Author: paulm100m

A Submission to my local Council on Environment Change

The Council’s 10 Year Plan’s ‘climate change’   position  is remarkable in its minimalism, absence  of vision and  lack  of understanding of the enormous impacts  climate change and biodiversity loss will do to the way we survive in our district  and around this country and the globe.  

All  previous measurements of CO2 levels in the past  indicate that while we are predominantly in  a latency  period as  oceans  continue to  absorb most CO2,  we are heading for long term  considerable  temperature and sea level  rises  for many millennium.

We cannot stop these changes occurring to our world, even if we were to  make good on our global  promises and reduce carbon  dioxide emissions substantially right now , but we can  take action now  to  somewhat mitigate the  extreme risks that climate change will bring to  both  humans, and other species that  we depend upon for our survival- both the known and the currently unknown species.

Additionally, there is now considerable evidence that the loss of species diversity globally is likely to significantly reduce  survivability risks for humans in the medium  to  long term. Retaining and restoring as much biodiversity in  our communities as possible is therefore just  as  vital as attempting to reduce the impact  of global heating.

Growing more trees that live for centuries is one of the key opportunities to reduce the impacts of rising levels of CO2, reduce species loss, provide some protection from intense weather events, enhance human wellbeing, and provide shade in summer and warmth in winter. 

BELOW ARE Just some of the key changes required :

  1. Develop  a  well-funded programme  to  develop  a local  nursery to grow native plants indigenous to  this locality, for both  Council  planting regimes,  and also  for property owners and community agencies.
  • Provide an educational resource (online and in person) on how to plant and grow more native vegetation and its importance to our communities and the planet.
  • Ensure all   available areas in the surrounding hills are replanted in native trees (not pines, which dry out the atmosphere and ground). This will not only create more habitat for native birds, insects and other biota, but also, once the trees are established, help restore rainfall levels in summer to what they were prior to settlement, and somewhat mediate temperature fluctuations.
  • Plant native plant corridors from the hills to the coast to ensure long term viability of native wildlife.
  • Ensure all existing non-pine tree’d areas are maintained and extended on public and private lands..
  • Plant all available park and reserve areas with native trees. There are far too many grass areas in our district with no trees, which serve no use, other than to employ lawn mowers and produce more CO2.
  • Ensure streams that have been buried in culverts are re-opened to the air, and the water margins planted in native plants.
  • Provide incentives for businesses to plant trees on their properties- e.g. rates rebates.
  • Provide stronger guidance  and enforcement of  local  agricultural  businesses  about their use of toxic pesticides,  artificial  fertilizers, and the considerable current threat  to  human  welfare of groundwater contaminated with fertilizer runoff, particularly nitrates.
  1. Financial and other encouragement for local food producers to become organic growers.
  1. Develop a project alongside other local councils and the NZ Transport Agency to develop a low emission public rapid light transit system using electric public vehicles.
  1. Council needs to be encouraging businesses and services to be truly sustainable and to use organic sources wherever possible whilst discouraging businesses that damage the remainder of our living environment through fines and regulation.
  1. Council needs to establish a bio-impact measure for all goods and services within its catchment. Ie a simple graded scale that measures a business’ impact on climate change and species loss, so that consumers can start to make more informed choices about the products they  consume.
  1. Long term planning for ocean level rises, which will progressively increase; particularly road access to our coastal towns.

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Postscript

My Council’s response below to anyone who made a submission to them on climate change… As can be clearly seen, there is no recognition that traditional cost/benefit analysis processes do not work when it comes to nature, and no recognition of the gravity of the environmental crises that have started to impact us, and will increasingly do so.

Nor is there any recognition of the other equally disastrous impacts of environmental damage; particularly species loss.

This planning strategy of burying one’s head in the sand is an option pursued by many local and central governments across the world…

Climate Change

We are experiencing more frequent weather extremes and effects, including floods, droughts and fires as a consequence of our changing climate. We have a large coastline, inhabited by thousands of residents. Adding to the complexity, much of our public infrastructure is built near the coast. Where to spend our time, effort, and funds to best prepare the <x> community for the likely effects of climate change and mitigate our greenhouse gas emissions is a key decision we needed to make. We asked you which of two spending options you preferred for Council to take to respond to climate change.

We decided to proceed with an affordable level of investment spread over the next 10 years. Once we have measured Council’s baseline emissions, we will investigate methods to reduce our emissions. The <x> Climate Action Plan is designed to be a living document. Suggestions from submitters and new knowledge (e.g. results from our emissions measurements) can be incorporated into a review of the Action Plan. The financial implications can then be worked through in further detail and consideration given to including them in future Annual or Long Term Plans.

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References

Chart of 420,000 year history: temperature, CO2, sea level

https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/blog/2020/cities-and-biodiversity-.html

http://www.fao.org/3/w2598e/w2598e06.htm

https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/09/1072292

The Russophobe Farcical Ride to War

Apparently we are expected to now believe that the Russians have now not only been paying the Taliban to kill U.S. occupying troops (likely ‘admitted’ after a little bit of healthy torture of a Talban suspect) but have also been blowing up Czech munitions dumps.

Apparently we are expected to now believe that the Russians have now not only been paying the Taliban to kill U.S. occupying troops (likely ‘admitted’ after a little bit of healthy torture of a Talban suspect) but have also been blowing up Czech munitions dumps. And that those pesky Russian GRU ‘intelligence’ operatives Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, identified by the ‘brilliant’ Western intelligence funded masterminds at Bellingcat (using Google Photos and other hi tech equipment) not only botched the poisoning of Sergie Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury in March 2018 , but had, 4 years earlier, botched the blowing up a Czech munitions dump, whose armaments were supposedly destined for the Ukraine after the Maidan anti-Russian coup in Ukraine.

This fits with the Skripal chain of events, where the most senior nurse in the entire British Army just happened to stumble across the Skripals, and where “military grade’ Novichok takes hours to actually work and then doesn’t kill the victims but then kills an innocent bystander some months later.

Curiously the Czech allegations were suddenly revealed 7 years later after the information had suddenly come to the hand of the newly installed Czech foreign minister, Jan Hamacek  (an enthusiastic supporter of NATO) , just before the Czech president was to have headed to Moscow to sign up for Sputnik V vaccines for the country, when tenders for the construction of a nuclear power plant in Czechia are just about to begin, (and which Russian companies would have had a good chance of winning), and a day after the Americans had announced more sanctions against Russians for somehow trying to influence U. S. elections in impossible ways.

And now we have the Le Monde in Paris creating little stories that the GRU had an espionage base deep in the Swiss Alps ( its gone now they say)

Presumably Western intelligence and their media arms are vying with each other on how far Western publics can be sucked in with ludicrous Russian plots.

“Hey guys, they swallowed that ridiculous story we made up about Gadaffi and the boxes of viagra for his troops to rape civilians, I’ll bet they swallow this one about Petrov and Boshirov again!”

The Russian government it would appear, has now lost its patience with the Americans after Biden deliberately insulted the Russian president as a ‘soul-less killer’, after years of sanctions of the Russian state, and will now make life very difficult for the remaining American diplomats in Moscow .

Diplomacy is thus now at an end between the two countries. In addition, the forceful tit for tat Russian response to the Czech expulsion of Russian diplomatic staff will mean that diplomatic efforts are also unlikely to occur in Eastern Europe in the near future.

The recent attempted coup and assassination of Belarus president Lukashenko, which Russia alleges was planned by Western intelligence operatives, has also not helped the current crisis.

War is becoming increasingly likely.

40,000 NATO troops are massed near Russian borders and 80,000 Russian troops and other units are stationed close to the Russian border with Ukraine.

Steadily increasing NATO military exercises along the border with Russia seem to presage an attempt by NATO forces to probe for weaknesses and then attack Russia, or at least provoke a response from Russia that Western media can proclaim is proof of Russian evil.

Not content with setting the scene for a war over Crimea (a territory occupied by the Russians since it ‘acquired’ it from the Turks in 1774), and the festering Donbass civil war in Russian speaking Eastern Ukraine; the Ukrainian Kiev government is now bizarrely accusing another Russian ally, Iran, of deliberately downing a Ukrainian airliner in the confused aftermath of the Soleimani execution by the United States.

Along with the escalation along Russian borders by the U.S. and its ‘allies’ – particularly the Baltic states, the Poles, Ukrainians, the English and the Australians-we see escalations by the Israeli racist regime against the Iranians, in the form of constant provocations , the most recent being the sabotage at the Natanz nuclear facility in Iran, and the provocations by the Americans in the South China Sea and elsewhere.

The decision by the Biden administration to withdraw some of it’s forces from Afghanistan by September 11 2021 , is indeed welcome and indicative of the total pointlessness of that 19 year war- other than to maintain a lucrative heroin supply trail for Western intelligence services. However the withdrawal is possibly also indicative of the American military’s recognition that fighting too many wars on two many fronts, is a recipe for defeat.

Alongside these aggressive actions go the sanctions designed to weaken Russia, Iran and China (and Syria, Venezuela and North Korea) for their temerity in not kowtowing to the American ‘world order’.

As American society and their economy continues to implode, we see increasingly desperate measures by the U.S. and their remaining ‘allies’ to try and contain and destroy those governments which do not support the American way of brutal colonial aggression.

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This short and innocuous tweet from U.S. Strategic Command on April 20th 2021, gives Russian and China clear warning that the U.S. is quite prepared to use nuclear weapons as a first option in resolving their differences.

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Links

Pure: Ten Points I Just Can’t Believe About the Official Skripal Narrative

https://www.rt.com/russia/521369-czech-republic-expels-russian-diplomats/

Sino-American Antagonism: How Does This End?

https://thegrayzone.com/2021/04/16/biden-afghanistan-war-privatizing-contractors/

Australia is playing in the international greyzone: it is time to get out of our unthinking alliance with the US

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/521315-biden-sanctions-russia-putin/

Chris Hedges: The Unraveling of the American Empire

Tourism & the Destruction of ‘Nature’

Much has been said and written about the importance of economies getting back to ‘normal’ after COVID-19 lockdowns. Recently New Zealand, has reopened normal airline connections with Australia, its second largest trading partner (after China) and a major source of tourists.

The New Zealand government’s decision to re-open air links with Australia has been partly driven by humanitarian issues of families isolated from each other across “the ditch” (the Tasman Sea), but predominantly to prevent the collapse of New Zealand’s large tourism industry.

Green algae

Little has been said however, on the impact the re-invigoration of New Zealand’s tourism industry will have on climate change and biodiversity loss.

Ironically the decision to create a travel bubble with Australia coincides almost to the day of the announcement from Moana Loa in Hawaii that their instruments have for the first time measured CO2 levels at more than 420 parts per million.

As an island nation, almost all tourists into New Zealand come by plane, and often from much longer distances than Australia (which is 4,163 kilometers away, or an air travel distance of 2,587 miles.). As Atmosfair notes, the burning of kerosene for airline engines is not the only major CO2 producer from jet planes. Jet plane veils and contrails, the build-up of the greenhouse gas ozone in a sensitive atmospheric floor, and the breakdown of methane, are also major factors in increasing CO2 levels and consequent global warming.

Suzuki notes that airtravel will continue to grow rapidly until 2050. If left unchecked, they could consume a full quarter of the available carbon budget for limiting temperature rise to 1.5 C. and …The global tourism industry is responsible for eight per cent of global emissions — more than the construction industry!’ and ...The total carbon impact of a single flight is so high that avoiding just one trip can be equivalent to going (gasoline) car-free for a year.

<p class="wp-image-3612" value="<amp-fit-text layout="fixed-height" min-font-size="6" max-font-size="72" height="80"><img class="wp-image-3612" style="width: 450px;" src="https://newantarctica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/co2.png&quot; alt="CO2 Levels Mauna Loa">CO2 Levels Mauna Loa

Tourism also has a significant impact on biodiversity loss; which, even more than climate change; is the greatest risk to this planet. While some have claimed (including U.N. reports) that tourism can increase biodiversity by encouraging humanity’s awareness of the natural world, and bringing human resources to play which protect species and prevent habitat loss; the arguments are clearly specious.

Providing humans with access to our remaining pristine natural environments necessitates environmental destruction and habitat disturbance. Roads, walking tracks, platforms, toilets, helicopters, boats, water and electrical utilities and housing are just some of the methods by which habitats are degraded by tourist activities.

And that is to ignore the impact of the introduction of pollutants like human sewage, supply waste and the accidental introduction of non-native microbes, weeds, insects and animals.

It is time for us all to throw away the ‘bucket list” and learn to be more present in the here and now, and be content with what we have. Creating mini-gardens, communal gardens and re-growing natural spaces in cities can help us all to understand the world in which we live and with which we are defendant upon.

Learning to observe, respect and value the small pieces of the natural world that are all around us, and to which we are inextricably (and often unknowingly) bound.

The natural world is not something for us to ‘experience’ and take a snapshot of; it is all around us: it is part of us, it is ‘us’.

It is more than time for all governments to demand that all products and services consumed, including tourism, are clearly packaged to show the devastating impacts they have on our ever dwindling natural world via biodiversity loss and global heating.

Then we will at last, know the true costs of our consumer society.

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Links

https://davidsuzuki.org/what-you-can-do/air-travel-climate-change/

https://www.atmosfair.de/de/

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/04/06/we-have-act-atmospheric-co2-passes-420-ppm-first-time-ever

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

http://www.gdrc.org/uem/eco-tour/envi/two.html

Click to access the-environmental-impacts-of-tourism-in-aotearoa-new-zealand-a-spatio-temporal-analysis.pdf

http://iced.cag.gov.in/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/2013_wgea_Wild-Life_view.pdf

Complicity

We are all in desperate need of real investigative journalism which is not paid, bullied or feel obliged to follow the current state propaganda line.

There is not much more one can say about Media Lens’ concise summary of the activities of Western countries- particularly the United States and its closest ally, the United Kingdom, in engaging in serial murder over many years, against countries and peoples more vulnerable than their own, whose misery and deaths can be exploited for profit.

While the barbarity of the U.S. and U.K is documented elsewhere in great detail, Media Lens’ great strength is to outline the consistent role Western mainstream media have played in actively supporting those wars and the lies they knowingly propagated ( or in a few cases simply failed to do their journalistic duty of investigation)

As the wheel turns, the U.S. will in a few short years, no longer have the preeminent global role it has acquired through military domination. As the U.S. global role declines, so the need for justice for those many millions victimised by that imperial power will steadily rise until those responsible are indeed facing the court at the Hague for their war crimes .

Alongside them in the dock will surely be those media propagandists who knowingly aided and abetted their crimes with media lies and encouraged the lust for war.

On a more absurd and light-hearted note, we note the allegations from an Australian TV channel, Channel 9, that Vladimir Putin hacked their TV broadcast because he didn’t like what they said about him . While the ridiculous allegations are unsurprising from such a news source, there will be any number of gullible xenophobic Australians ready to be whipped up into a frenzy about malign state actors ( any one of either China, Russia, North Korea or Iran-take your pick) interfering with their TV viewing !

We are all in desperate need of real investigative journalism which is not paid, bullied or feels obliged to follow the current state propaganda line.

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Links

Propaganda By Omission: Libya, Syria, Venezuela And The UK

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9411375/Did-Russian-hackers-force-Australian-TV-station-air-showing-Putin-investigation.html

Fact-Checking the Liars: the Record of U.S. Imperial War and Plunder

War with China

John Pilger has for several years now been talking about the ‘Coming War with China’-something I had in earlier years regarded as foolish speculation . However, in recent times I now hear much more loudly the drumbeats of war from America, and its more foolish and racist allies.

John Pilger has for several years now been talking about the ‘Coming War with China’-something I had in earlier years regarded as foolish speculation . However, in recent times I now hear much more loudly the drumbeats of war from America, and its more foolish and racist allies.

And in a more recent John Pilger article about the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima ‘ANOTHER HIROSHIMA IS COMING… UNLESS WE STOP IT NOW‘ he notes: “No radioactivity in Hiroshima ruin” said The New York Times front page on 13 September, 1945, a classic of planted disinformation. “General Farrell,” reported William H. Lawrence, “denied categorically that [the atomic bomb] produced a dangerous, lingering radioactivity.”-John Pilger .

It should therefore be no surprise that Western governments have lied and lied again in their pursuit of war and profit. The ongoing deluge of Western propaganda against China and its ally Russia, is clearly designed to ‘soften up’ Western publics for a war with those ‘evil orientals’.

The Western media claims of Uyghur genocide by the Chinese government have been largely constructed from one source; a somewhat ‘unusual’ gentleman called Adrian Zenz, a Christian fundamentalist evangelist and devout anti-communist. The Gray-Zone has published a damning report on the curious ways Mr Zenz has used public data to support his beliefs that Uyghur genocide is occurring. Western intelligence has latched onto Mr Zenz fundamentalist fervour to promote his views to the wider world, because it fits so well with their need to portray the Chinese government (and all things mainland Chinese) as evil .

As the GrayZone outlines in its article on the U.S. based Uyghur American Association (UAA), the Altay Club and other organisations determined to once again create an independent state in Xinjiang since its re-incorporation into the Chinese state in the 18th Century, there are multiple organisations both internal and external to China, determined to overthrow the current status quo in Xinjiang.

The Chinese government is now in the process of suing Zenz for libel in the courts.

Numerous Muslim Uyghur have in fact been radicalised by the Saudi Wahabbi doctrine and continue to play an important role as Salafi jihadi soldiers in Syria and other Middle Eastern countries, with funding and support from the Saudis and Western intelligence operatives. It is likely therefore that the Chinese government has put considerable effort into reducing the risk of Uyghur radicalisation in mainland China; the truth of how much repression of the Uyghur population in China is occurring is unknown at this point-although the Chinese government denies any such repression. It is however certain, given current population counts, that a Uyghur ‘genocide’ is not happening.

As one of the Chinese government’s representative Yang Jiechi so rightly put it at the recent Alaska China/U.S. Anchorage summit at the Captain Cook Hotel;’ the United States uses its financial and military might to bully other countries. …(and that) America had its own long history of human rights problems and foolish actions abroad. ‘Foolish actions’ is a wonderful euphemism for the scale of genocidal war and terror inflicted by the United States on ‘non-compliant’ countries over the past century and more ( i.e. countries that do not comply with the United States view of it’s ‘international rules based order’- not to be confused in any way with U.N. declarations)

Alistair Crooke summarises the theme of the anti-Russia-China rhetoric as ‘the U.S. thinks to lead the maritime and rim-land powers in imposing a searing psychological, technological and economic defeat on the Russia-China-Iran alliance’.

As with all colonial powers, the current arrogance and bellicosity of the Americans is premised on racism- the view that the Chinese are somehow an inferior nation who need education and ‘realignment’ with Western values and principles of what the Americans call ‘democracy and freedom’-but which in reality are principles based on the exploitation and subjugation of others.

The United States’ personal delusions of their exceptionalism – which align closely to Nazi views on the superiority of the German ‘race’- also play an important role in their incapacity to peacefully collaborate with others.

Given the United States appalling centuries long history of abuse of the vulnerable, at home and abroad, its view of itself as a pure, supremely democratic and exceptional nation (which many in the States undeniably believe) is psychotic, and indicative of the level of risk the world is facing when delusional people hold the reins of power in the worlds’ most militaristic country.

The United States appears ‘hell-bent’ on ensuring that no other country can get in the way of ‘rule-based order’ where the United States can and does whatever it likes, to whomever it likes, to ensure the money keeps rolling into the troughs of its billionaires.

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Links

https://thegrayzone.com/2021/03/17/report-uyghur-genocide-sham-university-neocon-punish-china/

The Urgent Need for a Biden-Putin Summit
For Leviathan, it’s so cold in Alaska
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/03/15/leviathan-mobilises-for-decisive-battle/

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/56466.htm

Stoltenberg Comes Clean on China ‘Opportunity’ for NATO

https://thegrayzone.com/2021/03/31/china-uyghur-gun-soldiers-empire/

The unraveling of the web of life

The Leaf in the Concrete Pool
The Leaf in the Concrete Pool

A U.K.  February  2021 report by Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta,  entitled ‘The Economics of Biodiversity’ outlines the ‘extreme risk’ the ‘world’, is being put by  not taking into  account the  ‘rapid depletion of the natural  world’.

While the overarching intent of the paper is to  be applauded in attempting to  reduce species loss,  the underlying assumptions outlined in  the paper  about humans’ relationships to  the rest of this living world  are,  to  put it mildly,  grotesque.

Prof. Dasgupta’s comment that  ‘Truly sustainable economic growth and development means recognising that our long-term prosperity relies on rebalancing our demand of nature’s goods and services with its capacity to supply them’, is truly bizarre.

The natural  world (including the human  species) does not exist  to provide ‘goods and services’. This arrogant and ignorant perspective of the living world around us  is the root cause of  why  the  living planet around us, is dying. All  living things on  this planet exist  in their own  right and to  construct  a web of  interdependent life around themselves; a web  that  humans have been  unravelling at  ever-increasing speed for the past 3000  years.

To  view other living organisms as ‘good and services’  for humans, is not only  to  debase the sanctity of life, but also confirms our  fundamental  lack of understanding of how life on  this planet life continues to  maintain  itself,  and once thrived. The more humans choose some organisms as being ‘worthwhile’  ( for humans),  and others not-  the more we destroy the web that  holds all  life on this planet together.

There are many humans on this planet who  have never known  what  it is to  be connected with  the living world around them – who  look  out their windows in  the morning at  the dead concrete jungle surrounding them  and think  this life. Who  truly do  think  of the living world as a commodity solely for humanities’  use, and who  never once consider that  the view from  their window  would have once been  a joyous riot of life-   of birds,  trees  insects and many other  animals. What  humans have not known, we do not miss. The more humans become immersed in  an inanimate world of concrete  and tar, the more it becomes ‘normal’.

We do  not comprehend what  we have done to  our world, and what  awaits us at the end of this journey  of ‘commodification’.

 

Links

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/02/economics-failure-over-destruction-of-nature-presents-extreme-risks

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/final-report-the-economics-of-biodiversity-the-dasgupta-review

The Capitol Invasion

What  are we to  make, from  across the sea, of Trump  supporters   invading the U.S.  Capitol  building while Congress members  were voting to  install Joe Biden  as the next president of the United States?

Is this ‘insurrection’?-  a new civil  war?  a ‘revolution’?…

In the mind-numbing complexities and anomalies  that  is American ‘democracy’, this new episode  in the  rapidly foreclosing Trump era  appear as a comedy  of errors, by  all  parties.

A historic opportunity by  Joe Biden  and the Democrats to  bring together the nation after 4 years of Trumpism,  has been  completely given  away-  to  childish  bi-partisanship,  which has the potential  to  further divide a fractured declining nation.  Trump’s devotees-  many of whom  are frightened at  their loss of incomes, law and order,  their loss of status,  the confusing messages of the U.S.  ‘Woke’  culture and many more  pressures, are not going to  go  away. If they  are now  no longer able to  attach  themselves to  a political  forum that  supposedly supports their frustrations, as Trump  pretended to do,  they  will find other  routes  to  assert  their concerns-  perhaps in  more damaging ways.

The deletion of Trump’s historic postings  and the removal  of his capacity to  post in  the future, was a concerted effort by  the major social  media  outlets. Twitter CEO Jack  Dorsey commented that  the ‘ban is a failure of ours to promote healthy conversation’. While I am  very  clear that  I personally find Trump’s rants and raving  inappropriate,  often  judgmental, rascist  and dangerous,  and that  he is guilty of war crimes in Yemen  and Syria  among other places ( along with  numerous other American  presidents) ,  I don’t believe I (or anyone else) has the ability to  judge what  is ‘healthy conversation’  for all  others;  assuming that  such  a thing as a ‘healthy conversation’ could ever be defined. For a social  media tycoon to  make such  a global  statement is both  dangerous and indicative of the quality of intellect  in  such  ‘high  places’.

And it is unsurprising that  most Republican  voters feel  that  this  presidential  election was stolen  from them  given 1) the vast  capacity for manipulating the electoral  system in the United States;  2)four years of hype and paranoia from  mainstream media that  Trump  won  the last election because the Russians  somehow  manipulated  voters and the voting system; 3) the global  mainstream media’s consistent campaign to  deride and demean Trump  in  any possible way ( not hard to  do  of course). and 4) the bizarre second impeachment process, simply designed to  kick  Trump and his supporters while he is down.

What  the United States desperately needs now  is a government that  understands its  role is to support the  dispossessed,  the poor, the sick and  the unemployed, to  live a  fair and pleasant lifestyle. There is after all, more than  enough  to  go  round in  the United States-  even  now.  But instead we see   the remaining U.S.  health  and income support infrastructures steadily  being whittled away-  the rich  getting richer,   the poor without hope  and the U.S.  electoral  system  dominated by  what  are  euphemistically called ‘corporate donations’.. The dichotomy between  the  empty promises of those in  power   and those who  need a better life there,  are growing ever wider. That  widening chasm  leads to  social  destruction.

It is baffling why American  society is so  willing to  ascribe to  conspiracy  theories -whether it be Joseph  McCarthy  and the internal communist  threat, the Russians, the Chinese,  or some other nation Americans have been  taught to  fear, or now, ‘insurrection’  from  white supremacists.

Farcical , if it were not deeply disturbing,  are Nancy  Pelosi (Speaker of the House at  Congress) and Hilary  Clinton (ex Secretary  of State)  stating publicly their view that  Vladimir Putin  orchestrated the Capitol  invasion. Either  (hopefully)  they  are simply attempting to  manipulate public opinion to  think  that  somehow Putin is behind all  of this,  or more disturbingly ,  they  actually believe their nonsensical  and delusional statements.

While the invasion of the Capital  building is certainly to  be deplored,  the response  from  Democrat congresspeople and lawyers has been  extraordinary and hugely counterproductive to  building truth  and reconciliation in the United States. It is hoped that  the parallels noted by  Eric Rasmussen in  his article about  the Reichstag Fire of 1933  and the Capital  building riot will  turn  out to  be simply coincidence, but they  are disturbing.

Is it their lack  of  education about the wider world and American history?; the efficacy  of American mainstream media  to  lie  with advertising and political  brainwashing?; their centuries long addiction to  violence? the insistence on show and appearance as more important than  truth and justice?- or perhaps a mix of all  those issues….Whatever the  primary  causes,  Americans are  in  for a rough  ride until  they come to  terms with their country’s contradictions, and learn the truth  about what  their  country  really has stood for.

Links

9/11 Was the Prelude. 1/6 Is the Holy Grail

Trump Impeached Amid Efforts to Silence Him

America’s Battle Over the Nature and Direction of Change Itself

Stop the Steal takeover exposes fragility of U.S. empire

Lee Camp: America Condemns One Violent Mob While Celebrating Another

No One Is Listening: A Country Divided Against Itself

https://www.unz.com/article/are-we-all-domestic-terrorists/

No matter Impeachment 2.0, Trumpism haunts America

DOJ Now Says There Was No Plot to Kill Elected Officials

How Billionaires Transfer Blame to Others

Recognising the Environmental Impact of Consumption

Tena koutou
While the NZ Government’s decision to  declare a climate emergency  in New Zealand is to be applauded-  currently there appear few mechanisms  to   achieve a carbon-neutral  government by  2025. Prime Minister Jacinda Adern’s touted response to  have all  government vehicles  electric,  is a case in  point of the contradictions in  environmental  policy. There is an  urgent  need for all  citizens to recognise the  impact of product and service consumption.
While electric cars will  reduce carbon  emissions through  vehicle  exhaust pipes, the production of the required number of  electric vehicles will  result in  further destruction of our environments-  lithium  mining for batteries ,  steel  production,  plastics production. to  name just  a few.  A sleight of hand process that  reduces emissions in  one area and replaces it with  more consumption in  another-  is simply deceitful  and will  not improve our environmental impact. Any  climate “emergency planning (an  ’emergency’  implies a short -term  problem- this is not a short-term issue)  must  also  address the collateral  bio-diversity loss that  is occurring in New Zealand and everywhere in  the world.
As a recent Israeli  study  amply demonstrates;  production of inert ‘stuff’  by  humans now literally out-weighs  the living  things on  this planet https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/09/human-made-materials-now-outweigh-earths-entire-biomass-study
We are replacing  living entities with  dead inert  matter at  a rapidly  increasing rate-  a recipe not just  for  an  emergency,  but a planetary  disaster.
While moving to  a steady  state economy is the only plausible  response to   the disaster rapidly unfolding  on our little plant; current levers of power and influence globally and in New Zealand clearly will not allow that  to  happen in  the short -term.
Consequently ,  rather than moving gently and steadily to  a slow-down  and cessation of human  ‘growth’ ,  we are  rushing headlong and ever faster  towards the precipice of environmental  catastrophe,  before we  fall over…and reach ‘steady-state’  in a way  that  will  cause huge immediate human  and other species’ suffering  and death.
To   hopefully avoid that precipitous  fall, I would suggest a measure that  will  in a relatively short  time ,  allow all  members of New Zealand society to   appreciate we cannot continue  this headlong dash  to  oblivion.
A requirement  that all animate and non-animate goods   and services in New Zealand carry  a warning label  which  indicates how much  the product has impacted on  both  climate change ( positive or negative) but also  ( and more crucially)  biodiversity. The labeling could be something similar to   cigarette warning labels and provide an  opportunity for purchasers to  be aware of the environmental  impact  of their purchase,  to  compare  goods’  environmental impact  and to encourage producers to  reduce their  environmental  footprint..
Over time this labeling would also  provide an opportunity for government  to   additionally tax those products and services  that  were  high in  environmental  impact,  once public support had reached an  acceptable level.
From  there, the public debate on how to  implement a  sustainable  steady  state economy  could proceed.
As you will  be well  aware, as you see the  data continue to   pile in at  an  ever increasing rate  on  global  warming and bio-diversity loss ,  we now  have little time and opportunity  to change our trajectory.
nga mihi
Footnote
The response to  my email   from  New Zealand’s Ministry of the Environment  courteously noted my suggestions,  but declined to  support it,noting that there were some unnamed private New Zealand companies interested in such  an idea.
Subsequently my daughter has suggested that  there would be web  companies out there who  could develop  an  app  which   could provide information online  for ‘consumers’  on  the relative  carbon  footprint and impact on  biodiversity of products being sold.
Yes please!

An Australia We Can Believe In

Australian  Prime Minister Scott  Morrison is apparently incensed about  Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian’s posting of an image of  an Australian  soldier slitting the throat  of a young Afghan boy.

Chin'as constrcuted image of Aussie war crimes in Afghanistan

The  ‘constructed’  image  that  Zhao Lijian  used  was based on  an  Australian government  report into  Special Operations Task Group in Afghanistan,  which  found   ‘credible information of 23 incidents of unlawful killing of 39 people “by or at the direction of members of the Special Operations Task Group in circumstances which, if accepted by a jury, would be the war crime of murder. None of these are incidents of disputable decisions made under pressure in the heat of battle, found the inquiry.” Those 39 prisoners and civilians were unlawfully killed and two treated so cruelly, the soldiers’ conduct amounted to a war crime.

This new report follows on  from  previous allegations of misconduct  by  New Zealand troops in  Afghanistan, by  journalists Jon Stephenson and Nicky Hager where New Zealand “Defence” Force personnel  breached rules of engagement in an SAS-led raid in Afghanistan in 2010 and covered up the resulting civilian deaths.

Why  such a report about  murders and abuse should be a surprise to  anyone, is a mystery. Western  countries have prided themselves on their superiority to  the ‘less than pink’  skinned races of the world  in  their  centuries’ old thrust  to control  the world’s resources for their exclusive benefit. Such  superiority extends to  a  war culture that dehumanises the ‘enemy’  as ‘gooks’,   ‘rag-heads’ and the ‘yellow peril’, among many other perjorative names..

Australia and the Western media at large depict their country as an innocent victim of ‘Chinese bullying’, ‘coercion’ and ‘aggression’, through  China’s use of  tarriffs, border controls and  monitoring of import goods’ quality,  to  press its argument that  Australia needs to  learn which side its bread is buttered on.

China is particularly annoyed with  Australia  foolishly following the Trump  propaganda line  that  COVID19  is a Chinese  communist government threat  to  the world. Startling, when it is China who  has done most to  show the world how to  limit infection spread…

Australia’s former finance minister, Joe Hockey, labeled China’s President  Xi’s actions “economic coercion.” As Hockey told Bloomberg in a Nov. 3 interview: “That’s not the China that I knew when I was treasurer” for two years until September 2015. This “immature action,” Hockey says, is “not the behavior of a great power.”.

One might be forgiven  for laughing at Joe Hockey’s ‘belief’  that Western  ‘great powers’   never use extortion,  threat  and violence to  get their  economic way. The creation of economic sanctions  and wars of aggression on countries the West  does not like,  is a time honoured tradition- not the sole prerogative  of Donald Trump!

We are now subjected to  the shameful  behaviour of both  the Australian  and New Zealand prime ministers whitewashing these current war  crimes by  claiming that  the images posted by  Zhao Lijian were ‘fake news’. Clearly the images posted were indeed not taken  in the heat of  Australians  killing Afghan children for fun; they  were intended as representations of real  events. Apparently,  ‘an obscure artist in China made an art about the tragedy which was widely circulated in Chinese social media, and which Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Li JianZhao tweeted.’

Human  Right Watch  notes that: The former military lawyer and whistleblower David McBride, who was deployed to Afghanistan with the special operations task group, was charged with a number of offenses in 2017 after he spoke to reporters about the alleged abuses, and his trial is ongoing. He is the only person who was charged, and the charges are unrelated to his conduct in Afghanistan.

One should therefore not be surprised by  a  Chinese (and North  Korean,  Vietnamese,  Syrian, Iraqi,  Libyan etc etc )  call  in  the future  to  demand reparations for all  those countries Australia and the other Five Eyes and Fourteen Eyes countries ( In addition to the Anglo-Saxon countries, the group includes Italy, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, France, Sweden and Norway), that have ‘bullied’ with  war and sanctions  over the past 60  years- the genocidal  wars in  Korea and Vietnam   come to  mind;  let alone Iraq, Libya or Syria…..and recently American  sponsored atrocities have come to  light….

That  Australia  and New Zealand  continue  to  defend  their  positions as  ex-colonial  powers  allied to  racist  and war-mongering  Western European states and the U.S., is no  surprise; but it does give an indication of the intelligence and humanity  of their political  and ‘intelligence’ communities, and their capacity  to grasp where  the future lies.

Links

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/508216-china-australia-soldier-afghanistan/

https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/11/19/australia-follow-afghan-report-prosecutions

https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2020/11/no-comparison-between-alleged-australian-defence-force-atrocities-in-afghanistan-and-kiwis-actions-in-operation-burnham-kiwi-war-journalist-jon-stephenson.html

https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/China-s-bullying-of-Australia-is-bound-to-backfire

Australian Lowlifes – American Empire’s Bitches

Stealing Mineral Wealth for Corporate Interests: U.S. Bankrolled Mass Murder of Millions in Central Africa

https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/secret-docs-reveal-dubious-details-of-targeted-killings-in-afghanistan-a-1010358.html

 

‘Leading the World’ with new wars we can believe in

The U.S.  president-elect  Joe Biden,  stated  on Tuesday 24th November 2020 , that  his newly chosen team “reflects the fact that America is back. Ready to lead the world, not retreat from it. Once again sit at the head of the table, ready to confront our adversaries and not reject our allies. Ready to stand up for our values.”

One wonders which  of ‘our values’  Joe is referring to. Most probably  it is the values of barbarous violence against other less powerful  states that  characterized U.S.  ‘foreign policy  in  the 20th century.

While continuously espousing the virtues of democracy  and freedom, the United States continues to  conduct  wars of aggression against  any country  that  either can be exploited for its resources,  or may  pose a threat  to  its global  dominance at  some later time.

In the traditional  manner of U.S.  politics,  we are reminded to  simply listen  to  their  grand eloquence about human  rights and freedoms and  ignore the sordid reality of U.S.  foreign  relations.  We are exhorted once again  to extol  the Nazi-like virtues of  American  ‘Exceptionalism’ .

No  longer will  we have to endure  the thuggish  foreign follies of  Mike Pompeo; instead we will be called to  embrace freedom  and fairness, and bomb the hell  out of the next  country  that doesn’t subscribe to  U.S.  demands.

We will  be encouraged to  support the freedom  loving rulers  of Israel  and Saudi  Arabia while they  brutalize their populations,  and encourage them  to buy more armaments  for their wars  in Yemen, or Syria ,  or anywhere!

We will  be delighted to  once again support  Obama era levels of drone murders of unsuspecting innocents in  far away  poor (Muslim)  countries, with  the intelligence  aids of our Five Eyes (white)  allies in Australia,  New Zealand Canada and the U.K.

We will be required to  delight in (as the Guardian has done) in the new Secretary  of State, Antony  Blinken’s  statements that “We can’t solve all the world’s problems alone,” he said. (without a trace of humour)  And even  that  “We need to be working with other countries.” and “America, at its best, still has a greater ability than any other country on earth to bring others together to meet the challenges of our time.” This from  the man  who  supported the atrocities and genocide in Iraq and Libya  (and supported the use of Al  Qaeda to   blunt Syrian  and Russian  successes in Syria),  to  name just  a few of the  wars that  Blinken  has enthusiastically supported. What  more delights can  we expect  from  a man with  no  moral  capabilities?

And then  there is Avril Haines; Biden’s director of national intelligence;  who  Antiwar.com  describe as   serving ‘ both the deputy director of the CIA and the deputy national security advisor under Obama. Haines has a history of running cover for CIA torture programs and served under former CIA chief John Brennan when the Obama administration dramatically increased drone strikes.

And as Caitlin Johnstone so acerbically states, ‘There’s never been a better time to be a woman, minority or member of the LGBT community who works in the DC establishment and enjoys dropping cluster munitions on children”

To  say  nothing of John Kerry, former secretary  of State to  Obama and  who  is to   be Biden’s  ‘Climate Envoy” a completely meaningless role,  other than  to  continue the Obama policy of signing climate treaties with  absolutely  no  intention of acting on them. (like the rest  of our “world leaders”.)

One can only assume that  American politicians live in  an alternate reality-  where they  genuinely believe the lies that  spout spontaneously from  their mouths,  while they  commit evil.

Links

https://consortiumnews.com/2020/11/30/lee-camp-we-cant-vote-em-out/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/24/joe-biden-climate-crisis-cabinet-picks-john-kerry

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/11/joe-bidens-foreign-policy-team-ii.html#more

https://www.mintpressnews.com/joe-biden-foreign-policy-make-american-empire-great-again/273201/

The Correct Response To “Give Biden A Chance”: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Biden’s transition team is filled with war profiteers, Beltway chickenhawks, and corporate consultants