Playwright Harold Pinter, Nobel Prize winner for Literature, has skewered the US in a pithy remark: "US foreign policy could be best defined as follows: kiss my arse or I'll kick your head in. It is as simple and crude as that".

Russia warns that if the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) gets directly involved in the war in Ukraine, it will be World War III (WWIII)! (Reported on 14/10/22).

Former Hawaii US Congresswoman and 2020 Presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard says "the Democrats are in the thrall of the military-industrial complex, and use liberal rhetoric to support wars of aggression" (Jeremy Kuzmarov, 16/10/22: Covert Action Magazine).

The war in Ukraine is "mostly not news but a one-sided litany of jingoism, distortion, and omission. I have reported a number of wars and have never known such blanket propaganda" (John Pilger, 11/9/22),

"We absolutely condemn the targeting of civilians" (NZ Prime Minister [PM] Jacinda Ardern commenting on Russian missile attacks in Ukraine, 12/10/22).

Author Vincent Bevins observes that "it was only after I began work on this book (see ref. at end of quote), speaking with experts and witnesses and survivors, that I realised the significance of the two historical events (US-instigated military coups in Brazil, 1964, and Indonesia, 1965) was much greater than the fact that violent anti-communism still exists in Brazil, Indonesia, and many other countries; and that the Cold War created a world of regimes that see any social reform as a threat. Indeed, the entire world has been reshaped over time by the influences flowing from these two coups targeting Leftwing civilians, the outcome of yet another critical bloody phase in the history of American imperialism" ("The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anti-Communist Crusade & The Mass Murder Program That Shaped Our World" (Public Affairs, 2020/21, p5).

"25 years ago, I warned expanding NATO ranked with the errors that led to WWI and WWII", Paul Keating, 7/10/22, World BEYOND War: WBW News & Action: "How Can We Take War To A Child?" Keating was the Australian Labour Prime Minister, 1991-6.

Elon Musk, the world's richest man, argues in a Twitter exchange with Volodymyr Zelensky, the puppet president of US/NATO's Ukrainian regime, that Russia should retain Crimea, and that "Ukraine should adopt a neutral stance, dropping a bid to join NATO" ("West Prepares For The Worst", Sunday Star Times [SST], 16/10/22). Musk has similarly called for "peaceful reunification" between China and Taiwan, for "one country, two systems are our basic principles for resolving the Taiwan question . . . and the best approach to realising national reunification" ("Musk Backs Beijing's Claim Over Taiwan", Press, 11/10/22). Right on!

"In a habitat that (is) not growing any larger, the continuing increase in either our numbers, our activities, or our equipment would ultimately induce more and more antagonism" ("Overshoot: The Ecological Basis Of Revolutionary Change", William R Catton Jr, University of Illinois Press, 1980, p224).

"Whether it's racist fantasy or realistic concern, it's a question that won't go away: As population and misery increase, will the wretched of the Earth overwhelm the Western paradise?" (From front cover of the Atlantic Monthly, headlined "Must It Be The Rest Against The West?", Vol. 274, No. 6, December 1994).

"I think it is obvious that NATO expansion . . . represents a serious provocation" said President Vladimir Putin in a speech at the 2007 Munich Security Conference ("The Wolfowitz Doctrine Led To The Disastrous War In Iraq: Now It Is Leading To A Potentially Even More Cataclysmic War In Asia", Aidan O'Brien, 23/10/22: Covert Action Magazine) - an update on the "Permanent Race War".

Letter: "US Is Becoming A Neo-Fascist State", Terry Crawford-Browne, Business Day, 18/10/22, (in World BEYOND War: WBW News & Action: "Peace-Making In A Time Of Endless War", 1/11/22), "President Joe Biden would be wise to consider what happened to Napoleon and Hitler".

"NATO and Russia's military alike staged planned annual nuclear exercises yesterday . . . " ("Foes Hold Nuclear Exercises", Press, 28/10/22).

Baring Its Fangs

As the West swings further to the Right in the gathering crisis of global competition for scarce resources and profitable investment, the capitalist ruling class - to use a conveniently general term - is baring its fangs more and more, both domestically and internationally. From the US/NATO proxy war on Russia in Ukraine to the crucifixion of Yemen and the starvation of Afghanistan; and on to the CIA-orchestrated support for the women's rights' movement in Iran to try and destabilise another targeted enemy nation; there is now an utterly ruthless and hypocritical Western pursuit of power at any cost, taking world centre stage in the limelight under the shadow of the Bomb.

Almost unbelievably you would think, the US-led Western leadership is prepared to go down to the wire in risking all-out war over Ukraine (e.g., "West Prepares For The Worst", op. cit.). Nay, it is worse than this. The record of its actions during the past decade can be seen as absolutely crazy and evil - the very deliberate baiting and provocation of Russia into the potential precipitation of WWIII! (Peace Researcher [PR] 64, November 2022, "The Geopolitics of Brinkmanship and Mass Murder: Globalist Capitalist Contortions").

The US/NATO aim is clearly to try and take out Russia from the global geopolitical competition, and then concentrate on China. This militarist capitalist brigade is prepared to trample on as many other enemies as possible at the same time, e.g., Iran - hence the current US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) & co orchestrated media campaign to destabilise this target country, using Five Eyes cronies like NZ, and any others that can be bought.

("Is The CIA Supporting Another Color Revolution in Iran - Like The One That Installed The Shah In 1953?", Jeremy Kuzmarov, 10/10/22, Covert Action Magazine; "Is The Death Of An Innocent Woman Being Exploited To Advance The Goal Of Regime Change In Iran?", Elizabeth Sigrun, 11/10/22 - also CAM).

Most stunningly, this is all applauded and urged on by the West's "walking dead" political Establishment and its zombie mainstream media, including here in Aotearoa/NZ with our own State TVNZ very prominent in this role. It very deliberately plays down, or ignores the messaging of the Kremlin's nuclear threats as much as possible, as well as doing its best to help destabilise countries like Iran in an increasingly unstable world. Freud's "death instinct" is running riot!

Because the US-headed Western leadership has repeatedly failed at various crucial stages since the end of WWII to grab the opportunities on offer for the creation of a positively cooperative international system, we currently confront a deepening turmoil of mounting world problems. Whether or not we can extricate ourselves out of this morass in time is the huge question and challenge during the next few vital years we have left. The window of opportunity is rapidly closing (e.g., see: "Earthshot: How To Save Our Planet", Colin Butfield & Jonnie Hughes, with an introduction from Prince William, John Murray, 2021).

Zombie Suicidal "Death Instinct" Grips The West

Prime TV News dramatically reported (8/10/22) that US President Joe Biden had given his strongest warning yet that the nuclear threat is real in connection with the Ukraine War. Biden actually warned that the world is the closest now to nuclear war at any point since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. So, get this then for a most remarkable, bare-faced piece of American propaganda. Here we have the current US President - you know the guy, who as Deputy President under Obama, ran the US/NATO subversion programme to undermine Ukraine - warning everybody that the Ukraine War is tantamount to the Cuban crisis. He was supposedly doing this with a straight face.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, America threatened to blow up the whole world in a nuclear war unless the Soviet Union removed its nuclear missiles from Cuba. The acute madness came off the boil when the Kremlin agreed with Washington to the missile removal in exchange for an American commitment not to invade Cuba. But there was more. It was not revealed until 25 years later that the US, in exchange, had also removed from Turkey a battery of nuclear missiles there threatening Russia. This part of the trade-off deal had been kept secret.

In answer to a question about who won in the crisis, Google proudly proclaims that "the US won during the crisis" because the Soviets "had no other option other than escaping from the US that was provoked (my emphasis) by these missiles" on Cuba. A couple of crucial points come immediately to mind in connection with what President Biden has said. One is that Biden did not elaborate on his comparison with the Cuban Missile Crisis. But this historically momentous crisis was all about a nuclear weapon state fearing the placement of nuclear weapons by a rival state very near its border. The US postured in the most threatening Holocaust manner to "win" according to Google!

NATO Readies Its Nuclear War Missiles For Russia All In A Row

Having US/NATO nuclear missiles at your back-door is exactly what President Putin has described as like having a knife at your throat. Several other east European states already have US/NATO missiles lined up, aimed at Russia. So, any proper comparison with the Cuban episode would see this as an exactly similar situation to that in 1962, except that this time the roles are reversed, with Russia fearing US/NATO first strike missiles at its throat. In the Cuban Missile Crisis, of course, Russia had brought the weapons into Cuba ostensibly to protect it from another American invasion, following the failure of the "Bay of Pigs" fiasco in April 1961.

However, today, the absolutely stunning thing is that President Biden can so obviously count on the Western political Establishment and its mainstream media not making any such comparison, even though the Russian leadership has made its concerns blindingly clear. And, indeed, had done so for many years! Instead, the West's Establishment public relations (PR) machine will continue to pump out the malignly twisted message that this is all President Putin's fault; and that his war was "unprovoked"; and the nuclear threats are all his responsibility. Meanwhile, the game of "nuclear chicken" goes on.

The second point is that while America could threaten to blow up the world, Putin's threat to use limited nuclear weapons in Ukraine is roundly denounced as evil and unacceptable on all counts by the US and the rest of its Western mates. Yet, the US has a long history of threatening nuclear weapon use, as well as being the only country ever to use them.

President Biden went on to warn the world, too, that any tactical use of nuclear weapons would very likely lead to Armageddon. Indeed, in the circumstances prevailing this would be almost inevitable. But, in complete disregard for all the allegations about how bad and dangerous Vladimir Putin is, let's go on and press him like a cornered rat to the wall, and try and get rid of him altogether. Such is even the imagery promulgated by the militarist Western PR merchants of doom!

Western PR Rolls On For Doomsday!

So, in complete contradiction of how it has spun its own propaganda about the danger of nuclear weapons in relation to the Ukraine War, the Biden Administration and the rest of NATO continue to crank up the hostilities against Russia, bringing forward the delivery of dozens of highly accurate guided nuclear weapons to Europe, amid escalating tensions with Moscow ("US To Send Hi-Tech Nuclear Weapons To NATO Bases", Press, 29/10/22).

The mainstream media, including our own puppet version in NZ, are duly trumpeting an escalating battle on the Russian frontline. In particular, State-owned TVNZ, America's Warner Bros Discovery-owned TV3 (Newshub), and Sky Television's Prime TV (with news provided by Newshub) pour out this American-primed warmongering reportage every day.

(For vital alternative information and assessments on geopolitics and peace/anti-nuclear issues, see: Covert Action Magazine, - e.g., CAM's "Categories" list for entries on Ukraine, War in Ukraine, NATO, & NATO Expansion; & World BEYOND War: - a terrific range of campaigns, education facilities, videos, Webinars, billboards, articles & reports, etc, with regular WBW News & Action e-mails, including lists of readily accessible reading material; & also WBW's sister NGO RootsAction: - for more information and resource materials).

TV1 news reporters regularly give potted updates on Ukraine under the banner headline: "Russia Invades Ukraine". More and more, the militarist Social Darwinist mindset and even an increasingly open neo-fascist orientation are prevailing at the top level of Western decision-making. This is graphically reflected in media coverage, including here in Aotearoa/NZ.

For instance, TV1 reporter Corazon Miller in one of these potted overviews of the state of the war in Ukraine, unashamedly cheered on the many billions of dollars in weaponry lavished on the Zelensky regime by the Anglo-American axis and the rest of NATO (1 News, 25/8/22). In like manner, Newshub reporter Tova O'Brien got a personal "puff-piece" interview with Ukraine's President as part of this American-owned outfit's media spin on the crisis/war (SST, 14/8/22; Prime TV, 22/8/22). One of the objectives was obviously to try and pressure PM Ardern to visit Ukraine.

CIA Propaganda Unleashed!

When visiting Aotearoa/NZ in 1986 as a guest of the NZ Nuclear Free Zone Committee (of which I was an active member), ex-CIA agent Ralph McGehee warned us that the CIA boasted it could play the West's media like a giant wurlitzer (electronic organ piano). In our times, we see this syndrome displayed more dramatically than ever before. Famed investigative reporter John Pilger calls it "blanket propaganda" in the form of "a one-sided litany of jingoism, distortion, and omission" (John Pilger, op. cit.). The Ukrainian puppet regime is comprehensively plugged into this system in a quite unprecedented way for a Western-designated victim state.

"As many as 150 public relations (PR) firms (my emphasis) are said to be working with the Government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to shape public perception of the war, and to push for more tanks, fighter jets, missiles, drones" ("War Propaganda About Ukraine Starting To Wear Thin", Chay Bowes, 13/8/22).

Meantime, the Pentagon war machine and its co-drivers like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon are making a killing! "The US and other NATO countries are flooding Ukraine with lethal weapons that will haunt Europe for years to come - some portion of which will surely end up in the hands of warlords and fanatics, or worse - bring about WWIII and a nuclear holocaust"! (My emphasis) (ibid.). Yet it is significant that there are signs of incipient erosion in the West's tsunami of warmongering. The "Absolute Truth" as promulgated by the corporate and governmental media is looking a bit tattered around the edges, as more realistic versions of truth seep in (ibid.).

Just how we reached this perilous point of cheerleading for WWIII is explained by the overwhelming fact that so-called Western "civilisation" is now almost totally in the iron grip of the US-headed military-industrial complex and the corporate Keynesian commitment to militarist profiteering per the Pentagon, etc. Western democracy is largely a farce. The power elite of the top 1% not only owns and controls the mainstream media but rules effectively through the CIA and other related agencies of the "deep state". This is just an explanation in terms of tribal capitalist geopolitics on a small, fragile "Goldilocks" planet with definite limits to industrialised, fossil fuelled-population growth. It is now all simply coming down to a Social Darwinist struggle to the death!

The Really Big Question And Its Human Challenges

Have we got the longer-term vision and intelligence to save ourselves in the very nick of time is the universal, over-arching question?! Even the odd one percenter because of certain vested interests - and perhaps some greater sanity and rationality? - can break ranks to a degree, e.g., Elon Musk's plea for peace ("Musk Backs Beijing's Claim...", op. cit.).

Yet, as emphasised, there is an endless torrent of vicious Western propaganda and disinformation about the geopolitical state of the world, with the Ukraine crisis/war currently to the fore. US-orchestrated censorship and orchestration of the media is at the root of all this. With these considerations in mind, let us take a revealing report from the BBC's propagandist in Russia, Steve Rosenberg, as shown on TV (1 News, 14/10/22).

First, TV1's presenter remarked in the introduction to Rosenberg's report that Russian President Vladimir Putin was blaming the West for Europe's energy crisis, and that the BBC reporter would give an up-to-date review of the Ukraine crisis/war (ibid.). Steve Rosenberg said that Putin is painting Russia as the victim and that he is charging "terrorists" in Kyiv with responsibility for the current state of affairs. But Rosenberg declared that it all started when Russia invaded Ukraine in late February 2022.

Compare this sort of spin and its outrageous "Big Lie" with that back early in the first decade of this millennium promulgated by the George W Bush Administration. This Administration spun eminently malicious, warmongering lies about alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD), threatening America from Saddam Hussein's Iraq, thousands of kilometres away. It was the pretext for a horrendous, illegal war, still unfolding in all its disruptive and harmful ramifications. But at present, the US/NATO is aiming both to destabilise Russia and place nuclear WMD at its back door!

The Lies Of Liberation

So, we get then the screaming, self-serving Big Lie that the Ukraine War is all Putin's fault - indeed, "Putin's war". Biden & co. peddle this message, which is duly parroted by the rest of the Western Establishment, including our own Government and media. It is hugely ironic that for weeks on end in early 2014, we saw screened large on our TVs the neo-fascist spearheaded protests in Maidan Square, Kyiv, with even American leaders visiting there to openly urge them on and implement a bloody regime change - all in the name of freedom and democracy of course!

But any media discussion or even acknowledgement of how the US & co. orchestrated the overthrow of a democratically elected Government and ushered in far-Right rule is nowadays very much off-limits. Moreover, any discussion of how the war conducted by the neo-fascist militias on Ukraine's Russian-speaking minority in the east of the country resulted in the deaths of some 14,000 people is effectively ruled out of order.

A whole range of American agencies, including the CIA; the US Congress joint party-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which took over the CIA's "soft" operations in the 1980s; the US Agency for International Development (USAID); various Government departments; corporates; and so on, have all worked together to saturate Ukraine with a Western, Rightwing capitalist culture.

There has been, and currently more operative than ever, a whole phalanx of civic action agents; "NGOs"; selectively planted foreign-based political personnel (e.g., like Hunter Biden for a while, now so ironically being investigated by the FBI for tax evasion) and related support; a host of media PR specialists; propagandists; etc. - all backed up and greased with lavish foreign monies.

In the wake of the 2014 coup, special attention was given to friendly pliable politicians and their oligarchs, e.g., Volodymyr Zelensky, and associated neo-fascist political agents, parties, groupings, affiliates, and militias, e.g., the Azov Battalion. Endless provision for military and intelligence equipment, infrastructure and training poured into the country. Western special forces, mercenaries, and similar foreign militarist elements are very active on the frontline of fighting today.

During 2022, the Western media largely ignored all this. They have also strenuously ignored the ongoing harm to the self-declared "autonomous" communities following the violation of the Minsk Agreements by the US/NATO-backed Zelensky regime, which was preparing to take back this territory by force (check out CAM's categories entries on Ukraine and War in Ukraine, as well as WBW's materials).

Dumbing Down Democracy

Yet Western commentators can actually even refer to the regime in Ukraine as being "democratic", or a "democracy", again turning truth on its head. For instance, take Britain's hard Right Daily Telegraph (DT) newspaper talking about the danger looming if the West lets Putin "get away with butchering a sovereign democracy", and how it would supposedly then be "only a matter of time before he seeks to expand his empire elsewhere" ("Culpability Is Putin's" - item reproduced in the Press, 22/8/22).

Once again, we see the blatant Big Lie unashamedly proclaimed by this British reactionary propaganda outfit in that it is instead, of course, the US/NATO brigade in process of trying to extend the Western capitalist empire at the expense of Russia. The latter has, in fact, for decades been very much on the defensive back foot. And again, so very obviously, the ultimate American aim is to threaten Russia with first strike nuclear weapons on its very border. All of this is almost totally ignored, or grossly perverted by the Western war machine and all its multiple media PR agencies like DT, with our own set practically falling over themselves to conform to the dictates of the US/NATO brigade.

DT is indeed maliciously militarist enough in its editorial comment to rattle on about how "Russia's crimes affect the entire world" (ibid.). It alleges what it calls "appeasement never works in the long run" (ibid.). Yet, so very ironically, it says that Putin's invasion of Ukraine "was surely encouraged by America's botched and humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan" (ibid.). Oh dear, do you mean that America and NATO invaded a poor country and got their noses badly bloodied?! And what exactly does this mean then for so-called "appeasement" anyway?!

This DT editorial also accuses China of "destroying democracy in Hong Kong", and now posing a threat to Taiwan (ibid.). Well, the West was obviously using the cover of democracy in Hong Kong to foment trouble on China's very doorstep through a phalanx of subversive agencies, while any so-called "democratic" government in Taiwan would not survive for long without kowtowing to US imperatives.

Wacky Warmongering Gets Even Worse!

Hell, during the institution of a nuclear free zone in Aotearoa/NZ during the 1980s under the David Lange-led Labour government, the US tried its very best to subvert our own democracy. It has, indeed, succeeded in doing this over time since that momentous decade with the increasing penetration here of the military-industrial complex via Five Eyes, Lockheed Martin, Rocket Lab, etc. Our nuclear free zone now is just a sham and sick joke. The latest addition in the ongoing process of militarisation is the march of nuclear-armed NATO into the Pacific, welcomed with open arms by our political Establishment and media. NZ is only a mere pawn in the US-led West's geopolitical game!

In recent years, this militarist momentum of human evolutionary overshoot - as exhibited in NZ - has been driven by the American space industry, with Rocket Lab to the fore. NASA's presence here is also becoming very prominent. Naturally, all this hi-tech, spaced-out stuff is cheered on by our PR mainstream media. Unless we can bring about some urgent, positive changes, we are really stuffed!

Currently, we are ruled by a combination of perceived short-term self-interest, institutionalised hypocrisy, and real fear in the public discussion of geopolitics and NZ's place in the world. An ultimate irony is that this fear is largely fear of our Big Brother ally, "Uncle Sam himself", although this operates at an unspoken, subterranean level. In an ultimate irony, this syndrome feeds fear of proscribed external enemies like Russia, and most recently, China.

For example, some time ago TV1 in a very rare exemption from its normal practice, had a series of items critical of Air NZ for its support of the US-backed Saudi Arabian war on the people of Yemen. But it dared not mention America's key role in the inflicting of all the death, pain, and suffering on the people of this unfortunate country.

Any so very obviously pertinent criticism of the US and its foreign policy on such matters is overwhelmingly taboo in Aotearoa/NZ's public culture. Similarly, any criticism of Anglo-American foreign policy goals is rigorously marginalised for the most part. Instead, the conversation nowadays is all about beefing up our military in partnership with like-minded nations to combat China, Russia, and other touted enemies.

It is surely the pits of black comedy to hear about the global battle between American-exemplified democracy and the accused "authoritarian" states of Russia and China. New Zealanders actually live these days in a de facto totalitarian military machine! For my part, I have dealt in some detail with many of the issues raised in this DT item in the November edition of Peace Researcher (op. cit.).

But my current article must as a matter of course deal again with much of the subject matter involved. Any close examination of Western geopolitics, and its underlying drivers that are today so perverted and twisted by media spin, demands this kind of scrutiny. My present article is both an update (if only weeks apart) of my former analysis and an elaboration of various significant aspects and issues.

Geopolitical Background To A Spiralling Vortex Of Violence

Americanisation has fundamentally shaped the world in which we live, and continues to do so in multiple ways. In the West, for all sorts of reasons - whatever passing reservations might be voiced - this Americanisation has been widely endorsed and celebrated. Our media and culture, socio-economic structure and functioning, let alone our politics and foreign policy, are saturated and effectively determined by these influences. It is all ultimately "boom and bust", but besides the ever so dire environmental cost there has been an awful ongoing human cost. As author Vincent Bevins writes: "We do, however, live in a world built partly by US-backed Cold War violence" ("The Jakarta Method", op. cit., p240).

Being a committed member of the Five Eyes intelligence/covert action club, NZ has long been deeply involved in the US-led extermination programme of activist Leftwing civilians and other proscribed enemies - from helping facilitate the original Jakarta Method genocide in the mid-to-latter 1960s to supplying information these days via the Waihopai spy base for Anglo-American death squad/drone "kills".

"The establishment of Americanisation (in so many countries) was helped along by the mass murder programmes discussed in (Bevins's book). In a way, they made it possible... Washington's anti-communist crusade, with Indonesia as the apex of its murderous violence against civilians, deeply shaped the world we live in now, in five ways" (ibid.).

In connection with the dumbing down of Western democracy, John Pilger sums up the geopolitical legacy in damning fashion: "In my lifetime, the US has overthrown, or attempted to overthrow, more than 50 governments, mostly democracies. It has interfered in democratic elections in 30 countries. It has dropped bombs on the people of 30 countries, most of them poor and defenceless. It attempted to murder the leaders of 50 countries. It has fought to suppress liberation movements in 20 countries. The extent and scale of this carnage is largely unreported, unrecognised, and those responsible continue to dominate Anglo-American political life" (John Pilger: "Silencing The Lambs", op. cit.)

Five Ways That Mass Murder Defines The World We Live In

Analyst Vince Bevins sets out five ways that the Jakarta Method has shaped our world (“The Jakarta Method”, op. cit., pp240-3). The first is the legacy of the social "trauma" suffered under the duress of "mass terror", perpetrated in countries from Indonesia to Brazil, and from Guatemala to Chile. Besides Indonesia and Brazil, 21 other countries suffered such violence.

The second is that: "Washington's violent anti-communist crusade destroyed a number of alternative possibilities for world development. The Third World movement fell apart partly because of its own internal failures. But it was also crushed. These countries were trying to do something very, very difficult. It doesn't help when the most powerful government in history is trying to stop you" (ibid., p241). The West became free to rip off and exploit these nations at will, via "the rules of global capitalism", manipulating "an explosion of debt, a turn to neoliberal structural adjustment, and 'globalisation'" (ibid.).

Transnational corporations (TNCs), along with the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), etc., ruled the roost and imposed a so-called "free trade" international rules system. NZ, of course, was an eager, very self-interested comprador companion of the US, helping to define and impose the rules of this new world capitalist order per the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and then its successor the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

But the West's version of this global rules order has run aground somewhat of late from challenges by China, India, and other countries. This loss of control has been coupled with the loss of credibility due to the flagrant rorting by the rich countries of their own supposed system of correct behaviour - above all, by that self-declared "supremo" of free trade, America.

In particular, not only does the US so often ignore or bend rules whenever it wants, its use of arbitrary, illegal unilateral sanctions against nations it does not like has seriously subverted respect for international rules and how such rules are regulated. Moreover, as Bevins aptly points out: "Within the current (global) structure, the only real examples of large Third World countries becoming as rich as those in the First World since 1945 are South Korea and Taiwan, and it's very clear that these nations were given special exemptions from the rules of the world order because of their strategic importance in the Cold War" (ibid.).

Flouting The So-Called "International Rules Order"

We can add here with extra emphasis, that both South Korea and Taiwan have got dramatic international attention in recent times, given the US-led and inspired growing Western confrontation with China. Both Asian countries can serve as strategic launch-attack platforms for war on the regional giant, now extending its own global reach to try and evade and challenge Western power. The islands of Okinawa in Japan and Jeju in South Korea - a couple of unsinkable aircraft carriers for the US! - have been likened to daggers pointed at China's industrial heart.

Once more we see blowback in action. In what has been billed as: "A coruscating account of how the Bush and Blair administrations" cavalierly broke the law and tried "to rewrite the rules", Philippe Sands QC, Professor of Law at University College, London, laid bare the hypocrisy still being spouted by so many of our politicians, media, and academic commentators in 2022 ("Lawless World: America And The Making And Breaking Of Global Rules", Allen Lane/Penguin, 2005, back cover blurb).

A key question was posed: "After WWII, America and Britain led the creation of a new law-based international order, outlawing war and its excesses, protecting human rights and promoting free trade. Why is the US now undermining so many of those very laws?" (ibid.). "... America has reneged on agreements governing war, torture and the environment - with Britain often turning a blind eye or colluding in some of the worst violations" (ibid.). Among other violations, the US "abandoned the Kyoto Protocol and the Statute of the International Criminal Court, ignored human rights standards at Abu Ghraib (prison just west of Baghdad, Iraq) and disregarded the UN's prohibition on pre-emptive force" (ibid.).

A further question was next posed: "Are we on the verge of a new world order where the most powerful nations can put aside the rules that no longer suit them?" (ibid.). Yes, indeed, this is exactly the outcome which has transpired to the detriment of humankind as a whole, following America's egregious example. But, of course, we continue to have the raging hypocrisy of the Anglo-American axis informing the West's political Establishment and media as to the proper conduct and respect for rules.

A World Structured By Violence For Western Interests

Vincent Bevins identifies the third way that the Jakarta Method shaped our world in terms of how "the operations profoundly affected the nature of the regimes and economic systems set up in their wake. Indonesia and Brazil are two, perhaps the two crucial, examples" ("The Jakarta Method", op. cit.). In elaborating on this observation, Bevins says that these were "the largest countries that came into play", and both were brutally coerced "into the Western camp" (ibid., p242). Indeed, "Brazil and Indonesia were probably the (West's) biggest 'victories' of the Cold War" (ibid.).

After the 1964 US-organised military coup against the Leftwing government in Brazil in 1964, soon followed by the coup the next year in Indonesia, a powerful combination of events dovetailed together in promoting neo-fascist political influence elsewhere. In this vein, Vincent Bevins opines on another reason why he thinks "Brazil and Indonesia were such important elements of the process of Americanisation that ultimately shaped most of the globe..." (ibid.).

This is the fact "that, after 1964 and 1965, so many of their neighbours landed on paths that were influenced, directly or indirectly, by the anti-communist regimes in the region's largest countries" (ibid.). Any initiatives for social justice and more egalitarian societies were suppressed by the regimes that the US & co. had helped into power by the programmes of mass murder.

Writing in 2020, Bevins gives an overall general assessment of the outcome and implications of the US-orchestrated application of the Jakarta Method: "It's now probably accurate to say that all of Latin America, with the exception of Cuba (and we can add Nicaragua and Venezuela as identified by President Biden himself!) consists of crony capitalist nations with powerful oligarchies. In Southeast Asia, the same is true for the majority of countries, and even the communist countries were integrated into ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations), which Indonesia and the Philippines set up as anti-communist in 1967".

Capitalist Predators Prowling Africa Get Growing Competition

"As "The Looting Machine" (subtitle: "Warlords, Corporations, And The Theft Of Africa's Wealth", Public Affairs, 2015/16) by Tom Burgis shows, Africa's political economy remains dominated by weak states and violent extraction" (ibid., p241). China is now a big player there, and even Russia is increasingly involved. Crony capitalism and the resource rentier extraction economy has become the rule almost everywhere in Africa (see, e.g., "The Looting Machine" as just cited, ibid.)

The US, of course, has a prime and indeed expanding role in Africa. In its geopolitical, military command division of the Earth, the American eagle's talons are raking over the continent under the AFRICOM (US Africa Command) military mandate. Special forces operations, CIA dirty work, and other types of interventions and control strive to safeguard what America deems as its rights of governmental and corporate predation.

At this point, it is apposite to note just how pervasively the West's propaganda machine works. A small item headlined "Putin Gains More Africa Influence With Coup" (Press, 4/10/22) can serve as an illustration. This very brief report announces that: "The Kremlin has exploited the latest coup in West Africa to entrench its influence on the continent at the expense of the West" (ibid.). Russia has apparently gained allegiance from a regime change in Burkina Faso. This little media item concludes that President Vladimir Putin's mercenary army, the Wagner Group, is "increasingly being used to prop up Africa's illegitimate rulers" (ibid.).

We see here how the growing global competition for investment and resources is expressed in language terms that paint a perceived enemy as threatening and malicious. To be sure, Western free marketeers already have "gung-ho" Chinese rivals (e.g., in early 2008, the Rightwing Economist magazine had a front-page banner headline reading: "The New Colonialists: A 14-Page Special Report On China's Thirst For Resources", 15-21/3/08).

Not only that but the Press report casts the Russian-backed coup as another menacing step against the West's interests on the African continent, while the same media can effectively bury any Russian concerns about a very imminent threat by the West on this nation's very border. Such is the grotesque, all-encompassing extent and reach of Western propaganda in our times.

Very significantly, as happens so often and revealingly in such "news" as posted by the Press (op. cit.), no concern at all is shown for the victims of Social Darwinist struggle, in this case the "unpeople" of Africa. Any concerns about geopolitical rivals are regularly directed at the Western interests said to be affected! The whole record of egregious "dirty work" in Africa of the US & co. must remain unmentionable for the most part. Of course, the reverse kind of propaganda applies to the peoples of countries like Ukraine and Taiwan, pictured as the victims of bullying "authoritarian" states, operating against the democratic West, and thus obviously deserving of our attention.

Another Critical Turning-Point In The 1960s

With regard to Africa, let us step back again to that critical geopolitical decade of the 1960s, and its concatenation of crucial turning-points. In May 2022 a Times report via SST was headlined "Slain Leader's Trophy Tooth To Be Returned To Family" (29/5/22). It was indeed a very rare report in the Rightwing media, which is actually revelatory of Western "dirty work" - in this case, as long practised, on the African continent (ibid.). Again, given the episode reported was back in the Cold War era, Murdoch's Times could no doubt feel quite comfortable about some past history - water under the bridge, as it were, back in the Cold War.

A statement in the article was even highlighted about how "Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba was kidnapped, tortured and assassinated in 1961 after a military coup backed by Western powers" (ibid.). This statement was the caption for a photo of Lumumba (ibid.). The article reported that: "Lumumba, 35, was kidnapped, tortured and assassinated in 1961 after a military coup, backed by Western powers, with Belgium, Congo's former colonial master, taking the leading role" (ibid.).

It should yet be noted, that except in the vague reference to "Western powers", the Times article does not mention how both the CIA and Britain's MI6 were deeply implicated in Lumumba's death. A gold tooth was torn from Patrice Lumumba's mouth as part of "a kind of hunting trophy", consisting of "two of Lumumba's teeth and fingers", along with some of the bullets used to kill him (ibid.). The "trophy" was taken by "a former Belgium police commissioner in colonial Congo" (ibid.).

The Times could even afford to be pretty honest in its reportage. Its article states that: "Lumumba was a charismatic, popular leader, who symbolised the early democratic ideals of African national liberation. After independence, he was elected Prime Minister of the new Republic of the Congo" (ibid.). But he was taken prisoner in December 1960, and after suffering the most horrible torture, "including being forced to eat some of his own beard and flesh", he was murdered by a firing squad in January 1961 (ibid.).

This report concludes that, following a period of "chaos for the Congo", a military dictator took power in 1965, namely "Joseph Mobutu (later known as Mobutu Sese Seko), who ruled for 32 years. Mobutu changed the country's name to Zaire and ran a brutal, kleptocratic regime, condoned and supported by Belgium, the United States and other Western powers" (ibid.). He apparently looted his poverty-stricken country to the tune of $US15 billion. Zaire is now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The Tolling Hell's Bells Of Imperial Exploitation

However, like Indonesia's Suharto, Mobutu's excessive greed and corruption eventually eroded his use for the West's geopolitics. But a big factor implicated in the West's cooling support was that Mobutu got increasingly cagey with mining concessions. He played off the rapacious lust for mineral resources from this quarter against competing Chinese interests.

Joseph Mobutu's time as ruler ran out in 1997 after the US & co. fuelled an uprising against his regime led by Laurent-Desire Kabila. This revolt was backed and funded by Western mining companies, especially American and Canadian firms, and supported by US crony states Rwanda and Uganda ("Once Led By A Fierce Champion Of Anti-Colonialism In Patrice Lumumba, The DRC Has Effectively Been Recolonised By Western Capital", Covert Action Magazine, Owen Schalk, 4/8/22). Canadian TNCs Barrick Gold and First Quantum Minerals figured prominently in support for the revolt.

All this was eagerly cheered on at the time by the likes of the Washington Post (WP) and the Wall Street Journal (WSJ). During this critical period in the late 1990s, the Congo was touted as "Africa's richest geological prize", just like US President Richard Nixon (1969-74) had similarly lauded Indonesia's Asian riches several decades earlier (ibid.).

We can get a sense of the vital strategic importance that the West's power elite assigns to mineral resources by taking note of who were on the Board of Canada's Barrick Gold at the time of the Kabila-headed revolt against the Mobutu regime. "Former Canadian PM Brian Mulroney, former US President (& also former CIA Director) George HW Bush, and former CIA Director Richard Helms were on Barrick Gold's Board during this period" (ibid.).

Notably, too, "Vancouver-based First Quantum Minerals hired former (Canadian PM) Joe Clark to serve as their representative to Kabila" (ibid.). Ousted dictator Joseph Mobutu fled into exile in Morocco. The fall of his regime almost paralleled that of Indonesia's Suharto in 1998, being only a year earlier. Following some years of bloody tumult, Kabila captured Kinshasa, the capital of the DRC in 2001 (ibid.).

The Congo still continues to suffer the "resource curse" of its mineral riches of uranium, gold, diamonds, copper, cobalt, tin, zinc, coltan, etc. (ibid.). Since 1996, some six million people have died due to the unstable and perilous conditions prevailing in the DRC - both directly and indirectly from the violence unleashed. But as long as the West can suck resources out of the DRC and the general Congo basin region it does not give a damn!

Giving The Free Market A Covert, Bloody, Helping Hand

The murder of Patrice Lumumba in 1961 was mandated at the highest level of the so-called "free world". The obscene evil is enormous in its implications. "In August 1960 US President Dwight Eisenhower ordered the CIA to 'eliminate' Lumumba", supplying poisons for this particular hit job. But instead, as we have observed, Lumumba was savagely killed "by Katanga separatists, who were working with Belgian and American intelligence forces" (ibid.). His supporters were subsequently crushed by 1964 and the Congo was free for Western plunder.

The cost in human terms right up to the present day, and ever so sadly for the foreseeable future, is horrendous as the record testifies. Besides the millions of dead, Western and Chinese TNCs rip off the DRC at will. Over the years, the UN - which actually functioned as an organ of Western imperialism in the 1960s - started to condemn the foreign control and exploitation of the DRC and gross neglect of the country's inhabitants at the hands of the mining companies. "Of the $US41 billion produced by the Congolese mining industry between 2007 and 2012, less than 3% went into the country's national budget" (ibid.). Foreign control was wildly on the loose!

Analyst Aaron Good in his study "American Exception: Empire And The Deep State" (Skyhorse, 2022) notes that after the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, "the CIA under President Johnson (1963-69) would reverse several Kennedy-era policies in several Third World countries, most notably Brazil, Congo, and Indonesia" ("Two New Books Explore Pernicious Impact of US Intelligence Agencies", Covert Action Magazine, Dee Knight, 17/10/22). LBJ (Johnson) was certainly "the CIA's man" to the utmost degree (ibid.). Key countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia were securely folded into the Western empire under his watch.

At this point, I want to highlight again the DT media report cited above in connection with Russian influence in Burkina Faso, following a coup there in 2022 (op. cit.). "Now, Canadian companies own more than half the gold mines in Burkina Faso with assets valued over $US2.5 billion. They also own many of the most profitable mines in neighbouring countries", including one 80% owned by Barrick Gold in Mali ("Once Led By A Fierce Champion ..." op. cit.). Canadian companies have reached out for gold in West Africa, and are now looking at prospects in East Africa too (ibid.).

But the Pentagon's AFRICOM and its dominance in Africa is getting more and more severely tested, even as it beefs up its militarist predatory grasp. The West is now having to contend with growing competition from China, and even Russia, a competitive process which is ratcheting up conflict on the African continent and elsewhere ("Ukraine War Drives Big-Power Diplomacy Efforts Across Africa", Press, 30/7/22).

It is all so gutting in that there is no recognition of the desperate need for global alternatives to the dead-end Social Darwinist model and its inevitable concomitant of mass murder a la the Jakarta Method, or whatever other form taken - from drone strikes to the West's proxy war in Ukraine against Russia. Wars are raging and the planet's climate is collapsing! Yet the blind irrationality of the world's current leadership - especially that expressed by the West - could not be worse.

Tracking The Outcomes And Influences Of Mass Murder

In explicating his fourth point as to the ways in which the Jakarta Method and its "anti-communist extermination programmes shaped the world", analyst Vincent Bevins says "that they deformed the world socialist movement. Many of the global Leftwing groups that did survive the 20th Century decided that they had to employ violence and jealously guard power or face annihilation" ("The Jakarta Method", op. cit., p242).

"When they saw the mass murders taking place in these countries (like Indonesia and Brazil), it changed them ... When the world's largest Communist Party without an army or dictatorial control of a country was massacred, one by one, with no consequences for the murderers, many people around the world drew lessons from this, with serious consequences" (ibid.).

Bevins reported that he questioned Leftist interviewees "from Southeast Asia and Latin America" about the debates on strategy between "hard-line Marxism and democratic socialism", and the question of strategy between armed revolution and non-violent commitment to change (ibid., pp242-3). To be sure, the democratic socialists suffered a very bloody drubbing at the hands of American dirty work.

The grim fate of democratically-elected Congolese PM Patrice Lumumba in 1961 spoke volumes to this vicious prevailing reality of geopolitical power during the Cold War. These days, we have entered a new Cold War era versus both Russia and China. And the war with Russia is taking a dangerously hotter phase while the aggressive posturing against China could also turn very ugly overnight.

Decades-long experience has proved just how difficult participatory, egalitarian attempts for socio-economic reform have been, and continue to be, in the face of the capitalist West's implacable, self-serving opposition. Again, the Rightwing mainstream media play a fundamental, pernicious role in both misleading and dumbing down Western publics.

Contesting Social Injustice

At the same time, of course, widely beneficial results stemming from revolutionary violence can be highly problematic for a whole host of reasons. For one thing, the very kinds of commitment and organisation needed to be effective in the field of guerrilla combat can be counter-productive for the promotion of positive change. Authoritarian leaders can take over, losing touch with the people they claim to represent and cultivating their own self-interested gains, particularly if targeted by opportunistic capitalist governments and their TNCs. For instance, the sad history of Angola is a salutary case.

Another problem is that the resort to arms almost inevitably elicits further reactionary response from the ruling elite, backed to the hilt by Western repressive forces. Even if the revolutionaries can take power, de facto warfare goes on in other guises. The history of Cuba since the ousting of the Batista dictatorship has graphically illustrated this.

A third reason is that internal armed strife, even after the end of fighting, can leave persistent social scars, division, resistance, and sabotage by vested interests to constructive reform. And there can be various other problems. Consequently, the Left needs to rally stronger resistance and the promotion of positive non-violent alternatives worldwide. NGOs like WBW and CAM are charting the way forward. We must keep exposing and contesting the realities of Western imperialism.

The struggle for social justice against oppressors backed by powerful external agencies is a very painful process indeed. Those striving for a better and fairer social order need to forge the broadest support base they can manage for long-term success. Given that this challenge is in the face of greater odds than ever, we must surely strive harder to build the movements for change.

"Death Wish" Neo-Fascism In Action

"Finally, the fifth consequence (as Bevins sees it) of the crusade: fanatical anti-communism has never really left us, even in the First World. Not only in Brazil and Indonesia in the past few years, it has become clear that this violent, paranoid style in politics remains a very potent force". Witness Trumpism, and now the proudly and openly "aggressive" Biden Administration and its neo-fascist foreign policy.

At the same time, the fracturing of the Right proceeds even as this political grouping generally moves in a more radical direction. We now witness some bizarre trends and incidents. For example, the vicious hammer attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband stands as testament. A complete far-Right "screwball" came looking to kill the US Democrat Speaker of the House as did Trump's followers in the Capitol uprising on the 6th January, 2021. Yet, here is an 82-year-old woman doing her worst to stir up conflicts around the world and warmongering against both Russia and China. How bizarre!

Bevins concludes his fifth point thus: "But I think it's clear that; the ghosts of this battle most actively haunt the countries of the 'developing world'" (ibid., p243; see my "Ghosts Of A Genocide: The CIA, Suharto And Terrorist Culture", Peace Researcher 25, March 2002, Special Issue). We can look at the fate of such countries as Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Syria, etc., and say "amen" to that.

What has happened in recent years, of course, is that these easy pickings in imperially targeted victims have inevitably come to be replaced to some extent by geopolitical confrontation with far more powerful adversaries - namely Russia and China. Western militarist capitalism has to try and deal with these two opponents before they get even stronger and more difficult to confront and contain - at least, this is the rationale of the West's ruling power elite.

"At its summit in Madrid in June (2022), NATO, which is controlled by the US, adopted a strategy document that militarises the European continent and escalates the prospect of war with Russia and China. It proposes multi-domain war-fighting against nuclear-armed peer competitors. In other words, nuclear war" (my emphasis) (John Pilger, op. cit.).

Amazingly, our purportedly "fiercely independent" and "nuclear free" Government had a representative speaking at this warmongering NATO forum, namely our very own reputedly empathetic PM Jacinda Ardern. Our media embraced all of this NATO stuff very enthusiastically, with nary a word of substance about the mass street protests against US/NATO around this time. Such are the brain-dead times we live in!

Our Near Neighbour Melting Down - Australia's Angst

Sociology/Human Ecology Professor William Catton well warned about what he called "the de-civilising of Homo Sapiens" ("Overshoot", op. cit., p222-4). In 1972: "Sir Philip Baxter, the former Chairman of that country's Atomic Energy Commission, predicted that nations in the Northern Hemisphere were almost certainly going to destroy themselves in a nuclear war. Survivors of such a war might invade Australia as a refuge from the uninhabitable north" (ibid., p223).

Baxter predicted that: "There will be far more than we can accommodate . . . recognising Australia's finite carrying capacity" (ibid.). He went on to warn that these refugees "will have no interest in allowing us to survive" (ibid.). In the same speech, he supported an Australian government decision to keep options open on the question of acquiring nuclear weapons. He gave this support on the grounds that such power "could give Australians some say over who would be admitted and who would be kept out" (ibid.).

For sure, Sir Philip Baxter, the urbane Social Darwinist, was Australia's leading advocate of the day for nuclear and chemical weapons to repel the desperate refugees of war. Certain cultural and political themes have long been prominent in the life of white-ruled Australia, and concerns about repelling unwanted immigrants and refugees have carried on right up to the present, and foreseeable future. Australia has had a deplorable record to date in dealing with refugee "boat people", and this is set in concrete (literally in the form of imprisonment courtesy of neo-colonial outposts) for years to come. This "Fortress Australia" mentality is now also expressed increasingly in the country's militarisation.

Australian politics is notable for its traditional syndrome of white racism towards the Aborigine minority and antagonism to peoples of other cultures and ethnicities in foreign relations. In recent years, the most outstanding exemplar has been the now Liberal Party Opposition Leader, Peter Dutton. As former Defence Minister, he openly displayed warmongering belligerence towards China, following on from his time as Minister of Immigration and Border Protection when he justified the harsh treatment of detainees on Nauru and Manus islands.

Dutton became notorious for nasty remarks about Middle Eastern immigrants and refugees, although of course popular enough in white Australia. From sneering at Syrian and Lebanese arrivals to joking about climate change-induced sea level rise drowning Pacific Islands, Dutton has epitomised the Fortress Australia mentality. Incidentally, the history of Nauru at the hands of European exploitation is certainly sobering. Dug up for phosphate to feed Australian and NZ farms, it now serves as an offshore prison. Such detention centres are designed to help repel some of the flood of refugees, whom Australia, the US, and their mates have sent fleeing wars in their home countries in the Middle East and Afghanistan.

The Agony Of Nuclear Geopolitics

As America's most loyal deputy, Australia is gearing up for war. Its embrace of the new AUKUS (Australia, UK, US) nuclear submarine programme is the most dramatic expression of accelerating militarism. The latest phase, however, is just the culmination of a decades-long process ("The New Australian Militarism: Undermining Our Future Security", ed., Graeme Cheeseman & St. John Kettle, Pluto Press, 1990).

In a 1990 essay titled "The White Australian Threat To The Treaty Of Waitangi", Chris Tremewan, the then co-chairperson of the NZ Labour Party's Committee on Foreign Affairs and Security, outlined a context "of the resurgence of Australian militarism and the creation of the White Australian Threat" (ibid., p156). He then elaborated on this.

In more specific terms, he explained that: "The political context for Australia and the United States is, of course, New Zealand's nuclear-free policy of not permitting nuclear-armed or nuclear-powered vessels into New Zealand's ports. The United States' exclusion of New Zealand from ANZUS* Council meetings, and its downgrading of other military and diplomatic links with New Zealand, are intended to force an eventual return to the nuclear alliance" (ibid.). *The Australia, New Zealand, and 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.

Well, a combination of "stick and carrot" policies has certainly worked for the US with its de facto subversion of our nuclear free zone and the collaboration of pliable NZ governments. These days our Government is just an egregious US/NATO puppet, steeped in rotten hypocrisy, as is the rest of our Parliament, with the exception to some extent of Te Pati Māori!

There is now a growing sense of instability and diplomatic uncertainty in the Indo-Pacific region, as most dramatically testified by the China-Taiwan stand-off. A fairly recent edition of Australian Foreign Affairs (AFA) (Issue 10, October 2020) pondered Australia's predicament in a region of potential conflict. It was titled: "Friends, Allies and Enemies: Asia's Shifting Loyalties", and addressed what is seen as the Chinese challenge. Various strategies and policies were reviewed.

Australia's angst was reflected in debate over exactly what course to adopt. Worries were freely voiced. A quote by Hugh White, Professor of Strategic Studies at the Australian National University was highlighted by the AFA on its back cover: "These are anxious times. Not since early 1942 have Australians felt so in need of allies, yet been so unsure of their major ally ... Canberra is eagerly, even desperately, looking for new protectors" (ibid.).

Oh my gosh, so old Uncle Sam is looking a bit ragged and wobbly these days! In his article, White posits as one of his proposals a closer relationship with Indonesia ("Great Expectations: Can Australia Depend On Its Neighbours?", pp6-29, ibid.). For sure, Australian geopolitical strategists can still rub their hands over the success of the genocidal Jakarta Method in Indonesia (1965-70).

Geopolitical Genocide Can Evidently Be Cool!

Ironies can yet run deep. A Press headline for a brief column item proclaims that "Bali Wounds Still Raw" (13/10/22). Yes, this is yet another example of the hugely "politically correct" syndrome of Western hypocrisy in action. The report was about the commemoration on Bali "20 years since a twin bombing killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourists, including 88 Australians, 38 Indonesians and two New Zealanders" (ibid.).

These bombings were carried by Muslim fundamentalist militants ("Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion And The Death of Utopia", John Gray, Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2008; "War On Peace: The End Of Diplomacy And The Decline Of American Influence", Ronan Farrow, William Collins, 2018). The military-industrial com-plex has taken effective complete control of foreign policy.

"'Twenty years on, the ache does not dim', Australian PM Anthony Albanese told a service in Sydney" (ibid.). For certain, ironies go off the Richter hypocrisy scale here! (For the BBC in general, see "Is That True Or Did You Hear It On The BBC?", David Sedgwick, Sandgrounder, 2022). A number of points can be made here in summary form:

1. Australia operated hand-in-glove with its Five Eyes partners in instigating, facilitating, and spurring on the Indonesian genocide;
2. a later spin-off from the Five Eyes' use of Muslim fundamentalist death squads in the 1960s was the group which carried out the twin bombings in October 2022.
3. The bombings were indeed a horrible terrorist act. But the victims about whom the Bali wounds are still raw amounted to just over 200 people dead. At least some 80,000 or so people died in the slaughter on Bali in the mid-1960s, i.e., 5% of the island's population.

Ever so very ironically, the extermination programme in Indonesia began in the same month of October. Evidently, the "mass murder" got under way first in Sumatra on 7th October, 1965 ("The Jakarta Method", op. cit., p139). By December, the violence had arrived on the island of Bali, where it was particularly bad. In fact, the slaughter on Bali was probably the worst in all of Indonesia, convulsing the island with bloody violence (ibid., p149). There was a wave of peak killings in January 1966. "A little bit later, the first tourist hotel went up on the very beach, Seminyak, that had been used as a killing field" (ibid., p151).

As one local says: "They needed to kill the communists so that foreign investors could bring their capital here" (ibid., p246). It is very symbolic then of the Western violently imposed "international rules order" that: "The white people who come here for vacation are orders of magnitude wealthier than the locals who serve them" at the luxury beach clubs, bars, and hotels (p245). The Australian Consulate in Denpasar hosted a special commemoration in October 2022, for the "Australian survivors of the 2002 terrorist attack and relatives of the deceased" ("Bali Wounds Still Raw", op. cit.). Seminyak beach is close to Denpasar city and the Kuta tourist district, where the bombing occurred.

Highlighting Western Hypocrisy

Vince Bevins very scathingly contrasts how Indonesia and its Western allies have effectively buried deep the history of the slaughter that took place there in the mid-1960s with how tourists even "faithfully (or morbidly) visit the Killing Fields Museum outside Phnom Penh" in Cambodia (p246). We could not get a more graphic example of the evil of Western geopolitical hypocrisy and pseudo-morality if we were to dream it up.

The ironies still go on. TV reports dwelt on the pain of relatives and survivors still demanding better accountability for the 2002 bombing crimes. Some of them have been especially agitated about the fact that it was reported: "In August (2022) Indonesia's government considered granting an early release to the bomb-maker in the Bali attack, Hisyam bin Alizein" ("Bali Wounds Still Raw", op. cit.).

The mass death, suffering, and open wounds inflicted on victims of the genocide in Bali and elsewhere in Indonesia during the 1960s were ghoulishly celebrated for a relatively short - but so very revealing - period in the Western media. An edition of Life International revelled in how: "Even in lovely Bali, killing became an orgy of cruelty" (Vol. 41, No. 1, 11/7/66, pp64/5). To be sure, the magazine gleefully reported that: "Nowhere was the slaughter more frenzied than on Bali" (ibid., p64).

It dwelt on the gory details with much relish - after all, it could picture a colour photo of a prisoner for what it called "Haunted Face Of A Red Defeat: Indonesia's Blood-Bathed Vengeance Shatters A Vast Communist Plot", (ibid., p65). CIA-groomed reporter Don Moser duly spouted the American lies of alleged communist conspiracy, pretext for the massacres. He exulted in the death squad vengeance of the Indonesian Army, paramilitaries, fundamentalist Muslim militias, criminal gangs, etc.

The CIA conspiratorial covert coup had worked a treat! This issue of Life International was fittingly appreciative and thankful in an editorial for "LBJ's Foreign Policy Success" (ibid., p8). President Lyndon B Johnson is credited with keeping NATO up to the mark; progress in the Vietnam War; the failure of Maoism in Indonesia; a pro-US capitalist reorientation in a lot of Asia, led by South Korea; the crushing of the Dominican Republic rebellion in Latin America in April, 1965; and the general advance of "democracy" (ibid.). All the better, eh, when the "Jakarta Method" of mass murder can so very helpfully promote such freedom and democracy?!

Forging The Grip Of Foreign Control

Bali's tourist trade has just been part of a far wider exploitation of Indonesia's people and resources since the US-backed coup and genocide. Time-Life International's gloating over the genocide, as exhibited in its magazine cited above, took a more directly down-to-earth form in the following year, 1967. In the wake of the Indonesian Army's proclaimed "Operasi Penumpasan - Operation Annihilation, the country was free pickings for the vultures of greedy capitalism. American TNCs from Goodyear Tire to Lockheed Martin were already exploring "the new opportunities available to them in Indonesia" ("The Jakarta Method", op. cit., p167).

"James Linen, President of Time-Life, went a step further. He contacted both the (US) Embassy and Suharto himself, expressing interest in putting on a major business conference focusing on Indonesian opportunities" (ibid.). This proposal was heartily endorsed by US Ambassador to Indonesia, Marshall Green, one of the prime enthusiastic architects of the genocide (ibid.).

A swanky, high-powered conference ensued the same year in Geneva, Switzerland, titled "To Aid In The Rebuilding Of A Nation", carving up the resources of the country for foreign control and exploitation (ibid., p168). The meeting, which was apparently "a roaring success", can be seen as a forerunner to the annual meetings of the World Economic Forum, celebrating the touted successes of capitalist globalisation a la Bill Gates & Co.

Militarising The "Lucky Country" And Its Mates To The Hilt?

As observed earlier above, there can even be doubts these days about the reliability of the US-Australian relationship on the Right of Aussie politics. Professor White stresses "self-reliance first" (AFA, op. cit., p29). But Australia is now upping its militarist agenda big time with its Western partners ("Great Expectations", op. cit.). What is in fact happening now is that Australia is expanding its militarisation in close conjunction with the US and other allies (e.g., "Japan, US, Australia Agree To Boost Defence Cooperation", Press, 4/10/22).

Hilariously, given America's openly proclaimed plan to rule the world - a plan broadcast over many years - the aim of such Western alliances is "to deepen defence cooperation to jointly deter China's hegemonic behaviour" (ibid.). China only has one overseas base (Djibouti, East Africa) compared with the US's 800 odd, including four in Aotearoa/NZ ("The Wolfowitz Doctrine ...", op. cit.).

Yep, folks: "The foundations of the international order are being undermined" by both Russia and China, i.e., according to the Japanese Defence Minister Yasukaza Hamada ("Japan, US, Australia...", op. cit.). The whole stinking, evil record of Western aggression and mass murder for geopolitical gain is simply overlooked in its media-camouflaged, model-setting policies and practices, its systematic provocations, and all its ongoing pernicious blowback. The instant Orwellian memory-hole is constantly on call!

Naturally, Aussie's old ANZAC mate NZ is keenly conforming to the latest Five Eyes/NATO/etc. imperatives. "NZ and Australia will look to 'strengthen' joint military capabilities and compare notes on major reviews of their defence forces" ("Trans-Tasman Alliance Set For A Reboot", Press, 18/10/22). NZ only has a formal military alliance with one country, namely Australia, but of course both nations are sheltering under the American nuclear deterrent - oops, embedded in US nuclear war-fighting strategy!

Boosting Capitalist Power Projection

The key conduit for America's manipulation of Australian politics is apparently the Australian American Leadership Dialogue, said to be "Australia's most important, private, pro-US lobby group" ("The US Lobby And Australian Defence Policy", Vince Scappatura, Monash University Publishing, 2019). A lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Macquarie University, Vince Scappatura has dissected this outfit, calling "into question notions of 'benign' US power", and the idea that the US keeps Australia safe from invasion (ibid.).

Writing in much the same vein as Vince Bevins of "The Jakarta Method" (op. cit.), Scappatura says that during the Cold War, America's "objective of checking Soviet and Chinese aggression was the lesser" of "two central US foreign policy goals" (ibid., p198). The much larger game was the "extension of American capitalism and the efforts to crush those nationalist independence movements (a la the Jakarta Method) that threatened Washington's influence in the Third World" (ibid., p198; see also: Noam Chomsky, "Deterring Democracy", Vintage Books, 1992, pp9-68).

In light of the current US-contrived media and protest campaign on women's rights in Iran, the CIA coup against the democratic Mossadegh government there in 1953 continues to rebound both on the unfortunate people of this afflicted land, and the world in general. Now the militarist US/NATO, etc. are prepared to risk the fate of humankind itself in trying to destabilise their enemies, and even extend their global reach.

Vince Scappatura sees "Australia's national security elite" has similar considerations in our own times of cultivating "power and wealth and spreading political influence" ("The US Lobby . . .", ibid., back cover blurb). He argues that the Canberra elite's "fundamental interests are the expansion of State power and influence and the preservation of a pro-Western capitalist order".

"Australia's enthusiasm for America's foreign policy objectives and military adventurism reflects a shared global outlook between elites in both countries, along with a willingness on the part of Canberra to pay the premium required to reap the benefits that derive from a privileged connection to the dominant global power" (ibid., p200). This has been, and is, also Wellington's position for NZ's role. In the latest move reported, half-a-dozen American B-52 nuclear-capable bombers will be stationed near Darwin to help meet the purported Chinese threat. Oh boy, oh boy, such fun!

Posturing, Blustering Bullshit!

A pseudo debate on disarmament and nuclear weapons in the NZ Parliament showed once again just how much the Government and the whole Parliament (allowing for the exception of Te Pati Māori to some extent) is pervaded with the tribalist hypocrisy of capitalist geopolitics (Special Debate on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee's Report on its briefing on disarmament, NZ Parliament TV, 27/10/22). Billed as a debate, this was in fact a bi-partisan party confirmation - with Labour and National acting jointly, along with the minor parties of the Greens and ACT - of Parliament's commitment to nuclear weapon disarmament. But the contradictions of official doctrine were rampant as usual.

The West's enemies were naturally the bad boys - Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and so on. Russia was the especial whipping boy for all the four above parties. America, the worst offender on so many fronts in geopolitics, human rights, and disarmament instead escaped with barely a hint of criticism except in passing as it were. It was included by Disarmament & Arms Control Minister Phil Twyford as one of the nations collectively mentioned as responsible for polluting the Pacific with nuclear radiation and waste; and also, for resisting the UN's campaign to abolish nuclear weapons.

Taking their cues from the continuous propaganda peddled by the mainstream media, statements of concern and past history were all carefully contrived - certainly for the most part. For instance, National MP Gerry Brownlee spoke of how families used to talk of such issues round the dinner-table back in the past. He oddly cited the example of the Bay of Pigs incident when the CIA mounted a farcical attempt at invading Cuba in 1961.

However, Brownlee only referred to the "Bay of Pigs", giving no such incriminating details. He so very deliberately did not mention the Cuban Missile Crisis of the following year when the US threatened to blow up the world unless the Soviets removed their nuclear missiles from Cuba. After all, the parallel situation as drawn by Russian President Vladimir Putin regarding the Ukraine-Russian border, and the imminent, looming threat there of US/NATO nuclear weapons, would have surely been too revealing for the NZ Parliament to stomach.

Compounding Catastrophic Orwellian Contradictions

In all, it was another damning exercise in hypocrisy, which was ironically highlighted in a moment of honesty by an ACT MP. ACT is the most militarist party in Parliament. In line with its open embrace of the Five Eyes alliance, spokesperson Dr James McDowall warned that since NZ shelters under the nuclear deterrent provided by this alliance it must be very careful in making any criticism of its mates, of which two are nuclear-armed, i.e., America and Britain. For certain, NZ is caught in a very embarrassing contradiction!

National MP Simon O'Connor, who exults in his hard Right fundamentalism and reactionary extremism, preached the old maxim (suitably cast in Latin) that if you want peace, then prepare for war. The Parliamentary "debate" was supposedly about getting rid of nuclear weapons. But then what can we expect from a guy who thinks the "Keep Left" signs in Parliament could be part of a Leftwing conspiracy!

At the same time, he brazenly said that NZ is a reasonable, moral actor and that we can rightly call out the ever-growing violence across the world. But obviously, mind you, not any US-perpetrated and incited violence, which reflects American exceptionalism! We have to work more closely with such allies - apparently in both simultaneously calling out violence and in being more militarist.

In fact, our Parliament is just a puppet on a string for the American military-industrial complex and its "deep state". Our "democracy" is utterly morally bankrupt in its fulsomely corrupt endorsement of the Biden Administration's line on Ukraine. But then NZ governments have revelled for decades in the war crimes and human rights abuse of the US and the trashing of freedom and democracy in land after land. Disarmament & Arms Control Minister Phil Twyford sees no contradiction in heartily joining in US/NATO's proxy war on Russia in Ukraine and preaching against the collective resistance of the nuclear-armed states at the same time.

Indeed, Twyford spelt out this approach in an e-mail reply to me, dated 15/7/22: "The Government's response to the unprovoked and illegal invasion of Ukraine has been swift and clear, comprising the imposition of sanctions against Russia, as well as diplomatic, humanitarian, and military assistance to Ukraine. The Government has also taken every opportunity to promote multilateralism, disarmament, and support for the institutions of peace. There is no contradiction in pursuing both responses at the same time - indeed, both are indispensable. In this regard, I draw your attention to the PM's remarks at the recent NATO Summit".

Double-Think/Double-Speak

So, there you have it - our Government's total, unashamed commitment to Orwellian "double-think" and "double-speak". Not only does it endorse the US-prescribed Big Lie that Russia's invasion was "unprovoked", it is very happy and willing, as a purportedly "nuclear free" country, to embrace the nuclear weapons proliferating and warmongering US-controlled NATO in its menacing advance on Russia. NZ has been quite content to support US/NATO's militarisation of Europe.

Gosh, President Putin's afraid of WMD on his very border. Well, shucks, our Big Brother/Uncle Sam showed what do about them in Iraq didn't he? - proved that they were just a lot of hot air! Pity the country got wrecked and that so many people died and have been otherwise adversely affected, of course. But no real worries, eh, we're all ok, and free to go on exploiting peoples and the environment with our Five Eyes/NATO, etc. mates, come what may!

As for the overthrow of a democratically elected government in Ukraine in 2014, well, we are always ready to back - whatever certain reservations we might have at times, e.g., initially on Iraq - the predatory forays of the leading, grasping hand of the free market. It might all be taking us now to the brink of nuclear war, and indeed even over the brink, but what the Hell anyway! As often quoted, "we all have to die some time". And the Doomsday Clock goes on ticking . . .

Mind you, we are getting very worried about the appearance of China in our very own backyard and the prospect of military bases in the Solomon Islands, and elsewhere! Just look at some Press headlines, e.g., "PM Denounces China's Solomons Defence Pact", 21/4/22; "US Officials Warn Of Response To Feared Chinese Military Base", 27/4/22; & "Mahuta Fights Back On China In Pacific", 1/6/22). Bloody hell, this threat is coming closer to home! And so, it all goes . . .

America Wants War, Not Peace!

But hold on - it gets worse than this. Newshub TV3, which is owned by Warner Bros Discovery Inc., "an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate", based in New York, also oversees the news, etc. presented by Prime TV (owned by Sky Network Television). Both these two channels pump out a daily stream of CIA/Pentagon-groomed CBS propaganda on foreign affairs.

But even propaganda can sometimes trip up in a "Freudian slip". A CBS "reporter" remarked in an item featuring President Putin's nuclear threats regarding the war in Ukraine that the Russians are hoping to force negotiations on their opponents (Prime News, 27/10/22). So, you mean that US/NATO do not want peace negotiations?! Hell's bells again! In similar fashion to the CBS "reporter", the BBC's propagandist in Moscow, Steve Rosenberg, said in conclusion to an item on the Ukraine war that Putin's nuclear missile-rattling had not yet succeeded in deterring the West from helping Ukraine's military effort (1 News, 27/10/22).

Get this then. Biden & co., along with crony allies like NZ, are crazy enough to very deliberately and calculatedly risk nuclear war in very possibly the worst scenario of all - a conventional war provoked on the borders of one of the world's top nuclear powers, and which they are pressing as hard as they can. Who would have thought that our own Government and an almost united Parliament would be part of this madness?! Long ago, I anticipated growing irrationality as militarist capitalism started to break down on the global scale but to witness Freud's "death instinct" being paraded so openly today on the world stage is surely stunning.

It's A Mad, Mad, Mad World!

At this stage, it is well worth quoting a very perceptive Press letter to the editor. It reads as follows: "Strange discrepancy": "How ironic that the USA is promoting a ceasefire and urgent talks between the warring parties in Ethiopia but nothing is being done to bring Russia and Ukraine to the negotiating table despite the increasing risk of a nuclear catastrophe".

"It is salutary to remember the words of the late President Kennedy in his 'peace speech' of June 10, 1963: '. . . nuclear power must avert those confrontations, which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy or of a collective death wish for the world'" (Graham French, 28/10/22).

President Kennedy was assassinated later the same year on 22nd November, 1963 in Dallas, Texas. Various conspiracy theories have swirled about his death ever since. Today, evidence has accumulated that Kennedy might have been knocked off by an element of the "deep state", given his turn towards alternative policies making for peace (see articles on CAM's Website, op. cit.). The Life International editorial quoted earlier (op. cit.), lauding "LBJ's foreign policy successes" stands witness to how US foreign policy was re-routed after Kennedy's death in line with the prescription of the NSS-deep state.

Screw Peace Is Biden's Abiding Message

In another excellent letter to the editor, Kay Weir, who was the Editor of the flagship environmental magazine, Pacific World/Pacific Ecologist, aptly wrote: "Russian reasons". "Our Government has followed the US/NATO line that Russia's Ukraine intervention was 'unprovoked aggression'. But the reality is there's much, well-documented evidence on why this happened".

"Russia clearly laid out the deep security concerns it was enduring with the United States, United Kingdom and NATO's policies and activities in its region over decades. This includes the well-documented, US-orchestrated, illegal and violent coup in 2014 that deposed a democratically elected government and replaced it with a regime with a leader chosen by the US".

"More recently, the US, the UK and NATO irresponsibly refused to address even one issue that Russia presented to them in security treaties on December 17, 2021. This is why Russia intervened to save the lives of those immediately threatened by Ukraine's military forces, lining up in large numbers by February 2022 to attack civilians they had been attacking for eight years. The US and NATO refused to address even this pressing issue facing Russia - the murdering of Russian-speaking civilians in the Donbass that would have become genocide." (SST, 15/5/22).

Even in a summary statement like this, we can get a sense again of just how outrageously warmongering the Western political Establishment and its media continue to be in their coverage of the Ukraine crisis/war. A host of crucial aspects have been systematically suppressed for the politically correct consumption by Western publics.

The Brainwashed "Media Society"

As John Pilger pertinently comments: "We in the West live in a Media Society where brainwashing is insidious and relentless, and perception is filtered according to the needs and lies of State and corporate power" (John Pilger, op. cit.). The mainstream media is overwhelmingly American owned and controlled (ibid.) To amplify further on the Ukrainian record this year as noted above by Kay Weir, I cite the following quotes from Pilger: "On February 24, President Volodymyr Zelensky threatened to develop nuclear weapons unless America armed and protected Ukraine. Russia invaded the same day . . ." (ibid.).

Later in March (2022), Zelensky under pressure signalled that Ukraine could give up on the idea of joining NATO. But Putin had publicly declared back in 2021 that the puppet regime in Kyiv does not call the shots. US/NATO have driven the Ukraine crisis/war and go on doing so. Then: "On April 25, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin flew into Kyiv and confirmed that America's aim was to destroy the Russian Federation - the word he used was 'weaken'. America had got the war it wanted, waged by an American-bankrolled and armed proxy and expendable pawn" (ibid.). The war had in fact been under way since 2014.

US/NATO committed themselves to preparations and practice exercises for assaults on the Russian-held Donbass region in eastern Ukraine, and even threatening Russia itself ("Documents Reveal That NATO Was Rehearsing For An Amphibious Assault On Eastern Ukraine Using Ukrainian Naval Bases Acquired in Agreement With The UK", Arnaud Develay, 26/10/22, Covert Action Magazine, "NATO Had Plans For A Pre-Emptive Strike On Russia, Using The Cover Of A French-Led Naval Exercise In The Mediterranean", Sonja Van den Ende, 30/10/22, also CAM).

More Backdrop To Current and Future Dramas - A World In Turmoil!

In relatively recent times, NATO-aligned Europe has been wracked by the refugee crisis, stemming from the Western assault on proscribed enemies in the Middle East and adjoining areas in order to safeguard the imperially-mandated fossil fuel resources and reserves. Blowback goes on, and on occasion in quite bizarre ways. There are even "problems", as openly acknowledged by US President Joe Biden, "in the US-Saudi relationship" ("Saudi 'Hostile Act' Sparks Calls For US To Abandon Oil State", Press, 8/10/22).

The American predatory eagle has lost a few more feathers as Biden's Administration is spurned in its appeal to the fundamentalist Muslim kingdom to boost oil production. Instead, "a big oil production cut by a revived OPEC (Organisation of Petroleum-Exporting Countries) and Russia" threatens to undercut "the election prospects of Biden and Democrats" (ibid.). Record fossil fuel prices and profits have been rocketing! Sanctions on Russia have badly backfired in nasty blowback for the US and its allies! America and Europe thus continue to suffer the acute energy costs of their failing sanctions policy on Russia and other countries. The ironies and contradictions of Western imperial power with all its repeated, blundering "blowbacks" could not be more stark!

Meantime, the overall shift to the hard Right in the West has underlain the disruptive, destabilising, and counter-productive activities of global reach. It is then now so very ironic that even the Establishment Right, as expressed by some of its media, has recoiled back from the increasingly irrational manifestations of domestically oriented extremists. Again, ironies compound in the fallout from foreign policy, as exemplified by the self-proclaimed "aggressive" Biden Administration.

Irrationality in foreign policy parallels that on the domestic scene. Neo-fascist trends are very evident and widely endorsed in the West at the Establishment level with the rise of NATO, etc., while being reflected at home in more instability, social fracturing, and the rise of far-Right factions (e.g., "Historians Privately Warn Biden That America's Democracy Is Teetering", WP article reproduced in the Press, 13/8/22).

Besides the growing contortions of geopolitics and all its ramifications, there are, of course, other worsening woes in the West as well. These range from persistent covid pandemic effects to soaring inflation adversely affecting the cost of living; and from supply-chain breakdowns to the eroding impact of global warming on economies, let alone the general declining sustainability and resilience of ecosystems. Climate change seems to be worsening in ways that seem to be spinning out of all control!

In terms of geopolitics, another great irony and contradiction lies in the fact that a lot of critical goods come from China and trade supply lines have been disrupted to and from this country. But China has just been officially labelled as an "enemy" of the West, despite capitalist dependence on the Chinese market, for long lauded as the vital prop for an expanding world economy and as an essential conduit for exports/imports!

Climate Change Kicks In Hard!

As indicated, the challenge of global warming is growing. 2022 proved to be a record year for climate change devastation. The impacts from global warming are encompassing unprecedented snow and ice melt, droughts, scorching heatwaves, raging wildfires, rampant floods, and land/soil erosion throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas, Australasia, and elsewhere. All this is causing more and more damage to deteriorating ecosystems, biodiversity, wildlife, and human habitat.

And, all the while, mainstream scientists - as they have done over decades now - are always having to update their warnings as to how climate change is happening faster than earlier anticipated. Cassandra-type warnings were posted many years ago but naturally ignored by the greedy, short-term thinking capitalist movers and shakers of global power (see, e.g., "Global Warming: Are We Entering The Greenhouse Century?", Stephen H Schneider, The Lutterworth Press, 1989/1990). To be sure, there have been some excellent studies of how humankind has so far proved "impotent in effecting solutions" for climate change (e.g., "The Climate Change Challenge And The Failure Of Democracy", David Shearman and Joseph Wayne Smith, Praeger Pubs., 2007).

Repeated flooding impacts have even been greatly felt here in parts of Aotearoa/NZ. But suffering has reached previously unseen levels overseas. With the greater snow-melt pouring down from the Himalayas as a result of global warming, the scale of the disastrous flooding in Pakistan during August, September and October 2022 was gutting in its toll of humans and animals. At the same time, China was experiencing record heatwaves and drought, even drying up rivers like the Yangtze in quite breath-taking fashion.

Food crops and livestock worldwide are being hit enormously. Vast amounts of vital top-soil are being ruined and swept away. The war in Ukraine and the disruption of this country's critical input to the world food supply has been a very big factor in a growing crisis. "Extreme weather from climate change triggered hunger in nearly 100 million people and increased heat deaths by 68% in vulnerable populations worldwide as the world's 'fossil fuel addiction' degrades public health each year, doctors have reported in a new study" (published in the Lancet) ("Fossil Fuel 'Addiction' Is A Killer, Say Doctors", Press, 27/10/22). More and more people are experiencing "food insecurity" (ibid.).

So many of the issues so far outlined are inter-related and entangled in a complex nexus as societies undergo severe stress and damage of one sort or another. And, consequently, divisions both within and between societies ever deepen. In Aotearoa/NZ worrying lines of fracture have started to appear in recent years. There is entrenched deep resistance in capitalist society against making the radical changes needed to help save our collective skins in the long run. We have to break out of this parlous state of affairs. The UN is warning that we have to transform our societies root and branch!

Farmers in NZ - traditional supporters of the Rightwing National Party - have been fighting any regulation on their methane and nitrogen emissions for more than two decades. They repeatedly demonstrate their anger against the current Labour government by widespread tractor protests organised by a self-styled "Groundswell" movement. In turn, Groundswell's messaging is now being taken over and distorted to some considerable degree by the far-Right Voices for Freedom (VFF) movement and its nihilistic bent (e.g., "VFF Hijacks Farmers' Protest", Press, 21/10/22).

Growing Conflict And Black Comedy Geopolitical Contortions

These days, as emphasised from the start of this article, humankind is clearly getting locked into a deepening and compounding complex of mounting conflict. The contradictions of globalist capitalist growth are tightening the noose and the mainstream political parties pursue this chimera in conventional style. Whatever changes are proposed, the essential message is still that we can have our cake and eat it too. There is certainly no commitment to "root and branch" transformation!

On the one hand, conventional wisdom worries about the perceived pitfalls of resurgent protectionism. On the other hand, there are all the gathering geopolitical contortions driven by the quest for more resources and new markets. Ironically, wealth accumulation is now increasingly undermining and undercutting global capitalism. The quest for more resources and markets is constantly engineered by State cultivation of corporate economic growth and trade/investment outreach. But the various contradictions that I have signposted are compounding.

As time goes on, geopolitical concerns are cutting across market forces. Global power struggles are highlighted these days by the competition for rare minerals in the melting Arctic between the US, Russia, and China ("NATO Wary Of Rivals In Arctic", SST, 28/8/22). Ironically enough, minerals for electric cars are an especial focus. At the same time, the US is trying to prise American citizen Elon Musk, the world's richest man, away from China. Musk's Tesla electric car company relies on China for scarce resources ("Musk Fuels Twitter Fears By Siding With Dictators", a WP article reproduced in SST, 16/10/22). In August 2022, his Tesla company celebrated its millionth electric car manufactured in China.

The black comedy could hardly be funnier in the recent American controversy over the "politically correct" role of multi-billionaire Elon Musk in global capitalism. You see, Musk is in danger of becoming a very naughty, naughty boy with his globalist capitalist vision and interests. He seems to be even siding with dictators, of all people, according to his critics. Yet one can well wonder how this can possibly be a problem, given that research has showed how the US in 2015 was providing military assistance to 73% of the world's dictatorships ("The Echoes Of America's Hypocrisy Abroad: Decades Of Western Support For Dictatorships Have Caused A Crisis Of Democracy", Howard W French, 20/5/22, Foreign Policy).

Posting peaceful thoughts about how to end the horrible Ukraine War, as well as embracing a positive, cooperative approach to the China-Taiwan armed stand-off, is proving too much for the American National Security State (NSS). The NSS is the more visible version of the CIA/Pentagon corporate "deep state" that President Eisenhower warned about undermining democracy. Musk has even questioned the cost of "funding the Starlink satellite service that is currently providing Internet for Ukraine and its military . . ." ("Musk Backs Down On Starlink", Press, 17/10/22). But his company SpaceX is deeply entangled with the Pentagon and NASA and unlikely to really force this issue. Still, watch this space.

Democracy's Guardians In A Topsy-Turvy Tizzy!

Elon Musk, hilariously enough then, is an American oligarch in danger of getting out of control of the NSS power elite because he has got too globalist! President Biden has just signed a new law, which makes electric vehicles built outside of the US ineligible for governmental subsidies. The squeeze is mounting on "entrepreneurs" like Musk to conform to American geopolitical power dictates. The NSS wants to keep hi-tech knowledge, resources, and production under NSS control as much as possible.

The WP article cited above begins thus: "Elon Musk's recent pronouncements on major foreign policy issues are ratcheting up national security concerns about his take-over of Twitter, a global speech platform used by hundreds of millions of people, 75% of them outside of the US" ("Musk Fuels Twitter Fears ...", op. cit.). Musk's potential influence on Twitter is definitely then causing cold shudders to run down the backs of the NSS's "apparatchiks" and global leaders, who rely on Twitter if he takes control of the company (ibid.).

The WP article proceeds to make this comment: "Since autocrats already use Twitter to spread lies about opponents and whip up violence and mayhem, Musk's pursuit of approval from two of the most powerful is especially unnerving" (ibid.). Oh, my gosh, do you mean tweeting peaceful proposals threatens the NSS to its very core! Lol!

Furthermore, are we only to hear "the lies about opponents" and incitement to violence from the agents of the world's worst rogue terrorist state, and its propaganda protecting America's cultivation of mayhem and chaos across the Earth?! Apparently so, according to this WP piece. So much then for the touted torch-bearing role of the "free press" in defending "free speech" for democracy!

As Nobel Prize-winning playwright Harold Pinter comments: "The crimes of the US have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them" (John Pilger, op. cit.). Our politicians and mass media in NZ rigorously follow the rule of silence on these crimes as much as possible, while constantly streaming misinformation, "disinformation, use of rhetoric, distortion of language", and fake news - in other words, what Pinter roundly denounces as "a pack of lies" (ibid.).

To be sure, we have in the West a smug, satisfied sense of self-righteousness at stark variance with the real world. There is a cultivated, self-serving "submissive void" of ignorance and denialism (ibid.). Its victims are the exposers of truth like Wikileaks Julian Assange and surveillance whistle-blower Edward Snowden. By the end of October 2022 Elon Musk had taken over Twitter and conducted a big clean-out of staff. Clearly, this is very much an unfolding saga. But, equally clearly, Musk himself is untrustworthy. As an enormously greedy capitalist and so aptly an American iconic figure, featuring as Time's "Man Of The Year" for 2021, he exemplifies Trump-like self-interested narcissism. Yet, let's hope he can still do some good in maverick fashion!

Recapping On The State Of The World

In general, there is, very sadly, little concern and really meaningful action directed at the creation of a genuinely sustainable alternative system so vital for ultimate human survival. At best, the capitalist media are riven with contradictions, confusions, and the usual huge hypocrisy. As already laid out, the ominous geopolitical factors are currently expressed by an aggressively expanding NATO and other related Western militarist alliances, coupled with the perceived threat of a rising China and its increasing global reach.

Mounting tensions between China and Taiwan dramatically exemplify this process, as does a host of other conflicts and confrontations around the planet. Meanwhile, the West's proxy war against Russia in Ukraine increasingly constitutes a most dangerous potential flashpoint for total war. There is frighteningly regular talk now about the possible use of nuclear weapons, "dirty bombs", and other such WMD. But, as we have stressed time and again, Russia's nuclear war warnings and drills are treated in the most zombie fashion by the Biden Administration and its military machine.

Most horrifically, it all amounts to an utterly mindless goading and provocation for Russia to actually use nuclear weapons in its defence. While this game of "nuclear chicken" goes on, the people of Ukraine - as John Pilger, along with WBW, CAM, etc., have tellingly documented - are suffering as mere sacrificial pawns in US/NATO's bigger geopolitical plan.

Underlying all of this, again, is the pursuit of capitalist growth and the addictive obsession with the constant innovation of new technology, despite the glaring fact that the impact of such technology has been transforming the long-term human habitat for the worse, going back centuries. We are standing at present on the very brink of human-induced climate change catastrophe.

More specifically in this regard, I have looked at the mounting human and environmental costs as illustrated by the tragic history of the Congo, still plagued by ruthless imperial exploitation, and the ongoing scramble for key resources. The irony, as in the melting Arctic, of the hunt for rare minerals for hi-tech "green" technologies could not be more evident.

Confronting The Roots Of The Growing Crisis

And, of course, the most surreal and horrific form that this technological pursuit takes is the "death instinct" exuberance so evident in the preparation and countdown for WWIII. This syndrome is grossly manifest in all the exuberant, over-kill Western weaponry, warfare manufacture, and related deployment, as well as its regular use around the planet - including increasingly in space a la Rocket Lab.

America has led the world in militarising Earth by land, sea, air, and space. Its rampant hubristic aggression has unleashed planetary militarisation. Earth is bristling with the machinery of death as the "killer ape" faces evolutionary overshoot and subsequent meltdown. Either we think and act very laterally and creatively to somehow break out of this one-way, dead-end cul-de-sac, or we will inevitably suffer the catastrophic consequences!

Postscript (24/11/22)

The West's warmongering hypocrisy and contradictions have been highlighted by a statement "from US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark A. Milley, that the time could be ripe for Ukraine to negotiate a political solution to the conflict with Russia - which almost certainly would require surrendering some territory" - i.e., the remaining 20% of land held by Moscow ("Kyiv Confronts Tougher Fight", Press, 22/11/22). Yet the Zelensky neo-fascist regime is still backed by the Biden Administration in its aim of taking back all separatist land, including Crimea.

The Ukrainian puppet regime is fully reliant on US/NATO support, courtesy of which it violated the Minsk Agreements recognising separatist autonomy in Donbass. A peace deal as proposed by General Milley would be most fitting. At the same time, it would be a damning acknowledgement of the viciously contrived suffering inflicted on the Ukrainian people.

Safeguarding separatist autonomy and preventing US/NATO nuclear weapons at its backdoor have been Russia's essential goals, following on from the US-organised 2014 coup against a democratically elected government in Ukraine. Our own NZ Government, rife with warmongering and geopolitical hypocrisy, has even invited Zelensky to talk to our Parliament (by video link), which is almost united on the same wave-length for provoking WWIII!