Rocket Lab The Tip of A Much Larger Spear. By Ben Vidgen.

Rocket Lab is now recognised as having being weaponised.
First told it was there to take us to moon and protect us from climate change.

by Ben Vidgen

However major share holder include military industrial giant Lockheed Martin. While US owned Media Works TV3 and Australian owned Fair Fax Paper make no mention (having being given “exclusive access” to Rocket Lab) of it military and intelligence pay loads. As RNZ and a Peace movement, heavily aligned with the Labour and Green Party, now do acknowledge (and seek to take leadership) the work done by earlier independent journalists and local activist regarding Rocket Labs increased militarisation which for the first 15 years went unreported by politically aligned media and watch dog groups. There just remains one major problem its being done at the expense of people understanding that Rocket Lab is but just one single facility in the increasing militarisation of New Zealand space and tech based industries.

Beyond Rocket Lab the destruction of not just New Zealand’s nuclear free legacy (in the context of being world leaders for peace) by our fledging space and tech start up extends to;

A) One Ring To Rule Them All: Billionaire tech oligarch Peter Thiel an original founder of Face book and Palantir.

Palantir is the civilian version of Iran Contra player Admiral John Point Dexter Minority Report Total Information Awareness program known as TIAfor short which was bounced by congress but picked up by Theil in 2003.

It believed to have featured along with a conversation focused on cyber security in Queenstown 2017 Five Eyes Meeting held at Millbrook Resort Queenstown.

In 2020 Thiel has had being in talks with the government to use Palantir and the GCSB for tracking Covid with the government keen to say it would do so after making sure privacy concerns were protected by the spying agency. This is the same spying agency with a past history of illegal spying. That this was done within the jurisdiction of the GCSB (as say opposed to the Ministry of Health) is a concern.

Palantir is in short nothing but the commercial version of Total Information Awareness the predictive ‘Minority Report’ like software proposed by Iran Contra offender Admiral Point Dexter. Only to be rejected by Congress in 2003 with a ‘hell no’ becuase it grossly breached American privacy and civil liberties on a scale never seen before hand.

Then as noted TIA was picked up and used any way by Thiel who was also part of the Trump administration and heavily involved in the kind of public private partnership scheme which permitted TIA to come through the backdoor wearing a new name. Thiel has now partnered up with Rocket Lab and Star Link for Moon Express who cite their goals as mining the moon. Other Queenstown Wanaka billionaire gated community members include;

I) Iran Contra player Richard V Allen (credited with helping Key get elected by Nicky Hager in Hallow Men) whose business partner Mike Stoneowns Gibstone Winery and C.I.A-G the catering firm who oversaw the domestic need of the 2017 Five yes meeting.

II) Ronald Regan White House Electronic surveillance specialist and billionaire of Tyco Security & Cambridge Hedge Fund (No known links t Palantir more widely known partner software Cambridge Analytics but some personnel as Cambridge Hedge do note former employee as Cambridge Analytics).

III) Julian Robert ‘Wizard of wall Street. Wall was the key man who marketed NZ as a billionaire bolt hole with help of J Key. This was prior to Key becoming a director of Palo Alto Cyber Security (which follows on from Key having set up a private think tank to look for security threats made up ex military science and banking circle including General John Rhys who lied on NZ role in Afghanistan and headed the NZDF at time a training manual was found referring to journalists as “subversives”).

With Robert’s endorse by the likes of Key wealthy Americans have stepped up their investment in New Zealand to includes America’s Cup (which has multiple links to arms and Rocket Lab) financing by tech billionaire Gabe Newell, president of Valve, the video game company behind the Half-Life series and game marketplace Steam. In 2020 Newell “thanked” the country of New Zealand for its hospitality by launching a gnome into space with aerospace company Rocket Lab in mid-November.

Newell decided to stay in New Zealand at the start of the pandemic and is donating a dollar to the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit at “Starship” Children’s Hospital for every viewer who watches the satellite launch livestream or the online recording within 24 hours of launch.

It also included Dustin Aaron Moskovitz a Facebook Asana and Palantir Artificial Intelligence software Founder.

B) Awarura Tracking Facility: – Southland (Venture Southland) in partnership with Elon Musk Star Link whose Low Earth Orbit Star Link satellite pass over Central Otago Southland with Star Link having ground tracking sights located through out the North and South Island at Puwera, Te Hana, Clevedon, Hinds, Cromwell and Awarura

The current amount of satellites is around 5-600 (will become 40,000 strong) under contract to the Pentagon using it to trial targeting for global wide weapons platform system.

C) Pentagon contractor LEO – LAB central Otago world’s first and only supplier of commercial radar tracking services for objects in Low Earth Orbit (to be targeted and then destroyed) including client Star Link.

D) Oamaru Steam Punk Gets Weaponized: Twizel Waitaki Military contractor Dawn Aerospace is planning to send satellites to space using reusable rockets from near Twizel with the Waitaki District Council also discussing Dawn Aerospace using the Oamaru Airport. Oamaru already host a school for drone pilots catering to Middle Eastern nations. Such as UAE Saudi Arabia whom the late dissident journalist Jamal Kashoggi warned were using modernisation and sustainability program to develop their own technologically advance weapons industry.

E) Whose Your Military Industrial Complex Sugar Daddy: New Zealand universities are increasingly encouraged by the defence industry to build career option for those wanting to go to space.

Their encouragement includes grants and giving access to academic to their own toy box.

As a consequence scientific academic information is increasingly being classified and copy righted (a move first initiated by John Key Free Thinker think tank member Sir Peter Gluckman) so its increasingly only accessible to those with vested commercial or strategic interests.

This corporatisation of data goes hand in foot with the current moves by Microsoft to secure hooks into New Zealand’s official data and archives. Which if achieved will help Microsoft establish a data copy right monopoly. While the University of Auckland Space System Program led by former Pentagon Hawk Neil Paterson comes with funding from defence sector.

F) Space Station Not So Kiwi: Auckland University based Combined Space Operations, which the Daily reported in January 2020 aims to “integrate coalition space forces into US military operations, including through a Combined Space Operations Centre to be based in New Zealand”. The Daily continues :”New Zealand is yet to station personnel at this centre, but the NZDF says that it intends to do so and is training personnel in space capabilities to develop a space cadre of its own”.

In 2019 New Zealand integration with US military space activities included representatives attending the weekly operational forum of the US Combined Forces Space Command (which now included Australia as well), “where coalition space strategy is synchronised”.

A year later the 2020 the New Zealand government has announced it has established a space mission control (at Auckland University) with help from Rocket Lab and where it will be based for a new satellite that will orbit the earth observing “methane produced by burps or other flatulence from cows”.

No mention of Space Force military goals.

The satellite which failed to launch last weekend due to technical issues is however not just about cow but is also about being part of Space Force as we see from the daily report.

Its also about things like geospatial mapping and datamining.

The late Julian Carver prior to his death and incarceration under the mental health section of the crime acts (which remains unexplained and a mystery to his own family and friends) warned geospatial has the ability “if a picture worth of a thousands words to make a map worth a million words”.

Geospatial mapping in the right hand geospatial mapping Carver (who also head the Ninja a group of software activist lobbying for transparent data use) could enhance and improve all imaginable social and environmental factors if done with public transparency. How it could also however herald in unimaginable tyranny if permitted to evolve and develop behind closed doors.

The mapping while having genuine conservation benefits will also no doubt be of benefit to those seeking to mine the Pacific mineral belt (useful in the arms telecommunication and space industry) known as Zealandia which sits within NZ EEZ.
And is where the NZ government under Adern not only declined a Pacific nation led suggested moratorium on mining but has issued numerous permits despite it conservation promises it was elected on.

G) Mapping it all out: The UK, India, Australian, UK, NZ Covid lockdown result in exposing mystery flights are part of an international geospatial mapping program conducted by leased aircraft driven by industry’s linked to AI, military industrial complex and robotics. See also

H) 2020 QAnon hysteric distract national media from reporting on why a flock of aircraft and luxury yachts including a boat linked to Jeffrey Epstein girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell entering NZ during the Covid lockdown. The VIP Covid tourist are all tied to variety of tech based companies {national media forget to note any of those connections as it focused instead on the absurd claims made by QANON protesters linked to a known meth dealer Kim Butcher, Millie Holmes and other Head Hunter associates] and included;

1) Amazon’s Jeff Bezos Rocinante (in talks with NZ government),
2) Googles Larry Pages (working with NZ govt on automated UAV transportation system known as Kitty Hawk) Sense.
3) Three boats belonging to the Murdoch Empire linked to Ocean survey work, plus a survey boat Gayle Force tied to energy magnate with links to Trump (just like Thiel) and Queestown resident jeweller and rare metals dealer Michael Hill the Best.

It also included unconfirmed reports of Bill Gates in NZ not confirmed but can confirm he own a house in Nelson and is negotiating to open two massive data centres in NZ.

J) In the past three years any one driving around south Island will confirm all major power grid lines now carry twice the amount of wires and increased voltage and it clear our infrastructure is being geared up for massive consumption of energy.

I am sure their far more Im missing but this not too short list gives you and idea of just how militarise our nations becoming. And that there a lot more to Rocket Lab than even groups like the Greens or Labour aligned peace researchers are getting.

Because the issue is simply ignored by the corporate media and parties in power who then focus only on what we already know once out of power (as they seek to one day be back in government).

Such as the Greens, who the late Unionist Helen Kelly called their protest on mass surveillance a “lip service” who ignored both the role of Rocket Lab increasing militarisation and the massive boost to defence spending (20 billion borrowed by Key on top of actual budget increases). The later of which the Green leader James Shaw a former corporate spin doctor called an “oversight.”

Now out of power the Greens can be found mimicking the warning they chose to ignore when in power. Using literally the very words, they chose to remain deaf too when in power, as if they were their own original ideas without citing the initial source are talking of Rocket Lab. As they seek to move in on territory developed by local activist and independent journalist while they were in power and saying little about New Zealand’s militarised space.

The Green’s MP’s have incidentally include an increasing number of Corporate orientated professionals whose politics is neoliberal such as its existing senior MPs James Shaw and Julie Anne Genter. Genter herself is an American born Berkley University pol sci languages graduate who went to work for Sinclair Merz Knights a Strategic Planners (a firm whose primary clients included the US Department of Defence) and is is a duel Citizen (as is also believed to be the case with John Key). In the USA its not illegal to have a duel pass port but it is too hold duel citizenship and also be a public official in another nation other than the USA. Its a law however only ever enforced as and when it suit the US government. We tend to focus on MP’s in Parliament with known Chinese intelligence links but rarely discuss that same issue when MP’s have US or other conflict of interest issues originating from their nationality and career profiles.

PHOTO: I CRASH THE ‘GREENS’ ANTI WAIHOPAI 2019 PROTEST WHEN THEY ARE IN POWER & ACCUSE THE GREENS OF GRANDSTANDING. THAT THEY FOCUS ON OLD ISSUES TO KEEP THEIR COVER WITH THE FAITHFUL AS THEY IGNORE AND DOWN PLAY EMERGING ISSUES WHICH THEY REMAIN SILENT ON. A YEAR LATER OUT OF POWER THEY ARE NOW QUOTING ME AS THEY FOCUS ON ‘ROCKET LAB’ BUT STAY SILENT ON THE MUSHROOMING INFRASTRUCTURE WHICH SHOWS THE RAPID MILITARISTION OF SPACE & TECH INDUSTRY AT THE EXPENSE OF NUCLEAR FREE LEGACY GOES WELL BEYOND ROCKET LAB -WHICH IS SIMPLY THE TIP OF THE SPEAR.

Regardless they make zero mention of Star Link, Awarura (where local Green David Kennedy candidate actually refuses to accept Awarura has a military role), the defence funding of our University’s and the militarisation of New Zealand tech and and cyber based start-ups, who even leaped on board the America Cup. As the boat race shares related technologies have ties to Rocket Lab and lends mana to the corporate brands as they take NZ’s Nuclear Free legacy flag and drench it in blood.

Fact is Rocket Lab is just the tip of much larger and nastier spear.

Published by BENS WORLD – an interesting read with your coffee.

Ben has worked as investigative journalist, researcher and writers for a number of NZ/Australian publications, radio stations, as well as working for universities, NGO and commercial clients, as well as being a best selling author (State Secrets 1 & II [Return Fire]) specialising in organised crime and national security issues. With a degree in history and political science specialising in political violence and counter terrorism Ben spent six year in New Zealand Army territorial (reserves) serving in the Royal Artillery and the infantry with posting in signals, artillery intelligence, field and counter intelligence, reconnaissance and as a rifleman & platoon grenadier. Ben also has decades of experience in all aspect of the hospitality and tourism industry (from kitchen hand to marketing and promotions) through out Australasia as well a having strong root in the arts community of New Zealand’s South Island his beloved home and were he prints his own cafe publications and books . View all posts by BENS WORLD – an interesting read with your coffee.