We desperately need to understand and acknowledge that preserving and sustaining the living world around us is not just a vital thing to do in order that humans survive, but to acknowledge that our world is in reality a living entity; we do not have the right to destroy it, to market it, to unravel it.
All life is sacred.
A recent (May 19 2021) article in Common Dreams by Richard Heinberg highlights the fact that at least some planners have known since the 1950s that our current human civilization based on fossil fuels will end- and that unless we slow down our global economy (‘de-growth’) we are in a for a very very hard landing, and not far off.
Perhaps like the genial but simpleminded U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, John Kerry, we believe that, in the words of Charles Dicken’s Wilkins Micawber, ‘something will turn up’, to solve our environmental problems. Somehow, somewhere, some yet to be discovered masterpiece of human engineering will magically solve the anthropomorphic climate heating and catastrophic biodiversity loss humans have caused.
Or, like John Kerry’s older master, we believe that reducing the impact of climate heating and species loss can be done while creating more jobs that create more climate change and loss of species. While “Green” technology will reduce the use of coal fired electricity and less combustion engine vehicles, it will only minimally impact on human economic ‘growth’, which is the key driver in increasing environmental destruction of the web of life which sustains us all- for now.
Or, perhaps we can just ignore the whole issue and hope it will go away- like Russia’s Vladimir Putin. A country that is at the forefront of climate heating, with Siberia set this year (2021) to more than meet last years record temperatures in May of 10C higher than ‘average’
Why do we need ‘growth’?- what is its purpose?- does it lead us somewhere when it is continuously destroying the web of life that keeps us all alive?
There are a multitude of possibilities for a significant proportion of national populations to live sustainable and ‘growth-free’ lives; growing and sharing the abundance of nature. But of course those simple lifestyles do not translate into taxes, into corporate expense accounts, into how big your GDP is, or into state expenditure on ‘important’ projects that swell the egos of politicians and that provide a military budget for threatening your neighbours, or subduing your own population.
Once those so-called ‘growth’ projects are eliminated, there will still be more than enough state resources for free health and education for all, and a sustainable future for our children and the planet
We desperately need to understand and acknowledge that preserving and sustaining the living world around us is not just a vital thing to do in order that humans survive, but to acknowledge that our world is in reality a living entity; we do not have the right to destroy it, to market it, to unravel it.
All life is sacred.
As the 2010 ‘Universal Declaration of Rights of Mother Earth‘ unequivocally states in its First Article; (1) Mother Earth is a living being, and (2) Mother Earth is a unique, indivisible, self-regulating community of interrelated beings that sustains, contains and reproduces all beings.
Since 1948, (over 70 years) Israel and its vanguard army- the “settlers”, have brutalised, killed, tortured, intimidated and stolen the land of the Palestinian people. For over 70 years Western media have assisted the Israeli regime in portraying Palestinians as terrorists and that every Israeli action against Palestinians is a ‘response’ to some terrorist act by the Arabs.
In this latest round of the Israeli attempt to destroy Palestinian resistance to 70 years of brutality and theft, we are told that Israeli military action is a ‘response’ to Hamas in Gaza firing rockets into Israel. In reality this latest round of hostilities is inextricably connected to the Nakba – the catastrophe of 1948 when Israeli settlers and an Israeli military , murdered thousands of Palestinians and displaced many more to refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan and beyond, simply to steal their land.
Palestinians expelled from their homes at gunpoint during the Nakba; from bsdsmovement.net
As the Discourse Blog notes: “This is not a ‘clash’ between two equal sides. This is a straightforward attack by Israel on Palestinians. For days, the Israeli government has been systematically assaulting Palestinians worshipping at one of the holiest sites in Islam, during Ramadan, all while enforcing a move to ethnically cleanse a Jerusalem neighborhood of its Palestinian residents. Israeli forces have fired rubber bullets and stun grenades, injuring hundreds of people. The deputy mayor of Jerusalem has been filmed lamenting that Palestinian activists weren’t shot in the head“.
Ramzy Baroud of Common Dreams has a more detailed analysis of the attempted Israeli ethnic cleansing of the Sheik Jarrah community which sparked this latest response from Hamas. This ‘legalised theft’ of Palestinian property is beautifully outlined in this paragraph from Ramzy Baroud:
‘Last February, the Israeli Supreme Court awarded Jewish settlers the right to many Palestinian homes in Sheikh Jarrah. Following a Palestinian and international backlash, it offered Palestinians a ‘compromise’, whereby Palestinian families relinquished ownership rights to their homes and agreed to continue to live there as tenants, paying rents to the very illegal Jewish settlers who have stolen their homes in the first place, but who are now armed with a court decision.‘
Human Rights Watch have finally decided in the past few weeks that only now is Israel guilty of crimes against humanity, of persecution of Palestinians and is an apartheid state – something that has been indisputable for 70 years!
Is this how people should be treated? How can you, how can we, accept this day to day 70 year humiliation of a people simply because others want their lands?
Ironically, Israeli settlers’ and the Israeli regime’s constant ‘acquisition’ of Palestinian land over the past 70 years means that an Israeli/Palestinian two state solution is no longer a viable solution.
The United States has for much of those 70 years since the Nakba, pretended to act as the independent arbiter between Palestine and Israel in various peace agreements- peace agreements that all sides knew were a farce and had no possibility of ever happening because Israel had overwhelming force and had no intention of stopping its acquisition of Palestinian land. Perhaps President Biden will in reality finally show some moral backbone and force the Israelis to agree to a full and fair settlement with its Palestinian population and the Palestinian enclaves it controls. However, given Biden’s latest response to Israeli atrocities is to say ‘the ‘Israeli bombardment of Gaza is not significant’, we can get a clear sense of Biden’s moral and ethical framework. (Note that the U.K., Germany and Austria have now (15/5/21), once again, also acknowledged their ongoing support for Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people)
The only solution now for Israel and Palestine is a single state where all its residents have equal rights and where dispossessed Palestinians have the inalienable right of return and compensation for the lives, properties and olive groves confiscated or destroyed by the Israeli state. This apartheid nuclear-armed regime will hopefully depart peacefully.
Rachel Aliene Corrie (April 10, 1979 – March 16, 2003) was an American activist and diarist. A member of the pro-Palestinian group International Solidarity Movement (ISM), she was crushed to death by an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) armored bulldozer in southern Gaza in 2003 as she tried to block it from destroying Palestinian homes in Gaza .
You can read the weekly list of casual mindless brutal war-crimes committed by the Israeli regime and its settler groups here at the International Middle East Media Center.
Postscript
With the Israeli ‘Defence’ Forces now (as of 14/5/21) using their $3.8 billion dollars worth of gifted latest military hardware from the United States to bomb and shell Gaza, it is time to acknowledge that this rogue state must be controlled. An extensive United Nations neutral peace force must be put in place across Israel, Gaza and the West Bank to ensure safety for all of its populations, and Hamas and Israeli armed forces and settler terrorists must be immediately disarmed. Where I wonder is the West’s much vaunted “Responsibility to Protect” now?
The West’s ongoing support for the Israeli regime, and its slow genocide of the Palestinian people (that Israel has a responsibility to protect as the occupier of those territories), puts the lie to the West’s vaunted statements about supporting democracy freedom and human rights across the world.
There is no justification for Israel and its Western backers to use the horrors of the Holocaust to justify and legalise its horrific 70 year abuse of Palestinians.
Thankfully an Egyptian brokered ceasefire was declared between Israeli forces and Hamas and Islamic Jihad on 20th May. The message from Biden to Netanyahu in Israel was undoubtedly -‘stop the blitzgrieg, you’re damaging our and your international reputation’. Biden’s pledge to help restore Gaza but ensure no money went to Hamas, who are the legitimately elected government of the West Bank and Gaza, was assuredly a hollow one. The money will instead go to “President” Abbas from the Palestinian Authority, a venal entity who illegitimately govern the West Bank with the full support of the West and the Israeli regime.
Those in Gaza are thankful for this temporary ceasefire, but they know the Israeli war against them will continue regardless; the humanitarian blockades, the limiting of access to essential health services, clean water and sewage services, and the ongoing harrassment, murder and humiliation of Palestinians by the Israeli entity.
It is important to acknowledge the enormous grief and loss and suffering that a pandemic brings- those who lives were cut short , those who others relied on for their physical or emotional wellbeing, and those who made a wonderful contribution to a better life for all, while they were alive.
Prior to vaccine rollout in the ‘developed’ world, those countries that did best at reducing COVID deaths and infections were island nations- New Zealand, Taiwan, Iceland, Australia and even South Korea whose mainland border to the north is almost completely sealed. Being able to restrict access by humans from other countries played a huge role in reducing risk, and a sea border is a very efficient border wall once passenger flights are stopped or very closely monitored.
The most marked exception to the sea border rule is China, whose COVID restriction practices, while repressive to a degree, resulted in more freedom as a result of the control of the spread of COVID infection.
The map below from Our WorldinData.org for 3rd May 2021 illustrates the wide variation in death rates across the globe. Infection and death rates are a far more reliable indicator of a country’s effectiveness in managing the Covid crisis than simple numbers. A case in point being India , with a current horrific number of deaths (226,188 as of 4th May- but a rate per million population of only 163.9, as opposed to for instance the current rate of deaths in Bulgaria of 2390 per million but ‘only’ 16,609 deaths in total.
The map would suggest that while poorer countries have less effective formal health systems, they have an advantage of less mobile populations to spread the virus, and often greater access to open spaces where virus particles can more safely disperse.
However, once vaccines began to roll out, we begin to see a different story. Britain, a country with the highest death rate per million population for much of the earlier pandemic as a result of government incompetency and corruption, has now seen a remarkable reduction in deaths over the past month as the vaccine has been rolled out in a very systematic way. Similarly the United States, and some of the more wealthy European countries like Germany and the Scandinavian countries are also beginning to show marked improvements in death rates; in part because of tight lockdowns and the onset of summer with people spending less time in enclosed spaces , but mainly due to the vaccine roll-out.
Unsurprisingly, ugly power games between countries vying to be ‘top dog’ in the world, have resulted in extensive propaganda by all sides in rolling out vaccines to the world. These global power plays and the truly appalling greed of the pharmaceutical companies has also played a part in ensuring that the poorest countries do not get adequate access to vaccines, despite all the hollow platitudes from the United Nations and the propaganda from states.
One sublime example of the propaganda at play is this Guardian article which argues that because many Western governments are refusing to use the Russian Sputnik V vaccine because it is Russian (and dares to have the Russian flag on the box!), it is therefore a Russian ploy to sow dissent in the West. The fact that the esteemed (U.K.) Lancet medical journal has stated that Sputnik V has an enviable efficacy rate of 91.6%, doesn’t rate a mention. Sadly the article is one more demonstration of the global degradation of investigative reporting skills, understanding the difference between allegation and fact, and the capacity to use logical analysis. (but anything to further the ‘West is good/Russia bad’ meme)
The COVID epidemic has graphically illustrated the incompetency of many world leaders, and a reminder of the brutal sadism of many of them to kill innocent people in far away lands because of petulant power plays, jingoism and systematic racism.
Along with state power and incompetency, we have also witnessed the capacity of global pharmaceutical companies to capture the enduring essence of capitalism:- profits at any expense, including the loss of millions of human lives.
J.G. Ballard’s ‘The Subliminal Man’, written in 1963, outlines a future 1960-ish world where the state ‘encourages’ the population to buy more useless things so that they work more hours to pay for them and therefore consume more… in a never-ending circle of supply and demand.
In ‘The Subliminal Man’, the population is locked into this endless cycle via subliminal messaging from huge electronic billboards next to the motorways…How far we have come since 1963!
Today one is struck by governments all over the world exhorting the public to go out and spend, go on holidays etc, once COVID 19 lockdowns are over, ostensibly to ensure that we have full employment and therefore more money in the system….
But the reality is that we are all locked into a crazy system that relies on ever increasing demand for ever increasingly useless items that need to be ‘sold’ to us as essential, as ‘must-haves’, or the ‘bucket-list’, so that we can afford to live the life we ‘choose’….
We are no longer consumers; we are the consumed.
The barrage of advertisements on our cellphones delivered via social media and the apps we use; the ever more strident advertisements on TV for another ‘latest product’; even the billboards on our highways, are all testament to the fact that those advertised things are really non-essential- otherwise they would not need to be ‘sold’ to us. We would simply purchase them when our old product stops working, when we really need them, or not purchase them at all.
The ongoing process to ensure ‘essential items’ are designed to be non-repairable, only replaceable, and that commodities are constructed with plastics and other materials that deteriorate rapidly, also ensures that we must continue to buy and consume.
Everything that humans now require to live becomes a commodity, a consumable, packaged and labelled and sold; from the food we eat to the water we drink, the sentient animals we depend on for food; perhaps soon too, the air we breathe. Only money now provides us with meaning …’we know the price of everything and the value of nothing’.
Given that societies’ globally almost all rely on this psychotic fragile consumer cycle – we are in deep sh*t.
We know our consumer behavior is pushing our living world to oblivion- destroying the remainder of the natural world and creating enormous amounts of toxic gases and plastics and ‘land-fill’-yet our governments continue to relentlessly promote this consumer society, while simultaneously talking about reducing carbon emissions and retaining biodiversity.
It is as if they don’t think there are any other options- but of course- there are- just not ones palatable to the businesses and global corporations feeding off our consumer addictions.
(Note: this is a slightly re-edited version of a NewAntarctica post first published in 2014)
Every year in this fair little country of New Zealand, we “celebrate” Anzac Day on 25th April. We remember our “glorious dead” who fought in all those wars for king and country; beginning way back then with the Second Boer War of 1899 in South Africa, supporting our British countrymen in the British Empire’s fight against the “evil” Boers, to ensure South Africa could become a safe place for English speaking white men to colonise and rule over the black man.
Since then we have had the First World War where 100, 000 New Zealand men (and some women) were shipped overseas, out of a total population of just over 1 million people. 18,500 New Zealanders were killed in that ‘war to end all wars’ and more than 40,000 wounded. Anzac Day “celebrates” the day New Zealand and Australian troops along with troops from other parts of the Empire, India, England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, India, and Newfoundland as well as French forces invaded Turkey (a German ally) at Gallipoli ( or Gelibolu as the Turks call it).
The “Great War”, as it was once known, was initially at least, a European war to divide up the spoils of empire, with each countries’ soldiers the cannon fodder for money and power.
‘Only’ 2799 New Zealand soldiers died at Gelibolu attempting to break the Turkish defences in the harsh hills above the beaches, where 87,000 Turks died defending their homeland. Nothing in comparison to the many thousands killed and wounded in the trenches in Flanders and other parts of France; machine gunned, shelled and gassed by the “Hun” -the Germans.
Yet New Zealand collectively now glorifies Gallipoli; it was apparently (according to later New Zealand historians who should know) our “nation-building” exercise. Yet after that first world war to end all wars, every cenotaph
The Unknown Soldier
in every little town and city across New Zealand which named their dead, inscribed the lines “Lest We Forget”. In my imagination perhaps , it is ‘lest we forget’ those who died for nothing; the horror, the stupidity , the inhumanity to man of soldiers at war; not “lest we forget” our glorious war dead.
Let us not forget either, the many thousands of women and children who suffered at the hands of those damaged men returning from the wars; the family and community violence caused by the trauma of war and death.
The Send-off: a Poem by Wilfred Owen: -English soldier poet, 1918
And then we have the “good war”; the war against the Nazis and the Japanese between 1939 and 1945, where 140,000 New Zealand men and women were conscripted to fight overseas. Kiwi soldiers, while comparatively small in numbers, played a significant role in the European war against Germany and later against the Japanese in the Pacific. Could that war have been avoided without appeasement of Nazi and Japanese supremacism? There are many historians who say , that had the terms of the Versailles Treaty not been so punitive against Germany , German nationalistic fervour would never have produced such a cancer as the national socialists (Nazis). Similarly there are those who argue that had the Japanese also been able to obtain their Imperial “place in the sun” , Pearl Harbour would never have happened. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
New Zealand’s obligations for self-defence against the Japanese is inarguable; The Japanese were planning to invade New Zealand as part of their Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, along with invading Australia. The evil of the Nazis is also inarguable, and the horrors committed by them; New Zealand soldiers helped to bring those horrors to an end. Ultimately 11,900 New Zealand soldiers lost their lives in the second world war. However New Zealand is implicated in the war crimes resulting from the bombing missions undertaken by the Allies against German dams and the firebombing of Dresden; Tokyo and Kyoto .
New Zealand’s role in wars since the second world war has (aside from several small UN peace-keeping missions) been less than exemplary. 4,700 New Zealand soldiers fought in Korea between 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953, with 49 men killed in action. New Zealand (under U.N. auspices but without Russian attendance at that security council meeting ) was a party to the genocide committed largely by the Americans carpet bombing every North Korean town and city over that period.
Fighting as part of ANZUS, New Zealand enthusiastically supported the American pretext for invading Vietnam from 1963 to 1975 ( supposedly to halt the insidious spread of Communism (the ‘YellowPeril”) across Asia), while the New Zealand national government supported the bombing by the U.S. of cities and towns across Vietnam Laos and Cambodia, causing more than a million deaths. 37 New Zealand soldiers were killed in that war and many more afflicted by the impacts of “Agent Orange”, the chemical warfare “defoliant” sprayed by U.S. planes over the jungles and hamlets of South Vietnam. 33 New Zealand soldiers were also killed in the preceding Korean War where millions of Koreans were killed in that largely forgotten genocidal war.
Once again supporting the U.S., New Zealand inserted a small number of troops into southern Iraq near Basra during the second Iraq War. While for most of its service there, NZ troops were confined to base, it is highly likely that NZ troops were well aware of the wide-spread torture and murder of Iraqi civilians in that area by British troops . New Zealand is, by its support of that war, also implicated in the deaths of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who died as a result of a war based on the pretext of Saddam’s non-existent “weapons of mass destruction.”
New Zealand continues its commitment to “freedom and democracy” by supporting the Americans in Afghanistan. Initially promoted to the public as an incursion to eliminate Al Qaeda as a threat after the 9/11 bombing of the New York towers, the war has dragged on since its inception in 2001 and morphed into the elimination of the Taleban (an Afghan Pashtun tribal entity with previous links to Al Qaeda). New Zealand troops have likely been involved in capturing Taleban fighters and sending them to the US Bagram air base in Kabul for torture. A rather dubious analysis suggest that up to 20,000 civilian casualties alone have been killed in Afghanistan since 2001- the mortality figures for direct war impacts are likely to be in the many many thousands. ( the U.S. doesnt “do headcounts” anymore.)
New Zealand continues to be a key member of the U.S. run western intelligence community “Five Eyes”, which attempts to maintain the U.S state’s power and control over most of the world, and while NZ has publicly been cast in the shadows of ANZUS because of its nuclear-free stance, it in reality maintains an extremely active role.
However , even with the huge amount of information provided by internet and phone tapping provided to “Five Eyes” intelligence ‘experts”, it is clear that those security operatives have over the years since the second world war, acquired a farcical level of incompetence and lack of intelligence and judgment. Their wild misinterpretation of other states’ and non-state entities’ intent and motives has resulted in massive suffering to millions of human beings. It is highly likely that incompetence is not going to be changing any time soon.
In summary, ANZAC Day; that tribute of poppies and wreaths and guns , celebrates not our glorious dead, but the utter farcical futility of war and the greed of the powerful.
At the time of writing, the jingoistic drumbeats of war are sounding to fight once more the Russian threat against “poor little” Ukraine.
I note the U.K.s Daily Telegraph criticizm of the New Zealand’s stance in not following the white Anglosaxon “Five Eyes’ ‘intelligence’ group in condemning China’s excesses at home and abroad, and our ‘cosying up to China’s communist rulers’.
One wonders when the Daily Telegraph and other jingoistic British and other Western mainstream media, will begin condemning the U.K.s longstanding abuse of foreign populations; its enthusiastic military support for the House of Saud’s genocidal war in Yemen, its ongoing support of Wahhabist jihadists in Syria and elsewhere, its illegal deportation of Chagos Islanders so it can help its buddy in war-crimes, the United States, establish an air base there, the ongoing imprisonment of Julian Assange; human rights media activist on spurious charges, or even begin to question for a moment the Uyghur genocide allegations almost exclusively coming from the clearly disturbed Adrian Zenz
I am thankful that the New Zealand government and Foreign Minister Mahuta has the balls to stand up to the bullying by the U.K. U.S., Australia and Canada in their zenophobic racist attacks on China (whose sole aim is to ensure that the United States and its buddies can continue to engage in genocidal action around the world for fun & profit without constraint), but it is now time that New Zealand exits from this shameful alliance and closes down the Five Eyes spy station in Marlborough.
Five Eyes is an alliance of bullies and war-mongering murderers, and we as New Zealanders are currently actively supporting their drone murders against innocents, supporting illegal wars, and of helping to amp up a nuclear confrontation with China and Russia.
New Zealand has a proud history as a nuclear free nation.
The Council’s 10 Year Plan’s ‘climate change’ position is remarkable in its minimalism, absence of vision and lack of understanding of the enormous impacts climate change and biodiversity loss will do to the way we survive in our district and around this country and the globe.
All previous measurements of CO2 levels in the past indicate that while we are predominantly in a latency period as oceans continue to absorb most CO2, we are heading for long term considerable temperature and sea level rises for many millennium.
We cannot stop these changes occurring to our world, even if we were to make good on our global promises and reduce carbon dioxide emissions substantially right now , but we can take action now to somewhat mitigate the extreme risks that climate change will bring to both humans, and other species that we depend upon for our survival- both the known and the currently unknown species.
Additionally, there is now considerable evidence that the loss of species diversity globally is likely to significantly reduce survivability risks for humans in the medium to long term. Retaining and restoring as much biodiversity in our communities as possible is therefore just as vital as attempting to reduce the impact of global heating.
Growing more trees that live for centuries is one of the key opportunities to reduce the impacts of rising levels of CO2, reduce species loss, provide some protection from intense weather events, enhance human wellbeing, and provide shade in summer and warmth in winter.
BELOW AREJust some of the key changes required :
Develop a well-funded programme to develop a local nursery to grow native plants indigenous to this locality, for both Council planting regimes, and also for property owners and community agencies.
Provide an educational resource (online and in person) on how to plant and grow more native vegetation and its importance to our communities and the planet.
Ensure all available areas in the surrounding hills are replanted in native trees (not pines, which dry out the atmosphere and ground). This will not only create more habitat for native birds, insects and other biota, but also, once the trees are established, help restore rainfall levels in summer to what they were prior to settlement, and somewhat mediate temperature fluctuations.
Plant native plant corridors from the hills to the coast to ensure long term viability of native wildlife.
Ensure all existing non-pine tree’d areas are maintained and extended on public and private lands..
Plant all available park and reserve areas with native trees. There are far too many grass areas in our district with no trees, which serve no use, other than to employ lawn mowers and produce more CO2.
Ensure streams that have been buried in culverts are re-opened to the air, and the water margins planted in native plants.
Provide incentives for businesses to plant trees on their properties- e.g. rates rebates.
Provide stronger guidance and enforcement of local agricultural businesses about their use of toxic pesticides, artificial fertilizers, and the considerable current threat to human welfare of groundwater contaminated with fertilizer runoff, particularly nitrates.
Financial and other encouragement for local food producers to become organic growers.
Develop a project alongside other local councils and the NZ Transport Agency to develop a low emission public rapid light transit system using electric public vehicles.
Council needs to be encouraging businesses and services to be truly sustainable and to use organic sources wherever possible whilst discouraging businesses that damage the remainder of our living environment through fines and regulation.
Council needs to establish a bio-impact measure for all goods and services within its catchment. Ie a simple graded scale that measures a business’ impact on climate change and species loss, so that consumers can start to make more informed choices about the products they consume.
Long term planning for ocean level rises, which will progressively increase; particularly road access to our coastal towns.
________________________________________
Postscript
My Council’s response below to anyone who made a submission to them on climate change… As can be clearly seen, there is no recognition that traditional cost/benefit analysis processes do not work when it comes to nature, and no recognition of the gravity of the environmental crises that have started to impact us, and will increasingly do so.
Nor is there any recognition of the other equally disastrous impacts of environmental damage; particularly species loss.
This planning strategy of burying one’s head in the sand is an option pursued by many local and central governments across the world…
Climate Change
We are experiencing more frequent weather extremes and effects, including floods, droughts and fires as a consequence of our changing climate. We have a large coastline, inhabited by thousands of residents. Adding to the complexity, much of our public infrastructure is built near the coast. Where to spend our time, effort, and funds to best prepare the <x> community for the likely effects of climate change and mitigate our greenhouse gas emissions is a key decision we needed to make. We asked you which of two spending options you preferred for Council to take to respond to climate change.
We decided to proceed with an affordable level of investment spread over the next 10 years. Once we have measured Council’s baseline emissions, we will investigate methods to reduce our emissions. The <x> Climate Action Plan is designed to be a living document. Suggestions from submitters and new knowledge (e.g. results from our emissions measurements) can be incorporated into a review of the Action Plan. The financial implications can then be worked through in further detail and consideration given to including them in future Annual or Long Term Plans.
Apparently we are expected to now believe that the Russians have now not only been paying the Taliban to kill U.S. occupying troops (likely ‘admitted’ after a little bit of healthy torture of a Talban suspect) but have also been blowing up Czech munitions dumps.
Apparently we are expected to now believe that the Russians have now not only been paying the Taliban to kill U.S. occupying troops (likely ‘admitted’ after a little bit of healthy torture of a Talban suspect) but have also been blowing up Czech munitions dumps. And that those pesky Russian GRU ‘intelligence’ operatives Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, identified by the ‘brilliant’ Western intelligence funded masterminds at Bellingcat (using Google Photos and other hi tech equipment) not only botched the poisoning of Sergie Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury in March 2018 , but had, 4 years earlier, botched the blowing up a Czech munitions dump, whose armaments were supposedly destined for the Ukraine after the Maidan anti-Russian coup in Ukraine.
“Hey guys, they swallowed that ridiculous story we made up about Gadaffi and the boxes of viagra for his troops to rape civilians, I’ll bet they swallow this one about Petrov and Boshirov again!”
The Russian government it would appear, has now lost its patience with the Americans after Biden deliberately insulted the Russian president as a ‘soul-less killer’, after years of sanctions of the Russian state, and will now make life very difficult for the remaining American diplomats in Moscow .
Diplomacy is thus now at an end between the two countries. In addition, the forceful tit for tat Russian response to the Czech expulsion of Russian diplomatic staff will mean that diplomatic efforts are also unlikely to occur in Eastern Europe in the near future.
40,000 NATO troops are massed near Russian borders and 80,000 Russian troops and other units are stationed close to the Russian border with Ukraine.
Steadily increasing NATO military exercises along the border with Russia seem to presage an attempt by NATO forces to probe for weaknesses and then attack Russia, or at least provoke a response from Russia that Western media can proclaim is proof of Russian evil.
Not content with setting the scene for a war over Crimea (a territory occupied by the Russians since it ‘acquired’ it from the Turks in 1774), and the festering Donbass civil war in Russian speaking Eastern Ukraine; the Ukrainian Kiev government is now bizarrely accusing another Russian ally, Iran, of deliberately downing a Ukrainian airliner in the confused aftermath of the Soleimani execution by the United States.
The decision by the Biden administration to withdraw some of it’s forces from Afghanistan by September 11 2021 , is indeed welcome and indicative of the total pointlessness of that 19 year war- other than to maintain a lucrative heroin supply trail for Western intelligence services. However the withdrawal is possibly also indicative of the American military’s recognition that fighting too many wars on two many fronts, is a recipe for defeat.
Alongside these aggressive actions go the sanctions designed to weaken Russia, Iran and China (and Syria, Venezuela and North Korea) for their temerity in not kowtowing to the American ‘world order’.
As American society and their economy continues to implode, we see increasingly desperate measures by the U.S. and their remaining ‘allies’ to try and contain and destroy those governments which do not support the American way of brutal colonial aggression.
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This short and innocuous tweet from U.S. Strategic Command on April 20th 2021, gives Russian and China clear warning that the U.S. is quite prepared to use nuclear weapons as a first option in resolving their differences.
Much has been said and written about the importance of economies getting back to ‘normal’ after COVID-19 lockdowns. Recently New Zealand, has reopened normal airline connections with Australia, its second largest trading partner (after China) and a major source of tourists.
The New Zealand government’s decision to re-open air links with Australia has been partly driven by humanitarian issues of families isolated from each other across “the ditch” (the Tasman Sea), but predominantly to prevent the collapse of New Zealand’s large tourism industry.
Little has been said however, on the impact the re-invigoration of New Zealand’s tourism industry will have on climate change and biodiversity loss.
Ironically the decision to create a travel bubble with Australia coincides almost to the day of the announcement from Moana Loa in Hawaii that their instruments have for the first time measured CO2 levels at more than 420 parts per million.
As an island nation, almost all tourists into New Zealand come by plane, and often from much longer distances than Australia (which is 4,163 kilometers away, or an air travel distance of 2,587 miles.). As Atmosfair notes, the burning of kerosene for airline engines is not the only major CO2 producer from jet planes. Jet plane veils and contrails, the build-up of the greenhouse gas ozone in a sensitive atmospheric floor, and the breakdown of methane, are also major factors in increasing CO2 levels and consequent global warming.
Suzuki notes that airtravel will continue to grow rapidly until 2050. If left unchecked, they could consume a full quarter of the available carbon budget for limiting temperature rise to 1.5 C. and …The global tourism industry is responsible for eight per cent of global emissions — more than the construction industry!’ and ...The total carbon impact of a single flight is so high that avoiding just one trip can be equivalent to going (gasoline) car-free for a year.
Tourism also has a significant impact on biodiversity loss; which, even more than climate change; is the greatest risk to this planet. While some have claimed (including U.N. reports) that tourism can increase biodiversity by encouraging humanity’s awareness of the natural world, and bringing human resources to play which protect species and prevent habitat loss; the arguments are clearly specious.
Providing humans with access to our remaining pristine natural environments necessitates environmental destruction and habitat disturbance. Roads, walking tracks, platforms, toilets, helicopters, boats, water and electrical utilities and housing are just some of the methods by which habitats are degraded by tourist activities.
And that is to ignore the impact of the introduction of pollutants like human sewage, supply waste and the accidental introduction of non-native microbes, weeds, insects and animals.
It is time for us all to throw away the ‘bucket list” and learn to be more present in the here and now, and be content with what we have. Creating mini-gardens, communal gardens and re-growing natural spaces in cities can help us all to understand the world in which we live and with which we are defendant upon.
Learning to observe, respect and value the small pieces of the natural world that are all around us, and to which we are inextricably (and often unknowingly) bound.
The natural world is not something for us to ‘experience’ and take a snapshot of; it is all around us: it is part of us, it is ‘us’.
It is more than time for all governments to demand that all products and services consumed, including tourism, are clearly packaged to show the devastating impacts they have on our ever dwindling natural world via biodiversity loss and global heating.
Then we will at last, know the true costs of our consumer society.
We are all in desperate need of real investigative journalism which is not paid, bullied or feel obliged to follow the current state propaganda line.
There is not much more one can say about Media Lens’ concise summary of the activities of Western countries- particularly the United States and its closest ally, the United Kingdom, in engaging in serial murder over many years, against countries and peoples more vulnerable than their own, whose misery and deaths can be exploited for profit.
While the barbarity of the U.S. and U.K is documented elsewhere in great detail, Media Lens’ great strength is to outline the consistent role Western mainstream media have played in actively supporting those wars and the lies they knowingly propagated ( or in a few cases simply failed to do their journalistic duty of investigation)
As the wheel turns, the U.S. will in a few short years, no longer have the preeminent global role it has acquired through military domination. As the U.S. global role declines, so the need for justice for those many millions victimised by that imperial power will steadily rise until those responsible are indeed facing the court at the Hague for their war crimes .
Alongside them in the dock will surely be those media propagandists who knowingly aided and abetted their crimes with media lies and encouraged the lust for war.
On a more absurd and light-hearted note, we note the allegations from an Australian TV channel, Channel 9, that Vladimir Putin hacked their TV broadcast because he didn’t like what they said about him . While the ridiculous allegations are unsurprising from such a news source, there will be any number of gullible xenophobic Australians ready to be whipped up into a frenzy about malign state actors ( any one of either China, Russia, North Korea or Iran-take your pick) interfering with their TV viewing !
We are all in desperate need of real investigative journalism which is not paid, bullied or feels obliged to follow the current state propaganda line.
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