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Is New Zealand A Beta Test For Western Governments Micromanaging The Populace?

Is New Zealand A Beta Test For Western Governments Micromanaging The Populace?

In the wake of the covid pandemic lockdowns and mandates, many western nations and states in the US witnessed a new eye opening level of government intrusion into the daily lives of citizens.  Some, however, dealt with worse scenarios than others.

New Zealand in particular has popped up time and time again over the past couple of years with some of the most draconian restrictions on the public, and sadly the trend has not stopped just because the pandemic lockdowns stopped.  The island nation seems to be intent on setting the standard for authoritarian policies and government micromanagement, and a series of recent laws are driving home the reality that they do not intend to relent.

Flashback: In 2018, New Zealand banned all offshore oil drilling exploration in the name of instituting a “carbon neutral future”, meaning tight energy restrictions are forthcoming in NZ as the decade progresses.

In 2019, NZ banned all semi-automatic weapons after the Christchurch mosque shootings, punishing millions of law abiding citizens for the crimes of one man.  Video evidence of the Christchurch shootings is suspiciously illegal in NZ, and anyone caught viewing or downloading the event can be prosecuted.  The gun bans were enforced just in time for the pandemic lockdowns.

In 2020, the government introduced internet censorship legislation which would give them the power to selectively filter “dangerous content.”  Most of the provisions were ultimately scrapped after a public backlash, but future censorship remains a priority for the government.

In 2021, New Zealand Prime Minister and associate of the World Economic Forum, Jacinda Ardern, openly admitted to constructing a two tier society in which the vaccinated enjoy normal access to the economy, travel and social interaction while the unvaccinated would be deliberately choked with restrictions until they “chose” to comply and accept the mRNA jab.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

New Zealand Prime Minister Calls for a Global Censorship System

New Zealand Prime Minister Calls for a Global Censorship System

C-Span screengrab

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is the latest liberal leader to call for an international alliance to censor speech. Unsatisfied with the unprecedented corporate censorship of social media companies, leaders like Hillary Clinton have turned from private censorship to good old-fashioned state censorship. Speech regulation has become an article of faith on the left. Ardern used her speech this week to the United Nations General Assembly to call for censorship on a global scale.

Ardern lashed out at “disinformation” and called for a global coalition to control speech. After nodding toward free speech, she proceeded to lay out a plan for its demise through government regulation:

But what if that lie, told repeatedly, and across many platforms, prompts, inspires, or motivates others to take up arms. To threaten the security of others. To turn a blind eye to atrocities, or worse, to become complicit in them. What then?

This is no longer a hypothetical. The weapons of war have changed, they are upon us and require the same level of action and activity that we put into the weapons of old.

We recognized the threats that the old weapons created. We came together as communities to minimize these threats. We created international rules, norms and expectations. We never saw that as a threat to our individual liberties – rather, it was a preservation of them. The same must apply now as we take on these new challenges.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Insanity of Aotearoa New Zealand Closing it’s One and Only Oil Refinery

The Insanity of Aotearoa New Zealand Closing it’s One and Only Oil Refinery

Aotearoa New Zealand is in the process of making the biggest strategic blunder in it’s contemporary history by closing it’s one and only oil refinery, leaving us at the mercy or lack there of, of the fossil fuel industry and the super powers arguing over the lasts of the planets resources.
“One of the changes with the transition is we’re less dependent on a single refinery than we were previously. And our supply will be coming from a range of refineries around the Asian region.”
– Naomi James, speaking on Newsroom Pro Talks

Having exactly Zero oil refineries in Aotearoa makes us less dependent? Smell a neoliberal rat anyone?

New Zealand pre-ordered more oil stocks just before Russia invaded Ukraine, increasing government reserves this month – at a critical time.

“The Government and New Zealand fuel companies together hold more than 1.7 million tonnes of oil in tanks, ship holds, and international ticket contracts acquired just in time for last week’s international action.”
“Just in Time”, this is how this culture teeters like the proverbial Jenga Stack.
Read and watch the Orwellian neo-liberal double speak embedded below. In one foul swoop we are now depending on BP and Exon Mobil to keep our trucks rolling. Watch the dystopian interview with this puppet here; NZ bolsters emergency oil stocks backed by offer of Marsden Point storage

This is late stage capitalism, risking everything because the balance sheet says it’s more profitable importing 100% of the nations refined fuel needs, than this entire country having One Oil Refinery !
Can the reader see how dependent this insane decision makes our isolated country to biosphere incinerating corporations? It’s clear to me that the government should nationalise this strategic asset asap.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

TSHTF

TSHTF

You just know everything’s going pear shaped when the venerable acronym TSHTF, well known in our circles, hits mainstream media….. The below article written by Fiona Blackwood from the Hobart ABC Bureau appeared on the ABC News website and it’s so full of ironies I just had to pull it apart. So please bear with what will turn out to be an editing nightmare on my phone while I am still without a working laptop…

“Tasmania has been listed alongside New Zealand, Iceland, the United Kingdom and Ireland as potential havens of the future.” Right….. So whoever wrote this has no idea about food security, because literally nowhere in the northern hemisphere is safe AFAIC.

“The study, published in the journal Sustainability, found Tasmania could become recognised “as Australia’s ‘local refuge (lifeboat)’ as conditions on the continental mainland may become less amenable to supporting large human populations in the future”.

While many people have already moved to Tasmania to escape the heat in other states, some doomsday preppers are weighing up the island state as a post-apocalyptic option.”

Scottsdale's future is changing
Tasmania is already being chosen by mainlanders for its scenic landscape and relaxed lifestyle. (Supplied: Dorset Council)

“Tasmania scored highly in the report in terms of its climate, electricity supply, agricultural resources and population density.”

Mr Polin's land was put on the market in January 2012.
Mr Polin’s land included a bunker during the cold war in case of a nuclear holocaust.(ABC)

“The study states that rising populations and energy use have led to climate change, increased risk of pandemics and ecological destruction.

As a result, it found that human civilisation is in a “perilous position with regards to its future”.

“Professor of Human Geography and Planning at the University of Tasmania Jason Byrne agreed the state would be a good option to seek refuge “if things went pear-shaped globally”.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

New Zealand rated best place to survive global societal collapse

Study citing ‘perilous state’ of industrial civilisation ranks temperate islands top for resilience

Bunker repurposed for a US ‘doomsday’ community
Bunker repurposed for a US ‘doomsday’ community. A study proposes that countries able to grow food for their populations, protect their borders from unwanted mass migration and maintain an electrical grid, are best placed to withstand severe shocks. Photograph: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA

New Zealand, Iceland, the UK, Tasmania and Ireland are the places best suited to survive a global collapse of society, according to a study.

The researchers said human civilisation was “in a perilous state” due to the highly interconnected and energy-intensive society that had developed and the environmental damage this had caused.

A collapse could arise from shocks, such as a severe financial crisis, the impacts of the climate crisis, destruction of nature, an even worse pandemic than Covid-19 or a combination of these, the scientists said.

To assess which nations would be most resilient to such a collapse, countries were ranked according to their ability to grow food for their population, protect their borders from unwanted mass migration, and maintain an electrical grid and some manufacturing ability. Islands in temperate regions and mostly with low population densities came out on top.

The researchers said their study highlighted the factors that nations must improve to increase resilience. They said that a globalised society that prized economic efficiency damaged resilience, and that spare capacity needed to exist in food and other vital sectors.

Billionaires have been reported to be buying land for bunkers in New Zealand in preparation for an apocalypse. “We weren’t surprised New Zealand was on our list,” said Prof Aled Jones, at the Global Sustainability Institute, at Anglia Ruskin University, in the UK.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

‘Sustainability is wishful thinking’: get ready for the energy downshift

Green promises: EV charging stations are appearing in suburban streets. But will the economics actually stack up?
SUPPLIED
Green promises: EV charging stations are appearing in suburban streets. But will the economics actually stack up?

The problem with “sustainability” is its implication that economic growth can still continue on blithely in a world of zero carbon and a green energy transition. But expect a rude shock. JOHN McCRONE reports.

When I arrive for the interview, Professor Susan Krumdieck is busy clearing out her office.

A mechanical engineer at the University of Canterbury for some 20 years, Krumdieck is upping sticks and heading off to run an energy transition project in Scotland’s Orkney Islands.

Covid permitting, of course. “They’re all still in lockdown over there,” she says.

My question seemed simple enough. Is New Zealand finally getting serious about sustainability?

There seem positive signs, I suggest.

After years of mucking about with emissions trading schemes and other half-hearted curbs on climate change, the Government now appears to be building a national energy transition strategy.

The vow to be carbon-neutral by 2050 has been cemented into legislation. Change is going to be enforced through new institutional mechanisms like the Climate Change Commission.

There are agreed sub-goals, such as the commitment to be 100 per cent renewable electricity by 2035.

It all sounds like a plan – a roadmap to a better future.

Krumdieck answers by hauling out a wad of old yellowing magazines from a packing box. Decades of saved articles warning humanity of impending environmental disaster and resource woes.

Already she intends to set me straight.

“Well I’m cleaning out and I’ve been finding roadmaps. Like piles of them,” she chuckles wryly.

University of Canterbury’s Susan Krumdieck: We need to head back to the 1950s in terms of our energy use.
SUPPLIED
University of Canterbury’s Susan Krumdieck: We need to head back to the 1950s in terms of our energy use.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Analysis shows how the Greens have changed the language of economic debate in New Zealand

When Health Minister Chris Hipkins recently quipped that the Green Party is “to some extent the conscience of the Labour Party” he was not simply referring to polls suggesting Labour may need the Greens’ support to form a government.

Hipkins was also suggesting Green policies help keep Labour honest on environmental and social issues. So, what difference has the Green Party really made to New Zealand’s political debate?

Drawing on a study of 57 million words spoken in parliament between 2003 and 2016, our analysis shows the presence of a Green party has changed the political conversation on economics and environment.

In the recent Newshub leaders’ debate, both Jacinda Ardern and Judith Collins agreed that “growing the economy” was the best way to respond to the economic crisis driven by COVID-19.

Their responses varied only on traditional left-right lines. Ardern argued that raising incomes and investing in training would grow the economy. Collins suggested economic growth should be advanced by increasing consumer spending through temporary tax cuts.

By contrast, Green parties in New Zealand and elsewhere have long questioned the impact of relentless growth on the natural resources of a finite planet. Green thinking is informed by ecological economics, which aims to achieve more sustainable forms of collective prosperity that meet social needs within the planet’s limits.

man and woman shaking hands
‘Labour’s conscience’: Jacinda Ardern and James Shaw sign the confidence and supply agreement that brought the Greens into coalition in 2017. GettyImages

The language of economic growth

The impact of this radically different view can be observed in New Zealand parliamentary debates. When MPs from National and Labour used the word “economy” they commonly talked about it in the context of “growth” (“grow”/“growing”/“growth”).

On average, National MPs said “growth” once every four mentions of “economy”. Labour MPs said “growth” once every six mentions.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

New Zealand Deprioritizes Growth, Improves Health and Wellbeing

New Zealand Deprioritizes Growth, Improves Health and Wellbeing

Last May, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern released a budget to improve the “wellbeing” of its citizens rather than focusing on productivity and GDP growth. And not so coincidentally, New Zealand has one of the best coronavirus outcomes of any democracy in the world. Perhaps this provides a model for the world to make economic health cohere with health for all life.

To improve wellbeing, Ardern emphasized goals that focus on care for people and planet. Goals included community and cultural connection as well as intergenerational equity. Under the policy, new spending had to focus on one of five priorities: improving mental health, reducing child poverty, addressing inequalities of Indigenous peoples, thriving in a digital age, and transitioning to a low-emission economy.

While New Zealand isn’t the only country to float the idea of wellbeing over income, it is the first country to make it a reality. Guided by this philosophy, New Zealand is not in a rush to open its economy even as headlines swirl decrying a “stock market crash,” or a “recession worse than 2008-09.” Is Ardern’s example wise? Can we build upon it to further improve life after COVID?

Jacinda Ardern

New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, has deprioritized “growth” as an economic goal in favour of improving wellbeing. Her compatriots seem to like it: her personal approval rating is 65%. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Health and the economy

In the postwar capitalist framework, economic “health” became equated to income growth, price stability and full employment. There are increasingly serious pitfalls to thinking of “health” as a capitalist metaphor rather than a desirable end goal. Using GDP and stock market values as measures of overall economic health made sense in the postwar era, when growth was necessary to improve human wellbeing by raising material living standards.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

3 Central Bank Shocks Unleash Overnight Yield Crash, With Yuan On Verge Of Collapse

3 Central Bank Shocks Unleash Overnight Yield Crash, With Yuan On Verge Of Collapse

There is just one way to describe the plunge in bond yields overnight and the events behind it: the global race to the currency bottom is rapidly accelerating in its final lap with a global deflationary Ice Age (take a bow Albert Edwards) waiting on the other side.

The main event, of course, was the latest yuan fixing with the PBOC showing a clear sense of humor when it set the currency at 6.9996laughably not to be confused with 7.0000 (for at least another 24 hours that is), but just a fraction of a percent away from the critical threshold, and weaker than the 6.9977 expected. The result was a resumption in the offshore yuan selloff, a hit to US equity futures and a drop in Treasury yields. Of course, once the PBOC does finally fix the yuan on the wrong side of 7, all bets are off and watch as the CNH crashes… as far as 7.70 according to SocGen, especially once Trump hikes tariffs to 25%.

But there was much more in today’s iteration of the global race to the currency bottom, when first New Zealand, then India and finally Thailand shocked investors by being far more dovish than analysts expected. Indeed, the three Asian central banks delivered surprise interest-rate decisions on Wednesday as central bankers not only took aggressive action to counter a worsening global economy, but are now frontrunning each other – and the Fed – in doing so.

As noted last night, New Zealand’s central bank on Wednesday stunned investors by dropping its benchmark rate by 50 basis points, double the expected reduction and sending the kiwi tumbling. Thailand also surprised all but two in a survey of economists, cutting by 25 basis points. Finally, India’s central bank lowered its rate by an unconventional 35 basis points.

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Climate Change Triggers Hysteria As Ireland Declares A ‘Climate Emergency’

Climate Change Triggers Hysteria As Ireland Declares A ‘Climate Emergency’

Pollution

Ireland has declared a climate emergency, with Climate Action Minister Richard Bruton calling climate change the greatest challenge mankind is facing.

ITV quoted the minister as saying, “We’re reaching a tipping point in respect of climate deterioration. Things will deteriorate very rapidly unless we move very swiftly and the window of opportunity to do that is fast closing.”

The move, which followed cross-party support to amendments to a climate action report drafted by the country’s parliament, made Ireland the second country in the world to declare a climate emergency after the UK. In the latter, the declaration followed crippling environmentalist protests in London that paralyzed parts of the city.

In its wake, an independent, government-appointed Committee on Climate Change recommended to the government such measures as reducing the consumption of meat and dairy products, changing the way farms do business, and making electric cars the only cars that people can buy starting in 2035. By 2050, according to the panel, the country should be greenhouse gas emission-free.

It looks like climate emergency declarations could become a trend: hours after media reported the Irish parliament’s vote for an emergency, the New Zealand Vegan Society issued a call for the government to declare a climate emergency.

“New Zealand is woeful in its protection of the environment, with many rivers and waterways polluted, in part due to excess dairying in particular regions. It shows that we are simply not doing enough to protect our part of the world,” the call read

“It is the next biggest inconvenient truth… eating animals is causing habitat loss, driving climate change and the 6th mass extinction wave. What can we do? The answer is simple: go vegan and plant trees!” said a Vegan Society Aotearoa New Zealand representative, Claire Insley.

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Social Media Companies “Struggle” to Help Censors Keep us in the Dark

Social Media Companies “Struggle” to Help Censors Keep us in the Dark

According to CNN Business, “Facebook, YouTube and Twitter struggle to deal with New Zealand shooting video.”

“Deal with” is code for “censor on demand by governments and activist organizations who oppose public access to information that hasn’t first been thoroughly vetted for conformity to their preferred narrative.”

Do you really need to see first-person video footage of an attacker murdering 49 worshipers at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand?

Maybe not. Chances are pretty good you didn’t even want to. I suspect that many of us who did (I viewed what appeared to be a partial copy before YouTube deleted it) would rather we could un-see it.

But whether or not we watch it should be up to us, not those governments and activists. Social media companies should enable our choices, not suppress our choices at the censors’ every whim.

If Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube had been primary news sources in 1915, would they have permitted us to view footage  (rare, as film was in its early days)  of New Zealanders’ desperate fight at Gallipoli?

How about the attack on Pearl Harbor?

The assassination of president John F. Kennedy?

The second plane hitting the World Trade Center.

Lucinda Creighton of the Counter Extremism Project complains to CNN that the big social media firms aren’t really “cooperating and acting in the best interest of citizens to remove this content.”

The CEP claims that it “counter[s] the narrative of extremists” and  works to “reveal the extremist threat.”  How does demanding that something be kept hidden “counter” or “reveal” it? How is it in “the best of interest of citizens” to only let those citizens see what Lucinda Creighton thinks they should be allowed to see?

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Exclusive: They Spy With Their Little Eye

Exclusive: They Spy With Their Little Eye

The Five Eyes, a part of what the NSA calls internally its “global network,” have their dirty fingerprints all over the latest spying scandal engulfing New Zealand, writes exiled Kiwi journalist and activist Suzie Dawson.

NZ Spy Scandal:  Elephants In The Room; US Used NZ Spies to Spy on Third Countries, Including France; US Army Ready for Unrest


I’ve spent six years alternately begging major NZ journalists to investigate state-sponsored spying on activists including me, and, out of sheer necessity, reporting extensively on it myself from within the vacuum created by their inaction. So it is somewhat bemusing to now observe the belated unfolding of what ex-Member of Parliament and Greenpeace NZ Executive Director Russel Norman is describing as New Zealand’s “Watergate moment“.

In the wake of the bombshell release of a State Services Commission report into the affair, Norman wrote: “My key takeaway is that under the previous government, no one was safe from being spied on if they disagreed with government policy.”

This is a remarkable statement from Norman, who once sat on the very government committee tasked with oversight of New Zealand’s intelligence agencies. The futility of that lofty position was reflected in my 2014 piece “Glenn Greenwald and the Irrelevance of Electoral Politics“ which quoted Greenwald, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s leaks, saying of Norman:

“You had the Green Party leader here in New Zealand say in an interview that I watched that he was on the committee that oversees the GCSB [ Government Communications Security Bureau – NZ’s electronic spying agency] and yet he learned far more about what the agency does by reading our stories than he did in briefings. They really have insulated themselves from the political process and have a lot of tools to ensure that they continue to grow and their power is never questioned.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Australia Turning Really Authoritative? Is this How a Dark Age Begins?

The greed of governments in their pursuit of money is the single greatest threat to creating a Dark Age. With New Zealand imposing a $5,000 fine for just landing there and you refuse to hand over your pen and passwords to your phone for them to search, now we have Australia going really nuts to the point that they risk tech companies simply banning the sale of their products in the country. The Assistance and Access Bill 2018 in Australia will force Google, Apple, Facebook, and other technology groups to help Australian authorities decode certain forms of encrypted communications on their systems, or face fines of up to AU$10 million. The government says the legislation will help protect against terrorism, fraud and child abuse crimes, claiming it aims to ensure criminals “have no place to hide.”

The problem that arises that failure to pay taxes they also call criminal. Hence, the hunt for money is greatly aided by this type of legislation far more than any other pretend criminal activity. While the government has stopped short of demanding backdoor access to tech companies’ systems that would allow the government to tap into end-to-end encryption services such as WhatsApp, it doesdemand access to data at “points where it is not encrypted.”

Apple, FOR INSTANCE,  would not be made to create a backdoor for their iMessage where every user’s encryption key is different. But the government could request access to the single encryption key for its iCloud services. When you send a message to a friend, it’s encrypted as it travels between the two devices, and when it arrives, it’s decrypted for your friend to read, which is when the government should get to read it. The Australian government is cleverly demanding not a backdoor, but a “side door” to gain access to whatever people are sending.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

NATO Coordinates Information War on Russia

NATO Coordinates Information War on Russia

NATO Coordinates Information War on Russia

The US, Britain and other NATO allies upped the ante this week with a coordinated campaign of information war to criminalize Russia. Moscow dismissed the wide-ranging claims as “spy mania”. But the implications amount to a grave assault recklessly escalating international tensions with Russia.

The accusations that the Kremlin is running a global cyberattack operation are tantamount to accusing Russia of “acts of war”. That, in turn, is creating a pretext for NATO powers to carry out “defensive” actions on Moscow, including increased economic and diplomatic sanctions against Russia, as well as “counter” cyberattacks on Russian territory.

This is a highly dangerous dynamic that could ultimately lead to military confrontation between nuclear-armed states.

There are notably suspicious signs that the latest accusations against Russia are a coordinated effort to contrive false charges.

First, there is the concerted nature of the claims. British state intelligence initiated the latest phase of information war by claiming that Russian military intelligence, GRU, was conducting cyberattacks on infrastructure and industries in various countries, costing national economies “millions of pounds” in damages.

Then, within hours of the British claims, the United States and Canada, as well as NATO partners Australia and New Zealand followed up with similar highly publicized accusations against Russia. It is significant that those Anglophone countries, known as the “Five Eyes”, have a long history of intelligence collaboration going back to the Cold War years against the Soviet Union.

The Netherlands, another NATO member, added to the “spy mania” by claiming it had expelled four members of Russian state intelligence earlier this year for allegedly trying to hack into the headquarters of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), based in The Hague.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Forget New Zealand – You Must Give Your Password & Pin to your Phone So Customs Can Search it When you Land

Ever since the Socialists took over New Zealand, it demonstrates how they presume everyone is guilty and they might be hiding money that they can confiscate all because rich bastards are not entitled to what they earn – it belongs to them always. If you refuse, the fine is $5,000. New Zealand has become the first country to fine passengers who refuse to hand over their phone passwords at the border. Obviously, forget New Zealand. The New Zealand Customs and Excise Act 2018, which went into effect this week, allows customs officials to demand passwords, PINs and encryption keys to unlock devices for “digital strip searches” of anyone traveling to New Zealand.

Unfortunately, some other countries are watching closely. They will let you in if you pay the $5,000 find and you cannot refuse and get on the next plane without paying the $5,000 fine. This is what lies in store when socialists grab control. Freedom of the individual NO LONGER exists!!!! The state comes before God, family, or human rights.

When you travel, you should get a burner phone. You cannot have anything private on your person. Welcome to 1984 – it was just a little late!

Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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