Author: paulm100m

Media in an Unstable World

The world for humans continues to become more uncertain and more unstable; although you would largely not know that from our mainstream media. Climate Change is a little problem but we are working on it ,they say. Lets just ignore that we nowhere near achieving any of our much vaunted global targets of containing, let alone reducing, Co2 emissions- we are therefore definitely heading for global climate disasters in less than a decade.

Catastrophes like the recent flood devastation in Dera in Libya are third world issues, not our problem (and absolutely nothing to do with the avaricious Western world’s destruction of Gadaffi’s prosperous Libya (and his brutal death with a bayonet up his anus by Western supported jihadists, which US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton subsequently delightedly cackled about).

We are witness to an existential war in Ukraine, where, we are told, Ukraine will inevitable triumph against Putin and the evil Russians, but where in fact the West continues to coerce the Ukrainian military into sending thousands and thousands of its troops into slaughter against overwhelming superiority of Russian arms (Russian total air superiority, vast mine fields and overwhelming artillery capacity) .

And once independent academic analysts like Robert Patman in New Zealand along with the rest of the West, now regurgitate the nonsense of China being a threat to the West (and to New Zealand) and thus the appropriateness and necessity of the West continuing its brutal and sadistic “rule based international order” to confront both Russia and China.

Strangely too we hear very little mention in Western mainstream media of the drumbeat of a new multi-polar world. A world where the West can no longer dictate the economic terms through violence, war and blackmail of the South. Perhaps the images of African Sahel countries finally booting out their French colonial occupation forces raises some eyebrows in countries other than France, but there appears little recognition that this anti -Western movement is gaining steam across the South.

And strangely we how somehow not informed by mainstream media that the $6 billion that the US government has now so generously released to suppliers of essential goods to the Iranian population for the release of five Americans held by Iran for spying, was in fact Iranian state money stolen by the United States with their unilateral illegal sanctions against Iran, because of Iran’s non-existent nuclear weapons development.

Or perhaps you missed the very quiet admission by the US’s General Milley recently that the much hyped Chinese ‘spy’ balloons that drifted over the United States in February 2023 actually didn’t have any spy gear installed on them at all.

But hey, who needs facts when you need to inflame good white folks against the evil Russians,Chinese and Iranians ( let alone the North Koreans that the US committed 3 years of brutal genocide against in the Korean War).

And let’s just forget about climate change, what is more important than ensuring our global economy and consumerism keeps expanding?- right to the very end…

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Links

Climate Collapse – The Grim Silence Of Our Leaders
New Zealand’s priority is helping defeat Russia in Ukraine
Why the media aren’t telling the whole story of Libya’s floods
Why the media aren’t telling the whole story of Libya’s floods

How Americans released in swap deal engaged in espionage activities in Iran (presstv.ir)

Boiling Frogs-again…

You of course know the old (true) metaphor) that frogs in a pot which is slowly heated up, can’t register when the water is too hot for their survival and get boiled alive..

Well, something very similar is now happening for humans across the Northern hemisphere.

Source photo: https://showyourstripes.info/c/europe/all

And something very similar is likely to begin occurring in the Southern Hemisphere in early 2024 with the advent of El Nino and the rapid rise in Pacific ocean temperatures.

Source: https://research.csiro.au/acc/fifty-years-of-carbon-dioxide-co2-measurements-in-the-background-atmosphere-of-se-australia/

But it’s obviously all ok, because all our politicians around the world have far more important things to worry about– their next election defeat for starters, cosying up to big business for another, or sending another billion dollars’ worth of weapons to Ukraine. It’s as though climate catastrophe doesn’t really matter- if we just talk about it from to time and do nothing- that will placate the masses…

The response to the Greek Islands’ wildfires largely caused by climate change are just one of so many hypocritical and insane responses to climate change. The primary purpose of the fire response is not to eliminate the risks to vegetation and wildlife- oh no!-its to ensure that more tourists can flown in next year – and consequently ensuring that CO2 production from the thousands of tourist jets flying in and out of Greece ensure further climate catastrophe. Or we may give the example of why Paris has spent billions to clean up the Seine River -not to ensure river wildlife can return to the river after a century, but to ensure there will be millions of humans attending the Paris Olympics- all coming in on those CO2 producing jet planes from around the world…

Source : EDO https://edo.jrc.ec.europa.eu/edov2/php/index.php?id=1000

We need to ensure our communities can more easily adjust to the changes to our world and lifestyles that will occur whether we like it or not. Global trade will shrink as a result of more dangerous weather and destruction of sea, air and land routes. Transport insurance costs have already risen and will continue to escalate sharply as risks increase exponentially in the next few years. Local weather is becoming more and more unpredictable and dangerous. Multiple points of access to resources at a local level will become a priority.

In addition, to try and mitigate some of the impacts of global warming, species loss and destruction of soils and all the other species that we rely on for our survival, we need to urgently action the following.

In no particular order of priority (because they are all priorities), the following initiatives need to be initiated—NOW! …..

  • All food and products are produced within a 20km radius of major population centres. This limits both the transit/CO2 costs to the customer, and the transit costs of the producer.
  • Essential resources that cannot be produced or accessed locally are stockpiled in key places locally.
  • Transportation routes to other countries and locally, are multi-dimensional- ie different modes of transport which minimise biodiversity and climate harm.
  • All sales of goods account for their real costs to the environment.
  • All government and local government decisions take into account the environmental impact on emissions and biodiversity.
  • Businesses annually account and taxed for the environment costs of their business operations. All sales of goods account for their real costs to the environment.
  • All homes and businesses are retrofitted with high standard insulation. Where feasible solar panels are installed which link to the electricity grid.
  • Water from roofs is stored for either personal use or recycled into the water supply.
  • Urban areas and individual housing must have trees planted in every available area where food is not being produced.
  • All towns and cities are required to provide free or very low-cost community gardens and individual allotments for citizen food production.
  • Other species have the same rights as humans. A formal recognition by the UN and all state actors that all life is sacred and do not exist solely for humans’ benefit.
  • All products produced are capable of repair (or cannot be sold) and real recycling and repair occurs locally.
  • Governments and businesses are required to restore indigenous biodiversity to an agreed percentage each year.
  • Air travel is banned unless for absolutely essential business and family issues (e.g. tourism, global sports and cultural events are limited).
  • Solar, wind-powered or sustainably charged battery-powered sea, air and train vessels are developed and effectively utilised.
  • Farming is required to transition to sustainable practices within 10 years (no sprays, chemical fertilisers, and no ploughing- (use of permaculture, organic farming and biochar among other tools).
  • Indigenous trees are planted on a vast scale, on the understanding that they will never be cut down and ‘harvested’.

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The above initiatives may seem extreme to you- or even perhaps ridiculous and totally unnecessary. Why, you might say, can’t we, as Bill McKibben argues in his New Yorker article, simply return to 1960s levels of consumption?

The reality is that we have gone too far- way too far, beyond that. We have since had 80+ more years of consumption gone crazy, of CO2 production through the roof and an enormous amount of the biosphere destroyed. We not only need to stabilise humans’ impact on the living world we rely on for our existence, we need to start to actively repair it.

And yes, many of these proposals will have an impact on jobs; but without this forward planning job losses are going to be least of our worries- there will be little long term employment ins world of climate uncertainties and ongoing climate disasters.

Planning and actioning changes now, to cope with some of the enormous impacts climate change will have on our lives, will reduce some of the high risks of loss of income, food and essential resources that every one of us will face in our new climate world.

The alternative does not bear thinking about.

Postscript

In response to the recent US Congressional hearings on whether UFOs and aliens really exist, many of the U.S. public have stated that we really need to know whether we as human beings are really ‘alone’ in the Universe.

The unequivocal answer is of course that we are not alone, there are millions of sentient species right here on this planet that we have never bothered to try and communicate with as equitable partners. They may not look like us, behave like us, destroy the planet in the way that we do, (just like in fact our hypothetical alien friends from outer space would do), but they are, nevertheless our partners on this little world- and we are NOT alone!- let’s start to behave as though they really are our partners on this world!

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Links

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/to-save-the-planet-should-we-really-be-moving-slower?mc_cid=75c3f2d013&mc_eid=895987eb5b

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/05/230517122123.htm

https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/why-action-on-the-climate-crisis?

We need an Earth System Treaty to save civilisation. And we need it now

http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue96/Rees96.pdf

https://theecologist.org/2023/jul/31/future-what-future

World War Three

With the decision of the West to provide F16 fighters to the Kiev government we are heading rapidly closer to a world war.

It is not that the F16s are likely to be a ‘game-changer’ -as the Western media have called all of the previous Western wonder-weapons provided to Ukraine. It is the fact that the decision to provide these weapons is one more example of the West crossing the red-lines they promised they would not cross about the provision of more military support to Kiev.

Once it becomes evident that F16s are not going to provide the military advantage to Kiev that has been promised (Kiev cannot provide the necessary air support infrastructure to create a safe environment for the new fighters), nor can they match the newer generations of Russian fighters and its surface and air to air missiles), the next Western red-line will have to be crossed.

The West, after saying that training Kiev’s pilots on F16s would take at least 18 months, now says the training will take 4 months. This very likely indicates that the pilots flying the F16s will not be Ukrainian – they will be Western military ‘retirees’ or ‘volunteers’ and/or be operated out of Polish airbases..

Sow the seeds - US war poster

Kiev and the West is determined to ‘defeat’ the Russians in Ukraine- to ‘return’ Crimea and the Donbass to Ukraine (and then to carve up Russia in the way the neocons attempted to in the Yelstin years) . Given that President Putin gave the key rationale for the Ukraine invasion as protecting Russian speakers in the Donbass against neonazi Kievan troops, and given that Crimea has been a part of Russia since Catherine the Great annexed Crimea in 1783, a ‘return’ of Crimea and the Donbass to Ukrainian control would be an existential threat to the whole Russian Federation (not just Putin) and the Russian population would never accept that loss.

This is particularly so since Kiev has made it clear that it regards Donbass’ Russian speaking citizens as second class citizens who either have to be forced to speak Ukrainian or be exiled to Russia. Similarly Ukraine has made it clear that anyone in Crimea who has supported Russia (95% of the population at last count) will be deported to Russia once they ‘reassert’ control of the Crimean peninsula.

Western ‘intelligence’ and their military leaders are presumably aware of the existential nature of this war to Russia; although a knowledge of history and facts is not a prerequisite for decision-making in the US).

While NATO and the West insist they are not at war with Russia, the facts speak otherwise. Kiev’s military would have collapsed more than 6 months ago without NATO weapons; without NATO’s satellite and drone surveillance of Russian troops, without its ‘advisors’ on the ground in Ukraine, without the training of Kiev’s troops to use NATO weapons, and without the ‘retired’ NATO military ‘volunteers’ on the front line. NATO thus continues to pretend that its only providing ‘assistance’ to Kiev- the reality is very different – this is a NATO war.

It is now a very small step for NATO soldiers with NATO uniforms to be on the ground in Ukraine and supporting Kiev from NATO airbases and missile sites in Europe. Once that final line is crossed-possibly in the next few months, China will have no choice but to enter the war on Russia’s side. China has certainly provided economic support but likely no overt military support to Russia since the war began, and is fully aware that once Russia is disposed of and carved up, (as NATO strategists have made clear is the goal) they will be next.

The extension of the military ring around mainland China and the recent development of a second AUKUS/NATO military containment ring in the Pacific with New Guinea and other Pacific nations, plus the West’s universal abrogation of the ‘One China’ principle regarding Taiwan that the West had previously signed up to, are clear signals to Beijing that war with China is coming, and coming soon. Russia must survive for China to survive.

China continues to play a constructive and peace-making role in Ukraine as Patrick Lancaster notes, although to date, without success, unlike its outstanding recent success in brokering peace between Saudi Arabia and Iran to the great consternation of the U.S., U.K. and Israel, who had hoped that an Iran/Saudi confrontation would be the catalyst for regime change in Iran and access to its oil once again as in the ‘good old days’ of the brutal American controlled Shah.

The United States is desperate to ensure that it maintains total control of the economic strands of the global economy; it rightly sees the expansion of non-US dollar transactions as a major threat to it’s control, and its consequent capacity to threaten and cajole and extract the wealth of other nations who do not obey their wishes. And there are many in the West who are quite deranged enough for the world to endure World War 3 so that the West’s avaricousness can be maintained.

If the dollar collapses, the United States already in huge debt, will collapse rapidly. Its capacity to maintain its 600 plus military bases around the world will cease – and like the decline of the Roman Empire on fast forward, its military men will return home to vent their frustrations on the Empire.

Thus neither side in this war can afford to lose. Those of us on the periphery of this battle of the giants, need to maintain our safety as best we can!

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Links

The War in Ukraine Was Provoked

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/28/the-moment-has-arrived-biden-must-give-ukraine-all-it-needs-to-win

A Saner New World

As the world heads into an unknown climate world, we need to be planning for a different future than the globalized one we imagined we would continue to live in.

In my little country of New Zealand, tucked away deep in the South Pacific ocean, rapidly warming surrounding oceans are creating a new climate world for us of sudden intense rainfall with increasingly damaging floods and higher temperatures.

More intense and more frequent weather events are allowing us the opportunity to see how completely dependent the living world is, including us humans, on the weather.

Where once we could rely on relatively stable weather patterns, the reality has dawned on us that our weather will become increasingly more unstable, intense, erratic and more damaging; not just for a few years, but for many many centuries to come.

But nowhere do we seem to be planning for this inevitable future. A globalised world of long supply chains of ocean going behemoths, cargo jets and steel rails are becoming rapidly increasingly vulnerable to weather events and ever-increasing insurer’s costs. (even if we ignore the impact of the massive CO2 injections to the atmosphere those long supply lines make!)

We must therefore rapidly plan for vastly localised food, energy and other necessity production and distribution; with short supply lines which are less impacted by climate extremes.

The result of localised production will be a smaller range of products, often less sophisticated, an immense reduction in exports to far-flung places which will be offset by localised production employment, cheaper local food and products produced on a smaller scale which require far less local resources and exploitation of the environment, and ultimately a political realisation that each economic /state entity can be largely independent of its bigger and more powerful neighbours and just needs to simply be accountable to its local population.

This does not mean a return to feudal times or the loss of many of the gains in communication and shared knowledge humans have acquired in the past 200 years. But it does mean an end to the big international corporations whose only motivation for existence is greed rather than also serving their local populations.

It also means a gradual decline in consumerism and international tourism as populations re-learn to connect to their local environments and draw strength and joy from their local communities without further destroying their own natural environments.

In the case of building a sustainable world for humans other species- less is most definitely more!

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Links

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/ocean-temperatures-heating-up

Super-charging our Descent into the Unknown

While a savage war grinds on in the Ukraine, killing hundreds of thousands of young men and women on its battlefields for no good reason (along with the other less visible but nonetheless as brutal wars in Yemen, Palestine, Syria and various states of Africa); planet Earth heads ever more rapidly down the slope to a new world: a world where wild weather is the norm, where temperatures and sea-levels climb ever higher at an increasing rate, and where fewer and fewer living things can exist.

A world where humans have increasingly become the predominant inhabitants. A world of humans convinced of their supreme intelligence and foresight when all the factual evidence suggests otherwise. A world where humanity’s short-term avarice has become the dominant driving force for major decisions about our long-term future.

Global warming and loss of bio-diversity are creating a world for which humans and others species are not prepared and will likely not survive in. That global warming and biodiversity loss is purely driven by greed. We do not need all this inanimate ‘stuff’ we have created to lead a full and happy life, but we are hell-bent on acquiring it!

Note that the emissions shown in the above graph relate to the country where CO2 is produced (i.e.production-based CO2) , not to where the goods and services that generate emissions are finally consumed. 

But the greatest threat to us is not so much the steadily increasing temperatures and wilder weather around the globe caused by man’s constant production of Co2- but the loss of other species. Note that the graph below by Living Planet relates only to ‘wildlife’ , which in their terminology, only includes figures on vertebrate species – mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians. It does not include insects, corals, fungi, or plants. The corresponding loss of total volumes and different species of insects is equally catastrophic. And man, not simply through his/her actions in increasing global temperatures, but predominantly through loss of habitat to produce more stuff, is the cause of these losses.

If we were to take the current reductionist simplistic approach to these losses we might say that we have no idea what impact these losses will have on humans, or what ‘benefits’ we could extract from those species if they were to survive. However if we were truly the intelligent species we claim to be, we would be examining the relationships between all these species, including ourselves and determining to preserve wherever possible, the current species we have.

We simply do not have a clue how each of the millions of species on this planet uphold the web of life here.

Increasingly ‘science’ is coming to the conclusion that all living things are sentient– they have awareness and are thus worthy of our respect, empathy and kindness, and a recognition and desire by humans to wherever possible preserve the lives of all other living things.

Death by a thousand cuts: Global threats to insect diversity. Stressors from 10 o’clock to 3 o’clock anchor to climate change. Featured insects: Regal fritillary (Speyeria idalia) (Center), rusty patched bumble bee (Bombus affinis) (Center Right), and Puritan tiger beetle (Cicindela puritana) (Bottom). Each is an imperiled insect that represents a larger lineage that includes many International Union for Conservation of Nature “red list” species (i.e., globally extinct, endangered, and threatened species). Illustration: Virginia R. Wagner (artist). https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2023989118

And while various mainstream media in the West (and almost nothing in China and Russia) talk about the latest research about climate change and biodiversity and how we need to be doing ‘something’ to address it, and while politicians and bureaucrats put in place global and state agreements to ‘manage’ climate change-in reality , nothing is happening to reduce the risks to us all.

And agreed, the path we are heading down is now a predetermined one, to very high global global temperatures for the next few hundred years or more that will almost certainly make life a living hell literally, but no-one is actually creating the mechanisms to stop humans creating more and more energy for more ‘stuff” we don’t need.

Our rate of destruction of this planet is not reducing!

And yet we humans are Masters of the Universe, are we not?

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Links

https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2019/05/nature-decline-unprecedented-report/

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2023989118

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/02/bees-intelligence-minds-pollination

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/apr/12/the-trauma-doctor-gabor-mate-on-happiness-hope-and-how-to-heal-our-deepest-wounds

Highest ever readings of atmospheric carbon dioxide in human history recorded

Mainstream Media Parrots

Moon of Alabama recently posted a blog on how Western mainstream media copies the memes about the supposed relationship between Russia and China being one of Russia as the ‘junior partner”. As Moon of Alabama demonstrates, the phrase’ junior partner’ is repeated an nauseam throughout the MSM media (the phrase is repeated verbatim in at least 12 mainstream media articles .

This is however by no means the first time that MSM have regurgitated opinion and phrases as ‘fact’. We saw the phrase “Insurrection’ bandied about by not just US but other English speaking media in the days and months after the mob invasion of the US Capitol on January 6th 2023. Clearly not one of the journalists and editors who published those articles even bothered to look up in a dictionary what the term ‘insurraction” actually means. A single largely non violent mob invasion of a building where a government sits and has no capacity to bring down that government, is not an ‘insurrection’.

I would suggest that where you see these identical media phrases duplicated and parroted across media channels, you can come to the easy conclusion that the media articles are in fact simply propaganda with often no basis in fact because the journalist has not in fact investigated any of the facts- they are simply regurgitating someone else lines- often a government official or politician with quite another agenda than truth or freedom or honesty

The danger to Western populations is that, by repetition, people come to believe these parrotted phrases as facts. If that media company says it- and that one- and that one- it must be true! And conversely when people begin to understand that many mainstream media articles are in fact pure bullshit- they come to believe that everything is a lie- to ‘trust nothing and nobody’- it’s a recipe for disaster in the ever increasing environmental disasters that now impact us all.

We need independent media (not tied to current political agencies or big business) that have the capacity and honesty to truly research and investigate events and can give at least one version of the truth!

We need media that is not beholden to the current allocation of largely corrupt of politicians and bureaucrats for their ‘truths’- journalists who look for the nuances and not simplistic catch-phrases- and readers with the intelligence to both examine the contradictions in the media that is presented to them, who take the time to look for other interpretations of the ‘truth’, and who examine thoughtfully what is ‘conspiracy theory’ or disinformation , and what is not.

Our planet depends on it. With the ever increasing threat of the Russia/NATO war in Ukraine escalating into a full-fledged war between the Russo/Sino bloc and white Western nations, along with the ever increasing severity of the climate catastrophe and catastrophic loss of the natural world, we are in desperate need of reporters who show some intelligence, bravery, honesty and independence from our white-washed mainstream media.

Postscript

Three large Western media companies; The Guardian, Der Spiegel and the Washington Post have published so-called revelations about Russian cyber warfare in the Vulkan papers with the following long identical quote in each paper ‘These documents suggest that Russia sees attacks on civilian critical infrastructure and social media manipulation as one and the same mission, which is essentially an attack on the enemy’s will to fight.’ along with other multiple duplications.

Just think what that says about our so-called investigative media and its ‘bombshells’…

_______________________________________________Links

https://seymourhersh.substack.com/

http://moonofalabama.org/

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/03/the-junior-partner-meme-gives-no-insight-to-real-changes.html#more

View at Medium.com

https://consortiumnews.com/2023/03/31/craig-murray-the-so-far-non-existent-vulkan-leaks/

The Ever-more-Slippery Slope

In New Zealand, my home country, we have recently seen two unequivocal examples of the impact of climate change on our landscape and society. The most recent example, Cyclone Gabrielle , brought heavy rains and winds to much of the northern part of New Zealand, leaving 7 dead and huge damage to roading infrastructure, farms and many homes, as well as many tragedies great and small; human and animal lives lost, people injured and livelihoods destroyed.

CHRIS SKELTON/STUFF.co.nz
Destruction in Esk Valley, Hawke’s Bay, after Cyclone Gabrielle tore through the area.

While cyclones are not infrequent summer visitors to New Zealand shores, the intensity of this weather event, coming just 2 weeks after severe flooding in our biggest city Auckland, and the significant damage the cyclone caused, have made it clear to New Zealanders; politicians, business people and citizens alike, that we will see much more of this type of weather event in the future as a result of global warming, and in particular because of our warming Pacific seas which feed the cyclones further and further south.

Our politicians talk about ‘building resiliency’ and ‘better planning for future events like this’, but nobody is talking about how to reduce our climate footprint or change our behaviours.

As just one example of the need to change behaviours, much of the impact of Cyclone Gabrielle would have been substantially reduced if we had had more long term forest cover rather than open grassland on hills and water catchments. Long term old growth forest not only softens the impact of heavy rain on soils and therefore reduces runoff, but also holds the soil together better with roots that go deep into the subsoil, reducing the risks of slips and the soil erosion that results in much of the mud that we saw pouring through people’s homes and farms.

Old growth multi-species forest also mediates the actual climate, increasing moisture in the air in dry weather and reducing the impacts of wind and rain in wet weather . Instead, New Zealand has seen the steady destruction of old growth forest, almost none remains on lowland areas, with pine forestry, grassland for sheep and dairy, and urban development replacing those anchors of stability and those islands of species diversity.

Pine plantations, mostly pinus radiata, (otherwise known as Monterey Pine, from California) and the consequent logging businesses, are huge money making activities in New Zealand. Labelled as ‘sustainable forestry’, large areas of New Zealand are now devoted to growing pinus radiata -most of which is exported as either wood chips or raw timber logs to foreign places. The pine trees have replaced in many cases the unique indigenous forests of New Zealand which hosted New Zealand’s multiple unique bird species.

The ground is stripped of all vegetation (killing all wildlife in the process) before the pine seedlings are planted in rows across the hills. As they grow, the pine trees dry out and acidify the soil- some small remnants of the indigenous forest may sprout again, but mainly the ground is dead and dry with pine needles and the air is silent of birds and insects. The pine trees grow tall and straight, and in 25 to 30 years the trees are cut to the ground, and the living soil churned to dust and mud with cutting and hauling logging machines.

In 25 years of pine tree growth, some birdlife and insect life will have returned, but that is immediately destroyed in the levelling of the pine forest when logging occurs . The tree trunks are hauled away in huge logging trucks to the ports for export but usually the branches and other remnants of the trees are left on the hillsides.

When heavy rains comes, the rains pulverise the denuded soil, washing the topsoil into streams and sending the branches (the ‘slash’) pouring down the streams into the rivers to then smash into bridges on their way to the sea and to finally coat beaches with their broken branches and the mud.

Are we then going to change our ways in New Zealand about this massively environmentally destructive, but lucrative logging ‘business’? You bet your life we are not!

The business of pine forest logging is just one example among many of a world where business rules are pre-eminent (i.e .money trumps everything).

Our politicians and businessmen will talk about the tragedy of people losing their jobs and of small communities imploding if we don’t continue ‘business as usual”.

They will argue it will be impossible to construct a sustainable way of life and no longer continue to destroy our world in the way we have learnt to in the last 200 years with our business farming methods (dairy, sheep and other monoculture farming).

Their ‘normal’ is the destruction by human ‘development’ of our living world that once sustained so many species in the past in New Zealand.

Options for the development of self- sustainable rural communities, where exports and big business become a thing of the past, are simply not an option! That is, until the damage to infrastructure and insurance costs make it no longer a business option!

So, rather than planning for the changes that need to happen now to mitigate climate change, we will experience sudden and dramatic dislocation at some point (not so far away in the future) when even bigger storms wash away our current livelihoods!

Addendum

It wold appear that the Labor Government’s Environment Minister dismisses any responsibility for the issues of pine forest ‘slash’ damage.

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https://teara.govt.nz/en/diagram/16836/life-cycle-of-a-managed-radiata-pine

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/131254089/cyclone-gabrielle-pm-paints-bleak-picture-with-big-challenges-ahead

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/484265/cyclone-gabrielle-reports-forestry-slash-wiped-out-major-east-coast-bridge

Parker’s office says slash not an Environment Ministry issue (msn.com)

I’m all right Jack! …..

Growing up as a child in the mid 20th century in New Zealand, I learnt a common kiwi satirical saying. ‘I’m all right Jack’ referred to those us New Zealanders who believed everything was going well for them and they didn’t care how anybody else was managing. The “I’m all right Jack’ kind of guy would do anything he/she liked and didn’t concern himself with the consequences of their actions for others…Back then we lived in a relatively closed island community, shipping was the primary transport in and out of New Zealand and radio shortwave from the outside world, our society was a social welfare community; an understanding that our government and citizens had a responsibility to support and protect those who were more vulnerable than ourselves.

It was certainly not the perfect society; monocultural, intolerant of difference and non ‘white’ races, with hidden seams of family abuse and violence. Some things have changed for the better over the years, but the ‘I’m all right Jack’ culture-though no longer a phrased commonly used, is rampant as it is everywhere across the globe. It is an Ayn Rand socio/psychopathic kind of culture: I have a right to do whatever I wish, and to hell with the consequences for anyone else.

But today, more than at any other time in history, individual humans can no longer avoid the collective impact of their actions. There are simply too many of us on this planet – there is no other refuge, no unexplored wilderness, where we can go when things turn out badly.

The urgency for all humans, particularly those in the West, to dramatically change the way we live our lives has never been more immediate. Despite all the hype, we can not ‘grow’ our way out of our environmental catastrophe (climate change and biodiversity loss). Neither can we stop that catastrophe from ocurring; but we can at least even now limit the extent of the damage.

We must return to a simpler life; a happier more content life, and a life that celebrates all other living things. We can either choose this new direction or we will be forced upon us against our wills.

This planet will survive; the question is will humans and other species living here now, survive the cataclysmic changes to our world that are upon us?

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Links

https://www.commondreams.org/news/natureserve-40-animals-extinction-us

A not so Brave New World

COP27, the meeting of the rich and powerful with a smattering of people who actually know something about global warming and its impacts, was a total disaster for the planet. No agreed reductions in fossil fuels but an agreement to ‘compensate’ poorer countries for the impact that rich countries ongoing CO2 production will have on their local environment.

The fact that there were at least 36 private jets which flew participants into the COP27 conference, spewing huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere is one small demonstration of what these conferences are about- looking good and taking no action while our living planet dies.

While there were many indigenous peoples attending the COP27 who were able to voice their concerns about the current state of the earth and make suggestions for change, their voice had absolutely no weight in the final decisions made by the big power-brokers ( who depend on a CO2 producing economy to keep the electoral money rolling in).

Those indigenous groups talked not only about climate change, but more importantly, about the loss of biodiversity and our dis-connection with the rest of nature which industrialization and commodification has done to our beautiful living world in the last 200 years. Without our fellow living things on this planet ; we are done .

The idea that giving some money to a poor country to compensate for a now unsolvable problem of environmental destruction is frankly bizarre, and amply demonstrates that mental vacuity of those rich and powerful people.

No doubt the money will be useful and may help poorer countries mitigate the losses to their local ecosystems and help humans survive in their devastated environment a little longer, but in many cases that money will simply be spent on more ‘development’ and ‘progress’ and thus more environmental destruction.

And as we can already begin to see, many of the global ‘rich’ countries are already struggling to cope with the environmental ‘costs’ to their own economies, so their capacity to pay anybody else for their own stupidity is soon going to be substantially diminished.

Everywhere we see the powerful and the media portraying climate change as some little problem we can solve- at some stage- but lets get on with the business of despoiling the planet now -while there’s money to be made!

I see sublime examples of this on my local state television news channel, who in one news segment show how our magnificent government has made some new pledge to reduce carbon emissions and the next news segment extols the virtues of that same government encouraging tourists from half way round the world to travel to New Zealand.(and home again). Those enormous jet plane carbon emissions (about 5 tonnes of Co2 each way) will of course not be counted in New Zealand’s carbon emissions but to the tourist’s home country, so naturally everything is ok!

We will undoubtedly exceed 1.5C increases in global temperatures in the not so distant future , and will also certainly reach 3.5C increases if we do not dramatically reduce our consumption of energy globally. Green energy solutions; solar, wind and wave can make that transition a little easier, but they cannot ever replace the quantity of energy from oil gas and coal we continue to consume at ever increasing rates.

We all need to come to terms with consuming less and helping to recreate the natural world .

If we don’t, and very soon, Nature will decide for us in not so pleasant ways.

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Links

https://doomberg.substack.com/p/exit-stage-left?

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/11/21/another-terrible-failure-cop27-ends-no-action-cut-climate-wrecking-fossil-fuels?utm_source=daily_newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=daily_newsletter
Chilean Indigenous Activist Says COP27 Promoted Devastating Mega-Projects
Badly injured developing nations promised palliative care at COP27
COP27: Australia promotes fossil fuels as pathway to carbon neutrality

A Letter to New Zealand’s Defence Minister

Kia ora  Mr Henare

I note with interest your and the Labour Party’s unequivocal support for the current government in Kiev on your recent visit to Ukraine.

https://www.1news.co.nz/2022/11/20/defence-minister-peeni-henare-visits-ukraine-meets-counterpart/
Concurrently and interconnectedly  I note New Zealand’s decision to vote against  the annual  UN resolution   ‘COMBATING GLORIFICATION OF NAZISM”.

https://stuartbramhall.substack.com/p/52-countries-vote-against-un-resolution

FROM https://stuartbramhall.substack.com/p/52-countries-vote-against-un-resolution

These two  interconnected decisions make clear New Zealand’s position to  support the Kiev government, a regime which  is  unequivocally militarily and politically supported by neonazi groups like the Azov and Aidar battalions  and political  groups like the Right Sector, and which  for 8  years has been  shelling and  killing  more than 10,000  innocent Ukrainian people in  the Donbas simply because they  want to  speak  their native language, Russian (note that these figures are  confirmed by the Organisation for Security in  Europe (OSCE)

New Zealand equipment and targeting information is undoubtedly also being used by the Kiev military to  continue to fire missiles at Donetsk City and its civilian  infrastructure.

While the Russian invasion of Ukraine is to be unequivocally condemned, a path to peace must be negotiated which dispassionately  examines the reasons for this war  and Western  governments’ refusal  to  honour the Minsk  agreements signed by  Kiev, which would have  meant the Russian  invasion would never have happened.

While previous Labour administrations like David Lange’s and Norman Kirk’s had the moral  courage to  push back  against  the NATO white mans’ club, which continue to drone murder,  torture and initiate wars against those who do not wish  to ‘compulsorily share’ their resources with the Western  world, this Ardern government has cemented its relationship  as a NATO ‘ally’  and a key member of the Five Eyes group and continues to  enthusiastically  facilitate those illegal and immoral  activities. 

One would have that thought that those who have been victims of white man’s colonialism would have  taken some courage and   initiative to  distance New Zealand from  these activities of the white man’s club. New Zealand  is, and will increasingly become a pariah  state in the South  and East while it maintains it enthusiastic support for  NATO and the current ‘international  rule based order’,  which  every  non  Western  state recognises as code for the right for the US and its allies to do  whatever it wishes , including sanctions, targetted killings and  extreme violence against  whole populations. 
Does not the current Labour government have the courage to  push back  against  this ever expanding and dangerous war  that  NATO is fuelling at  the expense of likely  hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers, and demand that  each  side sit down to negotiate firstly a cease-fire and then a peace agreement which  is endorsed at the UN?

I sincerely  hope that  this Labour Government does belatedly recognise that New Zealand’s international and defense policies and actions  are currently not on  the moral side of rectitude.

Postscript 6th November 2022

The Telegram channel Rybar made the following post on 5th November.

#Ukrainian #Nazi group, within Azov Movement, Karpatska Sich, translated to Ukrainian the New Zealand shooter Manifesto that inspired the #Buffalo White Supremacist shooter.

The Ukrainian-language translation of the Christchurch shooter’s manifesto, flanked by a sticker for Ukrainian neo-Nazi group Karpatska Sich.

The New Zealand shooter Manifesto that inspired the #Buffalo shooter is a “must read” for all #NeoNazis and White Supremacists worldwide.
Here a group of #Ukrainian #Nazis from Karpatska Sich holding copies of the book translated to Ukrainian by the Nazi elitist group inside #Azov movement.

Neo Nazi Polish/Ukrainian group Karpatska Sich made a hateful video regarding the Pride marches in the EU the year.

(Note also the ‘sieg heil’ Nazi salutes)

Follow:
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses

In other words, the New Zealand government’s military is funding, training and likely imbedded with neonazis in Ukraine who are directly implicated in the New Zealand mosque shooting in Christchurch in 2019, which the same NZ government has roundly condemned as a terrorist act.

New Zealand is supporting terrorism.