Fortress Aotearoa: What changes politically after the NZ pandemic?
This pandemic is a universal shared experience, and with all universal shared experiences, it will have enormous unseen ramifications throughout our culture, politics and economy.
When this pandemic first erupted, the woke left attempted to hijack the issue and turn it into a virtue signalling competition that asserted any concern regarding the virus was really secret xenophobia and racism…
…meanwhile the Alt-Right Death Cult Capitalists were screaming for us all to get back to work to protect their wealth and privilege no matter the threat to the working class essential service workers those Alt-Right Death Cult Capitalists don’t care about.
TDB from the beginning stated this wasn’t an identity politics issue and that it was instead a public health nightmare and economic Armageddon and that we shouldn’t return to work to ensure the Death Cult Capitalists kept their wealth, but instead needed to rebuild the failed neoliberal capitalist hegemony that was now imploding.
Moving forward we need to appreciate there can be no new ‘normal’. The virus can re-emerge at any time and a heavy handed trace-track-quarantine infrastructure must be in place until a vaccine is available, and I say that acknowledging that there is no certainty of a vaccine nor how we would even manage to roll out what would be the largest mass medication program the planet has ever seen.
For New Zealand that means the borders must remain shut amputating migrant workers, international students and the tourism industry.
The economic depression this pandemic causes is the second wave of this tsunami after the lost loves. the Government has protected us from the first, it now must focus on the latter and that will demand a Labour Party brave enough to challenge the sleeping dogs of the neoliberal debate that almost destroyed the Party in the 1980s.
The foundations of the 35 year neoliberal experiment in NZ have been exposed an found to be cracked to their core, with the climate crisis demanding a radical change, this pandemic is the perfect time to challenge the religious orthodoxy of free market dogma.
Yesterday I looked at this impact on culture, today politics.
For sometime my feeling has been that the current political spectrum simply isn’t radical enough to adapt the economy, society and culture fast enough to the realities of the climate crisis.
This pandemic has highlighted that when existential extremes occur to us as a civilisation, we immediately look to the state for protection, so let’s just dump the whole free market neoliberal bullshit shall we?
It’s not ‘Socialism for Stealth’ if the entire country is screaming for it.
This pandemic is a universal experience, the shock waves of which are fracturing the free market certainties the hegemonic economic framework has been built upon.
An enormous cultural, economic and political backlash is building and the naked reality is that the climate crisis will be far worse than this pandemic we currently tremble from.
Spending billions on trying to rebuild ‘normal’ is fucking absurd when the market ‘normal’ was what made this pandemic erupt in the first place.
Destruction of natural biospheres alongside jowl to cheek over population and global trade exacerbated this pandemic but the climate crisis will make these 1 in a 100 year events become 1 every 10 years.
JP Morgan economists warn climate crisis is threat to human race
The world’s largest financier of fossil fuels has warned clients that the climate crisis threatens the survival of humanity and that the planet is on an unsustainable trajectory, according to a leaked document.
The JP Morgan report on the economic risks of human-caused global heating said climate policy had to change or else the world faced irreversible consequences.
The study implicitly condemns the US bank’s own investment strategy and highlights growing concerns among major Wall Street institutions about the financial and reputational risks of continued funding of carbon-intensive industries, such as oil and gas.
JP Morgan has provided $75bn (£61bn) in financial services to the companies most aggressively expanding in sectors such as fracking and Arctic oil and gas exploration since the Paris agreement, according to analysis compiled for the Guardian last year.
The current political spectrum in New Zealand can not radically adapt fast enough to adopt the changes we must make if we are to survive the climate crisis. It will require a radical Political Movement that elects a Party to implement Fortress Aotearoa…
- Move away from intensive farming and look to become domestically self sustainable in terms of food.
- Immediately ban all water exports
- 5 year Parliamentary term.
- Upper and Lower House (Upper House 50-50 split between Māori & Pakeha that can hold up legislation if unhappy about Treaty issues)
- Massive investment into R&D from Government with the understanding research is to benefit NZ first before sold offshore.
- Large scale increase in Navy, Army & Airforce.
- Mass limiting of tourism numbers with increased tourist taxes.
- Only citizens can vote.
- Sustainable immigration and an end to exploitative migrant workers.
- Resettlement Programms for all pacific island neighbours.
- Increase refugee in take to 10 000 per year
- Fully funded public services.
- Mass Green housing rebuild.
- 100% renewable energy for entire country.
- Massive tree planting across previous farming land.
- Wholesale re-write of state services act to end commercial values.
- Investment into basic pharmaceutical production.
- Financial transaction tax
- Wealth tax
- Multinational tax
- Inheritance tax
On a rapidly warming planet, NZ will increasingly be the life boat for Earth and the tyranny of our distance will become our blessing.
As the climate crisis unfolds more and more people in fury will turn against the current political system too wedded to the economic profits margins of the polluters. It is just a matter of time before the NZ electorate rejects the limitations of the current political spectrum.
The only thing that makes the Carbon Zero Act ‘historic’ is the future generations who will look back in spite & anger that we thought this sophistry was a legitimate response to the climate crisis – if you think maybe acting in 31 years is a solution, you are the problem.
In 2023, for the first time in NZ history, Gen x + Gen Y + Millennials will be a larger voting block than the boomers.
2023 is our date for revolution comrades.
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I don’t think this can be debate because our words are not evidence. I think we could reasonably say that flues effect humans most during winter so I think we could reasonably say that given our best efforts the amount of hospitalisations due to corona will rise by a 1/4 or a 1/3. Even if there was a vaccine flues attack our immune system which increases the likeliness some other pre existing illness might get us.
There’s still a lot we still don’t know about corona. Even our best efforts won’t give us the happy outcome certain people are forecasting. It’s a mistake to assume that individual achievement can succeed during a pandemic because in bubbles there is a physical hight and width to a bubble and if people hyperventilate to much in there bubbles they may sophicate. I’m not joking the mental health crises is just a real as the corona crises. In the last 3 months on the Daily Blog alone there’ve been some dark comments I’m sure everyone has seen. The idea that there is no society no longer holds water. So if we move as a nation and adhere to the scientific advice we can claw back our lost rights.
Did our media hotshots forget to tell us that Gates/Fauci/WHO were out of step and now out the door?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=136&v=uF4rmC9hUeQ&feature=emb_logo
on one side you have Trump (he who sggested injecting disinfectant ) and Dr Butter (he who has been before Medical board for bad practice and is an anti vaxer ) on the other side Fauci and WHO ki rest my case.
He never said that! He was referring too UV therapy! which they use on cancer patients and NEVER used the word “bleach” but you keep believing the bs mate
Jacinda has returned to the neoliberal flock obviously.
You are so right Martyn when you said; “Spending billions on trying to rebuild ‘normal’ is fucking absurd when the market ‘normal’ was what made this pandemic erupt in the first place.”
Jacinda is blowing her one and only chance of being a global leader of ‘transformative change to a ‘cleaner, more respectful, style of Governence’ sadly.
So much for her “Generations Nuclear moment” eh, as it was just cheap words.
Cleangreen – Well, of course. Today we see the Health Minister, David Clark, doing his own thing once again, while the rest of us poor plebs have been doing our best to function as responsible human beings – and sometimes inconvenienced almost to the point of tears.
I am incredibly pissed off with David – and myself. Trouble is, I saw this empty-headed idiot as another erudite learned Lloyd Geering, and it is now as plain as a pike staff that Geering was the last good Presbyterian.
Clark should be booted out of Parliament, and I daresay that the church is as good a place as any for knaves who opt for a different reality from the rest of us – whom he has the nerve to profess to represent.
Same old. Same old. In fiction, party members act for the good of the party too, but in real life there’s them that just act for themselves, and that’s it.
So yesterday I commented that the constant reposting of Nigel Latta’s tweet seems nasty and pointless, and my comment never got posted – is that what will happen again today?
There’s no specific way to react to the Wuhan virus and one thing Iv noticed about lefties-kiwi-style is there’s a tendency to see change coming but change is always a precursor to bigger problems either mental health issues or the assumption is we don’t handle change very well. How people deal with change is how people make sense of the cultural changes and there are people who live on the brink of disaster like Mr Nigel and so do we,. People who comment here I mean we go really deep into the Internet to find answers, and so we exist in this community where all these threats make sense to us and so how people deal with this change is culturaly specific.
I guess Nigel kind of see’s this change as something that can be this idea that could stop the world and get off and live in the moment which is impossible like if you think about time I mean where is the moment because it’s time that’s already passed because time is always moving. And now we live in a time where change is as Iv said is a precursor to something bad so we just sort of want to stop the world and get off, or freeze history so no one gets hurt indefinitely. The past is not the present and the present is not the future.
I think Nigel’s sudden change from outlook is a sudden loss of his future focused thinking and the lose of the utopia and the lose of any sense that society as a group can create a better New Zealand together that is better than today (and I’m saying even if some is truly racist like Don Brash he still requires the standard minimum healthcare not just because of today or because of yesterday but because it makes the future safer). Now I know Nigel is a smart man and he does plenty of good work but look at how the change was so severe that it caught Nigel up in a storm of fear and violence and it appears the destruction that progress intended to bring has to stop but we can’t. Stopping the Wuhan virus is not an option I mean we can suppress communicable disease into manageable levels with a vaccine but it’s impossible to engineer the dangers out of Mother Nature.
As Marx once said “it is ridiculous to long for that original fullness as it is to imagine with this complete emptiness all history has come to a stand still.”
We can’t stop the change because we can’t control history but what we can do is try and control the change and bring it to somewhere good and we can fight these evil forces together as a group by having a more optimistic understanding.
Well Aaron at least it makes a change from “was dem evil chinee what done it”.
Wait what? No. Beijing has things to answer for. When this outbreak first hit the headlines Beijing was saying the virus can’t be transmitted human to human and subsequent CIA leaks say they did know because the CIA was trying to warn Trump. So China has been running propoganda from the beginning and so has America. So Yknow we are going to have to appreciate how delicate this all is.
Politics. Watching David Seymour still pontificating on how the market is better than government intervention. With his new perm haircut he looks and sounds like that Houston televangellist scammer, Joel Osteen
Nay Harrogate, he’ll always be this….
The Arnold J Rimmer Song
https://youtu.be/E4TLto-nKfU?t=5
Indeed, Rodel. And notice how this free market purist has never, ever criticised the government for handing out taxpayer’s money to prop up private businesses? No, neither have I.
Agree with you for the most part, M.Bradbury, but I think your being a little melodramatic. Its interesting how fast nature reclaims its own…like Chernobyl, and the huge influx of wildlife there after people buggered off, so we have the same with fur seals invading the yellow eyed penguin colony’s because people aren’t around to bugger things up !…
Nature in action !
Sure we are screwing things up, but take us out of the picture and nature heals, – and heals fast.
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”The foundations of the 35 year neoliberal experiment in NZ have been exposed an found to be cracked to their core, with the climate crisis demanding a radical change, this pandemic is the perfect time to challenge the religious orthodoxy of free market dogma”…
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One thing at a time.We are dealing with a pandemic. To extrapolate climate change in the mix is a little ambitious, don’t you think? Sure it makes good headlines but right now the globe and NZ is reeling from the lockdown , covid, and the coming economic collapse of neo liberalism. And may peoples livelihoods. My point is that much of climate change issues will be dealt with in dealing with neo liberalism.
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”This pandemic has highlighted that when existential extremes occur to us as a civilisation, we immediately look to the state for protection, so let’s just dump the whole free market neoliberal bullshit shall we?”
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Well said and I concur with this. I like ‘big government’. Small government plays into the hands of the pirates- like neo liberals who essentially downgrade a nations infrastructure everywhere they go. And always will seek to do so as they wish to destroy it to eventually purchase it for a song and then raise prices. Its called a monopoly.
The melting of ice caps and the plight of polar bear and grizzly bears turning into Pizzly bears is of lesser concern than the plight of the working poor and their immediate future as well as small business owners. That’s just the way humans are wired. Self survival. I am also glad ”the shock waves of which are fracturing the free market certainties the hegemonic economic framework has been built upon” are crumbling,…it is about time too.
”Spending billions on trying to rebuild ‘normal’ is another curiosity… why do it? and who are the major recipients and why? Is the plight of the unemployed, the working poor going to be uplifted with all these ‘ Too Big to Fail’ types??? I think not. Yet we are the majority. Is this democracy? Why do they get to survive , – and survive well, – when we get to starve, lose economic security and suffer societal breakdown?
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”Destruction of natural biospheres alongside jowl to cheek over population and global trade exacerbated this pandemic but the climate crisis will make these 1 in a 100 year events become 1 every 10 years”…
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And while there’s no doubt about Destruction of Natural Biospheres occurring at an unsustainable rate ( often due to neo liberalism’s ‘capitalism on steroids’ ) I refuse to be that broad sweeping. I find it hard to buy into the theme that this is purely a naturally occurring situation. When you have America investing for the last 10 years in an infectious diseases lab in Wuhan, China and specifically to research coronavirus sp. with last years funding being 3.7 million dollars, I SMELL A RAT. And particularly when Chinese scientists traveled 1000 KM’S to caves to trap then research an obscure form of bat,… one must ask , – WHAT THE HELL IS AN AMERICAN COMPANY FUNDING A CHINESE INFECTIOUS DISEASES LAB TO RESEARCH CORONAVIRUS DOING IN THE FIRST PLACE???
And how far is the infectious diseases lab from the wet market in WUHAN? – a mere 20 km’s away.
Isn’t America supposed to be all up in arms about Chinese military bases in the South China seas?
Or is it more a ‘deep state’ counter movement to cause popular western resentment against China and to recreate a new cold war while at the same time to resetting the Western economy- perhaps edging it evermore towards a cashless one?
If you think we are under a surveillance society now, – then wait til the day the cashless society arrives, – you wont even be able to sneeze without the govt knowing about it.
I agree with almost all of your suggestions, but trying to weave geopolitics in with the destruction of neo liberalism and global climate change all at the same time for the little people who are grappling with the immediate fallout of an economic collapse just might be frying peoples brains, esp as they are coping with economic destruction, family issues, economic insecurity in an uncertain future just might be a tad too much.
Back to human nature , when the chips are down we seek self survival. Survival for us, and survival for our family’s.
Ice caps, grizzly ears and polar bears come a poor second.
And its not about pitting generation X, Y , and Z against boomers, – I suspect, – its more about focusing the battle against neo liberalism if you really want to see effective climate action. Knock that out, and you’ve got a free run home. Don’t knock it out, – and you can just expect more of the same.
Less ice caps and more pizzly’s.
After all the coffers are bled dry on frivolous projects in a mad pursuit of back to normal, the new feudalism will make the old neoliberalism look tame.
Smiling Assasain, Former PM turned house flipper, John Key is replacing Don Brash in being NZ’s grizzled irrelevant zombie commentator it seems. I guess he hasn’t come to terms how irrelevant he is. The UN didn’t come calling but maybe ‘The Block’ will!
‘Crucially important’: Sir John Key calls on Govt to allow more businesses to operate in lockdown
Former PM John Key praises Christopher Luxon as National leader Simon Bridges faces backlash
https://www.google.com/url?client=internal-element-cse&cx=006730714154542492986:oh6vl0ybuqy&q=https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/homed/real-estate/121284015/sir-john-key-buys-waterfront-sydney-pad-and-lists-it-next-day&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwjmw7m3_ovpAhVsyjgGHY5bDhoQFjAAegQIBRAC&usg=AOvVaw0ap1lU8EA9wqircv-gxdiM
Who would trust a liar and thief. Perhaps another of the hair pulling kind.
No UBI?