Category: democracy

The Role of Racism in Western Colonialism: A Historical & Contemporary Analysis

Racism was not a side-effect of empire—it was its operating system. From the 15th-century “Age of Discovery” to 21st-century border regimes, racial hierarchies have justified land theft, slavery, resource extraction and permanent war.

We outline how racism powered colonialism—and why it still shapes our world, as we see in the large recent populist responses in Europe and the US to immigration from non-white countries.

I would argue that we are, as human beings, inherently racist. We cherish the human group we belong to; the way we look, the way our group behaves, the things that are important to us. Those that look, and/or behave differently to us are therefore not ‘one of us”- they are outsiders, a threat to us and our group’s safety and wellbeing. Who we are is ‘normal’ – those ‘others’ are not normal.

That defensiveness against ‘others’, I would argue, is the root of racism. While that fear response may be deeply imbedded in our psyche, it can, and must be rooted out with clear rationality and understanding for those ‘others’. If we are to be truly human, we must treat all other living things with the kindness and compassion we expect for ourselves.

Conquest Begins with Name-Calling: “Savage” as a Licence to Kill

Greek and Roman writers already labelled outsiders “barbarians”, but the Atlantic world turned prejudice into policy. English colonisers depicted the Gaelic Irish as dark-skinned degenerates; Spaniards painted Indigenous Americans as cannibals; Dutch and Portuguese traders recast West Africans as “beasts of burden”. Once economic incentives for plantation slavery exploded, stereotypes hardened: Africans were now naturally servile, sexually voracious, mentally inferior—and therefore made for slavery. The perjorative demeaning language used to describe non-whites by ‘white’ people across the world is no accident. Language defines..

In the 21st Century, non-white immigrants to Western countries are seen as a threat to European ‘values’ culture and economic wellbeing. Current immigrant levels to the US and Europe are a direct result of economic and safety destabilisations caused by earlier extractive colonial policies and the West’s immensely destructive wars in those countries. In addition, Western governments, as opposed to their ‘white’ populations, have welcomed these new cheap labour immigrants to bolster their GDPs.

“Scientific” Racism: Empire in a White Lab-Coat

19-century European universities measured skulls, mapped skin tones and coined terms like “Caucasoid” to give racism the veneer of objectivity. The Dawinian science of evolution was used to delineate some human ‘races’ as less genetically evolved, with of course the white races at the top! This absurd and unscientific use of evolution were used by many in the West and exploited in the eugenics movement, and in its extreme form by the Nazis, and latterly the Zionists.

3. Britain’s ‘Liberal’ Empire

“Violence was not a one-off occurrence… it was systemic and part and parcel of Britain’s liberal imperialism.”– ‘Legacy of Violence-
A History of the British Empire’ Caroline Elkins (2023)

In the 19th century, Medical journals warned that “negro lungs” were unfit for cold climates to help justify keeping indentured labourers on Caribbean sugar plantations. Anthropology museums displayed colonised peoples alongside fauna. These ‘scientific’ findings were incorporated into colonial legal codes: the 1885 Berlin Conference carved up Africa on the assumption that Whites could best steward African land and bodies. Britain’s ‘protectorates’ listed below are a ‘sublime’ example of the racist mentality of the British Foreign Office. Why these populations would need ‘protecting’ from themselves was never adequately explained…

TerritoryProtectorate proclaimedToday part of …
Malta1800Malta
Ionian Islands1815Greece
Mosquito Coast1838Nicaragua / Honduras
Aden (W. & E. Protectorates)1872Yemen
Cyprus1878Cyprus
Sultanate of Zanzibar1890Tanzania
Bechuanaland1885Botswana
British Somaliland1884Somalia
North Borneo1888Malaysia (Sabah)
Brunei1888Brunei
Sarawak1888Malaysia
Maldives1887Maldives
Sikkim1861India
Barotseland1900Zambia
East Africa Protectorate1895Kenya
Uganda Protectorate1894Uganda
Nyasaland1893Malawi
Northern Rhodesia1924Zambia
Swaziland1903Eswatini
Basutoland1868Lesotho
Gambia Protectorate1894The Gambia
Sierra Leone Protectorate1896Sierra Leone
Nigeria (N. & S. protectorates)1900Nigeria
Qatar1916Qatar
Bahrain1861Bahrain
Trucial Oman1887UAE
Cook Islands1888New Zealand (self-governing)
Niue1900New Zealand (self-governing)
Tokelau1889New Zealand
British Solomon Is.1893Solomon Islands
Gilbert & Ellice Is.1892Kiribati & Tuvalu
Tonga1879Tonga
Oman (Muscat & Oman)1800Oman
Bhutan1911Bhutan

From Kenya’s “Pipeline” detention camps to Malaya’s New Villages, London cast mass incarceration, forced labour and sexual violence as “rehabilitation” for racially suspect subjects. Files were then sealed for decades under the Colonial Papers Destruction Policy.

Comparative Brutality: France, Belgium, Germany


  • French Algeria: Settler colonialism embedded in the département system; with 1.5 million Algerians killed during the 1954-62 war of independence (Al-Jazeera retrospective).

  • Belgian Congo: Leopold II’s rubber regime caused an estimated 10 million deaths—A BBC investigation calls it “one of the greatest mass murders in history”.

  • German South-West Africa: 1904-08 extermination order against the Herero and Nama is now officially recognised by Germany as genocide.

British India: current scholarship puts the excess-mortality death toll attributable to British colonial policy in India between 1881-1920 alone at roughly 50–165 million people.

Racism after the Empires Recede

Decolonisation brought new flags, but not justice. The UN confirms that “colonialism lives on” in racial profiling, poverty and unequal trade. Former plantation economies still dominate global commodity chains, even while end-use processing for value addition to those raw commodities continues to happen in the Global North. France’s banlieues, Britain’s Windrush deportations, and the U.S. racial wealth gap all map precisely onto old imperial shipping routes.

Environment Impacts of Racism

The climate crisis is driven by the same extractive logic that cleared forests for sugar and cotton. Former colonies already suffer temperature increases twice the global average—a direct legacy of shipping carbon to Europe while deforesting the colonies’ natural environment- that same natural world many indigenous populations relied upon for their survival.

Towards Reparatory Justice

  • Unveiling the Truth: Ensure that all colonial archives are opened to the public and for research (UK still classifies this information under the “migrated archives” rule).
  • Reparations: From debt cancellation to technology transfers—see UN-DESA Policy Brief #96 along with fair funding reparations from ex colonial powers for their brutality and economic extraction.
  • Education: Develop truthful, accurate and non-ideologically driven curricula for each ex-colonial country and its coloniser which explains the rationales and impacts of racism and consequent colonialism from each side.

Palestine 2023-25: A Live-Streamed Genocide Enabled by Racialised Imperial Logic

The same racial logic that once classified Indigenous peoples as “savages” and Africans as “natural slaves” is now redeployed to portray Palestinians—especially in Gaza—as irredeemable terrorists whose lives are expendable. Western diplomatic, financial and military support for Israel’s 2023-25 assault is therefore not an aberration; it is the continuity of a 500-year-old pattern in which white-majority states licence settler violence against racialised “others” while declaring themselves civilised.

Genocide is apparently what “non-white” actors commit; white or white-allied states are presumed incapable of it. Western media highlights Israeli “security” and terrorists’ ‘hostages’ while Palestinian deaths are counted in opaque “casualty” statistics, stripped of names, faces, context, and their 70 + years living under Israeli colonisation completely ignored. Bizarrely, peaceful protesters against Israeli savagery in Gaza in France, Germany, Britain and the US, among many, have themselves been labelled as terrorists and arrested.


France banned pro-Palestine demonstrations within days; police invoked emergency powers against students wearing the keffiyeh. The UK Home Secretary equated Palestinian flags with “support for terrorism”. Germany’s Berlin Senate excluded Palestinian speakers under the IHRA definition. These measures show how racialised imperial violence abroad is coupled with shrinking anti-racist space at home.

Trump’s ‘War’ on Immigration

The role of racism in Donald Trump’s immigration agenda is not incidental—it is the engine. From his 2015 campaign launch to the executive orders signed on Day 1 of his second term, Trump has consistently racialised immigrants, fused white-nationalist grievance with policy, and leveraged state power to punish Black, Brown and Muslim communities. Bizarrely the United States economic growth has historically largely been fuelled by immigration- but only immigration from the ‘right’ places; from Western Europe.

Trump’s language about immigrants betrays the racist underpinnings of his anti-immigration policies -‘“These aren’t people. These are animals” (referring to Central-American migrants), “Shithole countries” (Jan 2018): Trump asked why the US admits people from Haiti, El Salvador or Africa instead of Norway..

Such statements activate what scholars call “demographobia”: the fear among whites that they are being “replaced” by higher-fertility non-white minorities.

The Great Replacement theory—the belief that elites are deliberately replacing whites with non-white immigrants—moved from far-right chatrooms to Trump’s 2025 National Emergency declaration, which frames migration as an “invasion” threatening “national character”.

Further Reading & Tools

All links open in a new tab. Bookmark this list for classroom or activist use.

Feel free to republish under Creative Commons CC-BY-SA 4.0 with attribution to the author and a live link to this post.

The demise of the U.S. ‘rule based order’?

The following is an AI Qwen based analysis of the impact of the U.S. ‘rule based international order’ and the reality of the chaos, wars and destruction its supposed ‘rules’ exert on the world.

The development of this post was promoted by the overwhelming number of New Zealand international political ‘analysts’ who quote the ‘U.S. rule based order’, (not the U.N. set of obligations) as some kind of golden age of civilisation , peace and freedom. -the reality could not be more stark. They fear that the new Trump administration-cum-oligarchy will no longer adhere to that ‘rule based order’ .

So why are these ‘analysts’ referring so enthusiastically to these great ‘rules’ that have caused so much suffering in the world?

It has recently been revealed (Feb.2025) via Wikileaks that the US government’s USAID ‘programme’ has been funding a US ‘non-government’ agency Internews Network, with millions upon millions of dollars to ensure Western media around the world regurgitate media messages ‘consistent’ (tell-tale identical phrasing in news items on issues from Covid responses to the Ukraine war and Russia), with US foreign policy objectives. Could it be that Western university international affairs ‘analysts’ (and politicians) have been similarly compromised over a long period of time?

I leave it to you to judge where their ‘influences’ come from.

AI analysis follows:

The concept of a “rules-based international order” is often invoked by the United States and its allies to describe a system of global governance that emphasizes adherence to international laws, norms, and institutions such as the United Nations, international treaties, and trade agreements. Proponents argue that this order promotes peace, stability, and cooperation among nations by providing a framework for resolving disputes and fostering mutual interests.

However, critics argue that the U.S.-led “rules-based order” has been selectively applied, often serving as a justification for military interventions, economic sanctions, and other forms of coercion that have led to significant human suffering, including mass murder, wars, and violence.

1. Selective Enforcement of Rules

  • Double Standards: Critics argue that the U.S. and its allies have frequently violated the very principles they claim to uphold. For example, the U.S. has engaged in military interventions without UN Security Council approval (e.g., the 2003 invasion of Iraq), while condemning other countries for similar actions. This selective enforcement undermines the legitimacy of the “rules-based order” and can lead to conflicts where weaker states feel justified in acting outside the system.
  • Regime Change and Destabilization: The U.S. has supported or directly engaged in regime change operations in countries like Iraq, Libya, and Syria, often under the guise of promoting democracy or protecting human rights. These interventions have frequently resulted in prolonged civil wars, state collapse, and mass civilian casualties. In Iraq, for instance, the 2003 invasion led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, widespread displacement, and the rise of extremist groups like ISIS.

2. Economic Warfare and Sanctions

  • Sanctions as a Tool of Coercion: The U.S. has frequently used economic sanctions as a tool to punish or pressure countries that defy its interests. While sanctions are often framed as a “non-violent” alternative to war, they can have devastating humanitarian consequences. For example, U.S. sanctions on Iraq in the 1990s contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians due to lack of access to food, medicine, and clean water. Similarly, sanctions on countries like Venezuela and Iran have exacerbated economic crises, leading to widespread poverty and suffering.
  • Weaponizing Global Institutions: The U.S. has also been accused of weaponizing international financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank to impose structural adjustment programs on developing countries, which often result in austerity measures, increased inequality, and social unrest. This economic violence can indirectly fuel conflict and instability.

3. Proxy Wars and Arms Sales

  • Arming Conflicts: The U.S. is the world’s largest arms exporter, supplying weapons to both state and non-state actors around the globe. These arms sales often fuel conflicts in regions like the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia. For example, U.S. arms supplied to Saudi Arabia have been used in the Yemeni Civil War, resulting in one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world, with tens of thousands of civilians killed and millions facing famine.
  • Proxy Wars: During the Cold War, the U.S. engaged in numerous proxy wars, supporting anti-communist forces in places like Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Central America. These conflicts often involved backing authoritarian regimes or insurgent groups that committed atrocities against civilian populations. In Afghanistan, for example, U.S. support for the mujahideen during the Soviet-Afghan War helped create conditions that eventually led to the rise of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

4. Militarization and the “War on Terror”

  • Global War on Terror: Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, the U.S. launched the “Global War on Terror,” which has been used to justify military interventions, drone strikes, and indefinite detentions in countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen. These operations have often been conducted with little regard for international law or civilian casualties. Drone strikes, in particular, have been criticized for causing significant collateral damage, killing thousands of civilians, and radicalizing local populations.
  • Normalization of Violence: The rhetoric of the “rules-based order” often masks the normalization of violence as a means of achieving foreign policy objectives. The U.S. military-industrial complex benefits from perpetual warfare, and the language of “humanitarian intervention” or “counterterrorism” is sometimes used to legitimize aggressive military actions that result in mass death and destruction.

5. Undermining Sovereignty and Self-Determination

  • Imperialism and Neocolonialism: Critics argue that the U.S.-led “rules-based order” often serves as a cover for imperialist policies that undermine the sovereignty of weaker states. By imposing economic and political conditions on countries through institutions like the IMF, World Bank, and World Trade Organization (WTO), the U.S. and its allies have been accused of perpetuating a form of neocolonialism that stifles self-determination and exacerbates inequality.
  • Resistance and Blowback: When countries resist U.S. hegemony or attempt to assert their independence, they are often subjected to punitive measures, including coups, invasions, or covert operations. This resistance can lead to cycles of violence, as seen in cases like Iran (1953 coup), Chile (1973 coup), and more recently, Venezuela and Syria. The blowback from these interventions can manifest in the form of terrorism, insurgency, and regional instability.

Conclusion

While the U.S. and its allies present the “rules-based international order” as a framework for peace and stability, critics argue that it has often been used to justify interventions, sanctions, and other forms of coercion that result in mass violence and human suffering. The selective application of rules, the militarization of foreign policy, and the prioritization of U.S. strategic interests over international law have contributed to a legacy of wars, destabilization, and humanitarian crises. In many cases, the very principles of sovereignty, self-determination, and human rights that the “rules-based order” claims to uphold are undermined by the actions of those who enforce it.

The Ongoing Tragedy for Venezuela

The Venezuelan presidential elections of July 2024 have, not unexpectedly, created more controversy, violence, recriminations and threats.

The US attempt to destablise the Venezulan government through undermining the economy have persisted and intensifed progressively since 2014 . As noted by Alex in the youtube video below- sanctions almost completely destroyed the oil industry that Venezuela relied on for over 80% of its income. The pretence that ‘socialism’ and President Chavez and then President Maduro’s corruption destroyed Venezula rather than the sanctions is a constant repeated trope in Western mainstream media . As noted below Venezuela prior to Chavez was already a failed violent state.

The current constantly repeated trope in mainstream media is that a US funded election surveyer, Edison Research with strong links to the US government and intelligence services, had constructed an exit poll which showed the opposition presidential hopeful Gonzalez, winning by 65%. This sole exit poll has been repeated over and over in ALL Western media in the last few days as proof that the election was fixed by Maduro.

While it is possible that the Maduro government did fix the election, we need more information before we can make that accusation.

The West well knows that extreme external pressure on a nation-such as the Western sanctions and multiple US supported attempted coups that Venezuelans have endured for the past 10 years, can provoke a country to respond with ever tighter internal repression and brutality to control externally controlled dissident forces, and Venezula appears to be no exception to that rule; although the extent of that repression in Venezuela is of course amplified and exagerated by Western media. Current Western media reports of huge demonstrations against Madura in Vernezual’s capital Caracas and beyond appear to be vastly exaggerated.

The US, its Western allies, and those South American states in the Organisation of American States (OAS), despite their chorus of accusations, obviously have no way to know what really happened in the polls, without that information. As Mexico President AMLO states: “Before any results were known, the Organization of American States director had already recognized one of the candidates, with no evidence of ANYTHING… ENOUGH interventionism… they keep meddling from abroad!”

And given Western mainstream media’s historic and ongoing complicity in supporting US sponsored coups in Venezuela, one should take their accusations with a large grain of salt.

Perhaps the most ridiculous of those attempted coups and Western media support for it, was the attempt by an almost completely unknown Venezuelan member of Congress Juan Guido, with US backing, to pretend that he was in fact the rightful President of Venezuela. The fact that Western governments enthusiastically supported Guido’s outrageous claims despite any evidence, is proof positive of the anti-democratic attempts to once again control Venezuelan’s oil resources at any cost.

That the UK was prepared to compromise what remained of the Bank of England and the City of London’s integrity as a global financial centre by appropriating Venezuala’s gold on the excuse that the gold belonged to Guido’s pretend regime, indicates the extent to which every Western nation is prepared to do whatever the US requires them to.

Postscript

The announcement on 2nd August by the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that there is ‘overwhelming evidence’ González beat Nicolás Maduro in the presidential election, without there actually being any ‘overwhelming evidence’ one way or the other at all at that stage, once again demonstrates how the US will go to any lengths to get ‘their’ person ‘elected’. (which obviously tells you a lot about the US’s own electoral process)

A great article by Counterpunch validating many of the arguments above

and

Systemic Disorder’s in depth assessment of the Venezuelan elections

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Links

https://www.thecanary.co/global/world-analysis/2024/07/30/venezuela-elections-propaganda

https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2024/07/29/us-government-edison-poll-venezuela-election/

https://hannity.com/media-room/poll-firm-that-provides-election-data-to-cnn-claims-error-yet-again/

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/07/29/world/venezuelan-leader-juan-guaido-sovereign-gold-dispute-intl-scli/index.html

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/4/25/venezuelan-opposition-leader-guaido-expelled-from-colombia–

The Making of Juan Guaidó: How the US regime change laboratory created Venezuela’s coup leader
Announcing ‘Corporate Coup: Venezuela and the End of US Empire’ by Anya Parampil

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/07/29/world/venezuelan-leader-juan-guaido-sovereign-gold-dispute-intl-scli/index.html

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/4/25/venezuelan-opposition-leader-guaido-expelled-from-colombia–

https://www.vox.com/2020/5/11/21249203/venezuela-coup-jordan-goudreau-maduro-guaido-explain

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202407/1316986.shtml

https://www.reuters.com/world/china-venezuela-sign-agreements-economy-trade-tourism-2023-09-13/

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/7/29/stark-split-in-world-reactions-to-disputed-venezuela-election

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/12/world/us-venezuela-sanctions-alina-douhan-intl/index.html

https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/country-reports/ahrc4859add2-visit-bolivarian-republic-venezuela-report-special

https://news.antiwar.com/2024/07/29/us-accuses-venezuela-of-election-manipulation-after-maduro-victory-threatens-sanctions/

https://www.telesurenglish.net/president-nicolas-maduro-denounces-violent-acts-perpetrated-by-the-far-right-in-venezuela/

https://daniellarison.substack.com/p/abandon-the-failed-venezuela-policy

A Timeline of US Sanctions on the Venezuelan Regime
Venezuela: As US Leaders Call Fraud, US Observers Endorse Results
https://cepr.net/press-release/report-finds-us-sanctions-on-venezuela-are-responsible-for-tens-of-thousands-of-deaths/

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/02/venezuela-election-us-edmundo-gonzalez-maduro-results-disputed

https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/08/12/media-coverage-of-venezuelas-presidential-election-normalizes-us-interference

U.S., opposition claims on Venezuela election fall apart under scrutiny

The Beginning of a Journey into the Unknown

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Links

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

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

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

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

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

Humans’ ‘Intelligence’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Welcome to 2024! 

New Zealand as a Commodity for Sale

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

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

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

Te Tiriti flag-the Treaty of Waitangi flag

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Full speed ahead to that environmental brick wall, chaps!

The Psychopathic West

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Links

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

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


The Immorality of Western Politicians

On 7th October , the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur war, Hamas, a militant group in Gaza , the home to three quarters of a million Palestinians imprisoned behind concrete and wire fences by Israel since 1967, launched a surprise attack against Israelis.

Moon of Alabama talks about this new Hamas raid (doomed to failure against overwhelming military odds) as a retaliation against Israel’s recent military support for Israeli settler thug’s invasion of the Muslim Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.

In reality, this is one more desperate attempt by Palestinians to reassert their legitimate rights as free Palestinians, rather than prisoners of the Israeli apartheid regime – which many have described as slow motion genocide, since the 1948 Nakba (The Catastrophe) when Israeli soldiers, with the full support of the US, UK and many other Western countries, killed thousands of Palestinians and brutally forced many hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes into refugee camps in Lebanon and Syria.

247 villages in Southern Palestine were ethnically cleansed by Israeli forces in 1948. The refugees from those villages were then forced into a concentration camp that came to be known as the Gaza strip.

And while any responsible government should deplore any violence by any party in another part of the world; the response from Western governments, including my own New Zealand government, has been to condemn Hamas’ violence, without in any way acknowledging that the causes for this violence are the direct result of the barbaric actions of multiple Israeli governments since 1948. A long-standing pattern of ‘legalised’ (by Israeli courts) sustained violence against Palestinians for their crime of owning land that Israeli settlers wanted to acquire at no cost.

Let us not pretend that Western politicians are not aware of these barbaric crimes by the Israeli state- crimes which continue to this day, and every day, and yet somehow, year on year, we do not hear condemnation of these crimes by the Israeli state and the settler thugs they support. Instead we hear that Israel is a key partner of the US, the UK and the EU in helping conducting the West’s business of extortion of Arab and Iranian assets in the Middle East.

And for many years the United States purported to act as an ‘honest broker” between the Israeli state and Palestinians; pretending that a Palestinian state was still a viable option, while all the while providing unlimited military and other resources to the Israeli regime to continue it expansionist agenda in Lebanon and Syria, and almost nothing to the West Bank and Gaza enclaves.

This is one moment in this decades’ long war against Palestinians where Western countries could really do the honourable thing, and strongly pressure Israel to ensure it complies with international law by tearing down the walls containing Palestinians in their tiny prison encampments, grants them full rights as Israeli citizens, allows the right of return for all Palestinians since 1948 and fully compensates Palestinians for the theft of their lands.

Do we in fact have any Western politicians with any honour?

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Postscript

As Jonathan Cook so lucidly outlines ,the West’s enthusiastic swooning over Israel’s ‘retaliation’ is sick-making; and who gives a flying f*** that Israel’s much vaunted ‘intelligence” (read ‘Terrorist’) services didn’t have advanced warning of Hamas’s attack? How about some long term justice for the Palestinian people (after 75 years of Western enthusiastic support for Israeli injustice). As Jonathan says; ‘This moment rips off the mask and lays bare the undisguised racism that masquerades as moral concern in western capitals’.

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Links

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/10/palestine-strikes-back.html#more

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Palestinian_expulsion_and_flight

Remembering the Nakba

https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/gaza-israel-west-hypocrisy-jailbreak-stomach-turning

https://kevinbarrett.substack.com/p/gazans-break-out-of-worlds-biggest?publication_id=314817&post_id=137770975&isFreemail=true&r=5hf4x

– IMEMC News International Middle East Media Center

https://richardfalk.org/

PCHR: “Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (Weekly Update | September 14-20, 2023)” | – IMEMC News

Mansour: Israel’s ‘License to Kill’
Chris Hedges: Palestinians Speak Israel’s Language

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 Cult of ‘Personality’

The cult of ‘personality’ is not however limited to kings and queens; we see it everywhere in the world; the adulation of rock and movie stars whose lives are constantly shattered by trauma and misadventure and a role model for no-one, the president of an Eastern European country with an addiction to cocaine and ill-gotten gains who sacrifices the lives of thousands of men for his glory, or another Eastern European president whose addiction to patriotism and ‘duty’ has resulted in the ruthless death and destruction of so much

Kings and Queens are human beings too, and the grief and loss they leave behind should be respected and not trivialised..

However, it does astound me how not only people in the U.K. but around the world are now eulogising the late Queen of England for her glorious ‘service’ to the country and (British) Commonwealth. Exactly what that ‘service’ was I am yet to discover.

Was it perhaps those queenly waves from her limousine, or maybe the way she delivered her annual speeches from the Crown which had been written for her by the government of the day, or perhaps the way she shook hands with even the lowliest of commoners and smiled so graciously?.

In compensation for that annual ‘service’ we are told she and her retinue are paid $78million (USD) per annum by the British taxpayer, while the Windsor family’s assets currently stand at $28 billion (USD). The contrast between the royal family’s obscene wealth and the poverty of many in the U.K. could not be more extreme.

And let us not elaborate on the assets that the Crown has’ acquired” from British colonies over the centuries at the point of a gun, or the Crown’s enthusiastic embrace of the tyranny and abuse of those colonies, or the British Crown’s continued support of genocide in Yemen, to name just one war..

And yet, the downtrodden poor of Britain and many across the world have wept real tears of grief and loss at her passing- creating an account of a person whose apparent only wish was to ‘serve’ her people. (it is in passing, extraordinary how the entire Western media have all enthusiastically leapt onto the bandwagon of the Queen’s ‘service’ terminology , as one )

There are of course many in the world who do not share those views of a noble and glorious British monarchy- but most Western media are careful to avoid such inglorious inputations.

But let us leave those who wish to mourn, to do so in peace. Their grief is no doubt in most cases genuine- their loss is real..

And all the while, the voices of those who are calm and rational; who call for a safer, sustainable, kinder and compassionate world, are silenced by demagoguery and the power of the corporate media who attach themselves so comfortably to that demagoguery- there is, after all- money to be made with the latest craze…

The cult of ‘personality’ is not however limited to kings and queens; we see it everywhere in the world; the adulation of rock and movie stars whose lives are constantly shattered by trauma and misadventure and a role model for no-one, the president of an Eastern European country with an addiction to cocaine and ill-gotten gains, who sacrifices the lives of thousands of men for his glory, or another Eastern European president whose addiction to patriotism and ‘duty’ has resulted in the ruthless death and destruction of so much. And then, for many Americans, the eulogising of the latest president-whoever he is , to our ‘democracy’ and our ‘exceptional nation’, and the consequent demonisation of those who disagree with us.

What is it in the human psyche that permits many of us to succumb to this irrational and dangerous fervour?- to march in lock step with our current hero to oblivion? For our ‘hero’ will soon become our next ‘monster’ when the current vogue for them has dissipated.

We desperately need to let go of those ‘heroes’, we need to focus instead on what we all need to do right now to save as much as we can of what is left of this planet- both for ourselves and the other living things we have imperiously assumed dominion over.

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Links

“https://consortiumnews.com/2022/09/09/cruelties-of-the-queens-reign/”
Queen Elizabeth II Wasn’t A Servant. She Was A Parasite
Imposed Insanity – Royalty, Propaganda And The Coming Catastrophe
That’s Enough Monarchy Now