Tag: New Zealand

Sinophobia and Hysteria in the Pacific

The Pacific has long been the playground of European powers. France even now has what the French call patronisingly ‘protectorates’) in the Pacific including French Polynesia ( including Tahiti), New Caledonia, and Wallis. The independence movement in New Caledonia is particularly strong and has resulted in a number of clashes recently with the French occupying force there.

The United States has bases and territories in the Pacific, including Guam, American Samoa, Wake Island and Kwajalein Atoll  and also of course Hawaii which has become a US state. The US also has several naval bases in the Pacific, including Pearl Harbour, Guam, Majuro Atoll San Diego and in American Samoa.

Australia’s primary Pacific territories include, Norfolk Island, the Coral Sea Islands (Including Willis Island) Lord Howe Island and the Torres Strait Islands; with the most notable base and populated territory being Norfolk Island, located roughly 1600km northeast of Sydney. 

New Zealand’s Pacific territories include the semi-independent Cook Islands (whose citizens have dual citizenship with New Zealand), Niue and the Tokelau Islands . The Cook Islands government has recently caused a furore in New Zealand by negotiating a trade agreement with China without first discussing it with New Zealand.

Both New Zealand and Australia are members of Five Eyes the notorious US,UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand intelligence network , which has for 75 years supported Israel’s genocide in Palestine through information provision and has been directly involved in providing vital intelligence for many of the brutal offensive wars conducted by the US and NATO-including the genocide in Korea , Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, Libya, the current war in Ukraine, and many more..

So perhaps it is perfectly understandable that New Zealand and Australia as part of the U.S. ‘international rule based order’ see their capacity to play their part in maiming and murdering millions for power and profit being threatened by the new kid on the block: China!

New Zealand has also relied on cheap (often illegally so) migrant Pasifika labour for its economy to expand over the past 50 years. Keeping Pacific Island countries therefore in a state of poverty has therefore been a desired outcome for NZ economists, to ensure a good flow of migrants. China’s resurgence is therefore a major threat to this strategy, bringing significant economic benefits via trade to Island nations and the likelihood that their populations will be more inclined to stay put. Having said that, China/Pasifika business ventures like deep sea mining are also a major threat to the environmental sustainability of the Pacific.

Despite the extensive hype from Australian and New Zealand journalists politicians and ‘experts’ , there is no evidence as yet of China establishing naval or air bases in those Pacific countries-unlike Australia and the US. What is curious is the almost total gung-ho support and consistent messaging from New Zealand journalists and ‘experts’ for more China bashing and more pointless New Zealand resources going into New Zealand’s military – on the somewhat ridiculous assumption that New Zealand’s tiny military footprint would have any impact on anything at all in a global conflict between superpowers.

China is now after all, a global super-power; it would indeed be strange if it did not have a presence this far south . China has steadily increased its naval presence in the Indo-Pacific region, including the Tasman Sea over the past few years. This is part of a broader strategy to expand its influence and protect its trading interests from a very belligerent United States and its co-opted allies-particularly Australia who has recently the AUKUS boondoggle deal to have the US build nuclear submarines Australia wont need, at staggering cost. New Zealand ‘experts’ are now saying New Zealand should also be part of this scam, to defend New Zealand from China!.

Rather than Australia and New Zealand acknowledging the new realities of China’s burgeoning global military and economic strength, and working with that (China after all clearly has absolutely no interest in invading Australia or New Zealand), Australia and New Zealand’s ‘experts’ and politicians instead want to hype up their populations for a futile and disastrous conflict with China. Bizarrely China is also Australia and New Zealand’s major trading partner.

It should also be remembered that United States naval forces and their NATO allies have traversed the South China Sea- very close to China’s borders, hundreds of times a year over the past 5 years. Ostensibly the US says that this is to ensure safe maritime passage in the area- but of course the vast majority of trade through the South China Sea is in fact Chinese.

The Chinese are under no allusions that the US is facilitating freedom of transit of this major trade route but are in fact threatening to blockade their vital maritime trade routes to the world..With its 904 military bases around the world, the US and its ‘Allies” are not a force for good in the world!

While New Zealand and Australia should logically be monitoring and preparing for any real military threats that might arise in the future, they also need to be adapting to a new multipolar world order, where the might-is-right rules of the U.S. ‘Rule Based International Order’ will thankfully no longer apply.

The development of open and honest communication channels with the Chinese Government instead of the current belligerency and media confrontation, would also be a helpful start, along with the development of long forgotten diplomacy skills.

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Links

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/542679/china-begins-second-military-exercise-in-tasman-sea

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/542714/expert-says-china-s-military-exercise-in-tasman-sea-serves-as-serious-threat

https://www.1news.co.nz/2025/02/08/analysis-anger-in-cook-islands-at-recent-moves/

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/542733/cook-islands-deal-opens-up-pacific-to-china-expert

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/542760/chinese-ships-in-the-tasman-a-gift-from-beijing-for-defence-spending-expert

World BEYOND War
Global Day of Action to #CloseBases

https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1010252037592085&id=100058218933804&_rdr

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Supply chain  disruption will occur for  a number of  reasons:

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

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

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

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

Energy Consumption

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

Carbon Credit Offset  Costs

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

Biodiversity Loss

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

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

Piwakawaka (NZ's fantail)

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

Population Impacts

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

Potential  Solutions

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

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

Local  versus National

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

National Resourcing

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

Iwi

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

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References

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

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

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

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

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 Ever-more-Slippery Slope

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Addendum

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

_______________________________________________Links

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

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

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

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

NATO: The White Supremacists’ Club

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 .

As Murray Horton notes ‘The message from Washington is clear – be in our “club” and we’ll make it worth your while’.

New Zealand has thus made it clear that it, along with NATO members, is de facto at war with Russia, along with the rest of the Western world. Apart from the U.S. occupied colonies of Japan (50,000 U.S. troops) and South Korea (23,000 U.S. troops), no other non Western countries have subscribed to trying to defeat Russia in Ukraine through the use of arms shipments to Kiev’s troops, or tactical guidance on the ground and satellite and in-air drone and manned aircraft surveillance of Russian forces. However New Zealand has also admitted to providing Kiev with artillery training and actively monitoring radio and other ‘chatter’ from Russian and their allies’ troops.

https://youtu.be/qciVozNtCDM

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.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1540853710720475137

Once, Ardern’s Labour Party had the courage to ban nuclear armed warships from New Zealand’s shores, to confront France in its contamination of numerous Pacific Island’s with nuclear bomb tests, and to press for a nuclear free South Pacific. But no longer. Ardern and her party (despite the spin from local policy New Zealand people that New Zealand has its own foreign policy) have completely sold out to the U.S., the U.K. and their white supremacist NATO minions, to the great enthusiasm of all of Australia’s main political parties. And we hear no word from the NZ government or the media about the U.S. latest military base in the south pacific, because of course U.S. bases are not a threat to anyone!

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’.

And as Murray Horton succinctly notes from a New Zealand perspective; ‘NZ is in the white Western world’s self-proclaimed elite intelligence club, namely Five Eyes. Which proved to be absolutely useless in seeing what was going on in Afghanistan, a country which had been an adventure playground for Western spies for 20 years. So, why is New Zealand in Five Eyes, what use is it to us (or anyone else, for that matter)? Time for NZ to get out, time for Five Eyes to become four eyes.’

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Links

http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2022/06/the-global-power-shift-isnt-west-to.html

https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2022/06/prime-minister-jacinda-ardern-s-europe-trip-to-include-attending-nato-summit-meeting-with-boris-johnson-pushing-for-trade-deal-with-eu.html

NZ BECOMES FURTHER ENMESHED IN US EMPIRE The Politics & Economics Of Five Eyes By Murray Horton (Page 5)

Understanding the NY Times Article on the CIA in Ukraine
New clear ways for the Pacific- Address historic nuclear injustices in the Pacific
https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/06/07/australias-newly-elected-labor-prime-minister-anthony-albanese-rushed-to-meet-with-joe-biden-in-tokyo-after-his-election-victory-to-fortify/
The United States- the Pacific bully
Opposition political parties banned in Ukraine and ‘unified information policy’ imposed