Moon of Alabama recently posted a blog on how Western mainstream media copies the memes about the supposed relationship between Russia and China being one of Russia as the ‘junior partner”. As Moon of Alabama demonstrates, the phrase’ junior partner’ is repeated an nauseam throughout the MSM media (the phrase is repated verbatim in at least 12 mainstream media articles .
This is however by no means the first time that MSM have regurgitated opinion and phrases as ‘fact’. We saw the phrase “Insurrection’ bandied about by not just US but other English speaking media in the days and months after the mob invasion of the US Capitol on January 6th 2023. Clearly not one of the journalists and editors who published those articles even bothered to look up in a dictionary what the term ‘insurraction” actually means. A single largely non violent mob invasion of a building where a government sits and has no capacity to bring down that government, is not an ‘insurrection’.
I would suggest that where you see these identical media phrases duplicated and parroted across media channels, you can come to the easy conclusion that the media articles are in fact simply propaganda with often no basis in fact because the journalist has not in fact investigated any of the facts- they are simply regurgitating someone else lines- often a government official or politician with quite another agenda than truth or freedom or honesty
The danger to Western populations is that, by repetition, people come to believe these parrotted phrases as facts. If that media company says it- and that one- and that one- it must be true! And conversely when people begin to understand that many mainstream media articles are in fact pure bullshit- they come to believe that everything is a lie- to ‘trust nothing and nobody’- it’s a recipe for disaster in the ever increasing environmental disasters that now impact us all.
We need independent media (not tied to current political agencies or big business) that have the capacity and honesty to truly research and investigate events and can give at least one version of the truth!
We need media that is not beholden to the current allocation of largely corrupt of politicians and bureaucrats for their ‘truths’- journalists who look for the nuances and not simplistic catch-phrases- and readers with the intelligence to both examine the contradictions in the media that is presented to them, who take the time to look for other interpretations of the ‘truth’, and who examine thoughtfully what is ‘conspiracy theory’ or disinformation , and what is not.
In New Zealand, my home country, we have recently seen two unequivocal examples of the impact of climate change on our landscape and society. The most recent example, Cyclone Gabrielle , brought heavy rains and winds to much of the northern part of New Zealand, leaving 7 dead and huge damage to roading infrastructure, farms and many homes, as well as many tragedies great and small; human and animal lives lost, people injured and livelihoods destroyed.
CHRIS SKELTON/STUFF.co.nz Destruction in Esk Valley, Hawke’s Bay, after Cyclone Gabrielle tore through the area.
While cyclones are not infrequent summer visitors to New Zealand shores, the intensity of this weather event, coming just 2 weeks after severe flooding in our biggest city Auckland, and the significant damage the cyclone caused, have made it clear to New Zealanders; politicians, business people and citizens alike, that we will see much more of this type of weather event in the future as a result of global warming, and in particular because of our warming Pacific seas which feed the cyclones further and further south.
Our politicians talk about ‘building resiliency’ and ‘better planning for future events like this’, but nobody is talking about how to reduce our climate footprint or change our behaviours.
As just one example of the need to change behaviours, much of the impact of Cyclone Gabrielle would have been substantially reduced if we had had more long term forest cover rather than open grassland on hills and water catchments. Long term old growth forest not only softens the impact of heavy rain on soils and therefore reduces runoff, but also holds the soil together better with roots that go deep into the subsoil, reducing the risks of slips and the soil erosion that results in much of the mud that we saw pouring through people’s homes and farms.
Old growth multi-species forest also mediates the actual climate, increasing moisture in the air in dry weather and reducing the impacts of wind and rain in wet weather . Instead, New Zealand has seen the steady destruction of old growth forest, almost none remains on lowland areas, with pine forestry, grassland for sheep and dairy, and urban development replacing those anchors of stability and those islands of species diversity.
Pine plantations, mostly pinus radiata, (otherwise known as Monterey Pine, from California) and the consequent logging businesses, are huge money making activities in New Zealand. Labelled as ‘sustainable forestry’, large areas of New Zealand are now devoted to growing pinus radiata -most of which is exported as either wood chips or raw timber logs to foreign places. The pine trees have replaced in many cases the unique indigenous forests of New Zealand which hosted New Zealand’s multiple unique bird species.
In 25 years of pine tree growth, some birdlife and insect life will have returned, but that is immediately destroyed in the levelling of the pine forest when logging occurs . The tree trunks are hauled away in huge logging trucks to the ports for export but usually the branches and other remnants of the trees are left on the hillsides.
When heavy rains comes, the rains pulverise the denuded soil, washing the topsoil into streams and sending the branches (the ‘slash’) pouring down the streams into the rivers to then smash into bridges on their way to the sea and to finally coat beaches with their broken branches and the mud.
Are we then going to change our ways in New Zealand about this massively environmentally destructive, but lucrative logging ‘business’? You bet your life we are not!
The business of pine forest logging is just one example among many of a world where business rules are pre-eminent (i.e .money trumps everything).
Our politicians and businessmen will talk about the tragedy of people losing their jobs and of small communities imploding if we don’t continue ‘business as usual”.
They will argue it will be impossible to construct a sustainable way of life and no longer continue to destroy our world in the way we have learnt to in the last 200 years with our business farming methods (dairy, sheep and other monoculture farming).
Their ‘normal’ is the destruction by human ‘development’ of our living world that once sustained so many species in the past in New Zealand.
Options for the development of self- sustainable rural communities, where exports and big business become a thing of the past, are simply not an option! That is, until the damage to infrastructure and insurance costs make it no longer a business option!
So, rather than planning for the changes that need to happen now to mitigate climate change, we will experience sudden and dramatic dislocation at some point (not so far away in the future) when even bigger storms wash away our current livelihoods!
Growing up as a child in the mid 20th century in New Zealand, I learnt a common kiwi satirical saying. ‘I’m all right Jack’ referred to those us New Zealanders who believed everything was going well for them and they didn’t care how anybody else was managing. The “I’m all right Jack’ kind of guy would do anything he/she liked and didn’t concern himself with the consequences of their actions for others…Back then we lived in a relatively closed island community, shipping was the primary transport in and out of New Zealand and radio shortwave from the outside world, our society was a social welfare community; an understanding that our government and citizens had a responsibility to support and protect those who were more vulnerable than ourselves.
It was certainly not the perfect society; monocultural, intolerant of difference and non ‘white’ races, with hidden seams of family abuse and violence. Some things have changed for the better over the years, but the ‘I’m all right Jack’ culture-though no longer a phrased commonly used, is rampant as it is everywhere across the globe. It is an Ayn Rand socio/psychopathic kind of culture: I have a right to do whatever I wish, and to hell with the consequences for anyone else.
But today, more than at any other time in history, individual humans can no longer avoid the collective impact of their actions. There are simply too many of us on this planet – there is no other refuge, no unexplored wilderness, where we can go when things turn out badly.
The urgency for all humans, particularly those in the West, to dramatically change the way we live our lives has never been more immediate. Despite all the hype, we can not ‘grow’ our way out of our environmental catastrophe (climate change and biodiversity loss). Neither can we stop that catastrophe from ocurring; but we can at least even now limit the extent of the damage.
We must return to a simpler life; a happier more content life, and a life that celebrates all other living things. We can either choose this new direction or we will be forced upon us against our wills.
This planet will survive; the question is will humans and other species living here now, survive the cataclysmic changes to our world that are upon us?
The fact that there were at least 36 private jets which flew participants into the COP27 conference, spewing huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere is one small demonstration of what these conferences are about- looking good and taking no action while our living planet dies.
While there were many indigenous peoples attending the COP27 who were able to voice their concerns about the current state of the earth and make suggestions for change, their voice had absolutely no weight in the final decisions made by the big power-brokers ( who depend on a CO2 producing economy to keep the electoral money rolling in).
Those indigenous groups talked not only about climate change, but more importantly, about the loss of biodiversity and our dis-connection with the rest of nature which industrialization and commodification has done to our beautiful living world in the last 200 years. Without our fellow living things on this planet ; we are done .
The idea that giving some money to a poor country to compensate for a now unsolvable problem of environmental destruction is frankly bizarre, and amply demonstrates that mental vacuity of those rich and powerful people.
No doubt the money will be useful and may help poorer countries mitigate the losses to their local ecosystems and help humans survive in their devastated environment a little longer, but in many cases that money will simply be spent on more ‘development’ and ‘progress’ and thus more environmental destruction.
And as we can already begin to see, many of the global ‘rich’ countries are already struggling to cope with the environmental ‘costs’ to their own economies, so their capacity to pay anybody else for their own stupidity is soon going to be substantially diminished.
Everywhere we see the powerful and the media portraying climate change as some little problem we can solve- at some stage- but lets get on with the business of despoiling the planet now -while there’s money to be made!
I see sublime examples of this on my local state television news channel, who in one news segment show how our magnificent government has made some new pledge to reduce carbon emissions and the next news segment extols the virtues of that same government encouraging tourists from half way round the world to travel to New Zealand.(and home again). Those enormous jet plane carbon emissions (about 5 tonnes of Co2 each way) will of course not be counted in New Zealand’s carbon emissions but to the tourist’s home country, so naturally everything is ok!
We will undoubtedly exceed 1.5C increases in global temperatures in the not so distant future , and will also certainly reach 3.5C increases if we do not dramatically reduce our consumption of energy globally. Green energy solutions; solar, wind and wave can make that transition a little easier, but they cannot ever replace the quantity of energy from oil gas and coal we continue to consume at ever increasing rates.
We all need to come to terms with consuming less and helping to recreate the natural world .
If we don’t, and very soon, Nature will decide for us in not so pleasant ways.
These two interconnected decisions make clear New Zealand’s position to support the Kiev government, a regime which is unequivocally militarily and politically supported by neonazi groups like the Azov and Aidar battalions and political groups like the Right Sector, and which for 8 years has been shelling and killing more than 10,000 innocent Ukrainian people in the Donbas simply because they want to speak their native language, Russian (note that these figures are confirmed by the Organisation for Security in Europe (OSCE)
New Zealand equipment and targeting information is undoubtedly also being used by the Kiev military to continue to fire missiles at Donetsk City and its civilian infrastructure.
While the Russian invasion of Ukraine is to be unequivocally condemned, a path to peace must be negotiated which dispassionately examines the reasons for this war and Western governments’ refusal to honour the Minsk agreements signed by Kiev, which would have meant the Russian invasion would never have happened.
While previous Labour administrations like David Lange’s and Norman Kirk’s had the moral courage to push back against the NATO white mans’ club, which continue to drone murder, torture and initiate wars against those who do not wish to ‘compulsorily share’ their resources with the Western world, this Ardern government has cemented its relationship as a NATO ‘ally’ and a key member of the Five Eyes group and continues to enthusiastically facilitate those illegal and immoral activities.
One would have that thought that those who have been victims of white man’s colonialism would have taken some courage and initiative to distance New Zealand from these activities of the white man’s club. New Zealand is, and will increasingly become a pariah state in the South and East while it maintains it enthusiastic support for NATO and the current ‘international rule based order’, which every non Western state recognises as code for the right for the US and its allies to do whatever it wishes , including sanctions, targetted killings and extreme violence against whole populations. Does not the current Labour government have the courage to push back against this ever expanding and dangerous war that NATO is fuelling at the expense of likely hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers, and demand that each side sit down to negotiate firstly a cease-fire and then a peace agreement which is endorsed at the UN?
I sincerely hope that this Labour Government does belatedly recognise that New Zealand’s international and defense policies and actions are currently not on the moral side of rectitude.
Postscript 6th November 2022
The Telegram channel Rybar made the following post on 5th November.
#Ukrainian #Nazi group, within Azov Movement, Karpatska Sich, translated to Ukrainian the New Zealand shooter Manifesto that inspired the #Buffalo White Supremacist shooter.
The Ukrainian-language translation of the Christchurch shooter’s manifesto, flanked by a sticker for Ukrainian neo-Nazi group Karpatska Sich.
The New Zealand shooter Manifesto that inspired the #Buffalo shooter is a “must read” for all #NeoNazis and White Supremacists worldwide. Here a group of #Ukrainian #Nazis from Karpatska Sich holding copies of the book translated to Ukrainian by the Nazi elitist group inside #Azov movement.
Neo Nazi Polish/Ukrainian group Karpatska Sich made a hateful video regarding the Pride marches in the EU the year.
In other words, the New Zealand government’s military is funding, training and likely imbedded with neonazis in Ukraine who are directly implicated in the New Zealand mosque shooting in Christchurch in 2019, which the same NZ government has roundly condemned as a terrorist act.
The bizarre orchestrated western media response to Hu’s exit from the PRC’s national Congress meeting in Beijing is noteworthy. Apparently a frail 79 year old man being gently escorted out the CCP Congress shows-the-utter-ruthlessness-of-xi-jinpings-quest-for-absolute-power!
Exactly how that is the case is not made clear, and why he would be so publicly supposedly removed from office is unexplained, but apparently any opportunity to demean and deride the Chinese Communist party by the West is a good opportunity. But why should that be so?
We are told that Xi Jinping is ‘ruthlessly’ consolidating his power by appointing more of his supporters to his decision-making circle, (something of course that Western politicians never ever do!) after the Chinese Communist Party Congress (representing its 96.71 million members) were somehow intimidated into once again electing the dictator Xi Jingping for a third consecutive term!
And we are told by Western media that China has a ‘very aggressive’ foreign policy. Strangely this view is not reflected by most of the nations of the South, many of whom have benefitted enormously from China’s technical expertise and support for their infrastructure development – in sharp contrast to the predatory practices of the United States and its IMF and World Bank proxies, of dismantling economically vulnerable states for the benefit of American corporations.
The Chinese ‘threat’ therefore is that the long-standing predatory actions of the United States and its Western white allies (what the West likes to call the ‘rule-based order) are under threat.
The pretence is that these actions by the US are designed to impede China’s military aggressive actions. They are in fact designed to ensure China stays a subservient power to the US, economically and militarily. Charles Freeman (ex US diplomat) states it bluntly: ‘This is the equivalent of smoking pot in a hot tub and fantasizing about tripping up competitors in track events, while they are out training and trying out new equipment. It’s conceivable that China will stumble and fall, enabling us effortlessly to “win the future,” but it is imbecilic to count on this. Delusional complacency and reliance on dumb luck or divine intervention will not enable us to outperform China or any other rising power.
And as Counterpunch notes:‘Biden and the Post are talking about a country [China] that has not used military force outside its borders for more than 40 years, and has only one military facility [Djibouti] outside its zone of influence.’. Contrast that with the West’s brutal wars in the last 40 years in Iraq, Syria, and Libya- let alone its unwavering support for Israel’s slow genocide of the Palestinian people or the U.S.’s 750 plus military bases across the world.
Pelosi’s bizarre flight to Taiwan recently to stir up the Republic of China or ROC (colloquially known as ‘Taiwan’) into buying lots more American military equipment they didn’t know they needed, is just one more of many examples of attempts by the US to provoke mainland China so it can be further labelled in the Western (white) media as an aggressive dictatorship and thus not to be trusted. It is after all only the Western white media (and now Zelensky’s PR team) who speak “the truth”!!!
It would seem that those of us in the West are, not so slowly, being brainwashed by a Western media in lock-step with Western corporate ‘interests’ and their politicians, to believe that China and Russia are the evil ones against whom we must fight to the bitter end to maintain our ‘right’ to plunder the rest of the non-white world as we see fit.
And all the while, Gaia will have the last laugh on those petty human squabbles.
The South China Morning Post ( Hong Kong based and not state media ) reported that ‘The episode was not reported in Chinese state media but in its evening newscast on Saturday night state broadcaster CCTV included a shot of the former president voting at the closing ceremony before his exit’.
Postscript
An erudite and sane perspective on the Ukraine war and international relations by Robert Falk (below)
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has it seems irrevocably pinned her flag to the mast of the ‘dark side’- the U.S. ‘rule based order’ ( not to be confused with the UN charter of human rights or anything silly like that, but with the right of the YS to do anything it damn well likes to any country and people it pleases. (bombing an allies’ gas pipeline is just one of so many examples)
Whil insisting there is only one truth in regard to world conflicts (no room for peace negotiations there!) she also insisted there could only be one view about climate change. As one who does not deny the reality of climate change, I find it astonishing that Ardern suggests we can legislate climate impacts away by saying we will not allow the world to increase global temperatures by 1.5C.
Either she is amazing badly informed by her science advisors about climate change, or she is simply posturing. The reality is that it is now inevitable that the world will experience much more than 1.5C warming. Governments across the world (including her own) have talked a lot about climate change impacts and what should be done- but have in fact done nothing more than pretend to their voters they are doing something. Co2 global production continues to increase, not decrease.
CARBON CLIMATE CRAZINESS Mauna Loa Atmospheric CO2 has reached 419.15 ppm (August) (seasonally adjusted mean). Increasing as fast as ever. Crazy because nothing is being done except to burn more fossil fuels, the global suicide scenario.#CO2#climatechange#globalwarpic.twitter.com/x7i0jlHxP4
And in fact Ardern’s government has continued to push for more international tourism (which in New Zealand results in massive production of Co2 from the passenger jets winging their way around the world to the South Pacific from the Northern hemisphere), more extensive dairy and agribusiness farming which continues to destroy our environment in multiple ways and generally more ‘progress’ (which means more businesses which inevitably destroy more of the environment and induces more consumption of goods people don’t need.
Ardern and her Labour are like her National Party opposition and all the other New Zealand political parties, locked into requiring financial support from businesses- and ‘more business’ and ‘progress’ are simply euphemisms for making money from environmental destruction.
But, to return to the earlier argument about there being simple single truths about the Ukraine war; that a democratic Ukraine with ‘European’ values of tolerance and freedom is fighting against a relentless ruthless behemoth of Putin’s Russian Empire, we might put forward a counter ‘truth’. That Ukraine is in fact a brutal single party white supremacist state whose only reason for Western support is to defang the Russian bear so that Western corporations can once again (as in the Yeltsin years) begin to appropriate Russian assets at bargain prices.
As the Scrum notes: Incited by Western powers, Poland, Lithuania, and the Habsburg Empire, the key to Ukrainian nationalism was that it was Western, and thus superior. Since Ukrainians and Russians stem from the same population, pro-Western Ukrainian ultra-nationalism was built on imaginary myths of racial differences: Ukrainians were the true Western whatever-it-was, whereas Russians were mixed with “Mongols” and thus an inferior race. Banderist Ukrainian nationalists have openly called for elimination of Russians as such, as inferior beings.
These Ukrainian ultra-nationalists have also been enthusiastically supported by strong Nazi elements in the Baltic States, Germany, Poland and the Ukrainian post WW2 diaspora, particularly in Canada.
So, naturally, any compromise in the grand Western agenda, not to mention a reduction in the Western PR media effort to discredit Russia (and now China) in any way possible how ever implausible, is completely impossible- peace negotiations are not an option. Nuclear war with Russia is also being promoted in Western media as also an option, deliberately misrepresenting (as Scott Ritter-former UN weapons inspector notes)the Russian position on first use of nuclear weapons.
The ‘perhaps’ unintended consequence of this glorification of the ultra-nationalist agenda, along with the self-destruction of European economies causing poverty and anger and demonstrations on the street, is the resurrection of the white supremacist ultranationalist movements, like Zelensky’s, across Europe.
These far-right groups not only celebrate intolerance of minorities, but also any dissent of the view that the state is pre-eminent in all things, that the corporations should rule in tandem with government (as in the US), and that consequently any collective view of humanity outside of the state apparatus is a threat to be stamped out.
However the far-right’s biggest threat to humanity is their denial of the climate change disaster. How can the state become strong in their view, without industrial ‘progress’ and a strong war-machine?
We can already see that view reflected in those European ‘moderate’ parties who currently control the EU. They’ll talk about mitigating climate change and green energy and all those cute things, as long as it doesn’t impact on the economy and the money that rolls into party coffers from the corporations-‘fire up the coal boilers for electricity again ‘cos we need to destroy Russia first!’
We are, after all, talking about Jacinda Ardern’s favourite ‘international rule-based order’ here!
Let’s get our priorities straight with the one true Truth!
The cult of ‘personality’ is not however limited to kings and queens; we see it everywhere in the world; the adulation of rock and movie stars whose lives are constantly shattered by trauma and misadventure and a role model for no-one, the president of an Eastern European country with an addiction to cocaine and ill-gotten gains who sacrifices the lives of thousands of men for his glory, or another Eastern European president whose addiction to patriotism and ‘duty’ has resulted in the ruthless death and destruction of so much
Kings and Queens are human beings too, and the grief and loss they leave behind should be respected and not trivialised..
However, it does astound me how not only people in the U.K. but around the world are now eulogising the late Queen of England for her glorious ‘service’ to the country and (British) Commonwealth. Exactly what that ‘service’ was I am yet to discover.
Was it perhaps those queenly waves from her limousine, or maybe the way she delivered her annual speeches from the Crown which had been written for her by the government of the day, or perhaps the way she shook hands with even the lowliest of commoners and smiled so graciously?.
In compensation for that annual ‘service’ we are told she and her retinue are paid $78million (USD) per annum by the British taxpayer, while the Windsor family’s assets currently stand at $28 billion (USD). The contrast between the royal family’s obscene wealth and the poverty of many in the U.K. could not be more extreme.
And yet, the downtrodden poor of Britain and many across the world have wept real tears of grief and loss at her passing- creating an account of a person whose apparent only wish was to ‘serve’ her people. (it is in passing, extraordinary how the entire Western media have all enthusiastically leapt onto the bandwagon of the Queen’s ‘service’ terminology , as one )
There are of course many in the world who do not share those views of a noble and glorious British monarchy- but most Western media are careful to avoid such inglorious inputations.
But let us leave those who wish to mourn, to do so in peace. Their grief is no doubt in most cases genuine- their loss is real..
And all the while, the voices of those who are calm and rational; who call for a safer, sustainable, kinder and compassionate world, are silenced by demagoguery and the power of the corporate media who attach themselves so comfortably to that demagoguery- there is, after all- money to be made with the latest craze…
The cult of ‘personality’ is not however limited to kings and queens; we see it everywhere in the world; the adulation of rock and movie stars whose lives are constantly shattered by trauma and misadventure and a role model for no-one, the president of an Eastern European country with an addiction to cocaine and ill-gotten gains, who sacrifices the lives of thousands of men for his glory, or another Eastern European president whose addiction to patriotism and ‘duty’ has resulted in the ruthless death and destruction of so much. And then, for many Americans, the eulogising of the latest president-whoever he is , to our ‘democracy’ and our ‘exceptional nation’, and the consequent demonisation of those who disagree with us.
What is it in the human psyche that permits many of us to succumb to this irrational and dangerous fervour?- to march in lock step with our current hero to oblivion? For our ‘hero’ will soon become our next ‘monster’ when the current vogue for them has dissipated.
We desperately need to let go of those ‘heroes’, we need to focus instead on what we all need to do right now to save as much as we can of what is left of this planet- both for ourselves and the other living things we have imperiously assumed dominion over.
All wars are, without doubt, pointless, tragic and foolish affairs that also play a significant part in destroying the remainder of our natural environment and a future for our children.
Western media are continuously playing a looped recording that Ukraine and its president Zelensky are defending the ‘free world’ – democratic ‘white” nations- against the evil Russian hordes. What is most interesting is that the language used in this messaging is consistent right across the Western media, regardless of the country you live in .
That the Kiev armies are undoubtedly shelling the former Ukrainian nuclear power plant near Zaporizhzhia: presumably to create more support for more weapons from the ‘white’ world.
That the Kiev government and its Western government supporters have been deliberately shelling civilian areas of the Donbass held by Russian speaking Ukrainians since 2014 , with over 14,000 deaths from shelling, and more recently with illegal ‘butterfly’ or ‘petal’ anti-personnel mines.
That real Banderite neo-nazis still play a significant role in determining Ukraine’s state and war strategy- despite many of them being killed or captured in Mariupol.
In the last few days we have also heard about the killing of the daughter of the ‘ultra-nationalist” Alexander Dugin. Dugin is, in my opinion, an obnoxious idealogue who has for many years promoted a Russia first meme. However nobody deserves to die because of their beliefs, (let alone their children) – be they Russian, Ukrainian or any other nationality.
What is however scary, is the identical use of language by Western media in describing Dugin as an ‘ultra-nationalist” – what exactly an ‘ultra-nationalist’ is, as opposed to simply being a ‘nationalist’, is somewhat unclear- but one is left with the clear understanding that only Russians can be ‘ultranationalists’ (or for that matter ‘oligarchs’) and never of course those Americans who have the ludicrous belief in the United States as the ‘exceptional nation’ who wanders the world doing good deeds for the benefit of those of us who are less enlightened.
Patriotism is one of the scourges of humanity; an absurd belief in the superiority of the culture and land to which you were accidentally born into. A scourge that blights and distorts the mind into believing that any action ; however intrinsically evil it is, is good as long as it benefits the country you were born in.
We see that evil in the blue and gold banners that enswathes everything in Ukraine, the United State’s ‘Stars and Stripes’, and the blue white and red flag of Russia, to name but three.
So now, as Westerners, we are told to hate all Russians, all Chinese, because they are a threat to our expensive lifestyles….And as true patriots, we should consume more, build more and destroy more , because we are the epitome of ‘civilisation’.
And all the while, we move ever faster into a new world where the climate is already more unpredictable and dangerous, where global warming and sea-levels continue to rise and rise for the next hundred, maybe thousand years, and where we ever more rapidly, destroy what is left of our living world.
And why?- because their media profit margins and their sponsors depend on more economic ‘growth’.
So it becomes clear that the only path to ‘de-growth’, and retaining some semblance of a live-able world for humans and other species, is one where Gaia herself creates that economic destruction.
When hurricanes, huge storms, enormous amounts of rainfall, oppressive high temperatures and sea level rise ( among many other ‘natural’ impacts), result in it being impossible to buy insurance for industry to sell your products or to have a market where people can no longer afford to buy your useless junk; only then will we start to see a return to a sustainable (but hotter) world where all species can live in harmony, and even some contentment!
Media have indoctrinated us all to believe that we need to consume more, do more, travel more – that we cannot live lives of contentment without all those things we need to buy and consume..
On June 26th Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s current prime minister, admitted in a TV interview, that New Zealand had been a NATO ‘partner’ -not member (as Ukraine also is) for the past 10 years. The interview was undertaken while Ardern was travelling to make a brief presentation to a NATO meeting in Spain, currently discussing how they can mitigate the Western disaster in Ukraine where Russian and Ukrainian ‘separatists’ are bulldozing through the remnants of Kiev’s army in the Donbass .
Given the admission from Ardern that New Zealand has been a NATO partner for the past 10 years, and has also been part of the Five Eyes alliance since 1956, we are thus a co-conspirator to the Minsk 1 and 2 subterfuges of 2014 and 2015 by Western nations in their pretense to the Donbass residents that a Ukrainian semi-autonomous region for the Russian speakers there was going to happen, and Kiev would stop bombarding Donetsk and Lugansk. New Zealand is also party to the provision of military equipment to the Kiev ‘regime’ (certainly not a ‘democracy’ now that almost all political parties other than Zelensky’s have been banned) which have been used to deliberately target civilian populations in Donetsk city in the past few months.
However if one were to believe Western and New Zealand media, Russia is shelling its own allies in the Donbass!- or as some Kiev residents have liked to call it over the years- the ‘Bombass’.
But let us not over-estimate the intelligence of our (Western) world leaders either!…
For New Zealand to pretend it is not at war with Russia is absurd. New Zealand is aiding its Western ‘allies’ to ensure that as many Ukrainians die for nothing in a war that could easily have been avoided if the West had insisted that Kiev abide by the Minsk agreements it signed in 2014 and not re-armed Kiev and its neonazi groups.
And let us not forget the colossal destruction this war is wreaking on the environment and the staggering amount of human resources wasted building weapons that could have been used to plant trees, and build a sustainable world….Or forget the increasing probability of a ‘hot’ war between Western white countries and China and Russia, which would likely then lead us all to nuclear armageddon.
Recently the U.S. orchestrated yet another Pacific military alliance between the U.S., Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK., strangely titled ‘Partners in the Blue Pacific’ whose purpose is to operate, the U.S. says “according to principles of Pacific regionalism, sovereignty, transparency, accountability, and most of all, [will be] led and guided by the Pacific islands.”. (Strangely those Pacific Island nations are not actually party to this agreement! )
This comes on top of the other new Indo-Pacific military ‘white folks’ agreement signed between Australia the United States and the U.K.; entitled AUKUS, which is intended to break the Pacific nuclear free agreement signed by most Pacific Island nations.
China has recently had the temerity to sign economic and security deals (not military bases) with a number of pacific island countries. If you believed NZ and Australian media and government lurid pronouncements, the ‘red peril’ is once again on the march to take away our democracy and freedom!
Presumably it’s the freedom to colonise vulnerable south pacific countries, to threaten and blackmail governments in the region, and to exploit Pacific Island communities using their cheap labour – dastardly Chinese stuff to try and limit us “good white folks'” exploitative opportunities in the Pacific !
Denis Argall notes from an Australian perspective that ‘the United States is entering into a period of instability at home and overreach abroad. The US’s declared intent to use the Ukraine war to diminish Russia is neither healthy nor attainable. The US provocation of war with China is contrary to our interests as well as common sense’.
New Antarctica 