice of American imperial economics: war as commercial opportunity, body counts as market conditions. It should chill any observer with a functioning moral compass.

And then there is the profiteering. Verified reporting from the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and Responsible Statecraft confirms that Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump are actively investing in Powerus, a Florida drone company positioned to capitalise on the Pentagon's sudden, urgent demand for drone technology, demand created directly by their father's war. In 2025, Trump Jr.-backed companies received hundreds of millions in Defence Department contracts.

On March 10, The New Republic reported:

Trump Sons Back New Drone Company Amid Iran War

Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. have found another avenue to make money off their father’s presidency.

President Trump’s sons are trying to sell drones to the Pentagon.

 ...

Powerus wants to build more than 10,000 drones a month. 

The Trump-backed investment firm American Ventures, the Trump-backed investment bank Dominari Securities, and drone parts maker Unusual Machines, the latter of which Trump Jr. is a shareholder and advisory board member of, are involved in the public merger. Eric Trump is also invested in Israeli drone maker Xtend. 

Jared Kushner's private equity firm Affinity Partners, meanwhile, receives $25 million annually from Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, the same Saudi government that, according to the Washington Post, actively lobbied Trump to attack Iran. The conflicts of interest are not subtle. They are structural.

The media's role in all of this deserves its own reckoning. Coverage of the Strait of Hormuz closure in much of the Western press has been framed primarily as an Iranian aggression problem, a crisis to be managed, rather than the foreseeable and widely forecast consequence of an unprovoked military attack launched without congressional authorisation, without an imminent threat to the United States, and without a coherent post-conflict plan.

Multiple Pentagon officials have confirmed to CNN that the administration underestimated Iran's willingness to close the strait. Pete Hegseth's response was not to acknowledge that failure. It was to berate journalists for reporting it, and to speculate openly about the day CNN would fall under the editorial control of a Trump family ally.

On March 14, Rueters reported:

 

Pentagon chief says he's eager for Trump ally to buy CNN as he blasts war coverage

Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth on Friday said he was ​eager to see Trump ally and Paramount Skydance, CEO David Ellison, take over CNN, as he criticized ‌the U.S. news media's coverage of the Iran war.

"The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better," said Hegseth, a former Fox News show host and combat veteran, referring to Paramount's $110 billion deal to acquire CNN-parent Warner Bros.

This determination to suppress inconvenient truth rather than confront it runs as a thread through everything the administration does. Whether it is doctoring economic statistics, dismissing independent analysis, silencing military advisors who question the war's strategic logic, or threatening the institutional independence of broadcasters who report accurately on its consequences, the Trump administration has demonstrated a consistent and deliberate commitment to managing perception over managing reality.

The American public is being asked to trust an administration that punishes honesty, rewards loyalty over competence, and has measurable financial interests in prolonging a conflict it launched without legal authority, without a credible threat to justify it, and without the faintest outline of an exit strategy. That the bombs keep falling while the approval numbers keep sliding appears, to those in the White House, to be just a communications problem.

Then there's the sanctions debacle. Three weeks into the conflict, the Treasury Department quietly lifted sanctions on 140 million barrels of Iranian crude oil at sea, freeing it for purchase by American allies. The United States is now actively generating revenue for the government it is simultaneously bombing. Senator Richard Blumenthal called it "sickeningly, shamefully stupid," and critics across the political spectrum have noted that Trump spent years denouncing Obama for returning $1.7 billion of Iran's frozen funds, and is now handing Tehran up to ten times that amount.

This isn't a strategy. It is the behaviour of an administration stumbling through a war it had no plan to win, launched at least in part to drown out a far more uncomfortable story: the partially released Epstein files, from which the DOJ illegally withheld documents directly implicating Trump in abuse allegations, and which vanished almost entirely from news reports and public discourse the moment the first bombs started to fall.

Trump's overall approval rating tells its own story, though the picture is more nuanced than a single number suggests. Depending on the pollster, his approval sits somewhere between 35% and 42%, with the most comprehensive rolling tracker, Civiqs, recording 39% approval against 57% disapproval across nearly 93,000 registered voters surveyed through to March 19, 2026. Nate Silver's Silver Bulletin aggregator puts his net approval at -15.3, a new second-term low, and three points worse than at the same stage of his first term. The Economist/YouGov survey has 56% of Americans strongly disapproving. Just 27% approve of his handling of fuel costs.

Internationally, the picture is bleaker still. Gallup's survey across 135 countries puts median approval of US leadership at just 33%. Pew Research, polling across 24 nations, found that 62% of people worldwide lack confidence in Trump, with his ratings trailing Joe Biden's by an average of twelve percentage points across those same countries. In Germany, confidence in Trump sits at just 12%. In Mexico, a mere 6%. The man who promised to make America great again has made it, by most global measures, less trusted, less liked, and less respected than it was under the predecessor he never stops attacking. He dismisses all of it: "I don't care about polling. I have to do the right thing."

The "right thing," it seems, has already cost Americans more than $11.3 billion in the first six days, with the conflict now burning through over a billion dollars a day. The Pentagon has subsequently requested a further $200 billion in supplemental funding from Congress, a sum four times larger than originally signalled. When asked to justify the figure, Hegseth's response was, "Obviously, it takes money to kill bad guys." He added that the number might increase, oblivious to the reality that all the United States is currently doing is killing civilians and the world's economy.

At the current rate of spending, that $200 billion would fund the war for just another 100 to 200 days. To put that in perspective, the entire annual US investment in global health, which funds HIV treatment for 25 million people and has saved an estimated 65 million lives since 2002, amounts to $12.4 billion, meaning the $200 billion war chest equals roughly 16 years of US global health spending, all to be consumed in under a year. News agencies are conspicuously silent about what this all means for the United States' already unmanageable $39 trillion of government debt. Meanwhile, tariffs have raised the average American household's costs by $1,500, pushed inflation well above where it would otherwise sit, and handed the Trump family's investment portfolio a timely and lucrative shot in the arm.

Greg Swenson sat before a global audience and called this a success story. It is not. It is a protection racket, and the American public is the one being protected from the truth.

Rocket Lab Fuelled by Broken Promises

There is a particular kind of dishonesty that is dressed up in the language of innovation and national pride. It does not arrive as an outright lie. It arrives as a vision, a story, a community hui at the local marae, a selfie with the Wairoa Lions Club. It arrives as a promise. And then, quietly, expensively, and with considerable personal enrichment, it is broken.

That is the story of Rocket Lab, "Sir" Peter Beck, and the people of Mahia Peninsula.

When Rocket Lab first arrived on the East Coast of the North Island and sought the consent of local Iwi and hapu to launch rockets from their whenua, Beck was unambiguous about what his company would and would not do.

In an early interview, he stated plainly: "Certainly if it involves something that's going to harm people then we're not really interested at all... certainly we don't want to be involved with any kind of missile programmes or anything to do with armaments."

 He added, simply: "No. No weapons."

Sonya Smith of Ngati Rakaipaaka hapu, whose people were among those assured of Rocket Lab's peaceful intentions, has been equally plain about how that promise has played out. "We were sold a bit of a story," she told RNZ. "It talked about satellite launches that supported environmental outcomes and safety outcomes and that's not really how it's played out."

Billboards went up around Mahia: "No military payloads. Haere Atu, Rocket Lab." The company did not respond when RNZ asked whether it had broken its promise to the community. That silence speaks volumes.

It should now be abundantly clear to any New Zealander paying attention that Peter Beck looked concerned Maori in the eye and told them what they needed to hear. A third of all payloads launched by Rocket Lab have since been for the United States military or affiliated agencies. The company now holds over US$1.3 billion in contracts with the US Space Development Agency alone, building missile tracking satellites explicitly designed, in the Pentagon's own words, to "significantly increase the coverage and accuracy needed to close kill chains."

Kill chains. That is the clinical euphemism the American military uses for finding people and killing them.

Which brings us to the present moment. The United States and Israel are conducting military operations against Iran. One of those attacks involved a US strike which destroyed the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls' elementary school in Minab, Hormozgan province, killing between 175 and 180 people, most of them children. Investigations by The New York Times, BBC Verify, and the NPR and CBC concluded the United States was most likely responsible. Amnesty International has called for accountability. The United States has offered none.

 

Last week, The Guardian reported:

 

US responsible for deadly missile strike on Iran school, preliminary inquiry says

Strike that killed at least 175 people, most of them children, reportedly due to targeting mistake by US military planners

A preliminary US military investigation has reportedly determined that Washington was responsible for a deadly Tomahawk missile strike on an Iranian elementary school in February that killed scores of children.

According to the New York Times, quoting unnamed US officials and others familiar with the initial findings, the investigation has concluded that the strike on 28 February on the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school building was the result of a targeting mistake by the US military planners.

Iranian officials had put put death toll from the attack as at least 175 people, the majority of them children, in one of the worst and most shocking American strikes producing civilian fatalities in recent memory. 

 

Rocket Lab is building the targeting and communications architecture of the same military that just bombed a school full of young girls.

When asked directly whether any payloads it had launched were being used in the Iran conflict, Rocket Lab's Vice President of Marketing and Communications, Morgan Connaughton, said responsibility for how satellites are used rests with the satellite owner. This is the statement of a corporation that has laundered its conscience.

New Zealand has no strategic interest in this illegal war. The United States and Israel have struck Iranian oil and gas infrastructure, strikes that will send petrol prices upward here at home, that threaten regional stability, and that put this country in an invidious position as a close intelligence partner of the United States through the Five Eyes arrangement. The United States and Israel's unlawful attacks are putting New Zealanders and our offshore investments at risk.

Rocket Lab's deep integration with the American military-industrial complex isn't a matter of abstract ethics. It is a concrete conflict of interest for this country's foreign policy and our standing in the Pacific.

Peter Beck cannot be trusted. He told Maori communities one thing and did the exact opposite. He built a company on a promise of peaceful science and turned it into a weapons contractor that helps rogue states indiscriminately target innocent civilians. He accepted a knighthood and a Nasdaq listing while the infrastructure he is building helps guide the most powerful military on earth, the same military that bombed a primary school, murdering hundreds of school girls.

The people of Māhia Peninsula deserved better. New Zealand deserves better. And the schoolchildren of Minab deserved to grow up.

The Dumbest War in Living Memory

There are wars fought for survival. There are wars fought for resources. There are wars fought, however misguidedly, for ideology. And then there is Donald Trump's illegal war against Iran, a war so bereft of coherent justification, so naked in its opportunism, and so catastrophic in its execution that future historians will struggle to find a category in which to place it. The dumbest war in living memory has found its author, and he is currently sitting in the most powerful position, explaining that he knows nothing about a bombed school or a destroyed desalination plant, and that Iranians are in any case, according to him, "among the most evil people ever on earth."

Let us dispense, first, with the pretexts.

This is not a war for security. The Arms Control Association has noted plainly that such a war of choice against Iran, without congressional approval, violates the Constitution and the 1973 War Powers Act, as well as Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, which prohibits the threat or use of force in international relations. Iran was, by all credible accounts, still engaged in diplomatic talks on the very day the US and Israel missiles began to fall on civilian targets.

IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said on 2 March 2026 that the agency had found no evidence of "a structured program to manufacture nuclear weapons" in Iran, and when asked directly whether Iran was "days or weeks away from building a bomb," his response was simply "no." Iran was still engaging in reportedly productive diplomatic talks over its nuclear program the day before the United States unleashed its weaponry. Security was never the point. If it were, you do not blow up the table at which the other party is prepared to sit.

This is not a war for oil, at least not in the way that cynics once imagined. American and Israeli strikes have, for the first time, targeted oil storage and refining facilities in Tehran. You do not secure a resource by incinerating it. What you do achieve, however, is a surge in global oil prices that enriches investors (including Trumps family members) and producers elsewhere, rattles markets, and inflicts immediate pain upon ordinary consumers, including New Zealanders whose import-dependent economy has absolutely no insulation from such shocks.

This is not a war to free the Iranian people either. The liberation narrative has long served as the humanitarian mask of American imperialism, and it fits no better here than it did in Iraq. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi confirmed that the United States attacked a freshwater desalination plant on Qeshm Island, with water supply to thirty villages impacted. You do not liberate a population by destroying the infrastructure upon which their survival depends. The Geneva Conventions are unambiguous: targeting facilities indispensable to civilian survival constitutes a war crime.

When Trump was asked about the desalination plant, he offered this remarkably incoherent response: "I know nothing about a desalinisation plant, other than to say, if they're complaining about..." He then trailed off into fresh denunciations of October 7, conflating Iran and Hamas as though the distinction were a bureaucratic inconvenience rather than a basic fact.

Bombing schoolchildren does not liberate them. Bombing desalination plants does not free people. It starves them, and it breeds a generation for whom the word "America" will forever cause resentment and anger across the entire world.

What this war actually is becomes clearer the more one examines the timeline. Whenever new material surfaces connecting Trump to the Epstein files, fresh documents, flight logs, or witness testimony implicating powerful men in the sexual abuse and torture of children, the news cycle conveniently fills with explosions. The pattern has become so reliable that it scarcely requires elaboration. A political war, then, fought as distraction. A racist and religious war, in which an entire nation of 90 million people is reduced by its attackers to a single, dehumanised caricature.

Trump has described Iranians as among "the most evil people ever on earth," a statement of breathtaking historical ignorance and moral vacancy from a man who has spent years cultivating relationships with some of the most genuinely evil figures of modern times.

From the moment Operation Epic Fury was launched, Trump's messaging has oscillated between outright fabrication, dealmaking and the wholesale destruction of Iran. He has called on the IRGC to surrender in exchange for immunity. He has asked Iranian diplomats to switch sides. He has declared that the new Supreme Leader will "not last long" without American approval. These are not the utterances of a statesman prosecuting a considered strategy. They are the improvisations of a man who began a war without a plan to end it, and who is now making his endgame up as the west loses allies and the body count climbs.

OMG a reporter confronts Donald Trump about Iran bombed its own elementary school with an American Tomahawk missile ridiciliously 😂🤣😭 pic.twitter.com/k7ld66Xk9W

— Furkan Gözükara (@FurkanGozukara) March 9, 2026

The war is not supported by the American people, and the Trump administration has done and said little to justify its belligerent actions. The varying and contradictory rationales from Trump's useful idiots have only offered the public simple incoherent jargon, and run contrary to available evidence.

New Zealand cannot afford to observe this catastrophe with the polite detachment of a small nation that prefers not to make a fuss. The economic consequences of a destabilised Middle East, surging oil prices, disrupted shipping lanes, and rattled global markets, land here with the same weight as anywhere. But beyond the economic, there is a moral obligation that this country has historically been willing to honour. We have a tradition of independent foreign policy that this moment demands we exercise again. But sadly our current spineless leadership is so vacuous as to appear like they're in support of Trump and Netanyahu's illegal war of annihilation.

Every missile that falls on a school, every village left without clean water, every use of illegal weapons, every civilian death that Trump waves away with a fresh denunciation of people he knows nothing about, each of these is a brick in the wall of resentment that will define how the world regards complicit Western nations for decades to come. History is not made only by those who pull triggers. It is also made by those who stay silent while the triggers are being pulled.

This is the dumbest kind of war: illegal, unjustified, racist, politically motivated, and conducted by a man who cannot name the school or desalination plant he has just ordered destroyed. New Zealand should oppose this war. Our politicians should say so, clearly and without any apology. 

United States Murders 160 Iranian School Girls

In the rubble of the Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school in Minab, southern Iran, during the morning of 28 February, 2026, lay the bodies of more than 165 young school girls and their teachers. Their deaths, delivered by American and Israeli missiles, are not the unfortunate side-effect of conflict. They are the predictable outcome of a reckless, illegal war launched by the Trump regime with the full-throated support of the war-criminal, Benjamin Netanyahu.

 

The official line from Washington is familiar and repulsive. The strikes, we are told, were necessary to neutralise an Iranian nuclear threat. Yet the evidence for any such threat is entirely absent. International inspectors have found no diversion of nuclear material, no weaponisation programme, no credible signs that Tehran was racing toward a bomb. The claim is a fabrication, recycled from the same playbook that justified the catastrophe in Iraq. It serves only to dress up aggression in the language of self-defence.

 

Yesterday, Al Jazeera reported:

Iran holds mass funeral for girls, staff killed in US-Israel school attack

Thousands gather in Minab for a mass funeral, chanting against the US and Israel after the school bombing.

Iran held a mass funeral ceremony for 165 schoolgirls and staff killed on Saturday in what Iran has described as a United States-Israeli attack on a girls’ school in the southern city of Minab.

The Israeli military has claimed it was not aware of any Israeli or US attacks in that area. Throughout its genocidal war on Gaza, Israel has denied multiple deadly attacks on Palestinian civilians, only to later backtrack when irrefutable evidence emerged, then terming such attacks as “accidental”.

What makes the lie particularly grotesque is the precision with which the same forces operate when it suits them. The United States and Israel can target and murder senior Iranian leaders with clinical accuracy. Drones and missiles found their marks without hesitation. Yet when the target was a school full of seven to twelve-year-old girls attending morning classes, suddenly the technology faltered and the deaths were dismissed as an unfortunate accident. The contrast isn't a failure of intelligence; it is a failure of morality.

This latest outrage fits a now-familiar pattern in Donald Trump’s behaviour. Whenever fresh details surface about his longstanding connections to Jeffrey Epstein’s paedophile network, new documents, flight logs, or witness accounts, Trump reaches for the oldest trick in his book: start a war. Domestic scandal looms, public attention must be diverted, and what better way than to pose as the strongman defending civilisation against a manufactured enemy? It is cynical, it is predictable, and it is drenched in the blood of innocents.

WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT:
Iranian state media shows crowds mourning in Minab after a strike on a girls’ school killed 150 students. The UN called the attack ‘absolutely horrific’ and urged an investigation https://t.co/SIiplNUFLo pic.twitter.com/kf0JE1HavA

— Reuters (@Reuters) March 3, 2026

Netanyahu bears equal guilt. Dogged by his own political troubles and accusations of war crimes in Gaza, he has long agitated for confrontation with Iran. The two leaders feed off each other’s belligerence, each using the other to shore up domestic support while the bodies of children pile up. Their warmongering is not about security; it is about survival, political survival purchased at the price of the lives of other people’s children.

The economic consequences are already rippling outward and will reach New Zealand shores soon enough. Oil prices have surged on fears of disrupted supply routes. Global stock markets have plunged, erasing billions in value overnight. For an import-dependent economy like ours, the fallout is straightforward: higher fuel costs, rising inflation, squeezed household budgets, and the real risk of a broader slowdown. This is not abstract market volatility. It is the direct, measurable cost of two leaders choosing missiles over diplomacy, something that our current spineless Prime Minister should be condemning without hesitation.

The UN education agency @UNESCO says that the bombing of a primary school during the US and Israeli military attacks on #Iran on Saturday constitutes a grave violation of humanitarian law. https://t.co/fkXfJck0UM pic.twitter.com/tV98qaCMHS

— United Nations Geneva (@UNGeneva) March 2, 2026

The world has seen this horror movie before, and the ending is never noble. Trump and Netanyahu have once again demonstrated that civilian lives, especially those of Muslim girls in a country they have unjustly demonised, count for nothing when weighed against personal political expediency. Their sanctimonious claims of precision and necessity collapse under the weight of dead children.
 

New Zealanders, like people of goodwill everywhere, should recognise this for what it is: naked imperialism dressed up as defence. The slaughter in Minab is not an accident of war. It is the logical result of warmongers who believe they can bomb their way out of trouble at home. Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have blood on their hands that no amount of spin will wash away. The international community must name this outrage for what it is and refuse to let it pass without consequence.

Peter Thiel is Building an AI Driven Mass Surveillance State

Make no mistake: the United States is constructing the most comprehensive civilian surveillance apparatus in human history. And they're not even trying to hide it anymore. 

Under the Trump administration's enthusiastic blessing, tech behemoth Palantir Technologies is weaving together the digital breadcrumbs of every American citizen into a single, all-seeing artificial intelligence system that would make Orwell's 1984 look quaint. Big Brother is no longer just watching. He's predicting, profiling, and pre-emptively punishing.

The latest bombshell? Palantir secured more than $113 million in federal contracts since Trump took office, including sweetheart deals that hand over the most intimate details of American lives to Peter Thiel's surveillance empire. We're not talking about collecting metadata here, we're talking about real-time behavioural analysis of every citizen, powered by AI that doesn't just watch but makes judgements about who deserves scrutiny.

 

Yesterday, The Economic Times reported:

Palantir Under Siege: Protesters rage over surveillance, ICE links in NYC office blockade

Palantir Technologies was confronted with furious protests on Thursday, as protesters were angry with the data analytics firm for its contracts with US immigration officials and the Israeli defense forces to reportedly build surveillance systems, as per a report.

Palantir Faces Protests Over ICE and Israeli Military Ties
The protests against Palantir were organised by the campaign group Planet Over Profit, with help from a coalition of local groups including Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), Bay Resistance, and the immigration rights group Mijente, as reported by the Independent.

...

Company’s History
The data analytics company was founded in 2003, backed by arch-conservative Peter Thiel and the CIA, the firm sells data-crunching services to companies, government agencies, intelligence services, and militaries, according to the report.

Palantir had first started working with ICE under former US president Barack Obama's administration, and is now reportedly helping the Trump administration to build a comprehensive surveillance system that gathers data from many government departments, and is allegedly working even with the Israel Defense Forces, as per the Independent report.

The crown jewel of this digital dystopia is Palantir's Gotham software, previously reserved for hunting terrorists abroad but now trained on American citizens at home, particularly noteworthy given the illegal ICE abductions. This AI-powered beast doesn't just collect data, it makes judgements, identifying "anomalies and patterns indicative of illegal activities or security threats." "Anomalies"? What a delightfully vague term for anything the algorithm decides doesn't fit its narrow definition of normal behaviour.

This isn't some far-off sci-fi nightmare. Immigration and Customs Enforcement records show Palantir recently received a $30 million contract to build a platform to track migrant movements in real time. Today it's migrants; tomorrow it's anyone who questions the government's increasingly authoritarian reach. The infrastructure for total surveillance is being built brick by digital brick, and most people are blissfully unaware of the implications.

But here's where it gets truly sinister: Palantir isn't content with just spying on people. They're throwing $100 million at marrying artificial intelligence with nuclear technology through a strategic product partnership with The Nuclear Company to co-develop NOS, the first AI-powered, real-time software system designed specifically for nuclear construction. What could possibly go wrong when you combine mass surveillance capabilities with atomic infrastructure?

The terrifying reality is that this AI-driven surveillance state represents the weaponisation of technology against the very people it's supposed to serve. Palantir, co-founded by Trump ally billionaire Peter Thiel, who was controversially granted New Zealand citizenship under John Key's government, offers data-analyzing software that uses AI to pull information from a multitude of sources and compiles it into charts, tables and heat maps. Your tax records, social security information, immigration status, online activity, all fed into an algorithmic maw that assigns you a threat score without you ever knowing why.

The most chilling aspect isn't just the surveillance...it's the propaganda potential. Once you have this level of granular data about every citizen, targeted disinformation campaigns become trivially easy. Know someone's worried about their job? Feed them anti-immigrant content. Concerned about healthcare costs? Here's some carefully crafted misinformation about government spending. The same AI systems monitoring your behaviour can manipulate it, creating feedback loops of radicalisation and control.

Even some Trump supporters are waking up to the horror they've unleashed. "I voted for Trump but this is just unacceptable," wrote one MAGA supporter, finally recognising that authoritarian tools don't discriminate based on political affiliation once they're built.

What we're witnessing is the methodical construction of a technological police state where artificial intelligence serves as judge, jury, and executioner of social acceptability. The algorithms don't just collect data, they make decisions about who gets flagged, investigated, harassed, or worse. And once this infrastructure is complete, rolling it back will be virtually impossible.


Meanwhile, back home, Newsroom revealed this week:

Big tech wants Luxon to turn NZ into ‘sandbox’

Immigration Minister Erica Stanford changed New Zealand’s ‘golden visa’ settings in April, creating a more streamlined pathway for those with enough cash to be considered an “active investor”.

As of June 23, Stanford said 100 applications had been approved in principle out of 189 in total. Seven had completed the process and invested funds in New Zealand in exchange for a residence visa, bringing a total of $45m into the country.

Some of these applications, as Stanford previously described them, came from the tech moguls behind “very big, well-known companies that you would probably use everyday”.

New Zealand has already accepted several of this cohort as residents or citizens, including Google co-founder Larry Page and Palantir co-founder and Donald Trump ally Peter Thiel.

Alvarez thought the benefits of attracting these sorts of companies outweighed the risks, as long as there were guardrails in place to protect data privacy, indigenous knowledge and health outcomes, among other sensitive areas.

The United States is pioneering a new form of totalitarianism: one where the oppression is algorithmic, the surveillance is total, and the control is absolute. And here's the kicker for Kiwis: Peter Thiel, Palantir's co-founder and Trump's billionaire mate, already holds New Zealand citizenship.

With the Luxon government actively courting overseas tech investors to use New Zealand as a regulatory "sandbox," we're potentially one handshake away from becoming Palantir's (with an office already right in the middle of Wellington City) testing ground for their next-generation of surveillance tools. When Silicon Valley's surveillance kings are literally NZ citizens, the dystopian future isn't across the Pacific, it's already walking through our front door.

New Zealand needs to wake up before we become the guinea pigs in Silicon Valley's next surveillance experiment. Because once you build the digital panopticon, everyone becomes a prisoner, even those who thought they were the guards.

Donald Trump’s Arms Push Betrays Global Needs

Donald Trump’s recent insistence that NATO countries increase military spending to 5% of their GDP is a reckless and self-serving manoeuvre that prioritises warmongering over humanity’s pressing needs. This demand, rooted in Trump’s cosy ties with American weapons manufacturers, threatens to divert trillions from critical global challenges like starvation and climate change.

In true Trump fashion, it’s a policy steeped in corruption and short-sightedness, with little regard for the broader consequences that increased militarisation causes.

In 2024, NATO’s 32 member states collectively spent $1.47 trillion on defence, representing 2.71% of their combined GDP. Trump’s proposed 5% target would push this to $2.71 trillion annually, nearly doubling current expenditure. For context, the war obsessed United States, NATO’s largest contributor, already accounts for $877 billion, or 3.38% of its GDP. Smaller nations within the NATO alliance would face crippling pressure to divert funds from social services to meet this arbitrary threshold.


Earlier this month, AP reported:

NATO is on the cusp of accepting Trump’s 5% defense investment demand, Rutte says

Most U.S. allies at NATO endorse President Donald Trump’s demand that they invest 5% of gross domestic product on their defense needs and are ready to ramp up security spending even more, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said Thursday.

“There’s broad support,” Rutte told reporters after chairing a meeting of NATO defense ministers at the alliance’s Brussels headquarters. “We are really close,” he said, and added that he has “total confidence that we will get there” by the next NATO summit in three weeks.

European allies and Canada have already been investing heavily in their armed forces, as well as on weapons and ammunition, since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

At the same time, some have balked at U.S. demands to invest 5% of GDP on defense — 3.5% on core military spending and 1.5% on the roads, bridges, airfields and sea ports needed to deploy armies more quickly.

What could $2.71 trillion achieve if redirected? The UN estimates that ending world hunger by 2030 requires $330 billion annually. That’s just 12% of Trump’s proposed NATO budget. Imagine the impact: 821 million people being fed, malnutrition eradicated, and communities stabilised and less likely to conduct resource based conflicts.

Instead, Trump’s plan would funnel billions into weapons systems, many produced by U.S. giants like Lockheed Martin and Boeing, companies with which he has troubling financial ties. During his first term, Trump’s administration approved $115 billion in arms sales, with Lockheed alone securing $83 billion in contracts. His stock holdings and campaign donations from defence contractors raise serious questions about whose interests he serves.

Climate change mitigation offers another stark contrast. The IPCC estimates that $1.6–3.8 trillion annually is needed to limit warming to 1.5°C IPCC, 2018. Trump’s $2.71 trillion could cover the upper end of this, funding renewable energy, reforestation, and adaptation for vulnerable nations. Instead, his policy would lock NATO into a cycle of militarisation, exacerbating global instability as climate-driven disasters rise. In 2023, 377 million people faced climate-related displacement. Diverting even half of Trump’s proposed spend could transform global resilience and save countless lives.

Education and diplomacy, cornerstones of peace, are similarly underfunded. UNESCO reports a $39 billion annual shortfall for universal education. Investing $2.71 trillion could not only close this gap but also fund diplomatic initiatives to de-escalate conflicts. NATO’s own data shows that 23 of its 32 members now meet the 2% GDP defence target, up from 10 in 2020. Forcing a jump to 5% risks alienating and destabilising smaller economies like Latvia or Estonia, where social services are already stretched.

Trump’s corruption taints this push for more military expenditure. His administration’s revolving door with defence contractors, evidenced by former Boeing executive Patrick Shanahan as Acting Defence Secretary, suggests a profiteering motive instead of concern over military capabilities. His properties reportedly earned millions from foreign governments during his presidency, raising conflict-of-interest concerns. This isn’t leadership; it’s a shakedown dressed as geopolitics.

New Zealand, a partner country through NATO’s Partnership for Peace programme, feels the ripple effects through its security partnerships. Increasing our $4.7 billion defence budget (2.2% of GDP) to 5% could instead fund the required 10,000 new teachers or 50,000 hospital beds Aotearoa desperatly needs. Globally, Trump’s plan undermines the cooperative spirit needed for peace. Diplomacy, not arms races, resolves conflicts. His NATO demand is a corrupt, dangerous distraction from humanity’s real priorities...ending starvation, climate change mitigation, and education deserve taxpayers' money, not Donald Trump's warmonger mates.

Is Trump Laying the Groundwork for U.S. Invasion of Iran?

The effectiveness of the United States’ recent military actions against Iran’s nuclear facilities have been cast into doubt by a leaked Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) assessment, revealing that Iran may have relocated much of its enriched uranium stockpile, including approximately 400 kilograms of near-weapons-grade uranium, to undisclosed locations before U.S. bunker-busting bombs struck.

President Donald Trump’s assertions that these strikes completely "obliterated" Iran’s nuclear programme now appear very overstated, again exposing a troubling gap between his often childish rhetoric and reality.

This development may appear to undermine the Trump administration's credibility but it also gives the orange buffoon a reason to undertake another ground offensive in the Middle East. US propaganda about Iran not being allowed to develop a nuclear weapon evoked unsettling parallels with the prelude to the 2003 Iraq invasion and claims of weapons of mass destruction, which were never found, raising concerns that the United States is once again undertaking another war for control of the world's resources.

The similarities won't be lost on many US voters, who will hopefully realise that Donald Trump's propaganda is airily similar to that used by George W. Bush in the lead-up to the Iraq war, when the U.S. government justified invasion based on false claims of WMD's. Today, the narrative of an imminent Iranian nuclear threat, either through Trump propaganda or leaked intelligence reports, mirrors previous disinformation campaigns by the dishonest United States government.


Yesterday, 1 News reported:

 

US regime change record isn't great, would Trump do any better with Iran?

As President Donald Trump floats the idea of “regime change” in Tehran, previous US attempts to remake the Middle East by force over the decades offer stark warnings about the possibility of a deepening involvement in the Iran-Israeli conflict.

“If the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change???” Trump posted on his social media site over the weekend. The came after the US bombed Iran's nuclear sites but before that country retaliated by firing its own missiles at a US base in Qatar.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt yesterday insisted that Trump, who spent years railing against “forever wars” and pushing an “America first” world view, had not committed a political about-face.

“The president’s posture and our military posture has not changed,” she said, suggesting that a more aggressive approach might be necessary if Iran ”refuses to give up their nuclear program or engage in talks".

Leavitt also suggested that a new government in Iran could come about after its people stage a revolt — not necessarily requiring direct US intervention.

The Trump administration has repeatedly heralded the strikes on Iran’s Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan facilities as a decisive blow to Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. However, the DIA assessment, as reported by sources familiar with the matter, indicates that the strikes failed to destroy core components of Iran’s nuclear programme, such as centrifuges and highly enriched uranium stocks, with damage largely confined to underground entranceways and above ground structures. The impact is estimated to set Iran’s programme back by mere months, not years.

Along with the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Director General Rafael Grossi stating that there was no evidence Iran was actively pursuing weaponisation, and U.S. intelligence assessments concluding Tehran halted such efforts in 2003, the Trump administration’s rhetoric continues to frame Iran as a terrorist nation who is aggressively pushing towards developing an A bomb.

The Trump administration’s dismissal of the DIA leaks as “fake news” propagated by mainstream media outlets appears increasingly disingenuous, a calculated effort to deflect scrutiny from intelligence that contradicts its hawkish narrative, including a report from Trump’s own Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, stating Iran was not enriching uranium beyond 60% before the U.S. strikes. This saber-rattling clashes with Trump’s public anti-war posturing, designed to placate his MAGA base. Polls currently show 68% of Americans oppose further military engagement in the Middle East. Such contradictions expose Trump’s efforts to balance domestic support with aggressive foreign policy, risking escalation despite widespread public aversion to another Middle Eastern war.

Notwithstanding a United States ground invasion of Iran being a logistical nightmare and a geopolitical disaster, it remains a plausible scenario if public opinion can be sufficiently swayed by the administration’s unsubstantiated fear-mongering about Iran’s nuclear weapons program. The administration’s marginalisation of experts and dissenters within its own ranks, reminiscent of the Bush administration’s pre-Iraq purges, suggests a dangerous willingness to ignore inconvenient truths in pursuit of political ends.

However, these leaks may even be strategically timed by US neoconservatives, designed to justify further escalation by highlighting the potential “failure” of surgical strikes. What we all need to keep in mind is that Iran’s preemptive relocation of uranium stockpiles indicates a safeguarding to avoid potential fallout as well as a defensive posture, not an aggressive push toward a bomb, yet this nuance is conspicuously absent from many world leaders' war propaganda rhetoric about Iran not being allowed to have a nuclear weapon.

 

Ground forces are key — but don't guarantee success

Airstrikes have never been enough on their own.

Take, for example, Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi. His forces withstood a seven-month NATO air campaign in 2011 before rebels fighting city by city eventually cornered and killed him.

There are currently no insurgent groups in Iran capable of taking on the Revolutionary Guard, and it's hard to imagine Israeli or US forces launching a ground invasion of a mountainous country of some 80 million people that is about four times as big as Iraq.

A split in Iran's own security forces would furnish a ready-made insurgency, but it would also likely tip the country into civil war.

There's also the question of how ordinary Iranians would respond.

The problem for Trump is that his administration’s high-profile strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities have only strengthened the Iranian people's resolve against the United States. They've also (conveniently for Israel and the United States) shifted global attention away from two pressing crises: the ongoing genocide in Gaza and their domestic unrest sparked by illegal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) abductions.

As Israel’s relentless bombardment of Gaza continues, killing over 55,700 Palestinians, mostly women and children, drawing international condemnation, the U.S.-led Iran operation has dominated headlines, effectively sidelining scrutiny of Washington’s complicity in the Gaza atrocities.

The ‘Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’ firing squad shoots heavily at starving Palestinians going to fetch aid at their fake distribution site pic.twitter.com/7px3KYsZxP

— Sarah Wilkinson (@swilkinsonbc) June 9, 2025

Trump’s push for allied nations to ramp up defence spending, framed as a necessity for global security, takes on a sinister hue in light of the Gaza devastation and his Iran gambit. With Gaza reduced to rubble and over 56,000 Palestinians killed directly by violence, alongside estimates of up to 186,000 total deaths including indirect losses from disease, malnutrition, and healthcare collapse. 800 more Palestinians have been murdered in recent days while trying to access food aid.

The U.S. appears to be laying the groundwork for further conflicts, potentially in Iran and beyond, to fatten the coffers of their military-industrial complex. By pressuring allies to bolster their arsenals, Trump ensures a steady flow of contracts for American defence giants, conveniently aligning with his administration’s hawkish posturing and the distraction from domestic failures.

Trump was facing a mounting backlash over ICE’s aggressive deportation raids, which have detained over 9,000 individuals in 2025 alone, triggering widespread protests and uprisings in cities like Los Angeles and Chicago, with communities decrying the humanitarian toll of family separations and detentions. The timing of the Iran strikes raises questions about whether this foreign policy spectacle is a deliberate distraction from both the moral stain of Gaza and the domestic turmoil threatening Trump’s political standing.

ICE agents caught on camera—brutally beating local gardener during arrest in Santa Ana.

Multiple reports of ICE raids "swarming" landscaping crews.

Even leaving lawnmowers running after grabbing men right off front lawns in the greater Los Angeles area.

Mayor Valerie Amezcua… pic.twitter.com/Yilx6F0PB5

— LongTime🤓FirstTime👨‍💻 (@LongTimeHistory) June 21, 2025

The administration’s criticism of the media further erodes its credibility. By branding critical reporting as the work of “low-level losers,” it seeks to undermine legitimate scrutiny, a tactic that feels rehearsed and hollow. This posturing distracts from the real issue: the risk of entangling the U.S. in another Middle East quagmire. For New Zealand the implications are significant. Our government’s alignment with Washington could draw us into supporting a conflict with very dubious justification.

The right-wing New zealand government must not be allowed to provide support for the United States' unending wars in the Middle East. This is especially noteworthy being that Trump’s recent admission that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu will have operatives “involved in the whole situation” regarding Iran’s nuclear sites lends credence to Tehran’s claims that the IAEA has been co-opted as an intelligence-gathering apparatus for Israel and the United States.

Iran’s decision to suspend IAEA inspections and withdraw from the NPT, widely condemned by Western powers, appears increasingly justified in light of this revelation. Such interference undermines the IAEA’s neutrality, fuelling Iran’s distrust and providing a pretext for its defensive posture, while exposing the U.S. and Israel’s coordinated efforts to provoke escalation under the guise of non-proliferation.

In conclusion, the DIA leaks expose the fragility of Trump’s claims about neutralising Iran’s nuclear programme, while the administration’s rhetoric and media attacks echo the dangerous prelude to invading Iraq. The U.S. appears poised to escalate a conflict that could destabilise the region and beyond. The pursuit of a ground invasion, predicated on unverified threats, demands rigorous scrutiny to avoid repeating past mistakes.

Is Chris Luxon the Dumbest Prime Minister Ever?

New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Christopher Luxon, has once again proven his knack for spouting utter drivel, this time with his brain-dead claim that the United States’ unprovoked and illegal bombing of Iran, cheered on by genocidal Israel, somehow opens a golden window for diplomatic “dialogue.” 

It’s the kind of statement that makes you wonder if Luxon’s been sniffing glue or just reading from a script penned by warmongers. Let’s unpack this steaming pile of nonsense and remind ourselves why this bloke’s leadership is a national and international embarrassment.

 

Today, The Post reported:

 

The US strike on Iran creates “opportunity” for dialogue, says Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.

Luxon, speaking from a war memorial for New Zealand soldiers in Messines, Belgium days out from a Nato meeting, which US President Donald Trump is expected to attend, offered no direct criticism of the strikes.

“We do not want to see a nuclear armed Iran. But now there is an opportunity, as we look forward from these strikes to actually, get around and use diplomacy and dialogue and negotiation to actually get a political solution in place,” he said.

“Really it's about the future. It's really about what actions are going to be taken in the days and the weeks ahead to actually make sure that stability and security is returned.”

Luxon’s latest gem, reported in the wake of the US’s 22 June 2025 airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear sites at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan, suggests that blowing up a sovereign nation’s infrastructure is a cracking way to kickstart a chat. Never mind that Iran wasn’t actually building a nuclear weapon, something confirmed by the IAEA, US intelligence community, and even Trump’s own Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard's 20 June 2025 report, before Trump predictably dismissed her assessment. Iran was already at the negotiating table, engaging in talks hosted by Oman in May 2025, ready to discuss its nuclear programme for peaceful energy purposes. But apparently, nothing says “let’s talk” like eight bunker-buster bombs dropped by B-2 stealth bombers.

The reality is as clear as Luxon’s bald head under studio lights: Iran was complying with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and open to dialogue until the United States decided to escalate a shadow war into a full-blown aerial assault. Now, Iran’s parliament is drafting a bill to withdraw from the NPT, and, having moved their 60% enriched uranium before the strikes, are now more likely to pursue nuclear weapons development, a direct consequence of the US and Israel’s unprovoked warmongering.

Chris Luxon cannot say why he condemns Iran's attack on Israel but not Israel's initial attack on the Iranian embassy in Syria:

"Again I'm not getting into that, again I've been really clear."

He also said he is open to allowing Singapore to test UAVs or drones in NZ air space. pic.twitter.com/7oIOq78S8y

— Nick (@StrayDogNZ) April 15, 2024

Far from fostering dialogue, these attacks have obliterated any chance of it, with Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stating on 23 June 2025 that they won’t enter into negotiations while Israel and the United states were continuing to bomb Iran. Luxon’s claim that this chaos creates “opportunity” is so detached from reality it’s practically orbiting Jupiter.

Let’s not forget that Israel’s ongoing bombardment of Tehran, hitting oil depots, civilian sites, and even state broadcasters, shows their goal isn’t just about stopping nuclear development. It’s now another war of attrition, not a surgical strike to prevent a non-existent nuclear bomb-making programme. And the US? Trump’s been itching for this since he tore up the 2015 nuclear deal, with plans for these strikes simmering for months, as leaked Pentagon documents revealed in April 2025. His administration’s sudden pivot to bombs over talks reeks of dishonesty, using Israel as a proxy to flex military muscle while pretending it’s about peace.

Luxon’s idiocy isn’t new. This is the same genius who claimed that Kiwis were “better off” under his government while real wages stagnated and public services crumbled. Or when he babbled about “streamlining” the Resource Management Act on 10 August 2023, only to admit he hadn’t even read the bloody thing. Then there was his 5 December 2024 clanger, insisting NZ’s housing crisis was “solvable overnight” by cutting red tape. But all the National led government has done is cancel state house builds and thrown thousands of people out of emergency housing onto the streets. And who can forget his pledge to “turbocharge” the economy by slashing public sector jobs, only for unemployment to balloon to 5.2%? The man’s a walking soundbite with the intellectual depth of a kiddie pool.

Iran’s nuclear programme is a grave threat to international security. Iran can never be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon and the US has taken action to alleviate that threat.

The situation in the Middle East remains volatile and stability in the region is a priority. We call…

— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) June 22, 2025

Unfortunately Luxon's not alone in the dunce corner. Australia’s Anthony Albanese called the US strikes on Iran “a necessary step for regional stability,” conveniently ignoring the illegality of the attack, Iran’s non-existent nuclear weapons program and a prior willingness to negotiate. UK’s Keir Starmer also mumbled about “supporting de-escalation” while refusing to condemn Israel’s follow-up bombings, a spineless dodge that rivals Luxon’s waffle. But Luxon’s special, he’s got a knack for saying nothing while sounding like he’s solving everything.

Worse, the NZ government’s silence on the US’s illegal attack is deafening. Foreign Minister Winston Peters has been careful not to criticise Israel and the United States, and Luxon’s refusal to condemn the unprovoked strikes or call for a ceasefire shows a spineless failure to uphold NZ’s legacy as a peacemaker. By not pressuring the US and Israel, they’re letting warmongers run riot, undermining any hope of de-escalation. New Zealand could be rallying the world to demand accountability, but instead, Luxon’s government is twiddling its thumbs, complicit by inaction and appearing to support a clear breach of the United Nations charter.

Here's what the doddering coalition of chaos fools did instead:

➡️ NZ continues to advocate for diplomacy and dialogue. Ongoing military action in the Middle East is extremely worrying & it is critical further escalation is avoided.

➡️ Airspace remains closed. That is why we continue to recommend NZers in Iran & Israel do everything they can… pic.twitter.com/rTF2jS1pVr

— Winston Peters (@NewZealandMFA) June 22, 2025

Lux-O-Flakes cannot even bring himself to call for a ceasefire, even though the US and Israel’s illegal airstrikes on Iran, absent an imminent threat or Security Council approval, constitute a breach of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter and amount to the crime of aggression. Israel’s ongoing attacks and the US’s direct and enabling roles, through military aid and diplomatic cover, exacerbate these violations. New Zealand’s silence, alongside the equivocations of other western politicians like Albanese and Starmer, highlights a failure to uphold the Charter’s principles. While the US and Israel may argue strategic necessity, the lack of evidence and disregard for Iran’s sovereignty and prior negotiations render their actions legally indefensible.

The tragedy is that Luxon’s ignorance, similar to other idiotic right-wing leaders, abets a dangerous US-Israel agenda that thrives on chaos, not solutions. Iran’s nuclear programme was never the threat they claimed, and bombing it has only hardened Tehran’s resolve. Luxon’s cheerleading for “dialogue” in this context isn’t just stupid; it’s a betrayal of New Zealand’s commitment to peace and international law. Is he the dumbest PM we’ve ever had? When you stack his record against Muldoon’s pig-headedness or Key’s smarmy amnesia, Luxon’s vacuous optimism and chronic foot-in-mouth disease make a strong case. Wake up, Chris. The world’s burning, and your vacuous soundbites are fanning the flames.

What Happens If Israel Murders Greta Thunberg?

The whole world’s watching, and it’s holding its breath. Greta Thunberg, the climate warrior turned Palestinian advocate, is aboard the Madleen, a Freedom Flotilla Coalition vessel aiming to break through Israel’s brutal blockade of Gaza and deliver aid to a starving population. This isn’t just a humanitarian mission, it’s a direct challenge to Israel, who is backed by a complicit United States intent on funding a genocide. But what happens if Israel, in its reckless arrogance, murders Greta on this peace ship? And let’s not mince words: the threat’s already out there, with posts by prominent US politicians practically calling for Israel to attack.


Yesterday, The Guardian reported:

 

Greta Thunberg joins aid ship sailing to Gaza aimed at breaking Israel’s blockade

The climate campaigner Greta Thunberg and 11 other activists have set sail for Gaza on a ship aimed at “breaking Israel’s siege” of the devastated territory, organisers have said.

The sailing boat Madleen – operated by the activist group Freedom Flotilla Coalition – departed from the port of Catania in Sicily, southern Italy, on Sunday.

It would try to reach the shores of the Gaza Strip to bring in some aid and raise “international awareness” of the continuing humanitarian crisis, the activists said at a press conference on Sunday, before the vessel departed.

“We are doing this because, no matter what odds we are against, we have to keep trying,” Thunberg said, bursting into tears during her speech.

“Because the moment we stop trying is when we lose our humanity. And, no matter how dangerous this mission is, it’s not even near as dangerous as the silence of the entire world in the face of the livestreamed genocide.”

 

Let’s not forget, Israel’s got form here, and it’s bloody. In 2010, the Israeli military stormed the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish ship in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla carrying aid and activists. In international waters, Israeli commandos killed nine activists, including one shot four times in the head. A tenth died later from injuries. The UN called it “excessive and unreasonable” force; Israel shrugged, claiming self-defence.

In 2018, the Al Awda and other flotilla vessels faced similar aggression, boarded, seized, with activists beaten and detained. These weren’t isolated incidents but a pattern: Israel targets those who dare challenge its blockade, leaving a trail of dead and wounded peaceful protesters. Greta’s mission sails into the same crosshairs.

US senator issues a death threat to Greta Thunberg and other humanitarian activists. pic.twitter.com/eJQGRX5mIo

— B.M. (@ireallyhateyou) June 1, 2025

Back in 2023, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee sneered that those pushing for Palestinian statehood should “carve it out of the French Riviera” instead of Gaza. It’s a dog whistle, plain and simple, a nudge to the far-right zealots who see dead activists as collateral damage in their stupid holy war. Huckabee’s words aren’t just rhetoric; they’re a green light for violence against anyone daring to stand with Palestinians. If Israel takes that shot, the fallout would be seismic.

The world would erupt. Greta’s a global icon, her defiance a symbol of resistance against oppression the world over. Her death would galvanise millions of climate activists, human rights defenders, and ordinary people fed up with Israel’s impunity. Protests would choke cities from Stockholm to Sydney.

Social media, already buzzing with outrage over Gaza’s unending military enforced famine, would explode. Israeli embassies would be targeted. Governments, especially in Europe, would face unbearable pressure to act, with sanctions, boycotts, and severed ties with Israel. Even the UN, currently sitting on its hands, might muster a resolution or two to try and dissuade Israel from pursuing their atrocious genocide.

But don’t hold your breath for the US or Israel to care. Peace negotiations? They’re a sham. Israel’s “Witkoff outline” for a Gaza deal is a non-starter, with Hamas calling out its “complete bias” toward Tel Aviv. The US, meanwhile, plays good cop while funnelling billions to Israel’s war machine. Since October 2023, the US has approved over $14 billion in military “aid” to Israel.

This isn’t just support, it’s complicity in what the Center for Constitutional Rights correctly calls a “genocide” that’s killed over 52,000 Palestinians, including more than 16,500 innocent children. The US vetoes UN ceasefire calls, shields Israel from ICC probes, and keeps the bombs flowing. It’s not just enabling genocide; it’s bankrolling it.

If Greta’s killed, the US will wring its hands, maybe issue a limp condemnation, but don’t expect accountability. Trump’s sycophantic team of idiots would dodge, citing Israel’s “right to self-defence,” while the war machine, a juggernaut the US economy relies on, churns on killing woman and children. The world, however, won’t stay silent. Greta’s death would be a tipping point, exposing the US-Israel axis of evil as not just indifferent to peace but actively hostile to it.

Trump’s Tariff Tantrum Has Backfired

Donald Trump's tariff tirade, sold as a patriotic push to “Make America Great Again,” is backfiring spectacularly, driving iconic US manufacturers like Boeing and John Deere to pack their bags and head for the exits. Far from reviving the heartland, Trump’s trade war is gutting it, and the numbers paint a grim picture of an economy teetering on the edge.

Let’s start with the carnage. Trump’s “Liberation Day” on April 2, 2025, unleashed tariffs as high as 54% on China, 46% on Vietnam, and 25% on South Korea, Japan, and Canada, among others. The pitch? Protect American jobs and bring manufacturing home. The reality? A complete disaster.

Companies such as Boeing, John Deere, Ford, GM, Stellantis, and Harley-Davidson are shuttering US plants, with at least 50,000 manufacturing jobs lost since April. While these figures are unverified, they align with the economic chaos unfolding. John Deere, threatened by Trump’s 200% tariff for moving production to Mexico, is doubling down on offshoring to dodge the skyrocketing costs of US production. Boeing, reliant on global supply chains, faces similar pressures as tariffs inflate costs and disrupt trade. Make no mistake, these companies are trying to survive, and are only looking to offshore their production because of Trump’s destructive tariffs, the exact opposite of what the orange fool apparently wanted to achieve.


Today, CNBC reported:

Trump trade tariffs slump widens to ‘nearly all U.S. exports,’ supply chain data shows

What began as a rapid drop in U.S. imports as shippers cut orders from manufacturing partners around the world has now extended into a nationwide export slump, with the U.S. agricultural sector and top farm products including soybeans, corn and beef taking the hardest hit.

The latest trade data shows that a slide in U.S. exports to the world, and China in particular, that began in January now extends to most U.S. ports, according to trade tracker Vizion, which analyzed U.S. export container bookings for the five-week period before President Donald Trump’s tariffs began and the five weeks after the tariffs took effect.

The farming sector has been warning of a “crisis” and ports data is showing more evidence of lack of ability to move product out to global markets. The Port of Portland, Oregon, tops the list with a 51% decrease in exports, while the Port of Tacoma, Washington, a large agricultural export port, has seen a 28% decrease. Tacoma’s top destinations for corn, soybeans and other ag exports include Japan, China and South Korea.

The economic toll is staggering. The Penn Wharton Budget Model projects Trump’s tariffs will slash US GDP by 8% and wages by 7%, with middle-income households facing a $58,000 lifetime loss. That’s not pocket change…it’s a gut-punch to working families that will keep hurting for many years to come.

The Tax Foundation estimates an average tax hike of $1,300 per US household in 2025 alone. Inflation, already a voter sore spot, is spiking. The University of Michigan’s consumer confidence survey shows long-run inflation expectations at a 32-year high, with two-thirds of consumers bracing for rising unemployment. NPR reports the economy contracted at a 0.3% annual rate in Q1 2025, a sharp reversal from 2.4% growth in late 2024, with tariffs fueling recession fears.

Despite the fallout from Trump’s monumentally stupid tariff’s, right-wing idiots like John Key are still claiming that there is some sort of plan. 

 

Today, 1 News reported:

 

Sir John said he "wasn't entirely surprised" at Trump's call to go ahead with the policy.

"They're just a negotiating point. I think he simply put on widespread and high rates of tariffs on every country to give himself a leverage point and a negotiating point.

"What I think he actually grossly underestimated was the stock market reaction. He saw not just the stock market, but the bond market imploding.

The only time we should be hearing from John bloody Key is when he's trying to explain about his own insider trading scandal. Why exactly haven't the mainstream media reported on this?

The problem here is that Trump and his sycophants simply don’t understand how modern day manufacturing works. This wasn’t a plan to try and negotiate better trade deals. Instead, it appears to be a plan for Trump and his mates to manipulate stock markets to line their own pockets. If this was a plan to negotiate better deals, it has failed spectacularly and come at the cost of thousands of US jobs and trillions of dollars.

Ultimately, Trump has eroded trust in the United States to such a degree that countries are now actively avoiding trade negotiations. Key’s claim that there was a workable plan is perhaps the dumbest analysis yet, given that Trump is displaying all the signs of a dictator in complete cognitive decline and his tariff’s regime has entirely failed to achieve the stated goal of bringing back manufacturing to the US.

Markets are reeling too. The S&P 500 plummeted nearly 5% on April 3, its worst day since June 2020 when the entire world had to shut up shop because of Covid. It even flirted with bear market territory. JP Morgan now pegs the odds of a global recession at 60%, up from 40%, solely because of the orange buffoon. Trump’s claim that tariffs will “make the country boom” again rings hollow as consumer confidence also tanks to its lowest rate since the pandemic.

The irony? Trump’s tariffs are doing the exact opposite of what he promised and hurting his blue-collar supporters the most. Instead of reindustrialising America, Trump's idiotic tariffs are deindustrialising it, pushing manufacturers abroad and jacking up prices for consumers. This isn’t economic patriotism; it’s economic vandalism. As the US economy shrinks and China’s grows, Trump’s trade war looks less like a strategy and more like a self-inflicted wound...a wound that the United States would be well advised to cauterize before it bleeds out.