" ... there is a desperate need to do something now about the conditions in which beings live and die ... We must reinstate the idea of living an ethical life as a realistic and viable alternative to the present dominance of materialist self-interest" (from "How Are We to Live? Ethics In An Age Of Self-Interest", Peter Singer, Melbourne, 1993).

"Americans identify with and celebrate their military prowess, their many wars, and their honoured war dead. The extremist neo-cons were the group most associated with this militant ethic in America, but the Democratic Party ... has adopted the same ethic" ("The CIA As Organised Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America And The World", Douglas Valentine, Clarity Press Inc., 2017, in ch. 23, "Propaganda As Terrorism", p387).

"US never behaved as role model ... we should remember the following. The US has a long history of racism and inequality and is one of the few countries to still execute criminals (not infrequently black and innocent). It has by far the highest number of gun deaths in the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development). It is also the biggest spender on arms and is currently weaponising space, while being the only nation to have obliterated cities with nuclear weapons. It has instigated a number of wars, including the attack on Iraq on the basis of lies about weapons of mass destruction".

"The CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) has manipulated many coups in Third World countries. The same Agency is responsible for the rendition, torture, and incarceration of hundreds of mostly innocent Muslim men. Despite being one of the world's worst polluters, little is being spent on climate change, mostly due to the fact that this 'democracy' is controlled by rich white men and heavily influenced by religious extremists. Definitely not a role model!" (Warren Thomson, letter to the Press, 30/6/22).

"The hypocrisy of the American media is a wonder to behold" ("The CIA As Organised Crime", op. cit., p318).

"Do not quietly into that horror nightmare - rage, rage against the dying of the light!"" (with apologies to Dylan Thomas).

In this article, I focus again on the warmongering mainstream media and our political Establishment. I do so with specific reference to the global context of the growing Ukraine crisis, coupled with the developing challenges to the US-headed Western empire in Latin America, the Pacific, and elsewhere. I give some more examples of propaganda and geopolitical gaming as witnessed here in Aotearoa/NZ. But first it is appropriate to briefly recap on the "Big Picture" - i.e., the global context and certain crucial factors making for great power confrontation and potential end-times.

Taking In "The Big Picture"

It was enlightening to come across a very apposite background encapsulation of the global capitalist "Big Picture" in an overview of the key ideas of capitalism's founding ideologue, i.e., Adam Smith, author of "The Wealth Of Nations" [1776] ('Smith, Adam, in "Philosophy: The Great Thinkers", Philip Stokes, Acturus Holdings Ltd., 2018, pp260-3). What have the "free market" and "free trade" actually demonstrated since Smith's original exposition of the touted benefits to society, and where are they eventually leading us all?

The relevant summary comment reads as follows: "It is surely a blinkered view, if comforting for the entrepreneurial capitalist, to suppose that pursuing one's own self-interest constitutes a magnanimous and philanthropic act towards society at large (as expounded by Adam Smith). One only has to review the history of industrial Britain, to witness the treacherous and exploitative working practices of the industrial age, the extreme poverty and degrading social conditions of the suffering working classes, to realise Smith's idealistic model has far more serious "unintended" consequences" (than the alleged beneficial ones trumpeted).

"What has largely brought an end to such conditions in the industrialised West is not a triumphant adherence to Smith's principles in Western economics, but a shifting of the poverty and exploitative working practices from one part of the world to another. In other words, the living conditions of those in the West have improved to the detriment of other countries insofar as the labour required to support Smith's economic philosophy has been removed from Western societies and transferred to those of the Third World" (ibid.).

We could most pertinently add to this assessment the observation that a similar big shift has happened worldwide with environmental costs. Poorer countries have been the victims of self-serving Western pollution, ecosystem destruction, waste dumping, etc., let alone the now rampantly rising fallout from global warming. Nowadays, both the past and present are catching up with Britain and the Anglo-American empire in general. A bellwether indicator is the parlous state of the Commonwealth grouping. The conclusion of a recent report summed up the growing crisis "[Prince] Charles Stepping Up To Face Commonwealth Challenges", Press, 24/6/22).

It observed that in a situation of increasing "uncertainty" and questioning: "Questions also remain about the bloc's value among poorer member states, with some critics scoffing at Africa's ties with an organisation they see as tainted by the memory of slavery and colonialism" (ibid.). Indeed, a royal historian sees the Commonwealth as "a rapidly disintegrating organisation" (ibid.). Tensions between rich and poor, especially over trade, are ratcheting up in a more conflicted world and the Commonwealth is a witness to this process.

People's Democracy Versus Imperial Control

The enormously glaring contrast between movements for people's democracy and those for imperial control was highlighted in early June 2022 in the US itself by the People's Summit for Democracy versus the Biden Administration-hosted Summit of the Americas - June 8th through June 10, with both events being held in Los Angeles (Covert Action Bulletin Podcast: 6/6/22).

Some 2,000 people - "artists, activists, journalists, and revolutionaries" - attended the first event while the official gathering got only a few hundred.attendees (ibid.). Note that in my current article, I am giving a special plug for the work of Covert Action Magazine (CAM). It has done a vital job for the world and American democracy in exposing US covert action and dirty work since 1978.

The people's representatives at their gathering in Los Angeles were protesting the CEOs (chief executive officers) and other plotters at Biden's Summit, which was replete with a carefully scripted and imperially contrived agenda. But, of course, the People's Summit for Democracy was boycotted by the established corporate media (ibid.). Biden's Summit very pointedly excluded the Leftwing-oriented nations of Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, and even also an indigenous peoples' delegation.

Political activist and journalist Walter Smolarek interrupted Luis Almagro, General Secretary of the Organisation of American States (OAS), in the course of a panel on supposed press freedom at the Biden-hosted conference. Smolarek confronted Almagro and called him out about his role in facilitating and legitimising the 2019 coup and resultant dictatorship in Bolivia, which had been mounted against its indigenous, Leftwing President Evo Morales (ibid; for background refer to "10 Reasons Luis Almagro Has To Go", People's Dispatch, 16/1/22). Luis Almagro is a Uruguayan lawyer, politician and diplomat, who is also so very obviously an egregious political puppet for the US government's public relations (PR) and dirty work.

Smolarek charged Almagro with vicious US-mandated machinations in Bolivia, and also in Venezuela. He condemned him for the murders of a number of Bolivians, including that of an investigative journalist. As well, he accused Almagro and his accomplices of facilitating the pillage and looting of Bolivia's rich mineral resources.

The US has ripped off these resources over many years of plunder. In Bolivia, the minerals concerned include petroleum, natural gas, gold, silver, tungsten, lead, zinc, and tin, as well as rarer resources like platinum, palladium, tantalum, and cadmium. Bolivia has the largest reserves of lithium in the world, which is vital for electric vehicle batteries.

Supporting Constructive Change

If American-coordinated imperialism continues its plunder of Latin American resources, the People's Summit for Democracy was able to celebrate some significant and growing successes. One country - especially over the past 15 years - has rebounded from both US-inflicted wounds and ongoing harassment. This land is Nicaragua, again the threat to the US of a good example ("Food Insecurity Increases In The US While it Declines In Nicaragua, Whose Socialist Government Has Defied US Regime Change Designs", Nan McCurdy, 23/6/22).

"Repudiation of [the] Biden Administration at [the] Summit of the Americas and Colombia's election of a Leftwing President signifies a new era of independence and progressivism in Washington's traditional 'backyard'" ("Winds Of Change Sweeping Latin America" Richard S Dunn, 28/6/22). What possibly marks a turning point too is that the US seems to be finding it harder to screen a lot of its covert action from international public scrutiny.

As noted above, the Biden Administration excluded Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua from its Summit of the Americas. It justified this exclusion on the grounds "of their allegedly poor human rights records and authoritarian governments" (ibid.). As analyst Richard Dunn remarks: "This is as hypocritical and self-serving as it comes; the US is in no historical and moral position to criticise, much less ostracise, any country because of perceived human rights abuses, corruption, or other governmental misdeeds" (ibid.).

Besides its long, ugly racist domestic history and ongoing behaviour: "The US has a record of supporting mass atrocities against Latin America and regimes that systematically violate human rights", e.g., the "extreme Rightwing, climate change denier" regime of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil today. The US regularly indulges in outrageously arbitrary and abusive bouts of power through its imposition of political and economic sanctions on countries it does not like.

From Neoliberal Hegemony To Neo-Fascist Militarism

Ever since the Reagan-Thatcher era of the 1980s, the hard Right free market/trade doctrine labelled "neoliberalism" has prevailed in the Anglo-American sphere of the West, at least until the Trump Administration when it moved openly into neo-fascist mode, even domestically. This geopolitical grouping comprises as its spearhead the so-called "Five Eyes" intelligence/covert action alliance, which consists of the hegemonic US in a "tight Five" - to use rugby union jargon - with its subordinate white, colonialist Anglo-Saxon mates - Britain, Canada, Australia, and little old "Godzone" NZ.

During the 1980s, Aotearoa/NZ cut loose a bit from this tight Five with our proclaimed nuclear free zone under the David Lange-headed Labour government. Many New Zealanders worked hard across the land to establish this status in the very teeth of American opposition, which was both overtly and covertly orchestrated. At the time, we connected positively and effectively with the international peace and anti-nuclear movement.

But successive governments - both National and Labour - chose later to reintegrate us back into the predatory US war machine, although still keeping up the pretence of a viable nuclear free zone. Given present day realities, we now seem to be light-years away from the decade of the 1980s. Contrast Ardern's NATO speech in June 2022 with David Lange's famous speech at the Oxford Union debate in 1985.

Lange scored worldwide with his caustic remark that he could smell the uranium on the breath of a young interjector. His remark also had obvious implications for his opponent in the debate, the warmongering evangelist Jerry Falwell, whose American Christian fundamentalism got a real drubbing (e.g., "David Lange At The Oxford Union", Courts of New Zealand).

The present Ardern-led Labour government still peddles the utterly bankrupt and outlandish myth that Aotearoa/NZ has a "fiercely independent" foreign policy (ABC Update, "It is time to examine Jacinda Ardern's repeated claim that under her Government, NZ has an 'independent foreign policy'", 29/6/22).

Choosing The Road To Hell!

These days, indeed - and so horrifically! - our Government is even herding us on track for a final confrontation with Russia and China, and their associates. This ominous line-up is being marshalled by US/NATO/Five Eyes, and a new series of touted "security" alliances taking shape in the Pacific. We have a very militarist Defence Minister in Peeni Henare. Moreover, our own military is always most willing, keen, and eager to plug into the latest phase and ventures of the American military-industrial complex, come Hell or high water!

Of course, the Opposition parties of National and ACT, who are so bad and scary enough on the domestic front with their class warfare for the rich, would be even worse than the current Government on foreign policy. If they were to constitute the next NZ government, we are in for very big trouble ahead and serious internal conflict! Later below, I take a critical look at one crucial dimension of their pro-US, pro-war agenda - namely, their call for Aotearoa/NZ to follow America in the use of arbitrary economic sanctions. Such is the increasing militarist mind-set!

In all, it is certainly no coincidence that PM Ardern's recent visit to Europe primarily to push for a free trade deal with the EU (European Union) incorporated a speech delivered at the NATO Leaders' Summit. Ardern was the first New Zealander ever to be invited to speak at a NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) meeting, which took place on this occasion in Madrid, Spain, 28-30 June. She had already defended NZ's cosiness with NATO by arguing that our country had been a NATO partner for ten years.

In her appearance at NATO, our PM's speech was steeped in hypocrisy and blatant contradictory posturing. The very fact of a leader of a purportedly nuclear-free country pontificating in friendly fashion at a conference hosted by an aggressive nuclear weapons alliance was, of course, a flagrantly outrageous contradiction in itself. So, at this warmongering conference, Ardern ironically warned about alleged threats from both Russia and China. At the same time, she contended that we should not use the war in Ukraine to boost the arms race, including nuclear weapons. She also appealed for more diplomacy. Again, the contradictions are glaringly enormous here.

It is a given that whipping up perceptions of growing military threats will only spur on the Western military-industrial complex to even greater armaments spending, expansion of its worldwide network of bases, foreign interventions, covert dirty work, etc. Propaganda and "psy-ops" per the media, etc. will be stepped up on the home front as well. All the while, our PM has still waffled on about how Aotearoa/NZ is supposedly so "fiercely independent". This is indeed the very stuff for savage satire!

Rising Resistance And Rebellion To The "Death Instinct"

Since the Reagan/Thatcher era, deep concerns about militarism, social justice, democracy, the environment, international relations, sustainability, etc. have driven further wide-ranging responses from the anti-globalisation and anti-capitalist movements, including our own version here in Aotearoa/NZ. After lapsing in momentum as the years went on throughout the neoliberal era - coupled with the rise of a new generation - people's democracy initiatives have most hearteningly even been gaining some ground again in recent years (e.g., Covert Action Bulletin Podcast, op. cit.).

So much of this revival has naturally been motivated by reaction to the rise of the hard Right in the US and the rest of the West, that has been pushing us towards militarist neo-fascism and world war. The Leftwing protest movements have included those primarily directed at charting and carving out alternative development paths (e.g., the grounding of effective food security in Nicaragua: "Food Insecurity Increases In The US While It Declines In Nicaragua", op. cit.). Food security, basic human rights, genuine sustainability in partnership with Mother Nature, etc., are catching on in various quarters across planet Earth.

We must work as hard as we can to grow these movements. This growth could greatly boost truly meaningful impetus for the creation of far better pathways to genuine sustainability. Capitalism could be transformed into an international system of interlinked cooperative, sustainable societies striving for the greater good of all humankind, instead of the predatory greed of the rich few and their assorted apparatuses of repression.

Hand in hand with the return of movements for people's democracy has been the rise once more of the international peace/anti-nuclear movement. This so urgently needed new and welcome development has recently been signalled most dramatically by the activities of the World Beyond War (WBW) non-government organisation (NGO) and its sister NGO Roots Action. On 25th-26th June 2022, WBW organised an internationally resonant "peace wave" (see, e.g., "Incredible Agenda For 24-Hour Peace Wave: No To Militarisation - Yes To Cooperation, June 25-26, 2022"), 22/6/22, info@worldbeyondwar.org.

Naturally, this "peace wave" got little attention from the corporate, warmongering media but things are starting to change for good in so many parts of the world. Resistance and rebellion are mounting against the self-destructive policies of Western capitalism. In particular, anger and disgust are being directed at its eminently crazy and evil leadership as so graphically epitomised by US President Joe Biden, who is proving far more dangerous to humankind than his widely despised predecessor Donald Trump.

Contradictions Compound For Militarist Capitalism!

While positive resistance continues to drive protests against the Western power elite and the transnational corporation (TNC)-contrived growth programme, ironies have compounded in the last decade or two with a widespread far Right reactionary backlash as well - a backlash with strong elements of neo-fascism, and one that again ironically also flows from and overlaps with the hard-line globalist capitalist agenda of the West. In recent years in Aotearoa/NZ, the performance of the very Rightwing ACT Party has exemplified these trends and connections.

Framing and shaping the public discourse of all this unfolding turmoil, have long been both the Anglo-American and broader Western mainstream media - together with all their satellite organs of dissemination in so much of the rest of the world. The corporate-owned and/or-controlled media a la Rupert Murdoch & co. have mostly ignored, misrepresented, or downplayed the deeper underlying issues at stake, and their longer-term implications.

As ever, the ironies and contradictions get more intense and contorted. For instance, take the case of China. We have long predicted that China would emerge over time as an enemy of the West as its economy grew and it sought resources and investment around the world. After all, this process is just a simple outcome of the continuing capitalist celebration of economic growth as exploited by the planet's dominant mammal.

And China has a huge growing population, and is even wanting to grow it more! Yet for decades, Western TNCs (transnational corporations) and their governments were most happy to exploit cheap Chinese labour and its largely unprotected environment. Its industrial thrust, indeed, was the big engine of the global economy for decades. But, oh my gosh, China has been reaching out into "our own backyard" of late. Like the West, it is never satisfied and continuously wants more and more!

In the West itself, however - above all else - the mainstream media suppress discussion and debate on the limits to growth and the issues of diminishing and/or deteriorating resources necessary for capitalist production and consumption. Industrialism must eventually prove self-destructive to a liveable habitat on planet Earth! Indeed, from climate change to micro-plastic pollution this is proving horribly true. Consequently, in the meantime, ruling interests strive to protect themselves from exposure to the fact that "the emperor has no clothes"!

The Western power elite cannot afford to allow any real close scrutiny of these matters in the public arena because this would reveal that the touted endless progress of global capitalism is just a sham. Such an honest acknowledgement would fire up the call for wealth and income redistribution and fair shares for all. Hence again, this elite is stomping on the militarist pedal in efforts to position the West to try and face down its opponents; or in the last desperate roll of the dice, to try and win a nuclear war!

PR And Murderous Market Propaganda

Leading analysts like Noam Chomsky and John Pilger have long shown how capitalist commercial advertising is fundamental to the purveying of political propaganda, whether via "news" bulletins and reports, documentaries, or fictional portrayals. These techniques are fundamental to the media manipulation currently so rampant. Our TV channels are rife with this American "infotainment" stuff and Hollywood celebration of murderous CIA and "Top Gun" imperialist conditioning. In the US itself, Murdoch's Fox News is the most notorious exemplar of propagandistic hard Right "news".

There has indeed been a systematic and pervasive neoliberal indoctrination and manipulation of public discourse for many years. We have continually drawn attention to this hugely pervasive problem in articles over decades in Watchdog and Peace Researcher (PR) because it is so absolutely fundamental to understanding the global crisis enveloping us all - and thus being able to work more effectively for ultimate human survival.

Across a whole generation, the Rightwing mainstream media have operated hand in glove with both corporate interests and governments to condition the publics of the Anglo-American axis and elsewhere to this increasingly militarist neoliberal ideology. Such bellicose capitalist indoctrination has taken on multitudinous forms. In recent years, the aggressive mode of the West's agenda has very ominously come to the fore in media messaging, as now dramatically demonstrated by the way the media frame and portray the very dangerously deepening and escalating conflict in Ukraine.

Boosting public support for NATO and Five Eyes constitutes the core of this Western Establishment programme of public conditioning and psychological warfare. In recent times, this propaganda wave is picking up in the Pacific with a stridently hypocritical, geopolitical "moral panic" about the growing reach of China. This stuff is geared to induce a sense of increasing insecurity from designated enemies whom we will have to encounter in conflict mode.

Programming The Geopolitics Of Self-Destruction

With regard to the worsening Ukraine crisis, what the US/NATO/Five Eyes/etc. programme promotes is now assiduously aimed at inculcating in its respective publics the acceptance and support of a long war on Russia's very border. Ever since the debacle of the Vietnam War, psychological operations ("psy-ops") on the home front have been fundamental for the American power elite and ultra-capitalist class.

For sure, this militarist gang loves a proxy war because it feeds the military-industrial complex, keeps their own people mostly safe, and serves their political objectives ("The CIA As Organised Crime", op. cit.). Keeping the loss of life down for their citizens helps preserve and guarantee continued public support. The presiding power elite cannot by any means afford to acknowledge the truth that:

1. there are definite imminent limits to industrial-type growth on a small planet and that critical resources are running out;
2. the Western capitalist sector of the world economy has depended for centuries on the ruthless exploitation of both peoples and ecosystems, and has thus reaped an enormously disproportionate use of resources for materialist living standards;
3. their outrageously privileged position in the Western hierarchy is dependent on fostering the delusion of endless growth and "trickle-down" economics of some sort at least;
4. otherwise, their very privileged position would itself come under increasing criticism;
5. and thus, in order to suppress dissent, they must try and unify their societies against proscribed common enemies - Russia, China, and a host of defined "rogue states" like North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, etc. They have to marshal belligerent militarism to try and maintain both world hegemony and their privileged lifestyles so inherent in this very hegemony;
6. in sum, Western imperialism is in mounting and compounding crisis, and we desperately need a rapid transition to an internationally cooperative, sustainable and peaceful system fit to meet the gathering challenges of the future, viz. climate change; fair shares for the world's poorest peoples; etc.

It has certainly been most significant that the warmongering, tribalist, nuclear-armed NATO has succeeded in co-opting our PM Jacinda Ardern, who has achieved an international reputation for empathy and kindness as documented in the book "Jacinda Ardern: Leading With Empathy" (Supriya Vani and Carl A Harte, Hardie Grant Books, 2021).

But, on the other hand, the PM has lately shown another very different side to her political personality, committing our Government militarily to US/NATO's ultimately suicidal proxy war on Russia in the Ukraine. At the same time, NATO is now stretching out its tentacles into the Indo-Pacific and intent on incorporating Aotearoa/NZ for all practical purposes, along with any other pliable partners.

Our country has just joined yet another Indo-Pacific pact aimed at China. This latest group is a so-called Partners in the Blue Pacific programme, including the usual other suspects as members - the US, UK, Japan, and Australia ("New Zealand Joins New Pacific Partnership With US, UK", RNZ, 25/6/22).

On the broader propaganda front, the aggressively warmongering US-led Western nuclear alliance in the form of NATO is posturing against the alleged threat of what it calls "authoritarian states", viz. in particular Russia and China and their associates. But, as I have already outlined above, this stratagem is basically just using the camouflage of "democracy" to cover the realities of mounting resource wars and protection of the greedy few. The US and Britain themselves are far from being genuinely democratic states. They are ruled by a grossly self-serving upper-class with a belligerent Social Darwinist outlook a la Joe Biden and Boris Johnson.

Western Warmongering

In these times, indeed, deplorably enough, the cultivation of warmongering tribalist nationalism is becoming more paramount than ever before. A whole Anglo-American indoctrinated generational experience rife with neoliberalism and the ideology of the terrorist "War on Terror" has taken a dark "grim reaper" toll of our public culture. This mind-set embraces a joint collective form as the West versus the rest. It is especially manifest - as stressed repeatedly in this article - in the aggressively expanding and militarist US-headed and nuclear-armed NATO, along with the closely related "Five Eyes" club, and their increasing spawn.

Today's media regularly tosses up endless illustrations of its warmongering mode. But I want, at this point, to give an example about a war that supposedly US/NATO have just left behind, i.e., Afghanistan. On 16th June 2022, TVNZ's 1 News At 6pm showed a BBC item which described the extent of hunger in this sadly afflicted country. It reported that half of the population there were suffering from hunger. Many people were desperate enough to be even competing for stale bread because fresh bread was priced well out of their reach.

This same BBC report openly and brazenly stated that the West has cut aid to Afghanistan since the Taliban took over. The reporter gave the reason for the cut in aid as due to the Taliban's disregard for women's rights.

In all, this particular item amounted to a most revealing and disturbing example of the cynical and malign nature of Western media posturing about wars with US/NATO designated enemies. There are a number of important aspects that need noting.

First, the item has the sales pitch, as it were, of human concern about people suffering from hunger in Afghanistan. But, secondly, at the same time there was the unashamed acknowledgement of the denial of Western aid to the very people concerned. But wait, the justification for this is the West's supposed priority for women's rights which apparently outweighs the actual severe physical and life-threatening deprivation of so many of the population, which according to United Nations (UN) World Programme estimates affects at least one in three of the country's total population. The evil Biden Administration even callously and unconscionably stole half of Afghanistan's foreign currency reserves for Americans!

Remember that these were the very same people, whom the US & co. had claimed to be protecting against the militant fundamentalists in its 20-year war. The CIA, etc, of course, had formerly recruited and cultivated the most die-hard and fanatical fundamentalists in the earlier civil war against the occupying Soviet forces. Things certainly do get messy, don't they, when one pursues a very self-interested agenda?! Unfortunately, many millions of people can end up suffering the fallout as is now so tragically happening again!

Currently, the crisis in Ukraine is precipitating a potentially very dire global food shortage. Ukraine and Russia are both blaming each other for the failure to get shipments of grain out of Black Sea ports. But once more, too, it is evident enough that this all amounts to yet another terrible blowback from malicious Anglo-American meddling geopolitics!

PR Framework Spinning Fast, Free and Loose!

It is a sickening reality, that the leadership of US/NATO and their associated PR flunkies - overwhelmingly dominant in the mainstream media - can actually put out the kind of transparently scam camouflage as exemplified in the BBC report cited earlier above about the plight of people in Afghanistan. The report tried to help screen the highly embarrassing reality of the US/NATO brigade's ignominious failure in Afghanistan by blaming the Taliban for the current condition of the nation, and in particular the huge hunger problem. As we have seen time and again, this sort of PR is highly effective for the most part in Western culture because of institutionalised hypocrisy and perceived self-interest.

The particular BBC item also took a purportedly moralistic - if in such a bizarrely construed and self-serving stance! - towards the awful suffering of the people, whom the Western forces had claimed to be protecting and assisting in the war. The war, in fact, is continuing (see, e.g., "Biden's Claim To Be Ending America's Longest War Misleading", Jeremy Kuzmarov, 15/4/21; & "Biden Betrays Another Campaign Pledge, Admits That US Will Continue To Bomb Afghanistan", Nick Mottern, 6/7/21).

The uprising against the Soviet-backed regime in Afghanistan that triggered the superpower invasion in 1979 included within its motivation, lots of anger stirred up about the elevated status and education for women that the Marxist-oriented government was pushing. The CIA & co. consequently recruited the most militant, fundamentalist Muslim fighters they could find to contest the Soviet presence. All this was crucially instrumental in helping spawn al Qaeda and the Taliban.

As might well be anticipated, any concern for women's rights got curtly dismissed when the US was later trying to negotiate a gas pipeline that would have crossed Afghanistan clear of Russian control. Taliban representatives were even hosted in the US in regard to the mooted deal. But the Taliban grip on the country proved too unstable for the Americans and then 9/11 happened. What followed subsequently was an artificially concocted programme on women's rights to try and help legitimate the US/NATO illegal occupation.

Critical Evaluation

Obviously, PR spin is everything. My special media exemplar of this syndrome for many years has been the case of Indonesian genocide. I still have a copy of a Life International magazine, Vol. 41, No. 1, July 11, 1966 (in mint condition!), which lavishly celebrated the CIA-contrived - and then still ongoing bloody slaughter - of communists and other leftists, Chinese, etc., in Indonesia, all complete with lurid descriptions and glossy full colour pictures of some of the death squad perpetrators. For me, this particular magazine edition is the most extraordinary illustration of how the West can get away quite openly across our public culture with the most vile propaganda imaginable - can indeed, quite literally get away with blue murder!

So much of the recent and current Western propaganda on the Ukraine crisis mirrors a similar syndrome of malignly calculated machinations. The category index of CAM has an extensive range of topics and issues notated by appropriate entry terms. Listed on the entries for Ukraine and the Ukraine War are an already considerable and ever-growing list of published articles. Indeed, CAM has revealed a whole other dimension of the conflict that the mainstream media rigorously avoid and suppress (ibid.).

CAM certainly provides plenty to ponder about just how bad the Western propaganda tsunami has got. The first casualty in war is truth and both sides in the Ukraine conflict peddle their own lies and "fake news" so obtaining a more critical and analytical perspective is essential. CAM ensures that we can have this kind of perspective.

Meanwhile, our TV channels in particular - i.e., TV1, TV3, and Prime - have been pumping out a constant stream of grossly biased pro-Western "news" and reportage. TV1 frames its daily news on Ukraine with the banner headline "Russia Invades Ukraine". By this constantly repeated technique alone, total blame and responsibility for the war is heaped on Russia and President Putin.

Thus: the US-orchestrated subversion and eventual overthrow of a democratically elected government in Ukraine in 2014 (costing US$5 billion!), and the ushering in of a regime change by neo-fascist forces; the initiation of a vicious ongoing civil war; and the resulting systematic suppression of any democratic opposition; etc., all get the airbrush-treatment to ensure the right narrative for presentation to Western consumers.

NZ Parliamentary Blustering Blather

NZ's own political Establishment certainly stepped up - in enthusiastic lockstep with its Five Eyes partners and the mainstream media - with a US-inspired strong verbal attack on Russia and President Putin during the 9th March, 2022 Parliamentary session. Watching and listening to Parliament pass the Act sanctioning Russia for its invasion of Ukraine was most enlightening about the extent of the American-induced conformity and utter hypocrisy of all our MPs (aside from the independently spirited te Pati Māori).

Our Government, including the Greens, along with the two Opposition parties - i.e., National and ACT - launched into condemnatory tirades against the Russian leadership. The most prevalent ploy of the white Anglo-American political Establishment and their media is actually a calculated silence on any awkward and compromising issues, let alone outrageous abuses of human rights.

So, selective choice of issue and biased perspective are the name of the game in line with what Big Brother/Uncle Sam both prescribes and proscribes. The full force and fury of rhetoric is unleashed on appropriately designated targets, and in Parliament's case, with the honourable exception of the qualifications to the motion voiced by te Pati Māori as noted, Parliament faithfully followed the American scripted condemnation of Russia and its leader.

It is, of course, hallowed NZ Establishment practice that the nation with by far the worst human rights record in foreign policy reigns supremely untouchable in conventional circles. Perceived short-term interest and tribalism rule, ok?! (For so much of the deplorable record since World War II [WWII] see, "The CIA: A Forgotten History", Zed Books Ltd., 1986; "Killing Hope: US Military And CIA Interventions Since World War II", Common Courage Press, 1995 - 2nd Ed., 2004, also published by Zed Books, 2003 - revised ed. 2014; & "Rogue State: A Guide To The World's Only Superpower", Common Courage Press, 2000. All three books are authored by William Blum).

Consequently, the blanket terms of "unprovoked" and "unjustified" - as articulated by the Biden Administration - were duly echoed by speakers to the NZ government motion to establish the new law on sanctions in reaction to Russia's invasion. Watching and listening to it all then, one could only marvel at the deliberately contrived ignorance and artificially outraged posturing that went on that day. Here was a Parliament happy to be wallowing in the blood-baths and mass suffering perpetrated by the Anglo-American axis - from the Middle East to Africa, and from Asia to Latin America - while calling out Russia sorely provoked by the same aggressive imperialist brigade bent on intruding with nuclear weapons at the ready right up to its very borders!

Hyping Up The Hypocrisy!

Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta proclaimed that we stand with Ukraine against "unprovoked, unjustified, and inhumane aggression on innocent people" (9/3/22). The many millions of dead, injured, made homeless, and/or otherwise adversely affected by US overt and covert interventions since WWII can apparently rest in peace. NZ, like other Western nations - above all, the Five Eyes club - is hugely steeped in foreign policy hypocrisy, lies, and "fake news".

Mahuta stated that: "NZ believes strongly in the international rules-based order and the multilateral system", i.e., in actuality, one tailored to the rampant abuses of the US & co. The US, of course, is notorious for disregarding, even attacking, any rules that hamper its imperialist style. Sidekicks like NZ get the freedom to piggy-back on the bullying and predatory practices of the Anglo-American axis.

The world's most pre-eminent rogue state and revered Big Brother partner thus gets NZ's warm embrace despite the horribly rotten record on international rules (for the embarrassing evidence of relatively recent times, see: "Lawless World: America And The Making And Breaking Of Global Rules", Philippe Sands, Allen Lane/Penguin, 2005; & also "Rogue State", op. cit.).

Those with the power and the gold write the rules but the West is facing a slippage in power. NZ's commitment on the current rules-based order was evidently repeated by the PM at her NATO speech with a straight face. The blustering windbag National MP Gerry Brownlee - you know, the guy who has proclaimed his belief in ever-lasting coal to fire up the planet! - sounded off about "unprovoked aggressor action" and "the conquest of Crimea" (9/3/22, op. cit.). Deputy PM Grant Robertson joined in with a similar condemnation.

Piling On The Lies!

In like fashion, Labour Minister David Parker asserted that Putin attacked "without provocation" (ibid.). He proceeded to charge the Russian leadership of using dishonest pretexts for the invasion, such as the Ukrainian regime is "Nazi". Furthermore, he actually claimed that there is no real threat to Russian security from either the Ukraine or NATO "to the territorial borders of Russia" (ibid.). Maybe Parker was getting confused with the reasons that the US gave for its illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq. The pack of lies about the alleged "weapons of mass destruction" (WMD) there was the obscenely dishonest pretext for the American "shock and awe" attacks on Baghdad and other places.

In sum, David Parker's speech amounted to egregiously transparent rubbish as we have documented in previous articles at length and detail in both Watchdog and PR, indeed ever since the coup against the democratically elected Government in Ukraine in 2014 (op. cit.). There is a ton of supporting information to this effect. But the NZ Parliament just flushed this kind of thing down the Orwellian memory-hole, or into the denialist side-drawer! How could any NZ politician seriously picture the US/NATO phalanx as non-threatening - just about as much as the Chinese in the South Pacific, eh David?! Orwellian double-think and double-talk are running riot!

On the other hand, Parker even cited as testament to Russia's bad record on foreign policy the atrocities committed by the Assad regime in Syria (9/3/22, op. cit.). Nevertheless, NZ governments have been happy to overlook all of America's ever-accumulating war crimes for decades and the varying degrees of their own complicity, including most outstandingly the role of Five Eyes and NZ's involvement (however indirect) in the Indonesian genocide 1965-70. And, of course, don't forget the dirty work of the US in Syria too, among so many other countries, for a more specific rebuttal to Minister Parker!

NATO Attempting To Subvert The UN

The unspoken US/NATO agenda is clearly to try and replace the UN as far as possible in international policing activities, to subvert this body's peacekeeping with a Western imperialist programme of aggressive global reach. To stress the point once more, the Biden Administration has brazenly boasted about its "aggressive" foreign policy a la Hitler! Jacinda Ardern effectively gave her blessing to all this in her NATO speech, whatever self-serving qualifications she made about the need for more diplomacy and the abjuration of nuclear weapons. Geopolitics certainly weaves a very contorted web for its exponents!

Back on the 9th of March, 2022, in Parliament, Greens Co-Leader and Government Minister, James Shaw, opened up with a blistering but stridently misplaced bullshit broadside at Russia and Putin. He drew "parallels between Hitler's Anschluss of Austria and the annexation of Crimea", and compared the invasion of Ukraine with the German invasion of Poland, sparking WWII (ibid.).

Given all the extensively documented evidence and history of Western subversion of Ukraine, coupled with all the accompanying provocations, Shaw's speech showed that the Greens are far from being a progressive Leftwing party but are instead deeply implicated in the syndrome of US-led Western imperialism, like the Government in general and the rest of Parliament.

A particular ploy along these lines now being played by National and ACT is to push the US strategy for more freedom to impose economic sanctions outside the UN ambit. The US has notoriously employed this illegal strategy against a whole host of enemies, brutally and repeatedly subjecting civilian populations to severe suffering and deprivation.

Tribalist Geopolitics Unleashed

In their viciously contrived revenge for losing to the Taliban in Afghanistan, the US/NATO & co. are deliberately punishing the starving people of Afghanistan with the loss of vitally needed aid - trampling on the very civilians whom they had claimed to be helping! We see here once again starkly portrayed - as even expressed in the BBC report cited earlier - the unashamed evil that the West is capable of!

The most horrible example of this geopolitical power ploy in the past was the case of sanctions placed on Iraq under the US-organised embargo in the 1990s. For certain: "Iraq's child mortality will surely go down in history as one of the great crimes of the 20th Century, alongside the Holocaust, the bombing of Dresden and excesses of Pol Pot" ("Tell Me No Lies: Investigative Journalism And Its Triumphs", ed., John Pilger, Jonathan Cape, 2004: see ch. on "Iraq: The Unending War (1998-99)", Felicity Arbuthnot, pp536-40, quote on p539; & also, ch. on "Cool War: Economic Sanctions As A Weapon Of Mass Destruction (2002)", Joy Gordon, pp541-52). Almost needless to say, the Western media collaborated to cover up this most grievous case of genocide (ibid.).

"In 1996, in an interview on the American current affairs programme 60 Minutes, Madeleine Albright, (the Clinton Administration's) US Ambassador to the UN, had been asked: 'We have heard that half a million children have died ... is the price worth it?' Albright had replied, ' ... We think the price is worth it'" (ibid., p533). Earlier in 1994, Albright had refused the appeals of the then UN Secretary General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, for international intervention to stop the genocide in Rwanda (ibid., p458). "... Boutros-Ghali angrily blamed the Americans" for this humanitarian disaster (ibid.).

So, Madeleine Albright was deeply implicated in two genocides but the obituaries that I saw and heard on her 2022 death studiously omitted any mention of them. Instead, most ironically, she was congratulated as an advocate of NATO's aggressively warmongering and imperialistic takeover of former Soviet republics in eastern Europe. Another of her legacies then is the current and dangerously escalating war in Ukraine!

Pushing Sanctions Power

To return to the NZ Parliament on the 9th March, we had the very hard Rightwing National MP, Simon O'Connor, - you know the guy, the one rapped by his Party for declaring his love for the US Supreme Court decision overturning the 50-year-old Roe vs. Wade case, which gave women the right to abortion - calling for Aotearoa/NZ to adopt what is called the Magnitsky legislation (9/3/22, op. cit.). This particular legislation is geared at legitimising arbitrary politico-economic sanctions.

It is supremely American too, as are of course, the overwhelming majority of Rightwing-inspired inputs and influences into our public culture - whatever form these might take. Such inputs and influences range from Hollywood films and TV drama series glamourising the CIA and special forces to the openly racist and conspiratorial alt-Right social media chat-rooms.

More specifically, the Magnitsky legislation refers to laws enabling governments to impose sanctions against individuals who have allegedly committed human rights abuses, or who have been involved in corrupt practices. Significantly enough, the US-formulated legislation originated from a case in Russia, thereby providing an American pretext for unilateral action (ibid.). A number of countries have since passed similar laws - including Canada, Britain, and the EU. The Western empire is revving up - both against powerful rivals, and the world's poor.

According to Google: "The Global Magnitsky Act of 2016 authorises the US government to sanction foreign government officials worldwide, who are deemed to be human rights offenders, freeze their assets, and ban them from entering the US". The huge irony here is that the country with the most notorious State terrorists and abusers of human rights is America itself ("The CIA As Organised Crime", op. cit.). They include a host of notorious foreign agents of the empire who have taken refuge in the US (ibid.).

It is extremely ominous that both the Opposition National and ACT parties have been promoting this sort of approach for the NZ government. If enacted, it would constitute another arm of the American empire operative in our own country. It is even more ominous that our present Labour government has indicated that it would look more closely at this proposal. Imperial pressure exerted per the Parliamentary Opposition is obviously building.

Commanding Space To Exterminate Life On Earth

In our times, the politico-economic and technological fantasies of the American empire even stretch heavenwards more than ever. From trying to command the realms of space around Earth in "Star Wars" style to NASA's Artemis programme to colonise the Moon and eventually Mars - suitably enough the end goal is a dead planet! Western so-called civilisation is certainly reaching its nadir.

Trashing our "Goldilocks" planet - whether directly, or via the model set by China, India, and so many other countries - and obscenely wasting vast sums of money on both armaments and space travel, let alone war, while more and more millions of people suffer hunger, dire deprivation, the mounting impact of climate change, etc. all stand as grim testimony to the failure of our touted civilisation to chart a path to sustainable, cooperative, and humane survival.

Our own Government is deeply implicated in this planetary overshoot with our NZ Space Agency (set up in 2016) working closely with the pernicious Rocket Lab. This combination is regularly lauded by both the Government and the media, especially the American-owned Newshub TV3 and its Prime TV associate. So-called space travel and space war development are interlinked in multiple, various ways. Human evolutionary overshoot is surely taking a real dive!

The ironies endlessly multiply and compound. In 1898, HG Wells wrote his most prophetic "sci-fi" book - "War Of The Worlds". Remember, the basis of the plot: the Martian high-tech civilisation had exceeded its resource limits and the Martians were desperately seeking another planet to exploit. Hence, they invaded Earth. Nowadays, the political Establishment and media here cheer on NASA, in conjunction with Rocket Lab & co., in a project to colonise the dead, red planet while humans ruin their so rare "Goldilocks" habitat here on Earth. You couldn't make this weird zombie stuff up if you tried!

Will The Walking Dead Awake?!

"The Business Party that rules America has helped to impose (a) mass psychosis on its customers and consumers. It is essential to perpetuating the capitalist system, in which 1% of the population possess most of the nation's wealth. Should the people emerge from the shadows of self-deception, and stop projecting their irrationality onto others, the house of cards would collapse" ("The CIA As Organised Crime", op. cit., p400). But the Big Lie still prevails, ok?!

As Douglas Valentine continually emphasises, the corporate mass media are fundamental to keeping the American people and the rest of the Western world in the dark about how the Business Party per the CIA and related agencies control both domestic and foreign dimensions of the American empire (ibid.). Our own political Establishment and media in Aotearoa/NZ are in thrall to all of this.

To recap and review in winding up this article, the war and gathering crisis in Ukraine has brought a whole parcel of problematic and contentious issues together. "Of 18 major human rights treaties, Russia is party to only 11 and the US to only five, as few as any nation on Earth" ("Ask The Rest Of The World To Lead By Reining In Russia & The United States", 21/4/22, RootsAction). For sure: "Both nations violate treaties at will, including the UN Charter, Kellogg Briand Pact and other laws against war. While most of the world upholds disarmament and anti-weapons treaties, the US and Russia refuse to support and openly defy major treaties" (ibid.).

Focusing more closely on the Ukraine crisis and war, we have seen how President Joe Biden's Big Lie that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was "unprovoked" instantly became a Western "truth". Client states like NZ willingly - even eagerly - conform to this Big Lie. And this holds even despite the quite stunning fact that Biden himself in the previous Obama Administration actually coordinated and oversaw the subversion and takeover of Ukraine! The Big Lie is ritually parroted by politicians and media and used as the justification for further action against Russia.

For instance, an article, reproduced from the CIA-groomed Washington Post declares that: "Sweden and Finland are close NATO partners, who remained officially military non-aligned until Russia's unprovoked (my emphasis) invasion of Ukraine pushed them towards the 30-member military alliance" ("NATO Reinvigorated By Ukraine War Response", Press, 30/6/22). This particular Big Lie has become central to the malign, warmongering propaganda of the US/NATO strategy to try and grab Ukraine from Russia's orbit, and destabilise Russia itself. Their malicious evil could not be greater, given the enormous risks of precipitating WWIII. The nuclear war dangers are increasing all the time!

Misleading And Malign Media Spin

At this stage, I want to stress yet again how the politicians and media have been hand in glove on Ukraine despite the overwhelming evidence to their adherence to the imperial line. Let's walk back to events unfolding since 2014. Presenter Lisa Owen on TV3's The Nation tackled our then Deputy PM and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Winston Peters, about a politically charged obstacle to a free trade deal with Russia (11/3/18). Owen contended that not only does Russia have a bad domestic human rights record but that it had intervened nastily in the Crimea and the wider Ukraine, and had even shot down a civilian airliner. She asked Peters how can he and his Government just ignore all this.

So, we had here one of the countless media examples of the most Orwellian hypocrisy in action, unashamedly ignoring the Anglo-American-NATO record. More to the point, we have the whole aggressive geopolitical thrust of NATO - driven and coordinated by the Obama Administration - right up to Russia's very borders, and causing a bitter civil war; and an intrusion, furthermore, which was already sharply boosting the arms race and leading to a very perilous standoff in Europe (for a rare mainstream media dissenting voice see: "It's Not Russia That's Pushed Ukraine To The Brink Of War", Seumas Milne, The Guardian, 30/4/14). And war duly came!

Then there is the apparently minor matter of the Obama Administration having facilitated a fascist-style coup and toppling a democratically elected government in the Ukraine, let alone overthrowing others in Latin America, i.e., the Leftwing governments of Honduras and Paraguay ("On Western Terrorism: From Hiroshima To Drone Warfare", Andre Vltchek & Noam Chomsky, Pluto Press, p159). In 2022, Imran Khan, the former Prime Minister of Pakistan, and his Government have been recently ousted in yet another US-backed coup. The empire's covert machinations continue around the world, carefully screened by the mainstream media. Things are indeed rapidly worsening in certain aspects of the global crisis.

Conventional Governments In Mindless Meltdown

So, very sadly, the current NZ Government - hand in hand with the National Party-ACT Opposition - has betrayed our democratically chosen nuclear free zone. It has actually been crazy, militarist, and imperialist enough to join in the US/NATO war against Russia in the Ukraine - joining the "perfect storm" scenario for WWIII. With Biden and Johnson, the Anglo-American axis could hardly have a worst warmongering leadership (Dee Knight, 8/6/22)

Their proxy war on Russia is stepping up the scale with dire consequences unfolding The war chest keeps upping the ante as the high-powered weaponry pours out. America's whole record since WWII shows that it will not hesitate to raze countries and sacrifice human lives en masse for its strategic aims and TNC profiteering.

American-supplied HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems) have arrived in the Donbass, with the arms manufacturers slavering about the prospect of wild killing sprees in testing their weapons! New surface-to-air missile systems and counter-artillery radars are also on their way. The latest package will even include NASAMS, a Norwegian-developed anti-aircraft system used in the US itself.

Of course, the head of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, is a Norwegian politician, who is so obviously in the American pocket! Among the other arms TNCs falling over themselves to get a pipeline into the ongoing murderous "gold rush" is BAE Systems with a whopping howitzer deal (Jeremy Kuzmarov, 27/6/22). War capitalism is booming!

CAM continues to reveal various dimensions of the dirty work and propaganda perpetrated by the CIA-advised Zelensky regime in Ukraine (e.g. "Is Russia's Bombing of the Mall in Kremanchuk Another False Atrocity Story Being Used to Justify Ongoing Military Intervention in Ukraine?" Jeremy Kuzmarov and Steve Brown, 1/7/22)

A Death Spiral Of Spin?!

NATO head Jens Stoltenberg has actually gloated openly on TV that if President Putin has been concerned about the nuclear alliance's advance into Ukraine, then he will be even more concerned about the joint decision of Sweden and Finland to join NATO (1 News, 29/6/22). Again, the breath-taking militarist stupidity of US/NATO geopolitics is stunning!

In a speech at the foreign policy institute Chatham House in Britain, Jacinda Ardern reinforced her own militarist stance - despite the usual qualifications - with another call on what she labelled China's increasing assertiveness in the Pacific. At the same time, too, she affirmed NZ's support for the US/NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. Ironically, she appealed again for commitment to multilateral organisations like the World Trade Organisation and World Health Organisation. Apparently, judging by NZ's behaviour, such multilateral organisations include NATO, Five Eyes, and the new Anglo-American pacts in the Pacific like AUKUS.

Survival At Stake!

The West is locked in a developing crisis which some of us have seen coming for many years. Leaders of the international peace/anti-nuclear movement as exemplified by Dr Helen Caldicott are aghast at the sheer irrationality of what we are beholding today. We have to rally together at unprecedented levels and scale. Governments are proving hopeless as I have documented in this article. Only people's movements can save us from ourselves. We must mobilise in every effective way we can. NGOs like WBW and RootsAction are admirably doing this. Other NGOs like CAM are working along associated and related lines. Let's massively grow the combined movement for positive change and peace!