Atrocities cannot be denied

The assertion that black is white, that facts are not and that something that happened didn’t is a troubling aspect of modern life.

For years antisemites have denied that the holocaust happened and now, in spite of video evidence and personal testimony, people are saying the atrocities  on October 7th didn’t happen.

How can anyone deny that in the face of these horrifying personal testimonies in Screams Before Silence: (The video is age-restricted for good reason).

These atrocities cannot be denied.

Night After Night

The book Night After Night tells the story of New Zealanders in Bomber Command in World War II.

Night after night also applies to the people of Ypres in Belgium.

Night after night, almost uninterrupted every night since 1928, even during German occupation in World War II, they observe a Last Post ceremony at the Menin Gate Memorial in gratitude for the Commonwealth soldiers who died in the surrounding countryside during World War I.

We were among about 1000 people from many different countries who stood in silence as the Last Post was played, and then as a bonus, a piper played the lament.

I thanked one of the men and told him it is an incredible tribute they are paying, night after night.

He replied, what they are doing is nothing compared to what the men they were remembering did.

“Known unto God”

Visiting war graves in France and Belgium is moving and sobering.

They are immaculately kept, thanks to the work of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

They are peaceful, in stark contrast to the noise and brutality that those buried there endured.

They are a tragic reminder to the tragedy of war and what so many sacrificed in the fight for freedom.

So many of the men who are buried there were so young – in their teens and early 20s.

Private V.J. Cameron of the Otago Regiment is one of them buried in the Caterpillar Valley Cemetery.

In World War I, soldiers didn’t have dog tags and many bodies were unable to be identified. Tomb stones for them have the inscription Known unto God.

Tyne Cot Cemetery:

It’s not forgetting, it’s not learning

Thousands of allied soldiers are buried in Tyne Cot Cemetery in Belgium.

It was visited by King George V in 1922, who said:

We can truly say that the whole Circuit of the earth is girded with the graves of our dead. In the course of my pilgrimage I have many times asked myself whether there can be more potent advocates of peace upon earth through the years to come than this massed multitude of silent witnesses to the desolation of war.

One exhortation on Anzac Day is lest we forget.

The problem isn’t that we forget, it’s not learning in spite of  all the witnesses, silent or not, to the desolation of war.

Woman of the day

Woman of the Day soldier Hannah Snell born OTD 1723 in Worcester who disguised herself as a man and joined the 6th Regiment of Foot. She took part in the capture of Pondicherry and fought in the Battle of Devicotta during the War of Austrian Succession.

Neighbours in Worcester… pic.twitter.com/teM0nL2hzH

— The Attagirls (@TheAttagirls) April 23, 2024

No benign strategic environment

New Zealand is joining allies in defending Red Sea shipping:

New Zealand is deploying a six-member Defence Force team to the Middle East region to uphold maritime security in the Red Sea, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says.

“Houthi attacks against commercial and naval shipping are illegal, unacceptable and profoundly destabilising.

“This deployment, as part of an international coalition, is a continuation of New Zealand’s long history of defending freedom of navigation both in the Middle East and closer to home.”

The team will contribute to the collective self-defence of ships in the Middle East, in accordance with international law, from operational headquarters in the region and elsewhere. No NZDF personnel will enter Yemen. It is part of a continuous New Zealand defence contribution to maritime security in the Middle East since 2013.

Foreign Minister Winston Peters says the strikes being carried out by the international coalition are against Houthi military targets which have played a role in attacking commercial and naval vessels. 

“These efforts support international security and the free flow of trade on which New Zealanders rely,” Mr Peters says. 

Defence Minister Judith Collins says the Houthi attacks show a disregard for international law, peace and stability, and the coalition response is an inevitable consequence of their actions. 

“Our NZDF personnel are highly trained and this deployment will see them work alongside their counterparts on an important mission. New Zealand supports global stability and this deployment shows our commitment to efforts to address a serious threat to that stability.”

Mr Peters says New Zealand’s actions to uphold maritime security in the Red Sea should not be conflated with its position on the Israel-Gaza conflict. 

“Any suggestion our ongoing support for maritime security in the Middle East is connected to recent developments in Israel and the Gaza Strip, is wrong.  We are contributing to this military action for the same reason New Zealand has sent defence personnel to the Middle East for decades – we care deeply about regional security because our economic and strategic interests depend on it.”

The deployment is mandated to conclude no later than 31 July 2024.

A fact sheet on the deployment explains:

• Freedom of navigation is an integral part of New Zealand’s national prosperity
and trade security. New Zealand has contributed to maritime security efforts in
the Middle East and elsewhere continuously since 2013 to protect not only our
vital national interest but also the international rules-based order.

• The decision to deploy a team of six NZDF personnel to uphold maritime
security in the Red Sea has been made with these same goals in mind:
defending lives, de-escalating tensions, and restoring stability to the Red Sea. . . 

Concern for the safety of crews and cargo has already forced ships to reroute which is adding delays and costs to global trade:

Nearly 15 percent of global seaborne trade passes through the Red Sea, which leads to the Suez Canal, linking the Indian Ocean with the Mediterranean. . . 

Massey University supply chain lecturer Carel Bezuidenhout said the conflict meant that passing through the Red Sea was pushing up insurance costs for shipping companies. 

“Most of them are actually avoiding that and taking the longer route around the Cape of Good Hope down at the bottom end of Africa. That adds substantial distance and delays to the supply chains, so in time we may start seeing a slower and non-responsive supply chain.” 

Bezuidenhout said all industries could be impacted if the conflict continues, but some sectors – like the kiwifruit industry – might be hit particularly hard. 

“When we start harvesting kiwifruit and we want to get those fruit to Europe as fast as possible, then it is going to become problematic for us to add another two weeks to get around the Cape of Good Hope.”  . . . 

It’s more than 20 years since then Prime Minister Helen Clark said we had a benign strategic environment.

Whether or not that was right then is debatable but it certainly doesn’t apply now and New Zealand must play its part to counter those who show no respect for rule based order, human life and trade security.

Milne muses

Oh, I'm tired of the noise and the turmoil of battle,
And I'm even upset by the lowing of cattle,
And the clang of' the bluebells is death to my liver,
And the roar of the dandelion gives me a shiver,
Give me Peace; that is all, that is all that I seek…
~A.A.Milne #ArmisticeDay pic.twitter.com/kQZFVvlxd2

— A.A.Milne (@A_AMilne) November 11, 2023

They shall grow not old . . .

France and Belgium are home to immaculately kept cemeteries, tended by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC), where those killed in the two World Wars now lie.

Some headstones bear the names of the dead, others mark the graves of those not able to be identified and have the inscription known unto God.

Visiting the cemeteries is both humbling and sobering – so many lives, most of them young, lost so far from home.

In Ypres, every night since 1928, the Last Post is played.

When I told one of the men who is part of the ceremony that theirs was an amazing tribute, he replied that nothing they do could be compared with what the people they are remembering did for them.

Last month the New Zealand Liberation Museum opened in Le Quesnoy, dedicated to the men who freed the town from German occupation in 1918.

It too brings home the high price paid by so many.

Looking at the peaceful countryside around the cemeteries we can only imagine just how terrible the conditions those who fought endured.

So many didn’t survive to grow old.

It is both frustrating, and tragic, that today 105 years after the war that was supposed to end all wars concluded, peace is allusive in so many other places and so many others shall grow not old.

Not just numbers

The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of a million is a statistic.

Stalin said that and in contemplating the 20 million who were killed in World War I it is easy to overlook the individual tragedies.

But these were people, not just numbers.

People with family and friends, and with futures that were taken from them.

Each poppy on this map of Grimsby in England plots  the known home of someone from that town who was a casualty in World War I.

How sad that more than 100 years after that war to end all wars, we still have wars and the tragic toll they take.

 

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Christmas message

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the geo-political history, there is no excuse for the death and destruction Vladimir Putin is inflicting on Ukraine.

Whatever the question, war should not be the first answer.

Whatever justification Vladimir Putin thought he had in invading his neighbour, he seriously underestimated the response and the determination of Ukrainians to defend their homeland.

The strength of that is illustrated in  Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Chirstmas message:

Dear people!

These days, millions of people in Ukraine and the world celebrate Christmas. The appearance of the Son of God gave people hope for salvation, faith in the victory of goodness and mercy.

Unfortunately, all the holidays have a bitter aftertaste for us this year. And we can feel the traditional Spirit of Christmas differently. Dinner at the family table cannot be so tasty and warm. There may be empty chairs around it. And our houses and streets can’t be so bright. And Christmas bells can ring not so loudly and inspiringly. Through air raid sirens, or even worse – gunshots and explosions. And all this together can pose a bigger threat. It is a disappointment. Of the higher forces and their power, of goodness and justice in the world. Loss of hope. Loss of love. Loss of myself…

But isn’t this what evil and darkness, which have taken up arms against us, want in their essence?

We have been resisting them for more than three hundred days and eight years. And will we allow them to achieve what they want?

In this battle, we have another powerful and effective weapon. The hammer and sword of our spirit and consciousness. The wisdom of God. Courage and bravery. Virtues that incline us to do good and overcome evil.

The main act of courage is endurance and completion of one’s work to the end, despite everything. The truth illuminates our path. We know it. We defend it. Our truth is a struggle for freedom. Freedom comes at a high price. But slavery has an even higher price.

Our path is illuminated by faith and patience. Patience and faith. These are twin forces. As it was said, “he who rules and controls his own spirit, is better than he who captures a city.” To endure does not mean to accept the circumstances. Patience is watching to make sure that we don’t let any doubt or fear into our minds. It is faith in one’s own strength.

Evil has no weapon stronger than the armor given to us by God. Evil smashes against this armor like a stone wall. We have seen this more than once. We endured at the beginning of the war. We endured attacks, threats, nuclear blackmail, terror, missile strikes. Let’s endure this winter because we know what we are fighting for.

We go forward through the thorns to the stars, knowing what awaits us at the end of the road. God is a just Judge who rewards good and punishes evil. Which side we are on is obvious. Who is who in this battle is obvious. There are at least seven proofs of this – they are known – “A proud look, a lying tongue, And hands that shed innocent blood, An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, Feet that be swift in running to mischief, A false witness that speaketh lies, And he that soweth discord among brethren.” We oppose all this. Being a role model for others. The faithful, that is, those who really believe, must be a light to the rest of the world. For more than three hundred days, Ukrainians have been striving for this, proving it, serving as an example to others. We are not righteous, not holy, but we are definitely fighting for good and fighting for the light, with faith in Bible prophecy:

“Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill made low. The crooked roads shall become straight, the rough ways smooth. The people who walk in darkness will see a bright light. The light will shine on those who live in the land of death’s shadow. For to us a child is born, to us a son is given!”

We believe that tears will be replaced by joy, hope will come after despair, and death will be defeated by life.

Today and all future winter holidays we meet in difficult circumstances. Someone will see the first star in the sky over Bakhmut, Rubizhne, and Kreminna today. Along thousands of kilometers of the front line. Someone is on the road, on the way – from the Ukrainian-Polish border to Kherson region or Zaporizhzhia. Someone will see it through the bullet holes of his or her own home. Someone will celebrate the holiday in other people’s homes, but strange people’s homes – homes of Ukrainians who gave shelter to Ukrainians. In Zakarpattia, Bukovyna, Lviv region, Ivano-Frankivsk region and many other regions. Someone will hear Shchedryk in another language – in Warsaw, Berlin, London, New York, Toronto and many other cities and countries. And someone will meet this Christmas in captivity, but let them remember that we are also coming for our people, we will return freedom to all Ukrainian men and women.

Wherever we are, we will be together today. And together we will look at the evening sky. And together we will remember the morning of February 24. Let’s remember how much we have passed. Let’s remember Azovstal, Irpin, Bucha, Kramatorsk, Snake Island, Chornobayivka, Izium, Kherson. We make a wish. One for all. And we will feel joy. One for all. And we will understand the truth. One for all. About the fact that no kamikaze drones are capable of extinguishing the Christmas Dawn. We will see its glow even underground in a bomb shelter. We will fill our hearts with warmth and light. No Kinzhal missile can hurt them. They will break against our steel spirit. And our struggle will continue without stopping. It is not threatened by planned or emergency blackouts. And we will never feel a shortage of courage and indomitability.

We have experienced a lot of bitter news and will deservedly receive good news. We will sing Christmas carols – cheerier than ever – louder than the sound of a generator. We will hear the voices and greetings of relatives – in our hearts – even if communication service and the Internet are down. And even in total darkness – we will find each other – to hug each other tightly. And if there is no heat, we will give a big hug to warm each other.

We will celebrate our holidays! As always. We will smile and be happy. As always. The difference is one. We will not wait for a miracle. After all, we create it ourselves.

Christ is born! Let’s praise Him! 

Christmas Truce of World War 1

What have we learned?

The First World War is sometimes called the Great War. It was also supposed to be the war to end all wars.

Great War is an oxymoron and it didn’t end all wars.

There’s been lots of smaller conflicts within and between countries, and the bigger Second World War, since then. Now there are very real fears that we’re on the eve of the Third.

There’s irony in Putin’s supposed motivation for invading Ukraine, to get rid of the Nazis, when there’s so much similarity between his invasion and that of Nazi leader, Hitler’s invasion of Poland, which triggered WWII.

Lest we forget we intone on Anzac Day as we remember old wars and the people who served in them, the people who died in or as a consequence of them, and the people who were scarred by them.

We haven’t forgotten but what have we learned when in the 21st century the evil that caused last century’s wars and the horrors that resulted are being repeated and more is threatened?

Or should the question be: what haven’t we learned and what do we need to learn?

We are the world

Robert Fulghum writes:

As my Czech readers know, after 30 years and 21 books, plus book tours that have taken me to many towns and cities across the country, I feel an affinity for Czech history, culture, and people.
I know that the Czechs were invaded and occupied by the Nazis in 1939.

Likewise, the Russians invaded and occupied the country in 1968.
And the communist government repressed the people for years until the spirit of the people rose up and the Velvet Revolution brought democracy in 1989.

The Czechs are no strangers to the oppression of autocratic rule.
Now the mighty Russian Bear is not far away – and on the move.
Vicious when aggressive, deadly when cornered.
A fearful time for Czechs, all Europe, the World, and even me.

I look at Czech news daily.
I was deeply moved by the videos of Wenceslas Square in Prague – filled to overflowing with 80,000 Czechs expressing their solidarity with the Ukrainians and their defiance of the Russian invasion. Million Moments for Democracy – (Milion chvilek pro demokracii) is the name of the movement to do all that is possible to support democracy, oppose Russian aggression, and give aid to the Ukrainian people in every way.

There are 200,000 Ukrainians legally living In Czechia, with another 100,000 refugees added last week – and more arrive every day. More than 100 million Czech kronor have been donated for humanitarian aid. Many people are driving to the Slovak or Polish border to offer aid to the refugees, including taking them into their own homes. I know some of these people.
And no doubt there are those living in Czechia who have taken up arms and crossed the borders in the opposite direction to join the active resistance with their weapons and lives.

Why am I telling you this?
I am not Czech or Ukrainian.

I live 9 time zones and thousands of miles from central Europe.
What does it have to do with me?

Consider:

For the last three years, a virus from a meat market in a small Chinese town has radically affected my culture, economy, and daily life.

Climate change knows no political borders – it’s worldwide.

And an invasion of a European country by Russia already means I paid a dollar more per gallon of gas when I filled up today.

When I walked out of the bookstore yesterday, two big semi-trucks rolled through downtown – with yellow and blue Ukrainian flags flying from their front bumpers. Ukrainian-American drivers.

The Earth was never smaller or more connected than it is now.

This is not 1939 or 1968 – it’s the 21st century.
And there are weapons at the ready we never had back then.
Chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons – ones, if used, will affect all life on Planet Earth – and even me, in Moab.
We have the United Nations. The European Union. The North American Treaty Alliance – all to say we are united against tyranny.

The man responsible for the barbaric assault on Ukraine has the power to push a button and start MAD – mutually assured destruction.
If he will allow the bombing of a maternity hospital, what else is he prepared to do?

I cannot turn away and say this is all so far away.
Not looking at the news is not an option.
Not thinking about what might happen is not an option.
Free people everywhere need to add their voices to those raised in Wenceslas Square – united against another holocaust.
Me, too.
If not us, who?
If not now, when?
We are the world.

Food security under threat

The war in Ukraine is threatening world food supplies.

This is a clear message on the situation with food security. Thanks to ⁦@TheoDJager⁩ ⁦@worldfarmersorg⁩ for finding this ⁦@FedFarmers⁩ ⁦@GHGGuru⁩ ⁦⁦@blairdrysdale77⁩ ⁦@DamienOConnorMP⁩ ⁦@Kieran_McAnulty⁩ ⁦@chrisluxonmp⁩ pic.twitter.com/DusRO3FDeM

— Katie Milne (@ktmilne6) April 10, 2022

World Vision shares the concern:

World Vision New Zealand warns that the crisis in Ukraine and the downstream impact on world wheat supplies threatens to plunge millions into an acute hunger crisis.

Ukraine and Russia are responsible for nearly a third of the world’s wheat exports, but the conflict has curtailed the planting season and caused a spike in the global price of wheat.

World Vision New Zealand National Director, Grant Bayldon, fears that the reduced wheat supply and its soaring price will severely impact emergency food supplies.

“Wheat is a staple in diets around the world and is a key component in emergency food rations. Any crash in wheat supply will have a devastating impact on millions of families in Afghanistan, Syria, and Eastern Africa who are reliant on emergency supplies to feed their children,” he says.

“We are already hearing stories of mothers in East Africa who are checking the pulse of their babies during the night to make sure they are still alive. What a devastating and disturbing ritual to have to perform each night.”

Bayldon says World Vision partners with the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) to deliver food aid in countries grappling with starvation and malnutrition, but the WFP gets half its grains from Ukraine and Russia.

“The crisis in Ukraine is rippling beyond Europe in a catastrophic way. We are concerned that the food price rises will mean more and more people in vulnerable countries will struggle to buy food and will be pushed to the brink of starvation,” he says.

In seven East African countries alone, more than 28 million people currently need humanitarian assistance due to varying levels of food insecurity. Around one in five of these are children who are suffering high levels of malnutrition.

“Starvation is devastating. We know that mothers in conflict zones often say to us that the hardest thing for them to bear is not the violence, but it is watching their children slowly perish from starvation while they are helpless to do anything. This is the brutal experience for many mothers in Eastern Africa right now,” he says. . . 

Crops should be being sown in Ukraine now. It will be too late soon and crops that aren’t sown can’t be harvested.

A food shortage could be seen as good news for New Zealand when we produce so much more food than we need but it’s not.

We don’t produce all the different types of food we need and with the costs for inputs like fertiliser increasing, profits are eroded, even if prices increase.

Price increases are bad news for consumers who have to pay more for food and that hits the poorest people and the poorest countries the hardest.

Food shortages and higher prices are sowing the seeds for both a humanitarian crisis and political instability.

West dropped big stick

Theodore Roosevelt’s foreign policy was to talk softly and carry a big stick.

Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan may or may not have talked softly but they carried big sticks – the means and the will to out-muscle the Soviet Union.

That’s what ended the Cold War.

In recent years the Western powers have not only dropped their big stick, they’ve played into Russia’s hands by focusing on the wrong threat.

Jacinda Ardern declared addressing climate change her generation’s nuclear moment but as Bjorn Lomborg explains it’s not climate change but nuclear war we should fear:

Weeks before thermobaric rockets rained down on Ukraine, the chattering classes at the World Economic Forum declared “climate action failure” the biggest global risk for the coming decade. On the eve of war, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry fretted about the “massive emissions consequences” of Russian invasion and worried that the world might forget about the risks of climate change if fighting broke out. Amid the conflict and the many other challenges facing the globe right now, like inflation and food price hikes, the global elite has an unhealthy obsession with climate change.

Yesterday we got another forecast of doom:

After a contentious approval session where scientists and government officials went through the report line by line, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has now published its guidance on what the world can do to avoid an extremely dangerous future.

First, the bad news – even if all the policies to cut carbon that governments had put in place by the end of 2020 were fully implemented, the world will still warm by 3.2C this century. . . 

Back to Lomborg:

This fixation has had three important consequences. First, it has distracted the Western world from real geopolitical threats. Russia’s invasion should be a wake-up call that war is still a serious danger that requires democratic nations’ attention. But a month into the war in Ukraine, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres—whose organization’s main purpose is ensuring world peace—was focused instead on “climate catastrophe,” warning that fossil-fuel addiction will bring “mutually assured destruction.” His comments come at a time when nuclear weapons are posing the biggest risk of literal mutually assured destruction in half a century.

Second, the narrow focus on immediate climate objectives undermines future prosperity. The world currently shells out more than half a trillion dollars annually in private and public funds on climate policies, while spending from the governments of countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development on innovation that underpins growth in areas such as healthcare, space, defense, agriculture and science has been declining as a percentage of gross domestic product over recent decades.

Education performance in developed nations is stagnant or declining, and real income growth among OECD countries has almost stalled this century. By contrast, in China, where innovation-related spending is up 50% from where it was in 2000 and education is rapidly improving, average incomes have increased fivefold since the start of the 21st century.

Third, in the world’s poorest countries, the international community’s focus on putting up solar panels coexists with a woeful underinvestment in solutions to massive existing problems. Infectious diseases like tuberculosis and malaria kill millions; malnutrition afflicts almost a billion people; more than three billion lack access to reliable energy.

These and other issues plaguing the developing world are solvable, but get far less funding from wealthy countries than climate change. Giving the developing world affordable access to consistently available energy—which often requires fossil fuels—is the key to lifting most of the world out of poverty. Yet before the invasion of Ukraine, the developed world was racing to make fossil fuel energy more expensive and less accessible for the world’s poorest.

It’s making fossil fuel energy too expensive in developed countries too.

What underpins this climate fixation? The false and irresponsible idea that global warming poses an immediate existential risk for the world. Climate change is real and man-made; have no doubt about that. But the best economic estimates used by the Obama and Biden administrations, as well as those created by the only climate economist to ever win the Nobel Prize in economics, all show that the total impact of unmitigated climate change—not just on the economy but overall—would be equivalent to less than a 4% hit to global GDP annually by the end of the century.

The U.N. estimates that the average person in 2100 will be 450% as rich as today. If climate change continues unabated, the average person will be “only” 434% as rich—a far from catastrophic outcome.

A world scared witless doesn’t make smart decisions—so it should be no surprise it hasn’t managed to make a dent in climate change. Globally, last year saw the most CO2 emissions ever, despite $5 trillion spent over the past decade on climate policies. The U.N. admitted in 2019 that there has been “no real change in the global emissions pathway in the last decade” despite the global Paris agreement.

One reason for that is that the tax more and do less policies that climate alarmists promote are politically unpalatable.

The European Union has tried to shift to renewables but still gets more than 70% of its energy from fossil fuels. Much of the rest is generated by burning wood chips from trees chopped down in America and transported on diesel ships. Solar and wind produce only 3% of the European Union’s energy, and the technology is unreliable, often requiring backup from gas when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow. Europe’s refusal to embrace shale gas—which can be found throughout the Continent but remains untapped—has left it at the mercy of Russian gas. The past two months show how dangerous this is.

Well-meaning politicians across the world have been proposing policies to reach net-zero emissions in coming decades. According to McKinsey, the policies will cost $9.2 trillion every year until net zero is supposed to be achieved in 2050. This is equivalent to half the global tax take. Such extremely costly policies are unlikely to be enacted by emerging economies such as India or Africa, whose emissions will skyrocket as their populations and economies grow. Net zero is also likely to fail in the developed world, where its high costs will erode prosperity and thus political support. Achieving net zero would cost every American family $19,300 a year, according to the McKinsey study.

To respond to climate change effectively, the world needs to spend more on green-energy innovation and develop renewables that are reliable and cost-effective. To address their immediate energy problems, Europe and America need to embrace fracking—despite Russian-funded propaganda discrediting it—and help the rest of the world access the oil and gas it needs. There are many serious threats in the world today, but most won’t get the attention they deserve until the political classes drop their hyperbole about climate change and treat it like what it actually is—only one of the many problems to be solved in the 21st century.

And like every other problem the solutions will come from research not crying the sky is falling when it isn’t nor with the political and bureaucratic policies, unsupported by science, that are being promoted to solve the problem, and are failing to do so.

UN routinely warns us that we have just a few years left until catastrophe:

In 1989, a senior UN official warns Associated Press that we have to fix climate change by 1999

or climate change goes beyond human controlhttps://t.co/JGkciBxmwz pic.twitter.com/gcbzLyDT8D

— Bjorn Lomborg (@BjornLomborg) April 5, 2022

But what can I do?

Robert Fulghum wonders what he can do about Ukraine and starts with the story of the cellist of  Sarajevo:

Background:
To make a long and very complicated story short, the breakup of the state of Yugoslavia resulted in a bitter conflict that became known as the Bosnian War. This was 1992.
A horrible time – many war crimes, genocide, ethnic cleansing, rape.
At the heart of the conflict was the siege of Sarajevo, which was the longest siege of a major city in modern history.

Enter Vedran Smailovic into the history of that place and time.

Here’s what I wrote about him in my book of essays, Maybe, Maybe Not published in 1993:

“Middle-aged, longish hair, great bushy mustache. He is pictured in formal evening clothes. Sitting in a café chair in the middle of a street. In front of a bakery where mortar fire struck a breadline in late May, killing twenty-two people waiting for food.

He is playing his cello. As a member of the Sarajevo Opera Orchestra, there is nothing he can do about hate and war. Even so, every day for twenty-two days he has braved sniper and artillery fire to sit and play Albinoni’s profoundly moving Adagio in G Minor.
Every day. For 22 days. . . .

You’ll find the rest of the story and Fulghum’s answer to but what can I do by clicking on the link above.

The journal posts stay up for a limited time.

‘This is an illegal war’ – Schwarzenegger

Arnold Schwarzenegger speaks to the Russian people:

https://twitter.com/Schwarzenegger/status/1504426844199669762

Rural round-up

War and sanctions have caused commodities chaos :

Global commodity crises tend to cause severe economic damage and political upheaval. The oil shocks of the 1970s left Western economies with runaway inflation and deep recessions. Oil revenues also helped prop up the Soviet Union and fuelled the export of Saudi extremism. Soaring grain prices in 2010 and 2011 were a trigger for the street protests that led to the Arab spring and the toppling of dictators.

Today Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is unleashing the biggest commodity shock since 1973, and one of the worst disruptions to wheat supplies since the first world war. Although commodity exchanges are already in chaos, ordinary folk have yet to feel the full effects of rising petrol bills, empty stomachs and political instability. But make no mistake, those things are coming–and dramatically so if sanctions on Russia tighten further, and if Vladimir Putin retaliates. Western governments need to respond to the commodity threat as determinedly as to Putin’s aggression.

The turmoil unfolding in energy, metals and food markets is broad and savage. Overall indices of commodity prices are now 26 per cent higher than at the start of 2022. The cost of a barrel of Brent crude oil has swung wildly around levels that indicate the biggest supply shock since Saddam Hussein’s army crossed from Iraq into Kuwait in 1990.

European gas prices have almost trebled amid panic that pipelines from the east will be blown up or starved of supply. The price of nickel, used in all-electric cars among other things, has spiraled so high that trading in London has been halted and Chinese speculators are nursing multi-billion-dollar losses. . . 

Ukraine farmer warns of looming food crisis – Country Life:

Ukrainian villagers and farmers have been thrown back into the Middle Ages, slaughtering pigs and milking cows by hand in an effort to keep the country fed, a farmer in Ukraine says.

Kees Huizinga said Russia’s invasion of its neighbour was not only creating a humanitarian catastrophe at home, but also a global food security crisis.

For the past 20 years the Dutchman has farmed 15,000 hectares about 200 kilometres south of the capital Kyiv.

He also milks 2000 cows, keeps 450 sows and plants a range of crops including wheat – the grain which helped give Ukraine, together with Russia, the moniker “breadbasket of Europe”. . . 

Stunning place to stay – thank you Julia #braemarstation A2O cycle way. pic.twitter.com/iKdx5PHdY6

— Katie Milne (@ktmilne6) March 12, 2022

Farming in a pressure cooker – Colin Williscroft:

A rapidly changing world is forcing change on farmers faster than ever before, but 2019 Nuffield scholar Corrigan Sowman suggests taking some lessons from the All Blacks’ playbook can help.

A presenter at the Farmax conference webinar held on March 9-10, Sowman spoke on the topic of his Nuffield study paper, Farming in a Pressure Cooker, and applied it to farming three years on.

In his earlier paper, he noted that global agriculture was at a crossroads, with past practices no longer deemed acceptable and often scrutinised by people with half the facts and pressure on farmers compounding as a result. 

He said some farmers were being overwhelmed by the situation, which was reflected in their mental health. . .  

New Zealand red meat export values grow despite pressures on sector :

New Zealand’s red meat sector is continuing to achieve strong export results in the face of considerable labour shortages and global supply chain disruption, says the Meat Industry Association.

The latest MIA analysis shows the industry is overcoming significant headwinds with exports reaching $940 million during January, a 27 per cent increase by value on January 2021.

The value of exports increased to nearly all the major markets. China was up 25 per cent to $398m, the United States up 32 per cent to $195m, the United Kingdom up nine per cent to $41m and Japan up 76 per cent to $40m.

“January was another very positive month for exports, which reflects the efforts across the sector to overcome the many challenges in processing and exporting,” said MIA chief executive Sirma Karapeeva. . . 

Hard work bears fruit for Central Otago orchardist – Country Life:

Kevin Jackson and his team go out on a limb to ensure the harvesting season runs smoothly at Jackson Orchards in Cromwell.

Kevin’s original orchard was located in the Cromwell Gorge but he was forced to leave the property when the Clyde Dam was being built.

Keen to stay local, he bought two large blocks of fertile land overlooking Lake Dunstan and developed new orchards and a roadside fruit shop.

“We started planting in 1969 and it was spread over five years before the total property was fully planted,” he says. . . 

Look at this bull calf 🤠 pic.twitter.com/nNQ82ploLN

— Shiloh Shores (@Shiloh__Shores) March 12, 2022

 

Big wheat trouble in China – Andrew Whitelaw:

The Snapshot

• The Chinese ag minister has declared that the winter wheat crop will be the worst in history.
• >90% of the Chinese wheat crop is winter planted.
• China is a huge producer of grain but requires a large import program.
• Australia no longer sends barley, but we send wheat to China.
• China has huge stockpiles (on paper) but has increased the import volumes during the past two years.
• 2022 will test whether those stocks are as large as government sources suggest.
• This development will likely see imports remain strong.

 

Blame Greta?

Sometimes someone writes what you’ve been thinking but haven’t had the courage to say, or the words to express it as well as Theodore Dalrymple does:

. . . Once the Russians have flattened and occupied Kiev, Lviv, Kharkiv, etc., as surely they will (for anything less would be a defeat), the question will be asked in the West, “Who lost Ukraine?”—as once the question, “Who lost China?” was asked. My preferred answer would be Greta Thunberg—or perhaps I should say, to be a little fairer, Greta Thunberg and people like her.

The Thunberg episode must have been of great aid and comfort to the man in the Kremlin, for it must have convinced him, as it convinced his apologists in the West, of the almost total decadence and fundamental unseriousness of the West. Here was a spoiled upper-middle class Swedish girl claiming that her childhood had been stolen—by whom and by what, exactly?—and no one in any position of power or responsibility had the guts to tell her to shut up and to stop broadcasting her disgusting self-satisfied and highly privileged self-pity. Instead, she was the object of deference and almost of adulation, as if she were being brave in the way that anti-war demonstrators in Russia have been brave.

Why did no one in any position of power or responsibility take on little Greta and tell her to go away? The answer, probably, is sentimentality: She was young, and everyone knows that adolescence is the springtime of idealism. To destroy the fatuous illusions of the ignorant and inexperienced is cruel; therefore, we must submit meekly to be lectured, or hectored, by them, and to do as they say. The fact that the person in question may have been as manipulated as a cruise missile was not allowed to enter anyone’s mind.

One can just imagine little Greta Thunberg trying to hector Putin or Xi: The whole idea is so absurd that it can’t be entertained for a moment. It’s precisely for this reason, that Putin wasn’t decadent enough to take her seriously even for a moment, that some so-called conservatives in the West admired Putin: the enemy of my enemy being supposedly my friend. As we now see, Putin is not anyone’s friend: But Greta Thunberg was his friend, in what Stalin would have called the objective sense.

She was his friend because she, and those who thought like her, assisted in creating Europe’s extreme vulnerability to Russia’s control over its energy supplies. We don’t want nuclear; we don’t want coal; we don’t want gas; we don’t want oil. The reality, however, is that the population does want to be warm over winter, it doesn’t want the factories to close down, and it’s quite attached to the continuous electricity supply that so far renewables can’t guarantee. Thus, the political class paid lip service to the Greta Thunbergs and their like while continuing, and indeed extending, the continent’s dependence on energy from Russia—a potentially, and now actually, hostile power. Of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Net Zero policy, I can barely bring myself to speak.

Putin’s hand would have been much weaker had Europe not chosen to be so abjectly dependent on Russian energy. How he must have giggled—if giggling is in his repertoire—to see the fawning reception of Greta Thunberg in the West. With what contempt must he have regarded us, he, an ex-KGB operative who believes that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century. Thunberg and her ilk must therefore bear some of the responsibility for bringing about the war in Ukraine.

They wanted net zero: What they got was the scramble for more nuclear power stations, more oil and gas exploration, and even a resort to coal, plus Russia into the bargain.     

Is it fair to blame Greta? No.

But it is fair to question, and possibly blame,  the people who allowed her to be exploited and the people, and the media, who promoted her and her views without questioning them and without looking for much better solutions to climate change than the tax more and produce less that so many seeking a greener world promote.

And it is definitely fair to blame the policies that left so many countries vulnerable to energy shortages which strengthened Putin’s hand.

There’s lessons for New Zealand here with the rush to stop oil and gas exploration, and allowing the country’s only petrol refinery to close.

We’re already seeing the consequence of that in imports of coal which is dirtier than that which we’re not permitted to mine here.

War in Ukraine sowing seeds of global food shortages

Kees Huizinga is a Dutch farmer who has been farming in Ukraine for the past 20 years. At the start of the war, he sent his wife and kids out of the country and is doing what he can to continue farming, growing the food that’s needed in Ukraine and around the world. This is an interview with Kees, recorded early in the morning, Ukraine time, on March 1, 2022.

At about 12:00 he talks about the threat of food shortages.

Farmers have stopped planting barley in the south of Ukraine, if it happens all over the country 100 million tonnes of food won’t be produced.

The threat of that was reflected in yesterday’s GlobalDairyTrade auction in which the price index went up 5.1% to a record high.

It is probably too late in the season for that to be reflected in a major lift in the milk payout, but it does indicate a positive outlook for next season.

However, the war is already putting upwards pressure on fuel and fertiliser so any gains on earnings will be at least partially offset by increases in the cost of inputs.

Even if that wasn’t the case, no sane person would want war to be the price paid for a better payout.