Author: paulm100m

A Few Little Pieces of Gold and Silver

A Revised Letter to the Editor to a local New Zealand newspaper:

The current New Zealand government has, in  a  few short months, proposed a Fast Track  Bill to permit friendly quick-rich developers to effortlessly destroy  our natural  environment  which  we  all rely upon, not just for our wellbeing, but for our survival. 

Similarly  the proposed revisions to  the Resource Management Act  not only assist in this quick-rich process by stopping Councils from  designating  for at  least  3 years  Significant Natural  Areas, but also permit farmers to  resume ‘mud-farming’ and other farm process  that not only destroy water quality  but significantly impact on the wellbeing  of farm animals.

But perhaps the pinnacle of achievement of this government to date in putting cash before humanity, is its proposal  to  resume Livestock Export by Sea. Thousands of cattle spend weeks at sea in pens wading in their own faeces horrific and terrifying conditions – but it makes lots of money!

The mark of a good human being is one who  treats all other living beings with kindness, compassion and respect.I find it extraordinary  that supposedly educated government ministers put money that they  and their mates dont really need  more of, before our long term  survival and our humanity.

I would therefore respectfully suggest  that  Prime Minister Luxon  and his Cabinet  Ministers, spend a month  at  sea in a livestock  transport  ship  wallowing in  their faeces as a learning experience.

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Links

https://eds.org.nz/resources/documents/media-releases/2024/make-a-submission-on-the-fast-track-approvals-bill-using-edss-template/

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/514993/government-reveals-first-changes-to-resource-management-act

Mud farming
Live export trade in New Zealand

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/511689/government-drops-need-for-councils-to-comply-with-significant-natural-areas-provisions

https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO2407/S00001/live-exports-a-global-animal-welfare-crisis.htm

The Beginning of a Journey into the Unknown

The famous Chinese ‘Book of Changes’, the I Ching; which provides guidance on becoming a wise person, notes in Hexagram 56 “The Wanderer” that “We are all wanderers in the Unknown. Those who travel beside the Sage are unharmed’.

Increasingly for people in the West particularly, there is a strong sense of the uncertainties that lie ahead of us. What was solid before: our economies, our climate, our status in the world, our future in general -are no longer certainties. And increasingly it is made apparent that we are being led by the blind- our ‘leaders’ who choose not to see, to look beyond their own immediate needs and greed and who ignore all the impending warning signs of a very different world ahead, and who choose not to implement plans for that new world ahead.

Israel’s genocidal attack on the people of Gaza has been enthusiastically supported by parties on the ‘left’ and right in the Western world, and Western mainstream media has carefully followed that line while pretending to be impartial.

We now have the spectre of elections in both the U.K and US where the choices in each case are between political leaders who demonstrate no morality and even less intelligence and who display minimal differences in their unconditional support of the already rich and powerful and mesmerisingly stupid foreign policy decisions. And with the further spectre of the Ukraine war being inexorably won by Russia with the soft backing of China and the global south, these Western ‘leaders’ see their power and illgotten wealth slipping away: there is panic.

Once again (for the hundredth time over the past two centuries) the ridiculous argument that “The Russians are coming!” is being promoted in MSM media to scare the bejeesus out of naive Western populations. Not only do the politicians agree on their brain-dead racist assumptions about Russia and China and the Global South, but their advisors are also in lock-step! The quality of decision-making in the West has (hopefully) reached rock-bottom!

Much of Africa has taken the opportunity of the West’s dissaray to rid themselves of the incredible exploitation by the last of the African colonisers- the French. Now, once again the indigenous Kanaks of New Caledonia are rising up against their colonialist French masters- but President Macron is holding firm- there is too much money to be gained from the nickel mine in New Caledonia.

A recent Canadian piece of analysis characterised one of the major risks to its population is ‘disinformation’ (otherwise known as perspectives on the world that are not aligned to the official perspective). It had previously been accepted in the West that expressing alternative views on the world was a key element of democracy (provided that it didnt actually change the power structure!)-but no longer…Diversity of opinion and knowledge is one the key factors that can help ensure humans’ evolution does not come to a sticky and dead end sooner rather than later.

Now, young people who express their opposition to Israel’s appalling genocide can be arrested as agitators and ‘antisemites’ and those who oppose the West’s involvement in the Ukraine war are ‘Putin’s puppets’. Rational analytical thinking is not permitted.

That Canadian analysis also points to climate change as a major threat to Canada’s (and the world’s ) wellbeing , but nowhere in any state’s manifesto across the globe are we informed that one of the key rational ways to address climate change and loss of biodiversity is de-growth. Economic “Growth” (an oxymoron if ever there was one) is our true God. Everything is measured against the ‘God of Growth’ who knows nothing and cares for nobody.

The only little problem with the fiscal measurement process called GDP is that it cannot measure the health and living viability of the planet nor the wellbeing of the multitude of species who inhabit it, and on whom human beings are totally reliant upon for our survival.

In my own little part of the world, our new New Zealand coalition of right wing zealots have in a remarkably short time, slashed 5000 government jobs, (or ‘red tape’ as they prefer to call it!), made access to government welfare that much harder, attacked the core premises of Te Tiriti o Waitangi (our founding document), enhanced payments to rich landlords and promised tax breaks which will inevitably only benefit the wealthy. To add to the flavour they are currently working on a “Fast Track Act’ with their big business ‘colleagues’, to ensure that ‘development’ is not stifled or delayed by foolish issues such as environmental protection. Short term greed must always out-weigh long term human wellbeing and environmental protection.

Sadly New Zealand’s politicians , like so many Western politicians, seem to be progressively dumbing down to the point of becoming brain-dead zombies mesmerised by dollar signs, and where honesty, compassion and an understanding of the complexity and fragility of the living world and our total dependancy upon it, are things of the past..

And all the while, climate change pushes all living things on the planet ever more rapidly into a totally unrecognissable and unpredictable new world..

____________________________

Links

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/17/economic-damage-climate-change-report

Climate ‘poses systemic financial risks’ (theecologist.org)

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/longform/2024/5/18/refuge-of-the-last-dreamers-luang-prabang-a-city-suspended-in-time

https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/last-dance-at-the-vampire-ball-west

SOME THOUGHTS ON  FISCAL  IMPLICATIONS OF CLIMATE CHANGE AND BIODIVERSITY LOSS FOR NEW ZEALAND (and others)

SOME THOUGHTS ON  FISCAL  IMPLICATIONS OF CLIMATE CHANGE AND BIODIVERSITY LOSS FOR NEW ZEALAND (and others)

Climate change fiscal  costs are largely currently assessed as solely the impacts of major weather events and consequent  restoration costs. While restoration costs after extreme weather events are likely to  rise exponentially over the next  century  and  beyond, there are significant other fiscal  impacts that also need to  be factored into planning. Note also  that  damage to infrastructure from climate change will  steadily increase in  both intensity and frequency over the next  100  years and beyond.

Ignoring future planning for these certainties will  result in  even more damage to  New Zealand’s economy and its citizen’s livelihood   safety and wellbeing  than is necessary. The impacts of climate change will be disproportinately felt by  those with limited incomes.

The longer we delay  anticipating and responding to the impending fiscal risks from  climate change, the greater the impacts will be on New Zealanders.

Food security for all, but particularly those with limited or no  income, is a key issue in  maintaining the wellbeing of New Zealands’  human population.

As climate change increasingly impacts New Zealand,  food supply chains are likely to  become more and more disrupted, resulting in  increasing costs  and decreasing volumes for food and other supplies.

Supply chain  disruption will occur for  a number of  reasons:

  • More and more frequent intense  climate events will  result in more  frequent road/rail  washouts  and flooding of increasing magnitude both within  New Zealand and beyond.
  • Sea and airline cargo  will  be increasingly disrupted by  extreme  weather events  (including a significant rise in  flight turbulence)  and  intense oceanic storms,  resulting in increase  damage to  transport vehicles and food stocks, higher  insurance costs and resultant food price increases, as well  as disincentives for farmers to produce more produce as export costs rise.
  • Drought,  flood and increases in  temperature in New Zealand and overseas  will  result in  reductions in animal numbers  and plant based food.
  • Rising sea temperatures, along with  ongoing unsustainable  fisheries exploitation are likely to  mean  the large NZ fishing industry  will  collapse within  a few decades
  • The recent  expansion of the dairy ’industry’  into  areas of New Zealand which  are  totally reliant on  intensive irrigation, like the majority of the East  Coast of the South Island, means such  areas will  become completely unsustainable for water intensive crops and  animals. Already  high irrigation levels  in Canterbury,  as a result of drought, are resulting in  unsustainable levels of water being drained from  local  rivers and aquifiers as well  as nitrate and other pollution of potable water supplies
  • Rising sea levels will  increasingly impact  on  both sea and airport  infrastructure. Most of New Zealand’s major airports are built in  flood prone areas or  close to the sea,  and  rising tides will  impact  on port sea  walls,  wharves, cranes and  container storage areas. The cost of rebuilds and/or relocation of air and sea port infrastructure are very  significant.
  • Consequent reduced  food production for export  by  New Zealand food producers will result in  increasing balance of payment’s deficits which  will  likely  result in  fewer overseas food and other  imports, as well  as less government taxation, resulting in  less income to  finance climate change mitigation.
  • As climate instability increases, specific areas of New Zealand like Northland and the East  Coast  of the North Island are increasingly vulnerable to major ongoing  flood and slip  damage and  consequent food production losses. South Island East  Coast  and Nelson droughts are  also becoming more frequent, with similar consequences.

Climate Change is also not only impacting of food supply but is  also beginning to  significantly impact  on  overall  insurer costs for housing,  businesses and new ‘developments’. As insurance premiums rise, all  fiscal  transactions will  slow, as  fiscal risks to  suppliers and purchasers  increase. A slowing economy ( estimated  conservatively as  a reduction of at  least  20% in 30 years) will result in  job losses and further risks to  human wellbeing, unless forward planning and implementation occurs now

Disruptions to and increased risk in  air flights will also  inevitably  result in  progressive reductions  in  tourism  income into  New Zealand (currently 11.4% of GDP)

The recent  analysis of Civil  Defence responses to the Hawkes Bay weather event has demonstrated that  Civil  Defence is not sufficiently resourced to   respond adequately to  even the current level  of extreme events.   Two  cyclones within  a few weeks,  as a Vanuatu  has recently  experienced, would stretch CD to breaking point. Significant increases in central   and local CD resourcing are going to be essential. Similarly, Police and NZ Army will  need upgrades to  cope with  the increasing frequency and magnitude  of climate extreme events.

Energy Consumption

New Zealand’s increasing consumption of energy, particularly in  increased use of EVs and other machinery that is being transitioned to  electrification and also IT /AI/Cloud based impacts. While NZ currently has just  sufficient sources of renewable energy, if current electricity  demands continue to increase, considerable investment in  renewable energy production in  solar  and wind will  be required.  

Carbon Credit Offset  Costs

If we continue under this current government policies to  take less action on  local  carbon reduction, we will  need to  purchase increased offshore  carbon  credits in  the billions of dollars to  meet  our international  obligations. Additionally, failure to meet  our international  obligations will  impact  on  our capacity  to export our produce to many countries.

Biodiversity Loss

The loss of New Zealand’s indigenous biodiversity is  well  documented and acknowledged as a major ongoing concern. However biodiversity loss of both  indigenous and non-indigenous flora and fauna  is occurring at an  alarming rate in New Zealand.

 We do  not  fully understand the intricate interconnections that occur between all  species in Earth’s  soil  and air  and the risks to  inadvertently tripping ‘tipping-points’ resulting in extreme  and sudden biodiversity loss are  consequently high. There are also  significant  difficulties in  attempting to  measure the fiscal  implications of biodiversity loss. However the current trajectory  of biodiversity loss in New Zealand and across the world, has the potential to  not only severely contract  GDP globally,  but potentially to  extinguish  all  life on  earth.

Piwakawaka (NZ's fantail)

The fertility of our soil, increasingly contaminated with  artificial  fertilizers, pesticides and weedicides is rapidly  deteriorating, particularly as mycorrhizal fungi; essential  to soil fertility, cannot survive in toxic environments. New Zealand’s continued capacity to  produce high volumes of agricultural  exports will  therefore be compromised in  the medium  to long term. The loss of pollinators  through toxicity, loss of habitat  and  introduced viruses is also a  major risk

Population Impacts

In recent years  NZ  governments have  increasingly used  migrant labour as a  cost-effective  mechanism  to increase GDP, however without the consequent   necessary increased development of critical  infrastructure in housing,  health or education. Rapidly increased populations have also  put increasing pressure on  biodiversity as ‘developed’ urban areas have expanded exponentially, and factors like recreational  fishing and foraging by  ever  larger numbers of people , impact  on  species numbers.

Potential  Solutions

Forward planning is urgently required  to both proactively  reduce the inevitable adverse impacts of climate change and to  ensure sufficient funding and other resources are available to  local  and regional  government and local  communities. The human  and fiscal  costs  of not proactively planning  for the inevitable will  be exponentially larger unless work is begun  now.

 Every Local community  must  be encouraged  and resourced to become as self-sufficient as possible as supply chains are increasingly disrupted.

Local  versus National

It is clear that  local  governments will  not be able to  finance the continuous work  to  both  reduce  local  climate change impacts and to  respond to local   adverse events through rates increases. A  formalised collaborative practical  partnership  between local and national  funding bodies needs to be established specifically to  address climate change risks.

National Resourcing

National  systems are  becoming  increasingly financially pressured to  respond to  adverse event mitigation. It is therefore be essential  to  urgently establish  a national  funding body , likely based on  the ACC contribution model that  can   resource the immense amount of work  required.

Iwi

Local  Maori iwi have traditionally played an immensely valuable role in  supporting local  populations put at  risk  by  weather and other adverse  events . Because of their  strong local  knowledge of the environments and resources  and connections and their hugely  practical  responses to  events , iwi  need to be  fully resourced to  support ongoing emergencies. Further, local  iwi’s traditional  and Te Tiriti role of guardianship  (Kaitiaki) of their lands needs greater recognition and support.

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References

https://www.oxfordeconomics.com/resource/the-global-economic-costs-of-climate-inaction

ashttps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1002016023001388 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-22/the-link-between-climate-change-and-turbulence/103877522

An obscure climate accounting decision with billion-dollar consequences
Piwakawaka (NZ's fantail)

The Striking Stupidity of Western Leaders

15/4/24

I am writing this blog post the day after Iran’s retaliatory attack on Israel after Israel’s missile attack on the Iranian legation in Damascus which killed several high-ranking IRGC officers. It is worth noting that one of rationales given by Iran for its subsequent attack on Israel was the fact that-despite the UK, France and the US knowing full well that Israel’s Damascus missile attack was a blatant and unique (at that point) breach of both the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, they refused to endorse a UN Security Council resolution condemning the attacks. By doing so, the US, UK and France have acknowledged that they and their Israeli proxy do not choose to abide by the international rule of law or human decency.

While Israel and the West claims that most Iranian drones and missiles were shot down and that there was minimal damage; there are other reports from Iran, Hezbollah and military analysts that there was significant damage to two Israeli airforce bases and a command post in the Golan Heights– all of those Israeli military sites had been used in the Israeli Damascus attack.

Given that there appear to be no casualties from the Iranian attack, it would seem that Iran has taken some care to avoid deaths-in contrast to current and historical Israeli genocidal actions in Palestine and, to a lesser degree, Lebanon.

There are also unverified reports that Iran notified the US of its intentions before the attacks, which then allowed the US , the UK and the Jordanian Army to shoot down many of the Iranian drones before they reached Israel. However there are strong indications that Iranian high velocity/hypersonic missiles did get through and hit the 3 Israeli bases.

Washington reports that President Biden persuaded the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu not to launch a further reprisal attack on Iran despite Netanyahu’s earleir threats to do so. That’s a possible reason for the current uncharacteristic restraint from Israel, but in my view the more likely reason is that Israel’s military advised Netanyahu that a further attack on Iran would be suicidal, given Iran’s capacity to break through Israel’s much vaunted ‘Iron Dome” anti missile shield.

In addition,Washington on both the Republican and Democrat wings, have been itching to attack Iran ever since the Iranian revolution in 1979 which threw out the US and UK intelligence agencies supporting the brutal Shah’s Savak secret police, invaded the US embassy in Iran and nationalised the Iranian oil industry. This most recent Iranian attack comes after Iran’s previous attack on America’s illegal military bases in Iraq in response to President Trump’s decision to murder General Solomeini, Iran’s chief commander coordinating the destruction of ISIS in Iraq and Syria. That previous precisely targetted Iranian attack- despite again giving the US fore-warning, resulted in some considerable destruction and injuries at several American air force bases in Iraq.

Washington is thus now well aware that Iran can and will respond to further aggression from the US or Israel. The US’s multiple military bases in the Middle East are highly vulnerable to Iranian missile attacks, as are its navy and its commercial shipping in the Gulf of Iran. Sky-rocketing oil prices caused by blazing oil tankers in the Gulf would not improve Joe Biden’s chances of re-election for one thing!

So, predictably the West will further sanction Iran for responding to Israel’s major breach of international conventions when it bombed Iran’s Damascus embassy.

All of this action comes on the back of 6 months of the most depraved genocidal attacks on the Palestinian population in Gaza by the Israeli ‘Defence’ Force. The accuracy of that genocidal description has been confirmed by both the International Court of Justice and the UN, despite the denials from Israel’s Western allies, who continue to pretend that Israel’s genocide is a war against terrorism- there is however too much money at stake for the West to back down from their collusion in genocide now. President Biden alone gets enormous ($5.2 million over 34 years) money personally from the Jewish American agency AIPAC, and most of Congress is likewise in the pocket of AIPAC.

And the EU will of course not sanction or condemn Israel for its ongoing murderous savagery in Gaza.

Western media (and particularly my own New Zealand media) works hand in glove to desperately support the illusion of rectitude by America and its allies and reject their complicity in Israel’s genocide . We cannot be informed about the Nakba of 1948 for instance, the international implications of destroying another country’s Embassy, and we are never admitted into the mystery as to how Gazans are somehow dying of starvation- (what could be causing that we wonder?), or why there are many thousands of Palestinian brutalised hostages in Israeli ‘jails’ who might be exchanged for Israeli hostages?

We are not to learn how really depraved and corrupt our Western politicians are..

In Britain there are clear indications that the Jewish lobby funnels huge amounts of money into both the Tory and Labour parties (as Craig Murray notes 40% of Labour’s shadow cabinet, at least, are financed by the zionist lobby)as well as what they bizarrely call the ‘House of Lords’ to ensure both parties unanimously support Israeli mass murder in Palestine, despite their government lawyers acknowledgment of that genocide. Ironically Keir Starmer, the current Labour leader who is likely to sweep to power in the next UK general election, despite his incompetence and corruption, was once a human rights lawyer, so is knowingly complicit in this murder. And let’s not forget their dear ex prime minister Boris Bojo Johnson, whose sabotage of a Ukraine/Russia peace deal in 2022 has now resulted in his having the blood of over 400,000 Ukrainian men on his hands and his non- existent conscience.

I am ever hopeful as the world moves away from this brutal Western ‘rule based order’ to a multipolar world, that these corrupt stooges in the West will be committed to the International Court of Justice and spend the rest of their lives behind bars. It remains a mystery to me how these Western ‘leaders’ can face the world (and the mirror), knowing they have no integrity, no honesty and no compassion. If it were not for their savagery, I would pity them.

And corruption further drives our environmental destruction- government subsidies for oil companies to produce more oil to produce more global heating from CO2 now total more 7 trillion dollars in 2023. Why would politicans do that, knowing full well that global CO2 levels have already passed the 1.5C degree maximum the world agreed on only a few years ago? Follow the money…’There are no pockets in a shroud’ as my grandma used to say…

Critical thinking is clearly not a strong point for a Western ( or any other)politician . The amazing level of simple blind prejudice of Russia for instance allowed the analysts and leaders of the West to assume (contrary to the actual pre-existing evidence) that Russia would collapse under the West’s sanctions , that the ‘brutal dictator Putin’ would fall and be replaced by someone eager to please the West, while Russia would be defeated in Ukraine because NATO’s Western weapons were so much better than Russian ones and their Western military geniuses so much smarter than Russians!

So it was quite ok to fund train and support neonazis and other nationalist crazies in Kiev who believed they were descended from the Nordic master race, whilst the inferior ‘asiatic’ Russian hordes only had outside toilets and stole washing machine chips for their weapons!

Even now the West simply can’t seem to get it into their heads that they are on the wrong side of history and the wrong side of humanity. The Global South wants no more of the West’s brutal exploitation and colonialism and flat-out lies. And for some strange reason the Global South wants a liveable world!

The evidence is unequivocal, our so-called civilisational ‘progress’ has been made on the backs of environmental destruction and ecocide. Politicians across the globe have consistently refused to acknowledge the real costs of energy consumption and human ‘development’ on our planet and ourselves. The charade of the COP meetings fools no-one

Those devastating costs are only now being made manifest and will continue to do so at an accelerating rate for the next 1000 years or more.

But hey!- whose counting?

Postscript

Israel supposedly DID send a few Sparrow small air to ground missiles into Iran in response, and their terrorist proxies in Iran, the MEK, supposedly also sent a few toy quadrocopter drones of Isfahan– so I kind of got my analysis wrong- but not really!

As a sidenote: ‘In 2017, the year before John Bolton became President Trump’s National Security Adviser, Bolton addressed members of the MEK and said that they would celebrate in Tehran before 2019.’-wikipedia

Don’t Buy This Product We’re Advertising!

Girl in a Natural World

Have you ever seen that kind of email header in your inbox? -hmmm-maybe not!

(Note: this post has been reproduced with the kind permission of changethatmind.com )

Our ‘modern’ society puts enormous pressure on all of us to consume and buy more; whether it’s the ads you see pop up on your smartphone as you scan the web, your social media accounts, your local newspaper or your TV, the billboards on your way to work or on  the public transport you use-the exhortation to buy, buy, buy is constant and ever more insistent.

And our politicians extol the virtues of an ever bigger GDP, of ever more ‘progress’.

And we are all the victims of this propaganda war; we can’t escape, and we all succumb to one degree or another. We feel the need to have something more modern, something better something bigger, something more ostentatious, or even just keeping up with our friends, family or colleagues to have something at least as good as theirs. Why is that, do you think?

We’ve all heard that stuff about there’s only one Earth, but we all act like we don’t believe it and keep consuming enough for at least two! Maybe you’ve noticed how every year there’s a little less greenery, a little more concrete, or even how there’s far fewer bugs that splatter on your car windscreen, or that you don’t hear the birds you used to hear and see when you were younger.

Do you ever wonder why almost all the things we buy are inanimate things? -made of plastic, metal or dead plants?

So as our human population increases more and more, and every one of us wants more and more on this lonely little planet- what’s going to give?

And what can we do instead of consuming more and more?

‘Take the Jump’ has some great suggestions on how to decrease your footprint in the world…

Take The Jump

What if we all reduced our consumption back to the level of what was being consumed in the 1950s in the West? How hard would that be?

The ‘de-growth’ strategists give us a realist’s views of what we need to do to save our planet, and live a fulfilled, joyful and connected life.

Below is CNBC’s take on what degrowth means…

And then there other parallel strategies that can also help reduce our footprint like reducing the stuff or ‘clutter’ in your home.  ‘Homes & Gardens’ have some great ideas on reducing clutter. And there can be a certain pleasure in letting others get some enjoyment from the things you no longer need; whether it’s donating them to a charity or recycling agency, or selling them on Ebay or whatever your country’s equivalent online trader happens to be.

There’s no doubt our world is changing, and humans.  inevitably, will have to change along with those changes- whether we choose to, or whether nature chooses for us.

Our making the choice for ourselves now is so much the better choice!

To a more fulfilled life and better world!

Paul at ChangeThatMind.com

Note that ChangeThatMind is not an affiliate of ANY of the agencies noted in this post; and thence does NOT receive any payment on any of the products not sold through this website!)

Other Relevant Posts

Discover Hope for Humanity’s Future

https://www.the-trouble.com/content/2024/1/16/repair-the-rift-a-review-of-slow-down

New Zealand Supports Gazans to Die Faster

The New Zealand government , unsurprisingly, has, along with 11 other Western countries, decided to withhold funding to UNRWA because of allegations by the Israeli apartheid regime in Tel Aviv that 12 of its thousands of staff in Gaza and the West Bank had been involved in the October 7th attack by Hamas on Israelis.

As Amnesty International makes exceptionally clear-‘At a time when Israel, the occupying power, continues to flagrantly violate its obligations vis-à-vis Palestinian refugees in Gaza and the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, UNRWA has long served as a sole lifeline, offering indispensable humanitarian aid, education and shelter. The agency also provides desperately needed aid for millions of other Palestinian refugees living in neighbouring Arab countries.”

As is made clear in the video below of an Israeli Knesset representative calling for the destruction of UNRWA several months ago-the elimination of aid to Gazans has long been a strategic goal of Israel as it continues to demolish and kill everything in its path in Gaza.

Please note that Noga Orbel’s statements are not the ravings of a lone psychopath, they are what passes for normal and acceptable in Israel’s parliament.

The United States, United Kingdom , Germany, France, Japan, Switzerland, Canada, Netherlands, Italy, Australia and Finland –and now New Zealand have all agreed that, despite the fact that they know Israel has been consistently lying for its 75 years of existence, to justify its ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, that they should ‘suspend’ funding to the UNRWA which has been the literally sole lifeline of food and water to Gazans trapped in Gazan while Israel bombards them into oblivion and blockades and destroys all essential services to Gazans.

What additionally needs to be said about the pyschopaths coordinating this genocide?

What these 12 ‘white’ countries (Japan is an honorary obedient white country in their eyes) are doing is directly aiding and abetting the psychopaths in Tel Aviv, in the mass murder of Palestinians. Without UNRWA aid to Gazans, many many more Palestinians will die.

The Zionist’s bizarre ideology insists that only Jewish people can live in the land of Palestine, and anyone else who has lived there who is not Jewish must be removed one way or another- through murder, imprisonment in Israeli jails or the open air concetration camps of the West Bank and Gaza , or expelled to refugee camps in another country.

This 75 years old strategy, begun in 1948 by Israel’s military with the Nakba (the Palestinian ‘Catastrophe’), is apparently all kosher and ok with those 12 white countries.

That 2 million Gazans will now either starve to death, die by disease from polluted water, freeze to death from lack of shelter or lack of health services destroyed by Israel, is of course of no concern to these ‘civilised’ countries.

Purely coincidentally of course, the Israeli allegations and the very prompt response from Western nations to halt aid, comes just days after the interim ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which (despite the subsequent denials of Israel, its Zionist supporters and many of these same white nations) established a prima facie case of genocide by Israel against Gazans.

The so fondly quoted US “rule based international order”(which Scott Burchell  has aptly described as ” Washington’s confected alternative to international law, the so-called “rules-based international order”, is now exposed as nothing more than a hypocritical protection racket in free fall’.) and the western governments and their politicians and bureaucrats who so slavishly support it, has now been brutally exposed for what it is – the ghoulish face of racist psychopaths perfectly content to let millions die, in that so honorable cause of propping up their careers and profits.

Postscript

https://www.1news.co.nz/2024/02/02/nz-eyes-aukus-pillar-two-what-is-it-and-how-could-it-impact-us/

One might have thought that NZ politicians were not quite so stupid as their Aussie colleagues in signing up to the U.S. inspired AUKUS protection racket-confronting non-existent threats from Russia & China & wasting millions in taxpayers money.

Perhaps they might have been better to consult with the new Argentinian president’s dead dog?

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Links

Parliament debates NZDF Red Sea deployment | RNZ News

https://www.indcatholicnews.com/news/49030

Has International Law Survived, or Has the Western Political Class Killed It?

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israels-allies-accelerate-genocide-freezing-unrwa-funds

The Western club- with its own morals, rules and rewards

https://amnesty.org.nz/reverse-cruel-decision-to-withdraw-unrwa-funding

Gaza 2023 -Wikimedia
Gaza 2023 -Wikimedia
Gaza 2023 -Wikimedia
Gaza 2023 -Wikimedia
Gaza 2023 -Wikimedia
Gaza 2023 -Wikimedia
Gaza 2023 -Wikimedia

Fmr. UNRWA Spox Refutes Israeli Smears (usefulidiotspodcast.com)

New Zealand Aligns itself with Genocide

23/01/23

New Zealand’s new Coalition government has, as of 23rd January 2023, formally agreed to support Israel’s genocide in Palestine by agreeing (at US request) to provide a small military force to support the American ‘coalition” to bombard Yemen.

The New Zealand prime minister Christopher Luxon, has committed outrageous lies to say there is no connection between the Gaza terror and the actions of Ansarallah (Houthi). Ansarallah has made it abundantly clear that the reason it has been attacking shipping heading to Israel is to try and force Israel to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza.

Mr Luxon is self-evidently lying through his teeth in saying there is no connection between the Red Sea attacks by Ansarallah and Gaza. Unsurprisingly, our ‘great’ New Zealand journalists at the news conference where Luxon was interviewed on the Yemen announcement, blindly accepted these lies without a question.

The UK and US in their bombing campaign in Yemen are simply continuing the genocide that their previous Saudi proxy had waged in Yemen for 9 years from 2014, using American and UK weapons, American and UK military instructors and guidance systems, and in all likelihood, “retired” British and American pilots to bomb one of the poorest countries in the world.

New Zealand’s conservative National Party which Chris Luxon leads, has a long history of sucking up to every US war of atrocity- from Korea, (shelling North Korean fishing villages from our warships) Vietnam (sustained mortar fire into Vietnamese villages), Iraq( hiding in their military camp in Basra) , Afghanistan (supporting the US and Australians to murder and torture Afghans) to its proxy war in Ukraine ( providing logistics to Ukrainian neonazis to shell Donetsk City civilians with cluster munitions) ; but all tiny amounts of military support  intended to bolster the U.S.’s ‘legitimacy’ in fighting these wars on the world stage.

However, the United States no longer has the credibility or respect of the Global South or indeed much of the world; particularly because of its unconditional support for Israel’s genocidal savagery in Gaza.

As Caitlin Johnstone notes:

We live in a dystopian world where it’s completely normalized to subvert human interests to commercial interests, to toss tens of thousands of lives into the incinerator for wealth and convenience. Where war profiteers rake in vast fortunes for selling instruments of mass murder to genocidal governments, and where the most powerful empire in history declares a war to defend shipping containers at the cost of human life.

Don’t ever let these sick freaks convince you that this is normal.

The National Party, along with its right wing allies; New Zealand First and ACT, are stuck in a time warp where the “civilised’ white man rules the world, and might is right.

New Zealand’s credibility globally has just sunk to a new low.

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Links

The Biden Administration’s Absurd Justification For Its Yemen War

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2024/01/hoping-that-china-will-help-with-yemen-is-delusional-bullshit.html#more

Humans’ ‘Intelligence’

I was reminded of human beings’ selective cognition by a wonderful recent quote from Patrick Lawrence: ‘The core purpose of ideology is to preclude all need of thinking of any kind’.

As Patrick succinctly points out- frameworks for thinking necessarily limit what we can see and understand- what is outside the framework is often invisible, and unknown to us, or simply incomprehensible or dangerous.

We are of course all limited by pre-determined reference points in our attempt to understand how the world works. The subtle and not so subtle messages we acquire by osmosis for those who care for us (or don’t) in our early formative years. There are a multitude of hypotheses about how that works- from Freud to Piaget to Vygotsky to Stephen Krashen.

Suffice to say that who we become and how we perceive the world is largely determined by our environment, and that environment is, in our early years at least, predetermined by others and random events that impact us. But even those ‘random events’ will be framed in our consciousness by what we have experienced before. One person’s experience and response to an event will often be entirely different to anothers..

And while our childhood provides the strongest framework for perception which may last our lifetime, we are constantly being impacted by new experiences which may subtly, or not so subtly, impact that framework; the experience of trauma for instance can profoundly rewire that mental framework.

And as that wired framework becomes more solid and impermeable to new experience, the lifelong construction of our egos begins. New experiences begin to predominantly simply validate our previous experience and mental framework, rather than providing new insights on the world and ourselves; we become progressively ‘locked-in’ to being ‘this particular person’- or rather this particular ego construction. Validation and inflation of the ego becomes the predominant ‘mind-set’ for many human beings for the remainder of their lives. In a way, our egos take up the brain space that might have been left for inspiration and insight!

And in addition, (going back to Patrick Lancaster’s point), we might choose one or other ideology, or fixed mindset, to further validate that sense of who we ‘think’ we are, and which group of humans we believe we belong to.

Taking all that into account, we might guess that those humans who desire to becomes ‘leaders’ of a particular section of the human race; their predominant driving force is not the furtherance of the good of that group they wish to lead – but the furtherance of their own egos. Once their egos are partially satisfied with that power that leadership endows, there is only one way forward; more power and a larger inflated ego!

And, as we have just stated, the bigger the ego,the smaller resultant brain power there is available to respond to events in innovative and open ways; the cliched, the prejudiced, the racist, or the violent response, is what comes first and easiest.

As 2024 begins to unfold in a multitude of often violent tumultuous ways, it is becoming abundantly clear that our current global leaders are definitively, not up to the job. Whether it be the weather balloon sized egos of Trudeau or Macron, the ruthless egos of Putin or Xi Jinping, or the demented ego of Joe Biden determined to bring the world down around his ears as his dementia unfolds. And let us not forget the pyschopaths like Israel’s Netanyahu, or the excessive intellectual limitations of Germany’s Olaf Sholtz or Britain’s Rishi Sunak!

And lets not go anywhere near Ukrainian comedians who become politicians!

With potential emergencies like global wars initiated in Ukraine or Taiwan, and the very real mammoth global disaster that is global warming and bio-diversity loss, the world desperately needs leaders who can put aside their egos, who can bring people together with really innovative ideas, and who then have the courage to make those ideas happen, for a sustainable and more peaceful world!

What global structure do we need to make that leadership pool happen?

Welcome to 2024! 

New Zealand as a Commodity for Sale

New Zealand’s new prime minister, Chris Luxon, has repeatedly stated that his job is to ‘run New Zealand’s economy’. He apparently does not understand that money is a commodity designed to facilitate transactions for the good of the whole population and is not an end in itself.

As the leader of the conservative New Zealand National Party, Luxon like his fellow right wing coalition parties, ‘ACT’ and ‘New Zealand First’, believes that reallocating more wealth and power to those who are already wealthy will be good for the country (though obviously not so good for those already on low incomes). As has been often previously quoted- ‘they know the price of everything and the value of nothing’.

In addition, the third leg of the coalition triad, the ACT Party, with an Ayn Rand-ish ‘pathology, is attempting to remove one of the key bases of what New Zealand is, a multicultural society where the indigenous Maori population have guaranteed rights, as enshrined in the Treaty of Waitangi (Te Tiriti), signed between Maori and the British Queen in 1840. Thankfully, Maori are immediately rallying and demonstrating to make clear to this white government that a revision to the Treaty is unacceptable.

Te Tiriti flag-the Treaty of Waitangi flag

It is a sad indictment of NZ’s education system and society, that so many New Zealanders continue to believe that making more money is what matters. ‘Making money’ requires ‘development’, whose direct coefficient is further destruction of the environment. ‘Development’ and ‘environmental destruction’ are, and have always been, directly linkaged- but strangely few economists ever cost the environmental impacts of ‘development’ and ‘progress’ into their financial assessments.

But environmental issues are of little concern to our brave new coalition partners. What apparently matters is a strict ideological commitment to the ‘free market’ and the firm punishment of those who do not commit to “New Zealand values” (whatever those might be). Thus strategies such as ‘boot camps’ for young people who offend, stiffer prison sentences and more prisons for offenders (particularly our Maori population), removal of Maori as an official co-language of the state, more motorways rather than public transport or EV options, and a re-commitment to our long-term ally, the genocidal ‘international rule based order’ (not UN based order) United States… In other words, a return to a more predictable ‘safer’ and ‘whiter’ world of 30 years ago, so they apparently believe..

Evidence, facts and research are not part of the decision-making process of this coalition of the mindless, harking back to a non-existant past when everything was clear and certain.

Unsurprisingly, managing a country is not quite the same as a managing a budget,nor is managing a state budget the same as managing a company budget, whose only bottom line is profit, rather than the sustainable wellbeing of its population and environment.

While New Zealand’s coalition partners ‘ideals’ do not quite match up to the imbecilic status of the new neoliberal leader of Argentina, Javier Milei, who is most certainly poised to completely destroy what remains of Argentinian society and its economy, we can get a strong sense of New Zealand colaition leaders reflexively returning to old tried and true historic conservative policies which have been amply demonstrated to be ineffective and damaging to key sectors of the country -except for the wealthy

And, as the US and the West’s unqualified support for Israel’s latest war of indisputable evil on the Palestinian people has so clearly demonstrated – the West is not on the ‘right side’ of history, (nor has it ever been) . As a multicultural country with illusions of fair play and freedom, New Zealand needs to be seen to be standing solidly with the oppressed of this world; those in the South who have been abused, murdered and stolen from by the West for centuries. Instead we are cosying up once again to the global homicidal maniac- the United States!

New Zealand’s new Foreign Minister veteran politician Winston Peters has been quoted as saying Israel has a ‘right to self-defence’-obviously deliberately ignoring the UN’s declaration of rights that an occupying power (Israel) has a right an obligation to protect that population whose land it occupies ( Palestinians) Israel cannot therefore be legally be at war with its own people, the Palestinians, who it has corralled into concentration camps like Gaza and the West Bank for 75 years. While calling for a ‘cease-fire’, Mr Peters obviously places far more weight on being obsequious to the US, than eliminating long-term Israeli genocide and ethnic cleansing.

And finally, New Zealand’s coalition partners, while no longer publicly expressing their scepticism about climate change, their new policies of ‘growth, growth and more growth and damn the environment’ clearly demonstrate their contempt of the stark environmental issues facing us all, and their blindness to its realities. No more light rail or subsidies for EV cars, more motorways,more tourists from places halfway round the world; it is like the last 20 years of growing environmental catastrophes simply did not exist!

Full speed ahead to that environmental brick wall, chaps!

The Psychopathic West

As of 19th November 2023, the Israeli “Defence” Force (IDF) continues to bomb, fire missiles, bulldoze and steadily destroy the Gaza Strip, the 177 square kilometre concentration camp set up by Israel in 1975 to contain Palestinians already enduring a blockade limiting food water electricity and other resources.

As the “occupying entity’ Israel under international law, has an obligation to protect that population. Israel ignores all such UN requirements, and has consistently brutalised the Gaza and West Bank Palestinian populations, as it has done since the Nakba (the Catastrophe) of 1948, when Israeli soldiers killed thousands and forcibly ejected millions from Palestine into refugee camps across the Middle East.

Israel was only able to achieve that ethnic cleansing and subsquent genocide of the Palestinian people with the unconditional military support of billions of dollars and pounds from the United States and the United Kingdom. These two entities have thus made a 75 year commitment to genocide of the Palestinian people to ensure that European Zionists can live their apartheid dream of a Jews only state in Palestine -thus condemning all non-Jews in Palestine; many of whom can trace their families back thousands of years in Palestine, to lives as non-citizens, or, in the words of many Zionists- sub-humans.

Thus while the IDF continues its barbaric bombing of women, children hospitals universities,essential infrastructure and residential areas in Gaza under the pretence of fighting Hamas; the US and UK “authorities” secretly celebrate the final solution to the Palestinian problem-sending more missiles and bombs to Israel so that the Gazan population can be finally eradicated or forced into Egypt.

A cease-fire therefore is not an option; that would just prolong the Palestinian problem and might lead, (“God”-forbid) to a negotiated settlement – a 2 or 1 state solution.

British and US “authorities” are therefore dismayed at the enormous groundswell of public revulsion in the West to Israel’s barbaric response to Hamas’s terror attack on October 7th, which lead to the deaths of over a thousand Israelis and about 250 hostages. Increasing evidence shows that many of those deaths were caused by Israeli helicopter gunships shooting at anything that moved.

https://goingunderground.castos.com/episodes/bombshell-max-blumenthal-exposes-israels-bidens-lies-deceit-over-gaza-bloodbath-october-7th

It is ironic that it is only now that Western publics are beginning to appreciate what Israel stands for- a quasi-religious fanatic apartheid state prepared to undertake any barbarity to fulfil its messianiac goal of a Jews-only state in Palestine.

These acts of barbarity and dehumanisation of Palestinians are not a one-off; they are part of a systematic process of extermination of Palestinians that has been steadily evolving and constantly refined by the Israeli state since the Nakba of 1948.

Those who criticise the Israeli entities actions are deemed to be ‘anti-semitic’; strangely ignoring the overtly deeply racist and murderous anti-Palestinian actions of the Israeli state and its settler thugs, and ignoring the explicit racism of a state that only recognises one section of its people as legitimate citizens.

For 75 years Israel has been milking the myth of it being the victim against Arab terrorism, a myth that Western mainstream media has enthusiastically endorsed, despite the evidence. e.g. Even today the New Zealand state television channel, TVNZ1 conveniently refuses (despite requests) to acknowledge the existence of the Nakba when outlining their history of the ‘Israeli/Arab’ conflict.

Purely coincidentally of course, we note that New Zealand’s ‘Five Eyes’ ally Australia is providing targetting data of Palestinians to be murdered by Israel, through its Pine Gap intelligence monitoring facility. Almost certainly, New Zealand is providing similar data to Israel via its signal intelligence facility at Waihopai.

So why does the US and UK and most of the West “unconditionally” support these 75 years of brutal savagery by Israel?

Because its suits them. Israel is supposedly a rational “Western” (read “white”) state entity in the Middle East amidst a torrent of ‘unpredictable Arabs’ -who also dont have the “right” religion! Israel is a predictable conduit for Western arms into the region. Israel can act as a proxy for Western ambitions in the Middle East, can spy for them, and can undertake savagery in the region with terrorists that would be hard to justify at home; including ongoing assassinations of Iranian scientists and providing support to ISIS jihadists in Syria.

US and UK authorities continue to deny what is self-evident-that Israel is committing massive war crimes against the Palestinian people. Using the illegitimate excuse of ‘revenge’, Israel is indisputably committing the war crime of collective punishment. UK’s Labour leader (and bizarrely a human rights lawyer) Keir Starmer, has enthused about the right of Israel to commit collective punishment, knowing full well he is lying, and is thus complicit himself in genocide

The UK, France, and other Western nations have even attempted to make support for Palestine illegal (a gross human rights abuse in itself). Such is the desperation of the Western establishment to support apartheid Israel, no matter the cost. The effort to keep lying that Israel is a shining democracy with the right to ”self-defence’ by people like Germany’s Olaf Sholtz is astounding. Im not aware of too many democracies in the world that keep half their population in concentration camps, depriving them of basic necessities of life and human rights!- but such are the cruel fantasies that people like Sholtz have to make up to defend their complicity in genocide.

And all the while, Palestinian people of all ages are being massacred by the Israel state for the crime of not being Jewish.

Mothers, fathers, grandfathers, grandmothers, young children and babies; blown to pieces by Western bombs and missiles used by a racist psychopath state.

But none of this should be any surprise -the West has been actively engaged in the murders of millions in the South over the centuries, where a profit can be made- why stop that little scam now?

The difference this time is that the role of the West in this ongoing savagery by Israel is visible for everyone to see- despite the fabrications and prevariciations of mainstream Western media.

The lies, duplicity, brutality, greed and racism of those who cling to power in the West are exposed for all to see.

_______________________________

Links

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/11/19/when-it-comes-to-the-israeli-led-war-on-terror-follow-the-money

https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/israels-war-on-hospitals