Staking Out Our Future:

The Travails Of Global Capitalism

- Dennis Small

“There is of course, no doubt that corporate interests, sensitive to the resource poverty of the US and motivated by the desire for profits, play a substantial role in shaping American foreign policy” (“Population, Resources, Environment: Issues in Human Ecology”, Paul & Anne Ehrlich, WH Freeman and Company, 1970, p308).

“The decades since the 1980s have seen elites around the world exercise an extraordinary ability to claim the fruits of economic growth for themselves. In this particular race, the US has been the frontrunner” (Prof. Robert Wade in “Inequality: A New Zealand Crisis, ed. Max Rashbrooke, Bridget Williams Books, 2013, p39).

“The human prospect is shaped by rising human numbers, mounting competition for natural resources and the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Each of these forces is a by-product of the growth of scientific knowledge. Interacting with historic ethnic and religious enmities, they augur conflicts as destructive as any in the 20th Century” (“Al Qaeda and What It Means To Be Modern”, Prof. John Gray, Faber and Faber, 2003, p119).

“. . . any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee (“Devotions”, John Donne).

For the rich and powerful capitalists in charge of corporate globalisation – i.e. in so much as anyone can be said to be in charge of such a runaway and chaotic process – it is becoming more and more problematic as to how they can convince the masses to believe in their mantras of endless growth and eventual prosperity for all. At present, this particularly applies to the Western version of capitalism, epitomised by the repeated budget and debt crises of the Obama Administration due to  Republican Party posturing as the class struggle deepens within the US and elsewhere. All this is creating a deeper pattern of uncertainty in the world economy. The antics of the loony Right as depicted by the Tea Party demonstrate just how frighteningly Rightwing the US really is, with its arrogant sense of God-given exceptionalism and entitlement (“Lawless World: America And The Making And Breaking of Global Rules”, Philippe Sands, Penguin, 2005). 

The hypocritical and self-serving myths promulgated by the American power elite are founded on the rampant exploitation of natural resources, and of peoples both inside and outside the country (“American Dream: Global Nightmare”, Z Sardar & M Davies, Icon Books, 2004; “American Empire”, N Smith, University of California Press, 2003; “The New Imperialism”, D Harvey, Oxford University Press, 2005). However, US manipulation of Third World debt has boomeranged badly in the 21st Century, as American Administrations now regularly stagger about the world stage struggling to cope financially. Creation of the unregulated capitalist casino with its inherent bank instability and all the varieties of derivative “funny money” eventually culminated in the continuously unravelling Global Financial Crisis (GFC) (for relevant background see e.g., “Casino Capitalism”, Susan Strange, Basil Blackwell, 1986; “The Grip Of Death: A Study Of Modern Money, Debt Slavery And Destructive Economics”, Jon Carpenter Publishers, 1998, & “Goodbye America! Globalisation, Debt And The Dollar Empire”, JCP, 2000, both by Michael Rowbotham; “The Roaring Nineties: Why We're Paying The Price For The Greediest Decade In History”, Joseph Stiglitz, Penguin, 2003). Today, China and Japan are the US's biggest creditors. Yet the grossly self-serving American example has only inspired more of the same sort of short-sighted behaviour by other countries as well (“Lawless World”, op. cit). The much-vaunted doctrine of capitalist competition certainly reaps its rewards in all sorts of payback!

We need to keep the global “big picture” in mind as it will increasingly impinge on our future prospects.  Some of the developments under way are likely to disrupt the traditional pattern of NZ politics to a very large degree as new and complex issues unfold upon us all, e.g., those associated with the so-called “War on Terror”; the ramifications of climate change and ecological degradation; disintegrating societies overseas and increasing refugees; Chinese investment and immigration. In trying to make sense of the “big picture” as much as possible, we have to repeatedly remind ourselves of the relevant background and history in tracing the roots of the key factors operating in the present and shaping the future. If we are to work more effectively for a better future, we need to assess our circumstances, including the important trends under way, as accurately we can, and determine our priorities and responses appropriately.

Ominous Trends

In the modern era, drawing on past centuries of imperial history, Western civilisation has depended on its exploitation of the oil and gas resources of the Middle East, North and West Africa, Mexico, Venezuela, Ecuador, Indonesia, and other places, let alone the plunder of other minerals around the planet. Now the limits, both geopolitical and environmental – whatever the capitalist hype - are starting to seriously bite. Given the intimate connections of military power with corporate projections and ruling class ambitions, one can easily predict that Western capitalism will become more militaristic, indeed neo-fascist. For sure, we were predicting all this ages ago. In the 21st Century, the dominant trends have already been very clear in this direction with the “War on Terror”, the doctrines of pre-emptive and retaliatory wars, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the widespread application of death squad strategy and tactics, and the practice of torture and other human rights abuses. These actions have been characterised by a host of military and covert interventions, let alone continually menacing and threatening behaviour. 

In recent years, the list of countries subject to military attack by Western agencies, whether by all-out assault; incursions by bombing, cruise missile, drone, special forces, or other means like logistical support and training for insurgents, keeps growing -  Iran, Pakistan, Libya, Syria, Mali, Somalia, Yemen, etc. The Anglo-American axis is especially enamoured with coercive strategy and tactics, however counter-productive it becomes. President Obama's Administration is deeply and viciously engaged, drawing on a long history (“Dirty Wars: The World Is A Battlefield”, Jeremy Scahill, Serpents Tail, 2013). Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry, backed by other Western leaders, have employed lavishly outraged rhetoric in their accusations of war crimes against the Syrian Assad regime. Assad has apparently made horrendous use of chemical weapons. Yet the US itself was guilty of assisting Saddam Hussein in chemical war attacks on Iranian forces during the 1980-88 Iran/Iraq War, including the use of the sarin nerve gas (“Exclusive: CIA Files Prove America Helped Saddam As He Gassed Iran”: www.foreignpolicy.com/; see link on http://reportergary.com/2013/09/how-the-news-media-promotes-war-in-syriab/). 

The scale of Assad's atrocities pale in comparison with the US-assisted slaughter of tens of thousands of soldiers, as well as civilians. I have seen nothing at all in our mainstream media on this recent damning revelation, only the American and Western propaganda. Obama has declared that we cannot allow an evil dictator to gas his own people, including children. But the US can readily help such a dictator to gas an enemy people, and also his own people, children included. The malign Orwellian hypocrisy of the West can be breathtaking. “1984” has come true in so many ways. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have charged the US with war crimes for indiscriminate drone attacks on Pakistan and Yemen. In late 2013, the US illegally and deliberately destroyed the peace process in Pakistan by killing the Taliban leader there, despite ongoing appeals from the Pakistani leadership and people to desist. Globalisation is degenerating into militarist barbarism. Is Western civilisation showing its true colours as the pressure comes on?

Indeed, with reference to America's “Memorial Day” in 2012, the then US Secretary of Defence, Leon Panetta, openly declared that the US is “a nation at war” (TVNZ7, ABC news item, 28/5/12). The list of officially acknowledged threats was already impressive at this point – Afghanistan, the restive Gulf, Iran, Yemen, conflict in the South China Sea and al Qaeda (ibid.). Later, the preview for a Q & A interview with Panetta on his visit to Aotearoa/NZ cheerfully posed the question: “will the next war come from China?” (TVNZ1, Q & A, 23/9/12). Panetta certainly claimed that the Pacific is now the US's priority (ibid.). Economic posturing like the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) goes hand in hand with militarist moves like the basing of US troops in Darwin, Australia, both moves being directed at China (as well as having other objectives). Endless war commemorations constitute a key component of the militarist conditioning of citizenry within the Anglo-American axis, and more widely the West.

Fatal Fast Tracking  

The Q & A interview conducted by Chief Political Reporter Corin Dann made it clear that both the American Administration and the NZ government were on track – as helpfully greased along by mainstream media like TV1 - to reunite fully in an ANZUS*-type arrangement, despite our current nuclear free policy (ibid.). So evidently we shall be able to have a lovely war with China!  As Warren Thomson aptly says: “NZ has sold its soul to the devil” (“Manoeuvred Back Into ANZUS: Subversion Of NZ's Independence”, Peace Researcher: 43, May 2012, http://www.converge.org.nz/abc/pr/43/pr43-001.htm). Panetta even wanted NZ to develop an amphibious landing craft capacity, apparently for helping out with invasions. For those inhabitants of the West concerned about the America's militarist direction and its ultimate outcome, the urgent imperative for pre-emptive, positive action should command our full attention. *ANZUS - the Australia, New Zealand, US military treaty that was the foundation of all New Zealand’s defence and foreign policy from its inception in 1951 until the US, under President Ronald Reagan, kicked us out in 1986. It remains in force today, but only between the US and Australia. Ed.

“Arguably the biggest defence force exercise in NZ history will kick off in South Canterbury with the arrival of troop-laden amphibious craft on a local beach in November (2013). Named Southern Kapiti 2013, the three-week exercise will involve the defence forces of the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, France, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Singapore, Tonga and NZ. It will be followed by others in 2015 and 2017 aimed at testing the NZ Defence Force's capability of deploying to a South West Pacific island or nation, aided by other nations if needed… The US will contribute four of the eight C-130 Hercules aircraft, along with two large military transport C-17 Globemasters” (Press, 15/10/13). This particular exercise is in the tradition of “Ready Reaction” interventionist forces and driven by the so-called “Five Eyes” Anglo-American axis (i.e. the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and NZ). Where exactly such exercises might eventually lead in an unstable world is uncertain. But as time goes on they can only heighten the risks of involvement in very dangerous situations. NZ could easily get squeezed between China and the US. 

As we become further integrated with the nuclear-armed American military and its National Security State (NSS) programme; our nuclear free stance will come increasingly into question. Significantly, a couple of Chinese warships and a supply ship visited NZ in mid-October 2013 and the Chinese sailors enjoyed sporting and cultural exercises with our Navy. The Government recognised their respect for our nuclear-free status. Meantime, the American Navy refuses to send even a Coast Guard cutter. But the US will continue to apply the militarist screws on what is left of our independence, with eager help, of course, from the Government and our foreign-controlled or influenced media. Indeed, the Government and the US have not wasted any time in reaffirming the militarist bonds. NZ Minister of Defence Jonathan Coleman, in looking forward to future closer cooperation, fondly affirmed the “common values” of the two countries in his meeting with US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel at the Pentagon in Washington in October 2013 (TVNZ, One News, 29/1013). Hagel indicated that these “common values” have been reinforced by NZ's participation in the war on Afghanistan. Certainly, and sadly enough, the record under the National government shows that NZ shares the same predatory imperial ambitions, and the same hypocrisy about freedom, democracy and human rights as its giant puppet master. The torch of liberty burns brightest for those with the gold and the firepower. An NZ frigate will soon visit Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and NZ and the US will together be patrolling for “terrorists” and “pirates” in waters off the Gulf of Aden, Yemen, and near Somalia.

Seizing Opportunities For Positive Change

There was one very positive point from the interview with US Defense Secretary, Leon Panetta, cited above (Q & A, op. cit.). He actually advised against NZ taking sides in any regional territorial disputes (including any that might involve both China and the US), recommending instead that we develop processes for mediation and arbitration. We should certainly take up this suggestion and work to develop a genuinely neutralist, peacemaking path with alacrity and passion.  Panetta said that both big powers in the Asia/Pacific region want a prosperous region, especially given that it is the focal node for global economic growth. There are plenty of big questions ahead however, including the one hanging over growth itself. While the US purports to be not trying to contain China (at least according to Panetta's comments at the time), this particular stance is contradicted by a number of recent policy initiatives, actions and even verbal declarations about China. 

Again, too, US forces are getting stretched across the globe with the Syrian issue coming to the fore in 2013, along with concerns generated by various incidents, episodes and political developments in the Middle East and Africa - in countries like Libya, Egypt, Somalia, Mali and Kenya. The “swing to the Pacific” has had to be somewhat modified. In striving to cope with all the countries and movements contesting its hegemony, the US is acting more than ever like a “yo-yo”. The Anglo-American 2003 invasion of Iraq not only increased general Muslim anger and fear but has dangerously disturbed the Sunni-Shiite balance. In 2013 Iraq suffered its worst violence since 2008 as the Syrian conflict - in so many ways generated by the American invasion of its neighbour - blows back in a destabilising and deeply tragic mess. Thankfully for all of us, and despite its legitimate grievances, Iran has adopted a more conciliatory line. The positive intervention of Russia has also cooled the potential for immediate wider mayhem, much to the frustration of the American hard Right, which has been agitating for open war on Syria too. Opposition to nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) should be across the board for everyone, not the subject of more selective Western morality as determined by narrowly perceived self-interest. 

In the Q & A interview cited above, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta added to his list of threats the dangers from the general turmoil in the Middle East, plus Pakistan, North Korea, and cyber-warfare (China of course being the main culprit accused in actuality). Given the recent revelations of worldwide mass surveillance by American and British spy agencies, Anglo-American duplicity is only highlighted once again. Panetta explicitly indicated that rising powers like China, India and Brazil must be closely monitored (ibid.).   American media, incidentally, can even portray an ally like India as a threat. It is most ironic that so-called “emerging economies” created by the process of Western-induced globalisation soon come to be seen in the West as potential threats as well as vital prospective markets for future growth. Blowback, as ever, rages on.  Brazil, angered by US spying, is now trying to institute a secure national communications system. France, Germany, Spain, Mexico, and a number of Asian countries are among those upset by the spying revelations.  In the years to come, we will need to forge far more effective international links in working for social justice, sustainable development and peace; we need to build more such links with non-government organisations (NGOs) in the US, China, India, Brazil, Mexico, and other pivotal countries. The networking to date in countering the TPPA is a great step forward in this direction. 

Confronting The Future

In the most general sense, humans are embarked on an evolutionary boom and bust cycle. American Professor William R Catton Jr. has summarised the process in the following terms (my presentation of it here following Catton's own outline of it: I took Catton's undergraduate courses in Environmental Sociology/Human Ecology when he was Professor of Sociology at the University of Canterbury in the early 1970s. I had studied History but it did not make any real sense. Biological species, however, come and go). In the context of the evolutionary origins of humans, we have succeeded through our cultural adaptations – i.e. technological innovation and the mechanisms of industrialisation and global capitalism - to temporarily subjugate the planetary environment to our material desires. But this very process of domination contains the seeds of its eventual dissolution. Our success to date has led us to believe in the cornucopian myth, a euphoric belief in limitless resources, and we have indulged in systemic drawdown, stealing resources as it were from the future. At the same time, we have had the delusion that technology will always save us from growth beyond an area's carrying capacity, the maximum permanently supportable load on the environment.  We have faith in continuous technocratic progress. This reflects “cargoism”, or a cargo cult type mentality – the belief that material goods and benefits will somehow miraculously continue to appear for us to enjoy; and that there are no natural limits to our growth and domination. And these beliefs prevail despite the fact that technology and consumption so often end up generating new problems, e.g., pollution, declining ecosystems, global warming. But growth beyond an area's carrying capacity (under free market globalisation now defined as the whole planet) is called overshoot, and leads to a population crash or die-off (“Overshoot: The Ecological Basis Of Revolutionary Change”, University of Illinois, 1980; http://www. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_R._Catton,_Jr. “Worse Than Foreseen By Malthus”, ; William Catton “Growth Is Madness!: - www.growthmadness.org/category/william-catton/).

Professor Catton's theory of human development can be called neo-Malthusian. It is a powerfully articulated version of a long-standing environmentalist contention (see e.g., “The Population Bomb”, Prof. Paul Ehrlich, Ballantine/Friends of the Earth Book, 1968/71; Prof. Ehrlich, incidentally, visited NZ recently on a lecture tour and was interviewed on Radio NZ, Sunday Morning, 27/10/13). Catton, who is a humane man (like Ehrlich); has hoped for some form of positive adaptation to offset the disastrous trends as much as possible. While he has not really explored his theory's dire implications (if we fail to act in time) in terms of the actual die-off process, he has stressed the nature of the challenge ahead and how we avoid facing up to the obvious dangers (“Bottleneck: Humanity's Impending Impasse” (2009). Back in the early 1970s, Professor Catton was pondering whether humankind had already overshot its carrying capacity. Later, in 2002, an important research study found that this carrying capacity was actually exceeded in 1980, the very same year of publication of Catton's own ground-breaking study of “Overshoot”.

“At some point, what had been excessive local demands on environmental systems when the economy was small became global in scope. A 2002 study by a team of scientists led by Mathis Wackernagel aggregates the use of the Earth's natural assets, including CO2 overload on the atmosphere, into a single indicator – the ecological footprint. The authors concluded that humanity's collective demands first surpassed the Earth's regenerative capacity around 1980” (“World On The Edge: How To Prevent Environmental & Economic Collapse”, Lester Brown, Earth Policy Institute, WW Norton & Co., 2011, p7: Brown's book is the best available up-to-date overview of the impending environmental crisis and what the international response should be; see also www.earthpolicy.org).The 2002 study led by Mathis Wackernagel indicated that, according to the trends identified, “it would take 1.5 Earths by 2007 to sustain our current consumption.  Environmentally, the world is in overshoot mode” (ibid.). 

The economic globalisation embraced by our Government and others is thus a roller-coaster programmed to crash, and cause subsequent population collapse. Global capitalism is fervently committed to self-destruction. Suicidal stupidity rules as ever! The National Party demonstrates this regularly in Parliament (as shown on Parliament TV). Its “cargo cult” goals are set to ruin the NZ environment and help ruin the Earth's ecosystems. Denial and obfuscation about obvious looming problems constitute the key corporate watchwords as been the standard practice since the 1960s (“Merchants Of Doubt: How A Handful Of Scientists Obscured the Truth On Issues From Tobacco Smoke To Global Warming”, Naomi Oreskes & Erik Conway, Bloomsbury, 2010/12; “Requiem For A Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change”, Prof. Clive Hamilton, Allen & Unwin, 2010  - which was reviewed by Jeremy Agar in Watchdog 124, August 2010, http://www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/24/10.htm Ed.). Can we grow the movements for alternatives in time?  

The Haunting Ghost Of Reverend Thomas Malthus

Historically, the Reverend Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) was a prominent figure in the development of economics (“The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times And Ideas Of The Great Economic Thinkers”, Robert Heilbroner, 5th ed., Touchstone Book, 1980, ch. 4). He stressed the role of population, arguing that “population will always tend to outrun food supply” (“Britannica Concise Encyclopaedia”, 2003, p1150). One important dimension of Mathus's thinking in particular got notoriety. Malthus gained a very nasty Rightwing reputation for blaming the poor for society's problems and for at least implicitly advocating starvation, ill-health, and even war as the means of population control (ibid.). For instance: “He argued that relief measures for the poor should be strictly limited since they tended to encourage the growth of excess population” (ibid.). This sort of Rightwing thinking carries on today, however covertly. But if one accepts the overwhelming scientific case that humans are just another product of evolutionary forces, then the challenge of the Reverend Thomas Malthus (Darwin drew on him) must remain: how can economic growth be sustainable and how can we provide humanely for the needs of all? What are the long-term alternatives?  What would genuine sustainable development look like and what would be its ultimate planetary carrying capacity? Can we make the worldwide transition to such a model in time? This is Malthus's perennial challenge to us on the Left, the underlying question of the biological relationship of population to its environment. At bottom, it simply reflects Darwinist evolutionary science (“Population, Resources And Environment”, Paul & Anne Ehrlich, op. cit.). 

Of course, it is a challenge to humankind as a whole. How can we keep deluding ourselves that we are a superlatively “intelligent” species, a species, moreover, which is an exception to the laws of nature? Paradoxically, if “free will” means anything, we could become the first species to actually choose extinction! Are we intelligent enough then as a species to be sufficiently pre-emptive? A commonly accepted nostrum about Malthus's economic theory as it relates to the question of population is that: “His theories, though erroneous (my emphasis), had great influence on contemporary social policy”, as well as on some other economists (Britannica Concise Encyclopaedia, op. cit.). Critical analysts on the Left have long correctly pointed out the outrageous inequities of the global food system and how food production and consumption are predominantly corporate-controlled; the huge wastage involved; the misplaced goal of growing more animal protein; etc. But short of a positive international revolution ensuing far greater democratic control of the food system directed by the needs of people and environment, we must take account of the kind of problems that Malthus has posed. 

We now confront the immediate realities of stressed ecosystems and desperate peoples. Typically blinkered, short-term thinking has long sidelined these problems - problems which are indeed coming to the fore today with the United Nations (UN) even recommending that we eat further down the food chain, suggesting the addition of insects to the diet of more peoples (evidently two billion people already eat insects as part of their regular diet, “Would You Like Flies With That?”, Sunday, TVNZ, 27/10/13). In many places, peoples are already plundering any kind of mammalian or bird life for food, e.g. “bush meat” in the Congo. The impact on ecosystems is proving dire. It is indeed urgent – as much as we can - to humanely reduce the human population and its environmental impact around the world, as well as continue the campaigns for social reform and social justice. The crazy course currently charted by capitalist globalisation means that more and more people want to consume at unsustainable levels. They have rising expectations totally out of kilter with the limits of the natural world. We need then to mightily address the question of how to avoid and repel the Malthusian solutions of famine, disease, war and death in all its forms - the Biblical vision of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. These are the solutions that the hard Right will always offer, whatever the guise adopted. The hard Right will fight tooth and nail against any measures to limit their own consumption and redistribute resources. 

The West itself should have made the transition to sustainable development decades ago. This would have set both a model and established a cooperative international system entailing the rest of the world. Back in 1970, Paul and Anne Ehrlich appealed for: “A massive campaign [that] must be launched to restore a quality environment in North America and to de-develop the US.De-development means bringing our economic system (especially patterns of consumption) into line with the realities of ecology and the world resource situation” (“Population, Resources, Environment”, p323, op. cit.). In 2014 and the rest of this decade, we face the question of urgent priorities, what resources we have available, and the best courses of action to take.  At present, the prevailing system of global capitalism ploughs on with business much as usual, although there are some heartening signs, e.g., the strongly growing trend to investment in renewable forms of energy rather than fossil fuels. But there is no such thing in Nature as a free lunch.

Resource Conflicts

As intimated, other countries will mimic current Western activities (and previous imperial history), as has been happening in the case of China itself to some considerable degree: witness the international sparring in the East and South China Seas; China's scouring of the planet for resources; its extension of diplomacy, aid, trade and investment in the Pacific region, engagements which can have manipulative aspects; the consolidation of its grip on Tibet and outlying provinces; etc. Meanwhile, Russia is staking out a big slice of the Arctic's potential fossil fuel resources, so ironically uncovered by rapid global warming. Russia symbolically planted its national flag on the seabed at the North Pole on August 2nd, 2007 (“Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics Of Energy” [Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt & Co., 2008, p113]). Hence its brutal treatment in 2013 of Greenpeace activists protesting the mining of the Arctic and the threat of climate change. Lamentably, Russia (supported by the Ukraine and China) torpedoed a US-NZ proposal for a marine sanctuary in the Ross Sea, Antarctica, no doubt with an eye on its plans and activities in the Arctic. Our own polar backyard as well seems more and more at risk from mineral exploration.

Both Russia and China together have rolled back – to a quite large extent - the American and Western push into Central Asia among the resource-rich states of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). These big regional powers have used the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, started in 1996 and comprising China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, for this strategic purpose, among other tactics (ibid, p230). It has all been a new version of “the Great Game”, the geopolitical contest in the 19th Century (between Russia and principally Britain) which saw wars in Afghanistan, the Crimea, and elsewhere (“The New Great Game: Blood And Oil In Central Asia”, Lutz Kleveman, Atlantic Books, 2003/4). The competition for the world's resources is hotting up with the West now locked in a scramble for what remains (“Resource Wars: The New Landscape Of Global Conflict”, Michael Klare, Metropolitan/Owl Book, 2001/2; “Capitalism: A Structural Genocide”, Garry Leech, Zed Books, 2012 [reviewed by Jeremy Agar in Watchdog 130, August 2012, http://www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/30/15.html Ed.]; “Winner Take All: China's Race For Resources And What It Means For Us”, Dambisa Moyo, Penguin, 2012).

The Anglo-American Axis Positions Itself For Battle

It was most symbolic back in December 1994, at the very time that the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was transforming itself into the World Trade Organisation (WTO), that the influential Atlantic Monthly (December 1994) posed on its cover the question: Must It Be The Rest Against The West?”. The editors made the comment on the magazine cover that: “Whether it's racist fantasy or realistic concern, it's a concern that won't go away: as population and misery increase, will the wretched of the Earth overwhelm the Western paradise?” The Atlantic Monthly serves as vehicle for discussion among sections of the Anglo-American intellectual elite. It has a conservative orientation. The reference to “the wretched of the Earth” echoes the title of the famous revolutionary polemic for the “Third World” by the West Indian-born and Algerian nationalist Frantz Fanon (“The Wretched Of The Earth”, Penguin, 1961/7). The December 1994 edition of the Atlantic Monthly featured a debate on the West versus the rest. It pitted academics Matthew Connelly and Paul Kennedy against Virginia Abernethy. Connelly was a PhD. candidate researching the Algerian war of independence while Kennedy was a Professor of History at Yale University, and the author of several significant studies, including “Preparing For The Twenty-First Century” (1993). Virginia Abernethy was a Professor of Psychiatry and Anthropology at Vanderbilt University and the Editor of the journal Population And Environment

In this debate, Connelly and Kennedy took the supportive internationalist position for the “Third World”, while Abernethy took the negative position. Connelly and Kennedy argued strongly that: “The only solution is to persuade our political leaders to recognise the colossal, interconnected nature of our global problem and to strain every element of our human ingenuity, resourcefulness, and energy to slow down, or if possible reverse, the build-up of worldwide demographic and environmental pressures” (Atlantic Monthly, op. cit, p76). In this sense, it was in line with the ongoing series of Club of Rome studies and other such publications. Professor Abernethy, instead, belonged to the Malthusian “let them starve” school, although of course she did not actually state this as policy in such blunt and callous terms. Rather, she avowedly hoped for local solutions as opposed to more development, aid and trade on the part of the West. She argued that the West (North) could do little to help the peoples of the Third World (South) in practical terms. Instead, she contended – in line with Malthus' views as noted above – that the research evidence showed development actually spurred population growth rather than curbed it. Abernethy did not comment at all on what her policy would mean for international relations. Her tacit working assumption was clearly that Western power would prevail in any future conflicts without somehow either directly restricting Western economic growth, or eventually causing too much instability for the world economy. At an even deeper level, she clearly failed to understand how the imperial tradition works in extracting profits and resources from the South. 

Neo-Malthusianism in its Rightwing version is a form of Social Darwinism. The history of Social Darwinism is portentous. “Towards the end of the 19th Century, in the US and Britain, there arose a movement based upon the incorporation of notions of survival of the fittest into social theory” (“The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Sociology”, ed. Gordon Marshall, Oxford University Press, 1994, p108). “Though not rooted in Darwinism (the idea preceded publication of the “Origin Of Species), such theories had a great popular vogue in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, when they were applied to the rivalries of the Great Powers and provided a pseudo-biological justification for power politics, imperialism and war” (“The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought”, 3rd edition, ed., A Bullock & S Trombley, 1999/2000, p800). The eugenics selective breeding movement has been noted as the “most well-known manifestation” of modern Social Darwinism (“The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Sociology”, op. cit.). The most dramatic example of applied eugenics was the horrible Nazi pseudo-scientific experiment and the Holocaust inflicted upon the Jewish people. 

The Rise Of Reactionary Social Darwinism

But another horrible manifestation of Social Darwinist doctrine, one that is still wrapped in much obscurity, was the secret official adoption by the US of an Anglo-American nuclear war-fighting strategy (“With Enough Shovels: Reagan, Bush & Nuclear War”, Secker & Warburg, 1982). In typically malevolent and stupid fashion, most of the Western media did their very best to screen this strategy from the public. This surely demonstrated - in stark and graphic form - just how bizarrely suicidal our culture can be, and what so-called Western civilisation can ultimately mean. Capitalist denial and obfuscation about global warming should come as no surprise. Over the last couple of decades, a reactionary new form of Social Darwinism has emerged, which draws together a number of strands: primarily white racism, capitalism, imperialism and Malthusianism but also, according to its varying forms: civilisation; the West; Christianity; both environmentalism (usually population concerns) and/or anti-environmentalism (rejection of natural limits, denial of man-made global warming, etc.); eugenics; and other sources. The viewpoint of Professor Virginia Abernethy is an implicit statement of this latest sort of Social Darwinism. 

A relatively sophisticated version this century is that promulgated by historian and Rightwing ideologue Professor Niall Ferguson, as illustrated by his TV documentary series, Civilisation – Is The West History? (shown on Prime TV in 2013). Professor Ferguson answered the question he posed by examining a set of the West's supposed advantages as he sees them - what he blatantly calls “six killer applications”: competition; science; property; modern medicine; consumerism; and the work ethic. Clearly these so-called “killer applications” principally comprise the process of capitalist imperialism, which Ferguson, of course, whitewashes in his comparison of how these Western cultural factors have related to other cultures (in contrast, see e.g., “Cultural Anthropology: A Contemporary Perpspective”, 2nd Ed., Roger Keesing, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1981; “Dirty Truths: Reflections On Politics, Media, Ideology, Conspiracy, Ethnic Life And Class Power”, Michael Parenti, City Lights Books, 1996). This is not only obviously Social Darwinist doctrine – more specifically, it is a version of neo-fascism with very wide ramifications (e.g., www.socialistworker.org/2012/10/11/turning-despair-into-hate).

Ferguson and his views have been popularised in the West because his neo-imperialism fits precisely the realpolitik outlook of the Anglo-American Establishment. As a leading ideologue, he has even got to deliver a round of the Reith Lectures, besides regular media promotion of his books, TV documentary series, etc. Professor Ferguson pursued his exposition on the triumph to date of the West and the gathering threats to this dominance in his TV doco series on “China – Triumph And Turmoil” (also shown on Prime in 2013). In so many ways, both Ferguson's cultural arrogance and his worries (and even “Brave New World” optimism) brilliantly exemplify Professor William Catton's evolutionary theory in action. In the final episode of “Civilisation” (on the “work ethic”), Ferguson is brimming with typical Anglo-American contradictions: he refers to the “cornucopia” of American capitalism that outstripped the Soviet Union but laments that we have lost faith in our supposed “killer applications”; and so we are now left with only vacuous consumerism, which of course is also one of these applications. At the same time, we risk killing the planet as other peoples have adopted the very same killer applications! In fact, the deepening environmental crisis is a function of a Westernising world as we run out of resources. Global warming is under way. There are the rising threats of China and militant Islam. The killer applications are obviously rebounding very nastily and even biting back   Professor Ferguson portentously ponders at Armageddon in Israel. But, in the end, he is nicely upbeat about the West and how we can still have the edge and even solve the world's problems. You see, according to him, we have the freedom to do this (before the NSS takes over?!). In the final analysis, Ferguson is totally incoherent – can we use the killer applications to solve the problems caused by the killer applications?! 

Barking Mad!

For a NZ example of Social Darwinist doctrine, take a newly published book by Ian Wishart's Howling at the Moon (orBarking Mad!) Publications Ltd.: “The 100 Days: Claiming Back New Zealand – What Has Gone Wrong And How We Can Control Our Politicians” by Amy Brooke (2013), which I shall review in detail in the next Foreign Control Watchdog. As a fundamentalist Christian, Brooke herself is anti-Darwinist. Her “100 Days” is a very crude, far Right rant, almost half of which was originally published as columns in Wishart's Investigate magazine. An obvious source of inspiration is Professor Niall Ferguson (quoted on the back cover). The book weaves together in a Social Darwinist manifesto the strands of racism, capitalism, imperialism, neo-Malthusianism, civilisation, the West, Christianity, and eugenics. This is all bound up by a perception of a sinister, pervasive Leftwing conspiracy that embraces a myriad of threats like: “the danger posed by the UN”; “militant Communist China”; “the phenomenon of the flight to the West by Third World emigrants”; “militant Islam”; to the “enemy within”. This “enemy within” and its objectives include the “so-called indigenous rights” claims of  “part-Maori” and “the extremist Maori Party”, and even the alleged Marxist subversion conducted by the Government's own “education politburo”. 

Her targets are very diverse and wide-ranging to say the least – from the “anti-family, anti-smacking legislation” in 2009 to “pro-abortionists”; and from “multiculturalism” and “political correctness” to “the man-made global warming rort”. She belongs to that element of the far Right, which also condemns “free trade” and globalisation gone wrong. So the National government is criticised too. But having no analytical framework other than conspiracy theory, she assigns primary blame so far as Aotearoa/NZ is concerned at the door of the Government, not big business and transnational corporations (TNCs). Most bizarrely and worryingly, this reactionary tract is enthusiastically endorsed for its “impressive” research and analysis by a Professor of Sociology (!) at the University of Canterbury, namely Greg Newbold (ibid, back cover blurb). Indeed, Professor Newbold congratulates Amy Brooke “on a magnificent effort” and actually recommends that “this book should be compulsory reading for all New Zealanders in public office” (ibid.). Scary stuff! A key theme of Brooke's book is the decline of educational standards, including in our universities. On the evidence of her book and Professor's Newbold's hearty endorsement, let's hope this is not symptomatic of the state of sections of our academia. 

A Bullish China

What Amy Brooke's book clearly shows is how an element of the Right within NZ and the wider Anglo-American axis is at odds with the commercial orientation of the “free traders”, including all those dependent on the Chinese market and investment. Aggressive reaction is the mark of an expanding Western constituency, which needs constructive countering. Certain National Security State (NSS) agencies and personnel might well soon connect more intimately with street-level “National Front” type movements.  Perceptions of a rising China and what it will mean is already dividing the Right to some degree and inducing plenty of contradictions. At a far more sophisticated analytical level than Brooke, Rightwing economist Dambisa Moyo presents a case for Western concern about competition from China (“Winner Take All: China's Race For Resources And What It Means For Us”, op. cit.). With regard to the reality of global trends, Moyo can well ask what will be the financial and human effects of this great new commodity rush, and will it ultimately mean a rush to destruction for us all. Having worked at the World Bank and Goldman Sachs, Moyo is a darling of much of the global capitalist Right for rubbishing aid to Africa (see her book “Dead Aid”, 2009) and for assiduously promoting corporate Western interests. 

As indicated, like so much of the Right too, her case is riven with contradictions. While she has compared Western aid unfavourably with Chinese investment in Africa (ibid.), so much of this investment (and aid), whatever its spin-offs in infrastructure and so on, is founded on the gross plunder of natural resources, on boom and bust again (“The Global Assault On Africa's Vital Resources”, in “Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet”, op. cit, ch. 6; Ross Kemp – Extreme World, Prime TV, 23/1/13; “The Price Of Precious Metals”, National Geographic, October 2013; the latter two references apply to the Congo's “resource curse”. For some pertinent background see, e.g., “US-UK Roles In Congo's Blood Diamonds Industry”, Kambale Musavali, 15/2/09, http://www.globalpolicy.org/). Such exploitation is part of the process of industrialising the planet. More generally, Moyo warns in “Winner Take All” that China menaces our future prospects because of this very industrialisation process, and that world war might well ensue (op. cit.). Moyo actually has no specific entries in her index for such terms as “industrialisation”, “environment”, and “sustainable development”, although she does explicitly look at the population question in relation to resources. But while she does not look closely at development in relation to the Earth's ecosystems, there is still substantial value in this book.  Dambisa Moyo puts forward in her conclusion a raft of positive proposals for the international management of resources (ibid.). Overall, she is addressing a very real challenge and so contributes to an absolutely vital discussion. It is most ironic that the original New International Economic Organisation (NIEO) commodity/resource proposals of the UN in the early 1970s come round again to haunt us (see immediately below).

Bulldozing the Planet – Its Peoples and Ecology

While Moyo sounds the alarm regarding the march of the giant from the East she has to acknowledge in her review of resource conflicts that as yet: “China does not feature strongly in the headlines of these raging and prospective conflicts, whether it is land, water, energy, or minerals” (ibid, p206). On the other hand, Western imperialism has been obvious (although carefully protected by the mainstream media of course). Looking at the role of oil and its ready potential to spark conflict, Dambisa Moyo observes: “That said, oil's role as a motivating factor is sometimes not explicitly acknowledged”. She gives the Iraq conflict as one example, referring to the supposed reasons for the 2003 invasion: “Yet although often presented as an ideological dispute (including ‘the risk of WMD’), the US war in Iraq can also be viewed as an attempt to control natural resources, especially in light of the fact that Iraq has nearly 9% of the world's proven oil reserves, one of the largest deposits in the world” (ibid, p202). Well, yes, to be sure. 

Among the reasons behind the predatory American invasion was the concern that China could gain real influence in the Middle East at the expense of the US. It was the act of a desperate addict (“Stop Thief!: Sadly, It's A Common Story – A Desperate Addict Turns To A Life of Crime”, Murray Horton, Watchdog 102, May 2003, http://www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/02/06.htm; “The Last Oil Shock: A Survival Guide To The Imminent Extinction Of Petroleum Man”, David Strahan, John Murray [pub.], 2007). Today, the US and the agencies under its influence proclaim that new technologies, especially fracking, will stave off peak oil interminably. But that is a whole other story. In the Atlantic Monthly debate cited earlier, while Connelly and Kennedy recognised that the West has built its standard of living from the exploitation of resources and peoples all round the planet, neither side of the debate fully took account of the West's temporary and artificial prosperity and the consequent implications of this. I shall draw on relevant aspects of this particular debate in the course of my article. So much of it resonates even more loudly today. 

After the advent of the WTO in 1995, the West, led by the US, pressed on with its free trade, neo-liberal crusade to further subjugate the Third World (“Recolonisation: GATT, The Uruguay Round & The Third World”, Chakravarthi Raghavan, Zed Books & Third World Network, 1990; “Sovereignty And The Struggle for Survival”, Occasional Paper no.1, Trade Aid Movement, January 1992). Previously in the UN during the early 1970s, the Third World had assembled a clear majority of nations calling for a New International Economic Order (NIEO, “Dictionary of International Relations”, Graham Evans & Jeffrey Newnham, Penguin, 1998, p368). The basis of the NIEO was to have been a set of commodity agreements ensuring fair and stable prices for Third World resource producers, potentially also providing for better environmental management as scientific knowledge grew. In its first report, the Brandt Commission later elaborated an updated NIEO-style programme and called for “an ecological perspective [to be] incorporated in development planning” (“North-South: A Programme For Survival – The Report Of The Independent Commission On International Development Issues Under The Chairmanship Of Willy Brandt”, Pan Books, 1980, p115). But the West had by then already effectively sabotaged the UN's prescribed NIEO Programme. The rich countries implacably resisted this proposed programme because it would have affected the core of imperial superiority and prosperity. In hiking oil prices, the Organisation of Oil Exporting Countries (OPEC) had set a totally unacceptable example. Whereas nationalist and State interests gained a considerable measure of control over the oil resource, similar efforts failed for other commodities.

The rich club nations of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) succeeded instead in promoting the corporate free market, transnational corporations (TNCs), and the West's piratical predominance. American imperialist attitudes again prevailed. This came at the cost of some significant European sentiment for fairness and restitution. It was a most significant turning point. In 1986 Susan Strange, Professor of the School of International Relations at the London School of Economics, observed this kind of change had happened generally with “American economic unilateralism” and prescription for international financial policy (“Casino Capitalism”, op. cit, pp152/3). Professor Strange commented that: “The grandiose solutions outlined in the Brandt Reports, involving a massive World Development Fund and a wholesale switch in spending from arms to welfare are going to remain a pipedream” (ibid, p182). Strange herself appealed for “radical reforms” of the international financial system (ibid, p189). Politico-economic realities meant however that these did not happen either, and so we have ended up in the global financial crisis (GFC) mess. Strange also worried in 1986 that “time is running out” (ibid, p175), and that “muddling through simply will not work” (ibid, p193). This was the same year that the US starting cranking up momentum for a new GATT Round, the so-called “Uruguay Round”, ushering in the WTO. 

Progress Becomes Problematic

In light of the GFC starting in 2007, the concluding paragraph of Professor Strange's book is worth quoting for its message today. In anticipation of reaching the end of the 20th Century, she comments: “If, by then, we have still not succumbed to a nuclear holocaust; that will be one thing to celebrate. But unless positive, practical steps are taken soon to cool and control the financial casino, there will not be much else. For most people, the social consequences of playing snakes and ladders with people's lives will have been made only too plain. Only those financial gamblers that still survive in the great office blocks towering over the city centres of the capitalist world will be raising their glasses. For the rest, the American Century will be coming to a mournful and miserable close” (ibid, p193). Leaving our fate to the so-called “invisible hand of the market” and the machinations of banks, financiers, and Merrill Lynch & co. money traders is folly indeed.  One big lesson for us is to vote out the ex-Merrill Lynch John Key-led National government in Aotearoa/NZin 2014. PM Key, incidentally, got out of Merrill Lynch just in time before the company was sullied by scandal. Another big lesson, the biggest of all, is that we have to help build a much better basis of international cooperation if humankind is to survive.  

In the decades since Professor Susan Strange wrote her conclusion to the “Global Casino” the consequences of Western-instigated militarist globalisation have been momentous. Deteriorating conditions in much of the “Third World” have resulted in immigration to Europe by a growing number of desperate refugees, dramatised in October 2013 by tragic mass drownings of “boat people” in the Mediterranean. Immigration in turn has become a major cause behind the rise of racist and nationalist political parties in societies already under stress from socio-economic problems, especially in Europe, e.g. the Golden Dawn party in Greece (www.socialistworker.org/2012/10/11/turning-despair-into-hate).  aking the long view, the very process of modernisation can be considered destructive in so many ways and ultimately self-destructive (“Climate Wars: Why People Will Be Killed In The Twenty-First Century”, Harald Welzer, Polity Press, 2012; “Al Qaeda And What It Means To Be Modern”, John Gray, p. cit.). 

In particular, Professor Harald Welzer worries that climate change will aggravate and increase the causes of conflict, and even come to constitute a major, if not the prime, cause of future conflicts and wars (ibid; see also my article “The Challenge Of Climate Wars: Countering Resource Conflict And Genocide” in Peace Researcher 46, December 2013). It could greatly increase the flow of refugees and migration. The 1994 Atlantic Monthly debate featured above highlighted predictions of far more desperate immigration into Europe in the years to come and the problems this trend would mean (op. cit.). World population growth has slowed since the mid-1990s but there are huge challenges ahead. Professor Welzer sees the militarised efforts by Europe and the US to repel Third World immigrants, so often now on the move due to Western aggression in the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa, and elsewhere, as part of the de facto war of rich versus poor across the globe (op. cit.). But the recent tragedies involving boat people have elicited expressions of concern at the highest level, and may hopefully result in more humane provisions and border control. UN Secretary General Ban-Ki-moon, the European Union (EU), Pope Francis, and the Prime Ministers of Italy and Malta are pressing for positive changes on treatment of the boat people.

Newly elected Australian PM Tony Abbott declared that he had two urgent priorities on taking office in 2013 – getting rid of the carbon tax and stopping the refugee “boat people” (by a more militarised approach). A well-known climate sceptic, Abbott has denied any link between global warming and the widespread bushfires in New South Wales during October 2013, labelling such claims “complete hogwash”. Professor Will Steffen, “UN Climate chief Christiana Figueres, conservation groups and the Greens, (accompanied by a host of other expert commentators), have pointed to climate change as leading to bushfires being regular and intense” (quote from the Press, 24/10/13; TV3, 3 News, 26/10/13; Sunday Star Times, 27/10/13). Figueres said: “It was 'absolutely clear' that were 'increasing heatwaves in Asia, Europe and Australia, and that these will continue in their intensity and frequency” (Sunday Star Times, 27/10/13). The “Mad” Abbott is starting to feel the heat himself. In Aotearoa/NZ, the Government shares Abbott's climate change scepticism (“United States Of Scepticism”, Sunday Star Times, 6/10/13), commitment to fossil fuels, antipathy to poor boat people, and other reactionary sentiments. But Professor Paul Ehrlich predicts that the now not so Lucky Country will, in the years to come, see many of its inhabitants migrating to NZ (Radio NZ, op. cit.). Meantime, the NZ government continues in its cynical manipulative fashion to use every opportunity it can to instil a sense of what it calls “the risk” of boat people arriving by whatever means, even if allegedly stowed away in shipping containers.

Running Aground On The Shoals Of Geopolitical Reality

The participants in the December 1994 Atlantic Monthly debate had seen the world at the time in an acute state of crisis (op. cit.). However, along came the WTO and a whole new wave of corporate globalisation, virtually burying what was left of initiatives in the West for an alternative vision of the future. But the Third World had not wanted either a new GATT Round or the WTO, and instead saw the US-dictated programme as a new form of colonisation imposed on existing inequalities (“Recolonisation: GATT, The Uruguay Round & The Third World”, op. cit.). “Demands for a free trade regime that ignore such structural inequalities have been opposed by the Third World” (“Dictionary Of International Relations”, op. cit, p184; “Recolonisation”, ibid.). Whereas both sides in “the West versus the rest” debate featured in the magazine had been concerned about the environment, the Anglo-American axis - spearheaded by the US - mounted a brazen assault on the planetary ecosystem, as well as further inroads into traditional societies under the banners of modernisation, free trade and globalisation. 

This assault soon incorporated countries like India, Brazil and China, which proved big enough to start marshalling and wielding their own powers, whatever the inequalities, problems and contradictions opening up within their own societies. The world vision of capitalist globalisation was to boost and unleash market forces across the globe, supposedly creating prosperity for all - never mind for how long. Myanmar (formerly Burma) is a country on the frontline of competition with China and a land already ravaged for its natural resources, particularly wood and minerals. But it is currently targeted for more exploitation by the West under the cynical guise of democratisation. NZ, in its typically blinkered and greedy fashion, is keen to get a slice of the action with NZ Trade and Enterprise (NZTE) pointing the way forward (“Democratic Revolution Opens Doors for Kiwis”, Press, 23/10/13). The rush to destruction goes on!

Eventually, during the first decade of the 21st Century, the WTO's agenda imploded over the various contentious issues at stake, particularly that of food security. NZ has been committed in practice to helping subvert Third World food security, a key reason no doubt for the failure of National government’s Trade Minister Tim Groser in his costly candidature for the job of Director-General of the WTO (see NZ's record in my “Food And Free Trade Theory: Peddling Snake Poison”, in Watchdog 121, August 2009, www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/21/10.htm). The Anglo-American axis has long used NZ political and bureaucratic players in pivotal international roles, e.g. Mike Moore as the Director-General of the WTO; Tim Groser and Crawford Falconer as Chairpersons of the WTO Agriculture Committee, Don McKinnon as Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, and free trader Helen Clark as head of the UN Development Programme. But even back in 1994, it was evident enough that there was an incipient groundswell shift of geopolitical power under way towards Asia (Atlantic Monthly, op. cit.). Despite all the hubris and militarist belligerence of the US preening itself for a while as the world's supposedly sole superpower, this shift has continued inexorably. The politico-economic tides pulling into the Asia/Pacific region have substantially weakened the predatory grip of the Anglo-American axis and the West in general. 

Monitoring “Megatrends”

The Western-generated myth of endless economic progress and prosperity for everybody has yet carried on into the 21st Century, building on euphoric free market hype as exemplified by John Naisbitt's “Megatrends Asia: The Eight Asian Megatrends That Are Changing the World”, published in the mid-1990s (Nicholas Brealey Pub,1995/7). Naisbitt was an enthusiastic free market pundit of globalisation, who airily dismissed any criticisms. For him, just like so many similar ideologues today: “Globalisation is not an ideological belief. It is a phenomenon, like the Industrial Revolution, and in my view just as inevitable and beneficial” (ibid., p2). The Marxist utopia supposedly resulting from historical materialism has been replaced by the neo-liberal vision of a future materialist Heaven on Earth, the fruit of an unfolding entrepreneurial revolution moving inevitably towards a permanent capitalist utopia, the consumerist paradise (“False Dawn: The Delusions Of Global Capitalism”, John Gray, Granta, 1998/revised ed., 2009). While Naisbitt liked to emphasise paradoxes, he was blind to the really big underlying paradoxes, or rather the many contradictions at work. The most important “megatrends” were quite beyond Naisbitt's ken. For instance, he practically ignored the environment altogether in his Asian study. He was blind to the question of resource limits. It was not even on his radar.

In “Megatrends Asia”, Naisbitt has no index entries for such vital terms as “oil” and “resources”. His references to any environmental costs are very few, brief and only in passing. At one point, he refers to a question mark over Asia “filling itself with millions of polluting vehicles” (op. cit, pp60/1). At another, in commenting on the urbanisation process, he acknowledges that: “The social and environmental costs are incalculable. Already, traffic, garbage and smog choke many Asian cities. Unemployment and underemployment are epidemic and there are chronic shortages of all kinds, including housing, water, power and transport” (ibid, p170). Apparently, however, such problems would be overcome …somehow. To make just a brief comment on one of these problems – smog, or air pollution, is now estimated to kill over a million, or more precisely, 1.2 million Chinese per year. Naisbitt looked forward instead to a booming free market Asia being “the key for the West” and its own future growth (ibid, p165). NZ pursues this path via the negotiations for the TPPA, and our free trade agreements with China and other nations in the region. The Government wants NZ to become even more competitive and growth-oriented and to double primary exports by 2025.   

All this neoliberal ideology is constantly reinforced by corporate interests and the mainstream media in Aotearoa/NZ. For instance, a British author on China's growth trajectory reassures us that the “Fonterra [botulism] scare won't cause [a] NZ-China crisis” over trade (Sunday Star Times, 13/10/13). Martin Jacques, author of “When China Rules The World”, continues the positive globalist spin of writers like John Naisbitt, pushing certain politico-economic aspects of our relationship with the Asian giant. On a visit to Aotearoa/NZ, Jacques declared that: “China will have a growing influence on our society and political structure too” (ibid.). He contends that: “The importance of the family will grow, against the individualism of the West. And the Chinese idea of statehood will change our ideas of democracy” (ibid.). While “NZ, in its modern form, was a Western creation”, it is now “coming under the growing gravitational pull from China” (ibid.).

There are all sorts of issues implicit here that relate to both Right and Left in Aotearoa/NZ. Note the obvious implications about statehood and democracy. Given the realities of the corporate capture of government worldwide, such Chinese influence – expressed by a highly politicised, centralised and corrupt corporate model - would obviously mean greater foreign control and eventually just a complete sham of democracy. Crony capitalism would reign triumphant as the comprador class expands, especially via its financial manifestations and takeover of primary industry (Prof. Wade notes these major global trends in “Inequality: A NZ Crisis”, op. cit, p50. Reviewed by Jeremy Agar in Watchdog 133, August 2013, http://www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/33/19.html. Ed.). Consequently, if the Chinese connections of trade, investment and immigration deepen rapidly in the years to come, along with diplomatic and political ties, and no major crisis erupts in the meantime; such issues will surely reshape a lot of NZ politics. At the same time, so will competition from the tightening coils of American intelligence, militarisation and politico-economic linkages. All this together will mean much greater division and stress within Aotearoa/NZ. Current indicators and trends are evident enough. For instance, farmers are divided “on whether foreign investors should be able to buy into farmland in this country, Federated Farmers says” (Press, 22/10/13).

Strategic Positioning

Chinese and related Asian investment and influence continues to gain ground in our vital agricultural sector.  For instance, “Waikato artisan cheese-making company Kaimai is being wound up and its assets sold to a company, which plans to produce and export UHT milk” (Press, 11/10/13). The new owner, Pureland Dairy, has its parent company Yoomoo Dairy Holdings based in Singapore and Canada (ibid.).  “Listed firm PGG Wrightson [PGW] has appointed a Chinese chairman, a first for a NZ agricultural company” (Press, 23/10/13). Alan Lai, the new Chairman, also heads “Agria Corp, the Chinese entrepreneurial firm”, which is the controlling majority shareholder in PGW. It was significant that Agria's takeover of PGW was facilitated by a loan from Hamilton company Livestock Improvement Corporation (Press, 26/10/13). Chairman Lai has projected that: “By 2030 one-third of the Chinese population will be fed by imported goods” (Press, 23/10/13). This is even now putting great pressure on the world economy and environment (see the problems forecast by Lester Brown in his “Who Will Feed China? Wake-up Call For A Small Planet”, Worldwatch Environmental Alert Series, Earthscan, 1995; & his “Tough Choices: Facing The Challenge Of Food Scarcity”, Alert Series, Earthscan, 1996; see also: www.isnblog.ethz.ch/security/the-food-threat-to-human-civilization, Anne & Paul Ehrlich, 13//3/13). A “land grab” deal with Ukraine highlights some of the issues at stake.  “Ukraine has reportedly agreed [on] a deal with a Chinese company to lease 5% of its land to feed China's burgeoning population” (NZ Herald, 26/9/13). A crisp statement summarises these issues: “China consumes about 20% of the world's food supplies, but is home to just 9% of the world's farmland, thanks in part to rapid industrialisation” (ibid.). 

In Aotearoa/NZ, our State-owned agricultural wing is heavily compromised by foreign investment. Listen to the message of “Steve Carden, the new boss of State-owned farming giant Landcorp”, the country's largest farmer: “Corporate farming is here to stay and foreign capital is needed for agriculture to realise its potential (Sunday Star Times, 20/10/13). Carden, who obviously subscribes to a very commercialised vision of NZ's future, is the author of a book called “NZ Unleashed” (ibid.). Having had experience at PGW, he is keen to develop a corporate-controlled model. So he welcomes a lot more foreign investment, declaring that: “’If we're to achieve our goal of growing the industry to where the Government hopes to be by 2020, that capital is not going to come from NZ’. Currently, Landcorp is in expansion mode. It also recently took over the management contract of the former Crafar dairy farms for Chinese investors Shanghai Pengxin” (ibid.).  Carden says that: “NZ will have to become comfortable attracting foreign capital, in ways in which we get the benefit of the capital without feeling like we're selling off our country and losing sovereignty” (ibid.). How we can do this he does not explain. “He also thinks farming sustainably is the only way to go, both from a marketing perspective and a resources one” (ibid.). He looks to adding value rather than increasing quantity. 

But those who have the gold make the rules and. as Marx showed, we always need to follow the money (conservative political philosopher and analyst Professor John Gray can dismiss the idea of a Marxist utopia but he rightly endorses Marxist analysis: The Sloman Economics News Site>>Socialism - www.pearsonblog.campaignserver.co.uk/?tag=socialism). Chinese conglomerate Shanghai Pengxin Group has “signalled a takeover offer” for Synlait Farms in conjunction with two of the existing shareholders John Penno and Juliet Maclean (Press, 22/10/13). Corporate control is bad enough – it also means effective foreign control. Globalist contradictions are squeezing Aotearoa/NZ, socially and environmentally (see my “Crunching NZ: Globalist Contradictions Bite Home”, Watchdog 131, December 2012, http://www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/31/10.html).

For almost 30 years in Aotearoa/NZ, the media suppression and manipulation of our democracy on free trade and free market issues has been stark. But some of these media (including the television component – at least both TV1 and TV3) have finally had to openly recognise the widespread resistance these days to the corporate free trade agenda, certainly in regard to the TPPA. While the Government continues to enforce neoliberal policies, many citizens have turned against them. Democratic debate and scrutiny are still severely restricted in scope and detail of course.

Globalisation Grinds Away At The NZ Heartland

Since 1994 both Australia and Aotearoa/NZ have reconfigured their economies with regard to their export markets. The priority of the former has been to serve as a mining quarry for China and the latter a dairy farm. Indeed, much of the world is being reshaped to the demands of China's emerging hegemony, as it was formerly configured to the demands of the West and - in modern times - especially to the imperial imperatives of the US. The West's centuries-old pillage of the planet is being replicated on a grossly telescoped time-scale: “… to meet China's hunger for timber, the last great rain forests are being felled and rare birds imperilled. In Brazil, farmers are clearing swathes of the Amazon to plant soybeans. In India, poachers are wiping out tigers” (from the cover blurb of “The Devouring Dragon: How China's Rise Threatens The Natural World”, Craig Simons, Awa Press, 2013). A particularly distressing case is the mass slaughter of the African elephant for ivory with even the poisoning of salt licks in Zimbabwe by cyanide, probably from illegal gold mining (Press 27/9/13; “An Investigative Report On Blood Ivory: 25,000 Elephants Were Killed Last Year”, National Geographic, October 2012). 

“In NZ, land is being turned over to dairying at an alarming rate to provide food for China, and mining coal for China is threatening pristine landscapes” (“The Devouring Dragon”, op.cit.). Large tracts of NZ land with special landscape and biota values are being turned over to dairying too, a most inappropriate farming practice for such country, e.g. the Mackenzie Basin in South Canterbury, all in the cargo cult pursuit of the “white gold” (“Mackenzie Basin: Corporate Dairy Farmers' Grip On The Mackenzie Basin Is Tightening.  John McCrone reports on their plans and changing landscape of this iconic part of the Mainland”, Press, 19/10/13). As is typical of the Fairfax-owned Press, the environmental viewpoint is strongly outweighed by capitalist goals. The Press still runs articles and opinion items by discredited climate and environmental sceptics like Bjorn Lomborg, Matt Ridley and David Packham (e.g., 14/9/13; and 16 & 23/10/13). Professor Lomborg is notorious for his gross “misuse of statistics” and “many false claims” but, of course, his message is exactly what Big Business and the global elite want to hear (“Merchants Of Doubt”, op. cit, pp258-60 & p265). As carbon cost expert Mike Berners-Lee says of his investigation into Lomborg's original thesis (i.e. “The Skeptical Environmentalist”): “In the end, it was abundantly clear to me that the whole thing was a sham” (“How Bad Are Bananas? The Carbon Footprint Of Everything”, Profile Books, 2010, p189). In the end too, this is true of corporate globalisation itself.        

Cosy Crony Comprador Capitalism

The National government is compliant with Chinese imperatives and the general TNC takeover, striving to intensify dairy farming and irrigation no matter what the toll on our waterways and freshwater resources, e.g. witness the controversy over the Ruataniwha Dam in Hawkes Bay, involving the threat to the Tukituki and Waipawa Rivers, and the vexed role of Conservation Minister Nick Smith (e.g., “Interference Over River Smells Bad”, Sunday Star Times, 29/9/13; “Water, Water Everywhere, Press, 26/10/13). Canterbury's waterways are getting dangerously contaminated by nitrate run-off (“Nitrate Risk To Infant Health”, Press, 22/10/13). In fact, about one million of our population have water contamination issues. Over half of our rivers are not safe to swim in. Didymo has infected 150 rivers and waterways. “100% Pure!?” Yeah, right!

NZ is actually now going backward in conservation and resource management when we need more desperately than ever a total commitment to going “green” and sustainable development. Our current Government is taking us in exactly the wrong direction, largely cheered on by the corporate mainstream media. Mining and fracking are getting a free hand with lots of Government incentives and support. NZ's marine ecosystems are being auctioned off to the oil and gas TNCs for deepwater drilling on a vastly unprecedented scale under a new corporate-oriented management regime, with even an explicit provision to crush seaborne protests (as in Russia) and curb public participation in decision-making. New legislation is designed to substantially subvert the environmental principles of the landmark Resource Management Act. The Department of Conservation (DoC) is being constantly cut back in funding and staff with all sorts of deleterious ramifications (Sunday Star Times, 3/11/13). To take just one of many examples that could be cited, a cut to DoC funding of the NZ Conservation Trust might soon mean the end of its project to ensure the survival in the wild of the great spotted kiwi (TV3, Campbell Live, 18/10/13). But the Government has more money to waste on the America's Cup corporate extravaganza. What kind of a world are we passing on to the next generation?!

The worsening state of the NZ environment along with the country's deepening socio-economic inequalities is an inevitable function of the globalisation process at work (for the latter see: “Inequality: A NZ Crisis”, op. cit.; “Mind The Gap”, TV3, 29/8/13; “All Things Being Equal”, Press, 26/10/13). And as we have long predicted, capitalism is becoming more authoritarian in protection of the rich and powerful. Government-sponsored corporate welfare and crony capitalism are running riot as demonstrated by the FBI/NZ police raid on the Dotcom mansion in January 2012, at the behest of Hollywood movie and music moguls; by the “dirty deal” on the Sky City casino convention centre (including fast-track easy entry to NZ for visiting Chinese and other Asian “high-roller” gamblers); by Warner Brothers' hobbling of our labour laws; the subsidies to Rio Tinto and Chorus; financial help for Media Works and Cadbury; the blatantly cynical con job of asset sales; the sponsorship of charter schools; the favourable fishing quotas for firms friendly to the National Party like Sanfords and Talleys; subsidies to the tune of $46 million for oil companies; and special facilitation for mining TNCs like Shell, Bathurst and Anadarko - the list goes on and on.  It all demonstrates yet again how the capitalist processes of extraction and accumulation serve a global elite at the expense of the long-term interests of everyone.

Drill It! Mine It! Frack It!

Anadarko is one of the pivotal big players on the NZ scene. It is a Texan-based TNC which has very cosy relations with the Government here. Portentously, Anadarko was deeply involved along with BP in the catastrophic oil spill in the Mexican Gulf in 2010, which gushed “some 200 million gallons of oil” into the sea (National Geographic, op. cit, p64). The toxic legacy is severely impacting people, local economies and the environment in the region. Gordon Campbell has written an excellent article detailing at length the background context and role of this TNC and its ominous implications for NZ/Aotearoa (see “Risky Business”, Werewolf 42, 4/9/13: http://www.werewolf.co.nz). Campbell clinically and cuttingly exposes the fraudulence of Anadarko's public relations (PR). His namesake, John Campbell, has also done a fine public service job in putting some heat on both Anadarko and the Minister of Energy & Resources, Simon Bridges (TV3, Campbell Live, 8/10/13 & 14/10/13). One interviewee pertinently remarked with regard to the toxic legacy in the Mexican Gulf that current related health problems there are “just the beginning of our horror story” (ibid, 8/10/13). Here in Aotearoa/NZ, the culture of corporate abuse was signalled in October 2013 by NZ Oil & Gas's refusal of cash compensation to the Pike River victims' families (Press, 30/10/13).

Anadarko has seismic testing and exploratory rights in three areas off our coastline – Taranaki, Otago and the Pegasus Basin off Canterbury. At present, the people of Kaikoura are particularly worried about Anadarko's venture into the Pegasus Basin, which was due to commence in December 2013 and last for five years. They have been protesting long and hard. There are serious concerns about the danger to the whale and dolphin watching business run by Ngai Tahu, which makes benign returns for the township and the environment. Not only might tourism be very adversely affected but so could the fishing industry. A bad oil spill would mean a huge economic loss for Kaikoura, besides all the ecological damage to the region. Ngai Tahu's enterprise has been an inspiring initiative on a number of fronts. Its spokesperson, Sir Mark Solomon, is appealing to the Government to rethink its plan. In the ocean nearby, the Kaikoura Canyon is an active earthquake zone and twice as deep as the Mexican Gulf. Moreover, there is a sweeping north-easterly wind which could prove highly problematic and even dangerous in certain conditions on the high seas.

In 2010 there was a biological survey by the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) vessel Tangaroa, which found an unanticipated wealth of biodiversity in the Kaikoura Trench. This marvellous lode of life is now at risk from Anadarko's operations. Astonishingly enough, however, Tangaroa has even been contracted out to Anadarko's research programme, compromising NIWA's supposed independence and constituting yet another instance of how conservation is being both commercialised and undermined by this Government. At the time of writing, the Government is changing the law to make exploratory seismic testing non-notifiable and conform to TNC expectations. Even Anadarko admits that the science of seismic testing is incomplete and that there are uncertainties (Campbell Live, op. cit, 14/10/13). It refuses to release its own environmental impact assessment to the public of the modelling of possibly damaging oil leaks. Greenpeace NZ, however, has commissioned its own scientific modelling report, which shows: “A deep-sea oil spill could devastate some of NZ's favourite beaches, with the effects stretching as far as the international dateline” (Press, 23/10/13). These projections have held up well, despite the predictable criticisms from the fossil fuel industry and its cheerleaders like Professor Rosalind Archer of the Engineering Department, Auckland University, who obviously has an American-oriented attitude to fossil fuel extraction given her academic career experience  (e.g., TV3, The Nation, 26/10/13). How can a petroleum engineering Professor declaim so loudly about environmental outcomes?  This is a glaring example of how our perceptions are routinely distorted by technocratic science and its exploitation agenda. As economics commentator Rod Oram well says: “New Zealanders are hungry for much better economic and environmental policies than Government and business are giving them” (“Digging Deeper On Coal”, Sunday Star Times, 20/10/13). We require a real sea change (“Why the World Needs An Economics Revolution”, Pacific Ecologist, issue 19, Winter/Spring 2010,   http://pacificecologist.org/archive/19/).

Advancing The Anadarko Agenda

Anadarko and the Minister claim that the company was only a passive investor in the Deepwater Horizon disaster, which to put it kindly is simply corporate crap! As John Campbell showed, there is ample documentation to demonstrate that Anadarko was also heavily implicated in the disaster (Campbell Live, op. cit, 14/10/13). In fact, Minister Bridges had a startling blow-out himself on Campbell Live (ibid.). His overriding concern was to act as a PR spokesperson for Anadarko and defend its reputation whatever the contortions, showing no real concern for local communities or our environment, or our national interest. To date, the pernicious influence of Anadarko on our own marine legislation has been so evident that the notorious clause directed against any protests at sea to try and counter deepsea mining has been labelled the “Anadarko Amendment” by leading critics such as the Green Party's Energy Spokesperson, Gareth Hughes. This certainly reflects Anadarko's record and continuing performance worldwide. Anadarko Petroleum has actually endorsed the use of “military tactics to counter drilling opponents” (www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_fracturing). It has worked overseas hand in glove with repressive comprador regimes. For instance, Anadarko has been the largest foreign oil operator in Algeria, along with Amerada Hess, another American company (“Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet”, op. cit, p162). It also has large operations in Ghana and China. As the global crisis compounds in its ramifications, harsh corporate-sponsored measures will only increase as government/big business collaboration deepens and broadens in typical neo-fascist fashion with the consolidation of the NSS. 

As to be expected, Energy & Resources Minister Simon Bridges maintains that Anadarko has an excellent record, that it has learnt lessons from its Mexican Gulf experience, and that it will be able to provide its own equipment in case of any accident (Campell Live, 14/10/13, op. cit.). Currently, Maritime NZ has only three 8.2 metre-long vessels, the “oil recovery vessels” - designed to work in sheltered waters - to deal with any oil spill. These boats are dispersed around the country, and are capable of only seven knots per hour at top speed when fully laden. As the Labour Party spokesperson on the environment, Moana Mackey, says, under the Government's new maritime management system for Big Business: “The deeper you go out, the more permissive the regulation” (Parliament TV, 15/10/13). But not for any seaborne protesters! We are pushing the limits further down the road of ecological disaster (“Deep Seabed Mining: Frontier To Oblivion!”, Pacific Ecologist: “Save The Oceans”, issue 20, Winter 2011, pp19-21, http://pacificecologist.org/archive/20/). 

The Consolidating NSS - “Creeping Fascism”

The Government is actually prepared to use our Navy against any protests now defined as illegal under its new marine mining regime. This is a further example of the current capitalist criminalisation of dissent and the intimidatory application of militarist control. Another such case is the continuing governmental legal pursuit of the Waihopai Domebusters for punitive costs (e.g. Press, 26/10/13). It is completely consistent with the US-mandated NSS and the increasingly Orwellian surveillance of a country's citizenry as continually disclosed by US National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden and others. The same nastily aggressive strategy and tactics exhibited by Putin's Russia to crush Greenpeace protests about drilling for oil in the Arctic comprise exactly the model that the Government endorses in our own waters.  

Under the rubric of the “War on Terror”, the Government has reinforced the emerging NSS with recent legislation legitimising virtually unfettered covert surveillance of New Zealanders, along with the retrospective whitewashing of previous human rights' abuses by the US-controlled Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB). This legislation facilitates working collaboration with relevant TNCs and other private agents (see Peace Researcher articles on this unfolding saga, e.g “Crime Pays! Government Legalises GCSB Culture Of Impunity” by Murray Horton, PR 45, June 2013, http://www.converge.org.nz/abc/pr/45/pr45-001.html). The neo-fascist trend is also very evident with the explicit linkage of private communication companies to ostensibly public security issues. In fact, so much of the Government spying done today is for the commercial advantage of strategically placed private interests. The term “Private Public Partnerships” is gaining a whole new meaning.

Australasia is increasingly caught in a complex of globalist contradictions. It is sandwiched between the demands of the world's two biggest powers. It is supplying resources to both, as well as involvement in other market and investment interaction, while serving as a military subsidiary and ally to only one of them.  Following the example of Australia, Aotearoa/NZ, with the advent of TNCs like Anadarko and Bathurst Resources, is shaping up to be a significant primary product supplier to both the US and China. It may become not just a big provider of farm produce, but a substantial supplier of minerals, helping fuel further industrialisation and militarisation in these two powers. For these two countries, and the others involved, the total quantities we supply may be small but for us such commodity production has huge implications – in the loss of sovereignty and what democracy that we have left, in our rapidly deteriorating environment, and in our socio-economic general well-being given worsening inequalities, and other deleterious aspects.  

The Changing Planetary Environment

Worldwide, in various places there has been a seemingly marked trend to greater fluctuations between drought and floods. Colorado is an American state hard hit by heat waves and wildfires in recent years. Most recently, however, it has suffered severe flash flooding, which severely affected oil and natural gas operations during September 2013 in the fossil fuel rich region of eastern Colorado. In the National Geographic News Series on Global Water Issues, it was recorded that: “Amid drought, explaining Colorado's extreme floods – flash floods in Boulder area may also have ties to fires and climate change”.  A damaged storage tank owned by Anadarko Petroleum Corporation even spilled oil into a flood-swollen river.  Meantime, in recent years as well, the prime oil state of Texas, traditionally the most flood-prone, has undergone a similar pattern of searing drought alternating with sudden floods. Here in the antipodes, a more volatile weather pattern of drought and storm seems to be also emerging. Certainly, such an outcome is predicted for us in the newly released fifth report of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC). But government suppression and distortion goes on. As part of the ongoing mainstream media misrepresentation of climate change, and just prior to the release of the latest UN report, TV1 even promoted the misleading propaganda that global warming has stalled, including a comment by climate change sceptic Andrew Montford, owner of the Bishop Hill sceptics blog (Noon & One News, 6pm, 24/913).

As we have seen in some detail, the Government is firmly committed to a fossil fuel future and more mining generally. It deliberately and implacably rejects any significant, constructive measures towards the implementation of a more sustainable model of development. In Parliament, the Greens continually haul the National Party over the coals for such ideological absurdities. At the planetary level, the canaries in the coalmine are screaming long and loud. The biodiversity which underpins the human food supply is being drastically degraded and simplified, and so, eventually, undermined: jellyfish are taking over acidic seas; a third of the world's amphibians are endangered; and bees are in decline to cite just a few of the indicators.

Crisis Is Opportunity

I understand that the sub-heading immediately above is an old Chinese saying. But blindness to anything other than short-term material gain is prevalent. For me, it was neatly expressed on a recent TV1 Q & A panel by former National Party President, Michelle Boag, who in defending the Conservative Party as a prospective partner for National, said of the Greens that they had “wacky ideas” and want to shut down a lot of business (27/10/13). Boag is incapable of seriously considering the ultimate wackiness of her own ideas, and the desperate need for alternative types of development. Both the leading free trade advocates of the National Party and Labour Party, i.e. Tim Groser and Phil Goff, are firmly wedded to the Americanised version of globalisation, the ultimate “wackiness”. So we are engaged in what can be called “culture wars” as well as class conflict. 

Long-term, we have a business civilisation in inevitable decline but reactionary forces are marshalling (“Why The Obscenely Rich Are The New Dictators” by Christian Caryl, reprinted from the Washington Post in Sunday Star Times, 27/10/13). We need to try and make the transition to sustainable development on as many fronts as we can. There is a call that: “It's high time for new political movements that can aggregate the power of individuals and marshal coherent responses to the intensifying concentration of influence by a few at the top” (ibid.). And this is a quote from an article in one of the American mainstream media!  We only have to “surf the net” to find all sorts of groups in the green and social justice movements working for positive change.(e.g. the Mary Robinson Foundation, www.mrfcj.org; Millennium Alliance for Humanity & the Biosphere, David Korten & the People-Centred Development Forum: www.yesmagazine.org/neweconomy). In the US the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies and the Institute for Policy Studies are helping to frame a New Economy Policy agenda and to build a supportive political alliance. There are similar initiatives all over the Earth. Let's help build the momentum for positive and constructive change, both within Aotearoa and internationally.


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