The world for humans continues to become more uncertain and more unstable; although you would largely not know that from our mainstream media. Climate Change is a little problem but we are working on it ,they say. Lets just ignore that we nowhere near achieving any of our much vaunted global targets of containing, let alone reducing, Co2 emissions- we are therefore definitely heading for global climate disasters in less than a decade.
And once independent academic analysts like Robert Patman in New Zealand along with the rest of the West, now regurgitate the nonsense of China being a threat to the West (and to New Zealand) and thus the appropriateness and necessity of the West continuing its brutal and sadistic “rule based international order” to confront both Russia and China.
Strangely too we hear very little mention in Western mainstream media of the drumbeat of a new multi-polar world. A world where the West can no longer dictate the economic terms through violence, war and blackmail of the South. Perhaps the images of African Sahel countries finally booting out their French colonial occupation forces raises some eyebrows in countries other than France, but there appears little recognition that this anti -Western movement is gaining steam across the South.
Or perhaps you missed the very quiet admission by the US’s General Milley recently that the much hyped Chinese ‘spy’ balloons that drifted over the United States in February 2023 actually didn’t have any spy gear installed on them at all.
And let’s just forget about climate change, what is more important than ensuring our global economy and consumerism keeps expanding?- right to the very end…
It is not that the F16s are likely to be a ‘game-changer’ -as the Western media have called all of the previous Western wonder-weapons provided to Ukraine. It is the fact that the decision to provide these weapons is one more example of the West crossing the red-lines they promised they would not cross about the provision of more military support to Kiev.
The West, after saying that training Kiev’s pilots on F16s would take at least 18 months, now says the training will take 4 months. This very likely indicates that the pilots flying the F16s will not be Ukrainian – they will be Western military ‘retirees’ or ‘volunteers’ and/or be operated out of Polish airbases..
Kiev and the West is determined to ‘defeat’ the Russians in Ukraine- to ‘return’ Crimea and the Donbass to Ukraine (and then to carve up Russia in the way the neocons attempted to in the Yelstin years) . Given that President Putin gave the key rationale for the Ukraine invasion as protecting Russian speakers in the Donbass against neonazi Kievan troops, and given that Crimea has been a part of Russia since Catherine the Great annexed Crimea in 1783, a ‘return’ of Crimea and the Donbass to Ukrainian control would be an existential threat to the whole Russian Federation (not just Putin) and the Russian population would never accept that loss.
This is particularly so since Kiev has made it clear that it regards Donbass’ Russian speaking citizens as second class citizens who either have to be forced to speak Ukrainian or be exiled to Russia. Similarly Ukraine has made it clear that anyone in Crimea who has supported Russia (95% of the population at last count) will be deported to Russia once they ‘reassert’ control of the Crimean peninsula.
Western ‘intelligence’ and their military leaders are presumably aware of the existential nature of this war to Russia; although a knowledge of history and facts is not a prerequisite for decision-making in the US).
While NATO and the West insist they are not at war with Russia, the facts speak otherwise. Kiev’s military would have collapsed more than 6 months ago without NATO weapons; without NATO’s satellite and drone surveillance of Russian troops, without its ‘advisors’ on the ground in Ukraine, without the training of Kiev’s troops to use NATO weapons, and without the ‘retired’ NATO military ‘volunteers’ on the front line. NATO thus continues to pretend that its only providing ‘assistance’ to Kiev- the reality is very different – this is a NATO war.
It is now a very small step for NATO soldiers with NATO uniforms to be on the ground in Ukraine and supporting Kiev from NATO airbases and missile sites in Europe. Once that final line is crossed-possibly in the next few months, China will have no choice but to enter the war on Russia’s side. China has certainly provided economic support but likely no overt military support to Russia since the war began, and is fully aware that once Russia is disposed of and carved up, (as NATO strategists have made clear is the goal) they will be next.
The extension of the military ring around mainland China and the recent development of a second AUKUS/NATO military containment ring in the Pacific with New Guinea and other Pacific nations, plus the West’s universal abrogation of the ‘One China’ principle regarding Taiwan that the West had previously signed up to, are clear signals to Beijing that war with China is coming, and coming soon. Russia must survive for China to survive.
China continues to play a constructive and peace-making role in Ukraine as Patrick Lancaster notes, although to date, without success, unlike its outstanding recent success in brokering peace between Saudi Arabia and Iran to the great consternation of the U.S., U.K. and Israel, who had hoped that an Iran/Saudi confrontation would be the catalyst for regime change in Iran and access to its oil once again as in the ‘good old days’ of the brutal American controlled Shah.
The United States is desperate to ensure that it maintains total control of the economic strands of the global economy; it rightly sees the expansion of non-US dollar transactions as a major threat to it’s control, and its consequent capacity to threaten and cajole and extract the wealth of other nations who do not obey their wishes. And there are many in the West who are quite deranged enough for the world to endure World War 3 so that the West’s avaricousness can be maintained.
If the dollar collapses, the United States already in huge debt, will collapse rapidly. Its capacity to maintain its 600 plus military bases around the world will cease – and like the decline of the Roman Empire on fast forward, its military men will return home to vent their frustrations on the Empire.
Thus neither side in this war can afford to lose. Those of us on the periphery of this battle of the giants, need to maintain our safety as best we can!
These two interconnected decisions make clear New Zealand’s position to support the Kiev government, a regime which is unequivocally militarily and politically supported by neonazi groups like the Azov and Aidar battalions and political groups like the Right Sector, and which for 8 years has been shelling and killing more than 10,000 innocent Ukrainian people in the Donbas simply because they want to speak their native language, Russian (note that these figures are confirmed by the Organisation for Security in Europe (OSCE)
New Zealand equipment and targeting information is undoubtedly also being used by the Kiev military to continue to fire missiles at Donetsk City and its civilian infrastructure.
While the Russian invasion of Ukraine is to be unequivocally condemned, a path to peace must be negotiated which dispassionately examines the reasons for this war and Western governments’ refusal to honour the Minsk agreements signed by Kiev, which would have meant the Russian invasion would never have happened.
While previous Labour administrations like David Lange’s and Norman Kirk’s had the moral courage to push back against the NATO white mans’ club, which continue to drone murder, torture and initiate wars against those who do not wish to ‘compulsorily share’ their resources with the Western world, this Ardern government has cemented its relationship as a NATO ‘ally’ and a key member of the Five Eyes group and continues to enthusiastically facilitate those illegal and immoral activities.
One would have that thought that those who have been victims of white man’s colonialism would have taken some courage and initiative to distance New Zealand from these activities of the white man’s club. New Zealand is, and will increasingly become a pariah state in the South and East while it maintains it enthusiastic support for NATO and the current ‘international rule based order’, which every non Western state recognises as code for the right for the US and its allies to do whatever it wishes , including sanctions, targetted killings and extreme violence against whole populations. Does not the current Labour government have the courage to push back against this ever expanding and dangerous war that NATO is fuelling at the expense of likely hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers, and demand that each side sit down to negotiate firstly a cease-fire and then a peace agreement which is endorsed at the UN?
I sincerely hope that this Labour Government does belatedly recognise that New Zealand’s international and defense policies and actions are currently not on the moral side of rectitude.
Postscript 6th November 2022
The Telegram channel Rybar made the following post on 5th November.
#Ukrainian #Nazi group, within Azov Movement, Karpatska Sich, translated to Ukrainian the New Zealand shooter Manifesto that inspired the #Buffalo White Supremacist shooter.
The Ukrainian-language translation of the Christchurch shooter’s manifesto, flanked by a sticker for Ukrainian neo-Nazi group Karpatska Sich.
The New Zealand shooter Manifesto that inspired the #Buffalo shooter is a “must read” for all #NeoNazis and White Supremacists worldwide. Here a group of #Ukrainian #Nazis from Karpatska Sich holding copies of the book translated to Ukrainian by the Nazi elitist group inside #Azov movement.
Neo Nazi Polish/Ukrainian group Karpatska Sich made a hateful video regarding the Pride marches in the EU the year.
In other words, the New Zealand government’s military is funding, training and likely imbedded with neonazis in Ukraine who are directly implicated in the New Zealand mosque shooting in Christchurch in 2019, which the same NZ government has roundly condemned as a terrorist act.
The bizarre orchestrated western media response to Hu’s exit from the PRC’s national Congress meeting in Beijing is noteworthy. Apparently a frail 79 year old man being gently escorted out the CCP Congress shows-the-utter-ruthlessness-of-xi-jinpings-quest-for-absolute-power!
Exactly how that is the case is not made clear, and why he would be so publicly supposedly removed from office is unexplained, but apparently any opportunity to demean and deride the Chinese Communist party by the West is a good opportunity. But why should that be so?
We are told that Xi Jinping is ‘ruthlessly’ consolidating his power by appointing more of his supporters to his decision-making circle, (something of course that Western politicians never ever do!) after the Chinese Communist Party Congress (representing its 96.71 million members) were somehow intimidated into once again electing the dictator Xi Jingping for a third consecutive term!
And we are told by Western media that China has a ‘very aggressive’ foreign policy. Strangely this view is not reflected by most of the nations of the South, many of whom have benefitted enormously from China’s technical expertise and support for their infrastructure development – in sharp contrast to the predatory practices of the United States and its IMF and World Bank proxies, of dismantling economically vulnerable states for the benefit of American corporations.
The Chinese ‘threat’ therefore is that the long-standing predatory actions of the United States and its Western white allies (what the West likes to call the ‘rule-based order) are under threat.
The pretence is that these actions by the US are designed to impede China’s military aggressive actions. They are in fact designed to ensure China stays a subservient power to the US, economically and militarily. Charles Freeman (ex US diplomat) states it bluntly: ‘This is the equivalent of smoking pot in a hot tub and fantasizing about tripping up competitors in track events, while they are out training and trying out new equipment. It’s conceivable that China will stumble and fall, enabling us effortlessly to “win the future,” but it is imbecilic to count on this. Delusional complacency and reliance on dumb luck or divine intervention will not enable us to outperform China or any other rising power.
And as Counterpunch notes:‘Biden and the Post are talking about a country [China] that has not used military force outside its borders for more than 40 years, and has only one military facility [Djibouti] outside its zone of influence.’. Contrast that with the West’s brutal wars in the last 40 years in Iraq, Syria, and Libya- let alone its unwavering support for Israel’s slow genocide of the Palestinian people or the U.S.’s 750 plus military bases across the world.
Pelosi’s bizarre flight to Taiwan recently to stir up the Republic of China or ROC (colloquially known as ‘Taiwan’) into buying lots more American military equipment they didn’t know they needed, is just one more of many examples of attempts by the US to provoke mainland China so it can be further labelled in the Western (white) media as an aggressive dictatorship and thus not to be trusted. It is after all only the Western white media (and now Zelensky’s PR team) who speak “the truth”!!!
It would seem that those of us in the West are, not so slowly, being brainwashed by a Western media in lock-step with Western corporate ‘interests’ and their politicians, to believe that China and Russia are the evil ones against whom we must fight to the bitter end to maintain our ‘right’ to plunder the rest of the non-white world as we see fit.
And all the while, Gaia will have the last laugh on those petty human squabbles.
The South China Morning Post ( Hong Kong based and not state media ) reported that ‘The episode was not reported in Chinese state media but in its evening newscast on Saturday night state broadcaster CCTV included a shot of the former president voting at the closing ceremony before his exit’.
Postscript
An erudite and sane perspective on the Ukraine war and international relations by Robert Falk (below)
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 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.
All wars are, without doubt, pointless, tragic and foolish affairs that also play a significant part in destroying the remainder of our natural environment and a future for our children.
Western media are continuously playing a looped recording that Ukraine and its president Zelensky are defending the ‘free world’ – democratic ‘white” nations- against the evil Russian hordes. What is most interesting is that the language used in this messaging is consistent right across the Western media, regardless of the country you live in .
That the Kiev armies are undoubtedly shelling the former Ukrainian nuclear power plant near Zaporizhzhia: presumably to create more support for more weapons from the ‘white’ world.
That the Kiev government and its Western government supporters have been deliberately shelling civilian areas of the Donbass held by Russian speaking Ukrainians since 2014 , with over 14,000 deaths from shelling, and more recently with illegal ‘butterfly’ or ‘petal’ anti-personnel mines.
That real Banderite neo-nazis still play a significant role in determining Ukraine’s state and war strategy- despite many of them being killed or captured in Mariupol.
In the last few days we have also heard about the killing of the daughter of the ‘ultra-nationalist” Alexander Dugin. Dugin is, in my opinion, an obnoxious idealogue who has for many years promoted a Russia first meme. However nobody deserves to die because of their beliefs, (let alone their children) – be they Russian, Ukrainian or any other nationality.
What is however scary, is the identical use of language by Western media in describing Dugin as an ‘ultra-nationalist” – what exactly an ‘ultra-nationalist’ is, as opposed to simply being a ‘nationalist’, is somewhat unclear- but one is left with the clear understanding that only Russians can be ‘ultranationalists’ (or for that matter ‘oligarchs’) and never of course those Americans who have the ludicrous belief in the United States as the ‘exceptional nation’ who wanders the world doing good deeds for the benefit of those of us who are less enlightened.
Patriotism is one of the scourges of humanity; an absurd belief in the superiority of the culture and land to which you were accidentally born into. A scourge that blights and distorts the mind into believing that any action ; however intrinsically evil it is, is good as long as it benefits the country you were born in.
We see that evil in the blue and gold banners that enswathes everything in Ukraine, the United State’s ‘Stars and Stripes’, and the blue white and red flag of Russia, to name but three.
So now, as Westerners, we are told to hate all Russians, all Chinese, because they are a threat to our expensive lifestyles….And as true patriots, we should consume more, build more and destroy more , because we are the epitome of ‘civilisation’.
And all the while, we move ever faster into a new world where the climate is already more unpredictable and dangerous, where global warming and sea-levels continue to rise and rise for the next hundred, maybe thousand years, and where we ever more rapidly, destroy what is left of our living world.
And why?- because their media profit margins and their sponsors depend on more economic ‘growth’.
So it becomes clear that the only path to ‘de-growth’, and retaining some semblance of a live-able world for humans and other species, is one where Gaia herself creates that economic destruction.
When hurricanes, huge storms, enormous amounts of rainfall, oppressive high temperatures and sea level rise ( among many other ‘natural’ impacts), result in it being impossible to buy insurance for industry to sell your products or to have a market where people can no longer afford to buy your useless junk; only then will we start to see a return to a sustainable (but hotter) world where all species can live in harmony, and even some contentment!
Media have indoctrinated us all to believe that we need to consume more, do more, travel more – that we cannot live lives of contentment without all those things we need to buy and consume..
On June 26th Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s current prime minister, admitted in a TV interview, that New Zealand had been a NATO ‘partner’ -not member (as Ukraine also is) for the past 10 years. The interview was undertaken while Ardern was travelling to make a brief presentation to a NATO meeting in Spain, currently discussing how they can mitigate the Western disaster in Ukraine where Russian and Ukrainian ‘separatists’ are bulldozing through the remnants of Kiev’s army in the Donbass .
Given the admission from Ardern that New Zealand has been a NATO partner for the past 10 years, and has also been part of the Five Eyes alliance since 1956, we are thus a co-conspirator to the Minsk 1 and 2 subterfuges of 2014 and 2015 by Western nations in their pretense to the Donbass residents that a Ukrainian semi-autonomous region for the Russian speakers there was going to happen, and Kiev would stop bombarding Donetsk and Lugansk. New Zealand is also party to the provision of military equipment to the Kiev ‘regime’ (certainly not a ‘democracy’ now that almost all political parties other than Zelensky’s have been banned) which have been used to deliberately target civilian populations in Donetsk city in the past few months.
However if one were to believe Western and New Zealand media, Russia is shelling its own allies in the Donbass!- or as some Kiev residents have liked to call it over the years- the ‘Bombass’.
But let us not over-estimate the intelligence of our (Western) world leaders either!…
For New Zealand to pretend it is not at war with Russia is absurd. New Zealand is aiding its Western ‘allies’ to ensure that as many Ukrainians die for nothing in a war that could easily have been avoided if the West had insisted that Kiev abide by the Minsk agreements it signed in 2014 and not re-armed Kiev and its neonazi groups.
And let us not forget the colossal destruction this war is wreaking on the environment and the staggering amount of human resources wasted building weapons that could have been used to plant trees, and build a sustainable world….Or forget the increasing probability of a ‘hot’ war between Western white countries and China and Russia, which would likely then lead us all to nuclear armageddon.
Recently the U.S. orchestrated yet another Pacific military alliance between the U.S., Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK., strangely titled ‘Partners in the Blue Pacific’ whose purpose is to operate, the U.S. says “according to principles of Pacific regionalism, sovereignty, transparency, accountability, and most of all, [will be] led and guided by the Pacific islands.”. (Strangely those Pacific Island nations are not actually party to this agreement! )
This comes on top of the other new Indo-Pacific military ‘white folks’ agreement signed between Australia the United States and the U.K.; entitled AUKUS, which is intended to break the Pacific nuclear free agreement signed by most Pacific Island nations.
China has recently had the temerity to sign economic and security deals (not military bases) with a number of pacific island countries. If you believed NZ and Australian media and government lurid pronouncements, the ‘red peril’ is once again on the march to take away our democracy and freedom!
Presumably it’s the freedom to colonise vulnerable south pacific countries, to threaten and blackmail governments in the region, and to exploit Pacific Island communities using their cheap labour – dastardly Chinese stuff to try and limit us “good white folks'” exploitative opportunities in the Pacific !
Denis Argall notes from an Australian perspective that ‘the United States is entering into a period of instability at home and overreach abroad. The US’s declared intent to use the Ukraine war to diminish Russia is neither healthy nor attainable. The US provocation of war with China is contrary to our interests as well as common sense’.
The great Sam Cooke’s beautiful and visionary song ‘A Change Gonna Come’ epitomises the tipping point of a global transition we are now living through.
It seems astonishing that it cannot be understood that, as with individual’s power and influence, so too do nations rise and fall; from luck and opportunity -rarely from great leaders, and certainly never from the superiority of ‘race’.
It should be noted that the concept of human ‘races’ dates from deliberate misinterpretations of genetic theory.
The genetic variations between different human populations are so small that differing individual aptitudes of ‘intelligence’ -a quality entirely defined by culture and environments which either support or diminishes their mental and physical opportunities. Racial superiority is therefore a completely foolish myth used by those who wish to manipulate others for their own nefarious purposes.
A superb modern example of this cartoon-like myth of genetic superiority can be seen in this ‘white” ( more appropriately termed ‘pink’) supremacy painting circulated by one Carl Bildt – a former prime minister of Sweden and who one would have presumed to be an ‘intelligent’ man- alas not.
The painting depicts ‘racially superior’ Western Ukrainian Knights (descended from ‘Aryan’ Vikings in their myths) heroically destroying the evil Russian ‘orcs’ ( who are apparently ‘genetically inferior’ Asians , according to those same myths.)
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is to be condemned- as is any violence directed against another country or peoples, but likewise, so are the actions of the Kiev government army in Donbass , killing its own population since 2014. There is good evidence to suggest that Western European countries and the U.S. actively encouraged , financed and weaponised the Kiev government to fight the Russian speaking Donbass ‘separatists’ for 8 years, and ignore the Minsk agreements Kiev had signed up to- agreements that would have restored peace to Ukraine.
Perhaps Carl Bildt’s tweet is one clue to the West’s determination to ensure a war between Russia and Ukraine.
And we can see racial prejudice in the extreme brutality against the Korean people in the Korean war ( what can only be called genocide)– a war between Europeanised countries supporting a brutal dictatorship in South Korea against a nationalist Korean communist army in the North supported by the Chinese and Russians.
Or perhaps we can see it in the savagery Western armies fought against a Vietnamese army trying to restore their country’s independence. Or the obliteration by the U.S. of an almost defenceless Iraqi army and Iraqi civilian infrastructure ( a society battered to its knees by remorseless evil sanctions that killed half a million Iraqi children to the apparent delight of that much esteemed U.S. stateswoman Madeline Albright) prior to the Iraq war.
Or perhaps in Libya, where Libyan society was obliterated by Western powers in a mad grab for its oil. Or the well-documented use of jihadists in Syria by Western governments attempting to overthrow the Damascus government. Or the unconditional U.S. and U.K. support of Israeli European ‘settlers’ who have steadily continued to violently steal the lands of those ‘dirty Arabs’ in Palestine for the past 74 years.
The ‘Nakba” 1949. Expulsion of Palestinians from Palestine at Israeli gunpoint
And shall we remember the barbarous futility of the war in Afghanistan?- where the United States continues to believe it has the right to steal Afghan state bank money ( along with the theft of Venezuelan government and Russian state funds)
And we do not need to go back more than a century to know about the complete lack of morality of European and United States colonial troops or their proxies in Africa, India, South America or the Philippines.
We are talking about centuries of barbaric ‘white ‘ conquest and exploitation of most of the globe by force. And now, the times they are a changing.
With Russia being forced to turn East because of Western sanctions, and China now a very much an ascendant super-power, previously ‘third-world’ countries are beginning to asset themselves in the face of Western blackmail, bribery and military coercion.
A number of the South Pacific island nations, previously beholden to their former colonisers and exploiters, Australia and New Zealand, are now looking north-west for economic and security agreements with China; agreements which are signed from a position of equality, not colonial subjugation. Ironically Australia has recently sent their Malaysian born Chinese born foreign minister Penny Wong, to the island nations to try and recoup the ‘damage’ to the West, by displaying a more ‘non-white’ face to the Pacific, while New Zealand sends its Maori foreign minister, Nanaia Mahuta – but the island nations are not fooled by this subterfuge; they know their history by heart. All the while, the United States simply makes threats to the Chinese on the sidelines.
Pacific nations are well aware of the bizarre racist viciousness from the whole Australian political spectrum against refugees and migrants, or indeed the decades long exploitation of seasonal Pasifika workers who harvest crops in Queensland and New Zealand.
Western media portrays these agreements with China as threats to the ‘rule based order’: the United States’ unilateral and often erratic and nonsensical set of decisions to exploit other countries, (‘rules’ much quoted by New Zealand’s Jacinda Adern), on what other countries should do unless they want to be threatened militarily, rather than an extension of China’s mutual trade agreements to supplement her hugely ambitious Belt and Road commerce initiative across the globe.
As has been often noted, China has one foreign military base, while the United States has at last count, 800 overseas military bases; all designed to intimidate at least one other country, or to intimidate the very country in which the military base is itself located, to follow the ‘rules’.
China has never been a colonial power. However, let us not be fooled into thinking that just because a currently weaker or emerging country does not as yet display the barbarity of the current ascendant countries (like the U.S. and U.K.) that does not mean that those arising powers will not descend into the same myopic and racist stupidity of thinking that they are somehow the exceptional nation, somehow always bound for glory.
Racism is not the distinct province of ‘white’ people, as those who were brutalised by the Japanese in the Second World War well remember.
All nations, when they ‘ascend’ to a position of power and global influence, are wont to believe in the fantasy that they are somehow naturally superior to others.
But we are definitively all equal as human beings.
My hope is that some time in the not too distant future, we realise that all other species are our equals too. Different skills, different attributes, but equal. Without that realisation we humans will continue to exploit this world until the natural world collapses around us – perhaps at that point we may realise we are an intrinsic and inseparable part of that natural world and that we need to cooperate – not destroy.
As two of the world’s ‘superpowers’ fight it out in Ukraine for the spoils of war, the world descends into a dystopian whirlpool of economic stagflation and environmental catastrophe.
While the Western propaganda war of obvious lies to its populations about the war in Ukraine is deeply disturbing, what is far far worse is the psychotic behaviour of all the world’s political classes in talking about the need to address climate change while doing the exact opposite- promoting ‘growth’, trying to revitalise tourist air travel, more production of goods, more industry..
The evidence is unequivocal; only a reduction and stabilization of human ‘growth’ will allow species on this planet to barely cope with the ongoing and now inevitable climate and ecocide we are experiencing. Promoting more growth is simply going to push us all faster off the cliff to a far deeper environmental catastrophe.
Sadly the Ukraine war has given us ample evidence of the concerted activity of Western media to consistently lie to its populations. The refusal to acknowledge the war of terror by the Kiev government on its Donbas population for 8 years since 2014 ( with 14,000 deaths), the refusal to acknowledge the existence of the well documented neo-nazi military groups working to eliminate Ukrainian Russian speakers (even while promoting videos made by them), or even the refusal to acknowledge that much of the fighting against Western Ukrainians is being carried out by Russian speaking Ukrainians from the Donbas against Western Ukrainians and the neonazis, are all examples of the subterfuge Western governments are required to commit to ensure a compliant population supports their war against Russia, while ignoring the horrors of Palestine’s slow genocide by Israel or the rapid genocide in Yemen by the Saudis, both enthusiastically supported by the U.S. and U.K.
My ‘favourite’ so far from New Zealand state tv , TVNZ, is their recent video clip of an interview with an elderly man in Donetsk (a Donbass city held by Russian speaking Ukrainians and constantly bombarded by Kiev’s troops since 2014) after shelling of his apartment building by the Western Ukrainians, while the commentator pretends the damage has been caused by Russian shelling.
The level of ineptness and stupidity of politicians across the globe is staggering: countries with artificially determined boundaries lurch towards war with each other and potential nuclear armageddon, for no apparent reason other than the engorgement of weapons contracts and politicians and bureaucrats’ egos. This craziness is fuelled by corrupt and inept journalists who parrot the ‘official’ line of their country’s equally inept politicians.
When media have no compunction to consistently lie to get their ‘message’ across, one knows we have no hope of the media presenting an honest case about the desperate need for genuine action about climate change. We are instead presented with occasional short media articles about climate change, followed by a psychotic switch to the main propaganda barrage of ‘produce more, work more, buy more, sell more, fly more’. Greenwashing is now the ‘in thing’. Half-truths and pure lies infest our mainstream media.
Perhaps the one saving grace of our incompetent leaders is that they are, through their own incompetence, leading the world into a severe economic depression, which, together with the impacts of climate change, will inevitably reduce consumption and consequently allow some restoration of our natural world.
Sadly however that economic depression will lead to much suffering and many deaths. A planned and systematic approach to de-growth would have been a far more humane response.
Unfortunately , politicians’ and bureaucrats’ responses to the various crises enveloping the world is either to make war, or ‘grow’ economies more.
I would appreciate if you could publish the following letter
‘Supporting’ Ukraine
While any invasion of another country is deplorable and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is to be condemned, one needs to remember that prior to this invasion, more than 10,000 Russian speaking Ukrainians have been killed by the Kiev government in the Donbass since 2014; predominantly by neo-nazi groups like the Azov Battalion- the very same neonazi group that Brenton Tarrant , the Christchurch mosque shooter, was an ardent adherent of.
We should all be aware that truth is the first casualty of war, but the level of war hysteria and blatantly distorted propaganda we are seeing across the Western world about this tragedy in Ukraine, is extremely alarming- our media now howls for World War Three.
Our prime minister talks about how New Zealand supports the “rule based international order”; the U.S. imposed version of how they believe the world should be; not United Nation’s rules.
It is time to step back from the brink of a massive, potentially nuclear, war which would involve China Russia and its allies, and the Western camp.
Saner heads need to prevail; we need peace and an effective response to the imminent climate catastrophe unfolding, not this foolish provocation by New Zealand.
New Antarctica 