A Nation Stands at the Crossroads: Upon the Very Heels of a Highly Significant Death, The U S Commandeerer-in-Chief Rushes to Appoint Amy Coney Barrett as Supreme Court Successor to Ruth Bader Ginsberg, In a Decisive Move Which If it Transpires as Expected Will Bring the Entire (Dis)United States of America to the Very Precipice, to a Veritable Knife-Edge (in the Memorable Words of the Lady Galadriel to the Nine Companions/'Fellowship of the Ring' in Peter Jackson Et Al's Cinematic Reinterpretation of JRR Tolkien's Epic Lord of the Rings Trilogy), From Which, If and As It Unfolds, The 'Slightest of Movements' Either Way May Well Signify Whether Its Original Aims and Objectives Ultimately Prove Successful or Otherwise: It's Make or Break Moment, Folks, It Really Is...

But Does That Mean the Entire Covid-19 Saga - Whether Globally or New Zealandwide - Is Perfectly 'Above Board' and 'On the Level' (so to speak)? Well, actually...yes - and no!

What, you're telling me (yep, I'm speaking pejoratively and in the shoes of an onlooker acting as devil's advocate regarding Yours Truly) that I'm in the ranks of the loony-tunes, of the conspiracy theorists and other associated 'nutters'? Well, once again - to repeat myself - no, and yes...

To take two examples/instances taken randomly from this afternoon's RNZ National News bulletins, the latter repeated often throughout the day...

On the 4 p.m. News we were told about a major protest *today/overnight in London over the Covid-19 (lockdown) measures, in which protestors believed/claimed the whole thing was a (global) hoax being used surreptitiously for clandestine purposes, as in to control the (world) population...

Okay, I happen to - completely - disagree in terms of it being any sort of a hoax, let alone a conspiracy as such, but what I most definitely/certainly do believe...

apart from what I specify in intricate detail upon my fifth blogsite,

http://IRYMN.blogspot.co.nz/ (or .com/),

in two or three blogposts posted three to four or so months ago...

is that the entire pandemic has set in motion such legal and other precedents which are not only being presently milked rather shamelessly and shamefully by various governments around the world, but moreover that even if not at present being at all evil or underhand are nevertheless putting in place 'stuff' (for want of a word to order) that future far less scrupulous political administrations 'here, there and everywhere' (i.e. worldwide) may well, and indeed will - at some unspecified date/time 'down the line' in the 'unforeseeable' (i.e. future) - choose/deign to use as an all too convenient pretext for furthering far less benevolent and far more nefarious purposes/agendas... 

One reason, in fact, that this very day I've - despite ever and only really subscribing to the tenets of one particular political party (in God's Own/Godzone), i.e. (what was once known as) the Social Credit Political League, these days simply known as 'Social Credit' - that is, alongside its onetime contemporaneous, and virtually **identical party - minus Socred's social conservatism - the Values Party) - and I still intend to support Social Credit by ticking the box of the local electorate candidate...

- determined this very afternoon I'll pretty certainly be giving the Advance/Public Party combo my party vote in Aotearoa-New Zealand's upcoming general election...

-and that despite my real and rather serious reservations about and even objections to some somewhat extreme elements to their Covid-19 policy plank... 

The second (news) item? On RNZ National's 8 p.m. (and Midday etc) news bulletins today we were told that 'There are repercussions for [disobeying] the [covid-19] laws [vis-a-vis] German sailors 'deliberately flouting' these (i.e. in New Zealand's own territorial waters, I presume)...

Really? Then what are the repercussions for the New Zealand Government apparently likewise flouting the law (of the land, you know, the sort they spend every waking moment writing and rewriting) according to New Zealand's Supreme (or Appeals) Court('s fairly landmark decision) recently? 

Hey, I'm only asking, please don't start stoning me for being disloyal to our globally-feted leader...

Or is it, as Eric Blair's (i.e. George Orwell's) brilliant oft-repeated refrain in his classic 20th-century fable Animal Farm expressed it so very aptly...reworking this, you understand, for the NZ context...

Some ****sheep are equal, but some ****sheep are {just a tad] more equal than others. 

*For the meantime bear with a few of my (alternating) specifics, frankly they matter not one whit or iota.

**A thing I always found rather curious, and indeed received my answer a decade or so ago (following my own brief electoral stint in NZ's 2008 General Election) from a local 'Socred' party official seeking to ***enrol me (free of charge, as well) as a member of said party...

that the Values Party had effectively 'stolen' Social Credit's policies...which, to look at another way - disregarding valid/legitimate charges of (political) plagiarism, no doubt - was actually paying Socred the highest form of flattery...

***Something which, despite his evident generosity, I  regretfully declined, seeing belonging to any merely (if necessarily) 'worldly' (as in earthly, as opposed to profane) political party to be a form of (implicit) treason to my One and Only Lord and Master Who brooks no rival for one's allegiance... 

****Substituting the traditional export-earning farm animal once 23 times more populous than our people for the popular, 'iconic' kiwi... 

COVID-19/The Coronavirus: Look, Folks, It AIN'T a Salvation Issue

So, yes, by all means feel free to comply with (the various edicts/orders and associated admonitions of) 'the authorities appointed by God'...

except insofar as you simply cannot in all good conscience do so, and believe in so doing you would be inevitably transgressing/breaking God's eternal, everlasting (Moral) Law of love and liberty...

 Hygiene/hygienic practices - including the likes of quarantining - quite frankly could not be more biblical, it/they really couldn't (be)...

-see, for instance, Leviticus 13:1-15:33, a 'section' of (Older Testament) scripture comprising fully 1/2 % of the entire Bible...

...and also my own blogpost on the matter, on my fifth blogsite, i.e.

http://irymn.blogspot.com - 'I Realize You Might Not Happen to Agree, But This is How I See It Anyhow'...

...in March or April I believe, right at the start of the nationwide New Zealand lockdown...

Making oneself a 'martyr for the Lord' is oftentimes, I would (very respectfully) suggest, simply a convenient pretext for giving the authorities that be *'the fingers', emotionally satisfying, admittedly, but so often productive of no real much less longer-term good...

Indeed, the biblical admonition (given in a wholly different context altogether) in Romans 12:18, but a few short verses earlier (as a matter of coincidental fact), of, as far as possible - 'as much as it lies in you(r keeping)' - be(ing) [i.e.living] at peace with all men [i.e. people], is only too applicable here.

Yes, the apostles John and Peter (in two recorded incidents) in the Acts of the Apostles certainly didn't avoid declaring the absolute necessity 'under God' of rendering implicit (and explicit) obedience to God over against mere humanity - that is, when(ever) the two classes of duty happened to conflict; but of course that was never meant to serve as some sort of catch-all 'get out' (of jail free) clause much less excuse to thumb one's nose at the powers that be when(ever) it happened to suit one('s particular sensibilities, prejudices or political/ideological biases/agenda)...

No, as Jesus Himself said on one occasion (in a scripture seldom quoted): Judge righteous judgment...not according to mere appearance. 

And in another two/three contexts (but again wholly relevant and apposite, as it so happens), since said authorities 'stand in Moses' seat'[i.e. of (in this case secular rather than religious) authority] **do as they say...but not as they [so often] do... 

Elsewhere advising Peter to pay the requisite temple tax 'lest we ***offend them' [i.e. selfsame authorities] and otherwise 'giv[ing] to Caesar what is Caesar's'...responses which baffled his critics and enemies no end in their profound simplicity and incontrovertible wisdom...

...i.e. enjoining the duty of compliant citizenship upon all citizens within a(ny particular) jurisdiction... 

*The two-fingered salute that one-time U S President George Bush (Senior) gave Australians back in the day, intending to indicate victory but unfortunately signifying something else altogether...

**As New Zealand's own (former) health minister, the local M.P. and one-time 'honourable' David Clark, might well have been accused of.

***And that's the reason - alongside sheer cowardice, I'd wager, simply not wanting to get into any unpleasant contention thereabouts - that I've 'positively' avoided this topic up till now, that I've taken so long to write and post this particular blogpost...

But it needs be stated/placed upon the record once and for all, so that when the coming Sunday Law crisis - emanating from the USA, but doubtless 'helped along' by the 'Mother Church''s earnest little helpers and undercover agents (the ancient order of) the Jesuits - comes into its own/pushes front and centre in the 'Time of Tribulation such as never was, no, nor ever will be [again]',

honest-hearted people everywhere will take due heed and may know for a certainty that the then charges of disloyalty and disaffection  to the powers that be are of absolutely no validity whatsoever. 

It's - Long Past - Time: "Let's Close the Gap, Let's Bridge the Divide, Let's Reconcile the Churches": (The 700 Club's) Gordon Robertson is Right On Vis-a-Vis the Long Overdue Need for American Churches (Of the Evangelical Persuasion in Particular) To Walk Out in Their Everyday Church Experience the Plain as Daylight Imperatives of Jesus' Teachings

Yes indeed, as Mr Robertson mentioned it had so often been stated (by various others), 11 a.m.-12 p.m. on a Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in America(n life)...

Confirming or simply validating the experience of my own (long deceased) Dad, who himself noted to his deep disgust and dismay all those many years/decades ago (before he and Mum moved to my *birth (and breeding) home country of Aotearoa-New Zealand in 1960), the **other churches in his/their own proximity/visitation were ***'segregated'.

*As in the common descriptive idiom 'born and bred', that is...

**As in the three he happened to deem acceptable, to even consider as options to attend, I'd gather, i.e. the (Roman) Catholic Church and the Baptist Church, and the Religious Society of Friends (otherwise known as the Quakers); which actually comprise a tiny number/proportion of U S churches by any standard...

It pretty well goes without (needing) saying that it was the last of these three which comprised black as well as white Americans in its 'congregation'...

***Or words to that effect.

Bloodymindedness Gets You Everywhere, Every Time...I Mean, Nowhere Very Fast: Some Thoughts About the Maori Party's, and In Particular Former Co-leader Tariana Turia's UNEQUIVOCAL, UNILATERAL Policy Push to Quite LITERALLY Rename ALL Aotearoa-New Zealand's Places by their 'Original' Maori Names...

Please spare us, folks...your singleminded determination is worthy of a far better object...

But to explain further...   

As Heather Du Plessis-Allan said, after discussing this election proposal with the aforementioned well-respected (not least by Yours Truly) Dame Tariana, on her weekday afternoon Newstalk ZB Drivetime Show this very afternoon,

*why not allow for a combination Maori-European nomenclature for each and every such site?

Knowing full well that to do such a thing (i.e. the aforementioned) would undoubtedly 'get the backs up' of a large percentage of the population...

But sadly, as Ms Turia well showed in her one-time **'antics' with a former Prime Minister of the Labour Party persuasion - which otherwise I would hardly serve with even an iota of criticism -
as with so many it's either 'her way or the highway'...

...and so, as Du Plessis-Allan herself so well put matters today - actually echoing  my own every thought as she did so - doing thus and so, while helping political/electorally the Maori Party in the forthcoming election with its own voter base (there'd be little doubt at all), could well lead to greater racial disharmony, one of the very objects, presumably, she and her party would be most keen to avoid - and like the proverbial plague (or Coronavirus these days)...

*Which incidentally is the precise practice of Yours Truly over the lifetime of my various blogs (far as I can remember), i.e. I've pretty well used Aotearoa-New Zealand as often as New Zealand in referring to my beloved homeland in the Antipodes...

**I.e. the escapist episode via a taxi or the like (as she lowered herself with Ms Clark looking on approvingly) after the two had publicly fallen out bigtime over the Foreshore and Seabed Law...though admittedly I'm yet to make hide nor tail of that particular rather oddball incident!

Je Suis (PORTLAND) Oregon...

For Once Ye Mainstream Media are Verily SPOT ON: Yes, the Scenes We are Viewing Throughout the American West are Indeed APOCALYPTIC, Straight Out of the Book of the Apocalypse Itself In Fact...

And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God...

I will shew wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath; blood and fire, and vapour of smoke...

...before that great and notable day of the Lord come...

And to my *beloved would-have-been 'sister city' of Portland, Oregon no less...

...and withal eerily reminiscent of the reddish skies we here in Aotearoa-New Zealand, and in my hometown of Dunedin, no less, experienced over the past summer, on the very morning of New Years Day, 2020 in point of fact...

*Yes, as I've often ruefully reflected in years and even decades since leaving America in mid-1995, Portland (as in Oregon rather than Maine) was far and away my personal pick of the (larger) city I'd have been more than at home moving to and living in, as I indeed did for awhile (two-three months) in late 1992.

Incredibly and unbelievably it now (as of today or yesterday or whenever) 'boasts' the unenviable distinction of having the world's most polluted air...

...though come to think of it, like its 'sister city' Seattle in Oregon's state neighbour to the north, Washington, back around 1980 following the eruption of Mount St Helens it perhaps likewise had some fairly marginal air quality...

Good On the Aussies...for Having the Gall, the Gumption and the Guts, to Stand Up to the Peoples' Republic of China, or Rather the Self-Appointed 'Representatives' Thereof

P.S. And 'Scomo' is right on vis-a-vis a person's intrinsic, inalienable right and even responsibility to attend the dying moments of (and 'funeral rites' for) their beloved, their nearest and dearest...

No ifs, buts or maybes - get a heart, ye (self-appointed) 'Masters of Covid'...

Grace Virtue: Shown No Grace by her Merciless Assailants and No Justice by a Judge Without Virtue: May You Rest in Peace...and May Your Own (Lifetime) (Good and Gracious, Virtuous) Works Follow You...As Indeed They (Doubtless) Shall

Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood: their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; wasting and destruction are in their paths.

The way of peace they know not; and there is no judgment in their goings...

Therefore is judgment far from us, neither doth justice overtake[-] us...

And judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off: for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter...

Yet Without GENUINE, HEARTFELT, BIBLICAL REPENTANCE Nothing, No, Nothing in the U S of A (Or Anywhere for That Matter) Will Ever - REALLY, TRULY - Change...

And such repentance is ever and only a gift from God, and issues (i.e. results in) or produces works which reflect the same...

And so Bishop Harry Jackson (I believe) is right on in his calling attention to the lack of such repentance (over the years and decades, even centuries presumably) evidenced by white Americans over their mistreatment of their *black compatriots...

Something in point of fact that any serious reader of this and my other (original) blogsite would be only too well aware has been understood and advocated by myself for quite some considerable time.

When I've reflected at times over recent years and decades upon the ongoing invidious plight of Blacks in the States what has especially struck me has been how so many of those who once so vociferously and vehemently (and vigorously) denounced the desegregationalism so powerfully advanced through both legislative enactment and societal changes from the Civil Rights Era on now so almost nonchalantly act as if actual equality as such were such an obvious and unquestionable 'thing'...

...despite many of them having (in decades previous) done their level best to thwart and frustrate and bring to nought any and all such social developments within their nation...

...and in saying so I most certainly do not include the likes of the once notorious segregationist George Wallace, who, it seems to me anyhow, experienced a genuine Road to Damascus experience, unlike so many of his contemporary (especially Republican Party) fellow-travellers.

*And of course other races, such as the Japanese in WW11, but - far more significantly, for obvious reasons - native Americans (American Indians), who experienced virtual genocide in centuries past.

"Not On My Watch!" is a Sentiment , Even 'Fighting Words' (It's Awfully Hard to Argue With) of My Very Own Namesake (Once Previously Alluded to, Upon My Utter Astonishment At Learning of Such) in the Trump Administration, No Less,...i.e. Interior Secretary DAVID BERNHARDT's 'Take' Upon the Out-of-Control 'Cancel Culture' Now Spreading Like an Insect or Rodent Infestation Of/Approaching Biblical Proportions Throughout the Length and Breadth of the States

In particular, vis-a-vis such attempts in the nation's capital, Washington D.C., of late...

As D J Trump has himself said - of which I'm in total agreement on this occasion - this sort of lawless attempt to rewrite America's history and destroy its cultural heritage...

must be stopped (dead in its tracks; ipso pronto; no ifs, buts or maybes)...

*/**Having said all of that, unlike some rather reactionary folk I'm personally of the view that an accommodation of sorts could potentially be made between the various warring factions in such matters, i.e.

such cultural artefacts of undoubted and undisputed historic significance and value could certainly - upon agreement and broad consensus within the body politic - progressively be removed, with due care and sensitivity, and relocated in various museums and the like and in such settings have a more thorough and balanced portrayal presented of all the various major perspectives upon such individual figures of note...

Just trying to be helpful, you understand, which in our day and age of over-the-top implacable bickering, rancour and dogged political partisanship surely couldn't be such a bad thing, you'd think...

But as I've said on other occasions, in a somewhat cynical vein, 'dreams are free', or (more optimistically, if way less realistically) one can only hope that such commonsense might one day prevail...

*Even just qualifying my preceding uncategorical assertion, I well realize and fully concede, doubtless seems to pretty much nullify that (previous) point. Accepting such an assessment as quite legitimate, I nevertheless - being the complicated and nuanced fellow I likewise am - choose to do so anyway, yet also wish to add another important caveat (or qualifier), namely

**That I simply find it impossible to question much less oppose whichever black Americans consider confederate statues (and associated publicly displayed Civil War 'memorabilia') to be outright offensive and worthy of only one possible fate, i.e. public humiliation and destruction...

...basically because those who have been so long downtrodden in such a despicable and appalling manner - as a watching world has looked upon with horror and unbelief and its own sense of outrage over recent years (as the systematic and systemic police violence against black - in particular, but certainly not solely - Americans throughout the lengths and breadths of the United States has been exposed time and again for all to see) - ***can hardly be blamed for finally rising up and declaring: "Enough is enough!"...

***Though I have always heartily 'endorsed' (for want of a better word) the nonviolent road of civil disobedience so ably and effectively articulated by and practiced by the likes of Martin Luther King Junior, when studying a paper in American History (from the Civil War era through the Carter years), I recall being so appalled by the treatment of blacks for so very long I could briefly see the sorts of 'arguments' advocated by the likes of Malcolm X and, if my memory serves me aright, Stokely Carmichael in simply wishing to have the (basic human) 'right' to defend themselves and their families upon being, for example, attacked without reason in the sanctity of their own homes...

Although I wish their (in my view often patronizing and condescending, and moreover gratuitously virtue-signalling) fellow-travellers...such as for instance some prominent (especially foundational) members of the Black Lives Movement...would 'cease and desist' forthwith from what to myself anyhow are rather disingenuous attempts (unfortunately overly 'successful' thus far) to hijack the holding police to account (and now also statue-dismantling) movement for their own ideological agenda and political ends...

effectively using it even, I would argue - ****as others have (and much more ably than myself, I'll readily concede) - as pretty much a Trojan Horse...

****Such as *****the 700 Club's articulate and measured, ever mild-mannered, reasoned and reasonable, Gordon Robertson...

*****As occasionally seen upon New Zealand's Shine TV weekday evening Newscast (from 6 p.m.).

George Orwell (I Mean Eric Blair), Secular Seer of the 20th-Century (and Well Beyond), Once Again Proven a Prophet of Rare Insight...As the Dilettantish Standard-Bearers of 'Our' (English) Language Go to Town Yet Again in Their Incessant Attempts to Turn 1984's 'Newspeak' into Rather Vivid Reality...

Squandering a Superb and Unprecedented - and Undoubtedly Un-(Readily) Repeatable - (God-Given) Opportunity: To Re-set U K Politics for Good: Boris Johnson Et Al's Going AWOL Sadly, if Predictably, Betraying the (Great, Unprecedented) Trust Traditional (Mainly Working-Class) 'Laborites' Throughout the United Kingdom (Especially England and Wales) Reposed in the Brexit-Delivering Government Handed a Whopping Landslide Victory and Mandate in Last December's History-Making Election...as ('Gender-Challenged') Newbie Labour Leader Keir Starmer Goes from Strength to Newfound Strength...

As Covid-19 Takes Out Many Americans, Constitutional Crises Loom In Every Direction and the United States of America Edges Ever Closer to Civil War, the Closest It's Approached That Inauspicious Predicament Since the Days of Abraham Lincoln

To Be Continued... 

Gimme, Gimme, Gimme...Everything I Want...And Preferably Yesterday! (An Entitled Generation's Plea To 'Have it All' - Right Away - I Mean (to say) 'the Juicy Bits'...But None of the Difficult Stuff)

"Yes, let us have all our innate/inherent rights - but none of the concurrent responsibilities. All the privileges of adulthood, but none of the associated responsibilities. All the dessert, and none of the vegetables."

In other words, let's have our cake and to eat it too.

And thus and so an ultra-entitled generation seeks to extend the voting age lower and lower...whilst its standard-bearers will equally vociferously argue that the age of criminal liability be pushed out further and further (towards the late teens)...

Yes, as a good and close friend once taught me, wanting its cake and to eat it too...

Reminds me somewhat of some words with which King Solomon - at the height of Israel's glory as a nation - ended his much-loved Book of Proverbs:

After describing a certain generation, using that very word four times (30:11-14), we find the following words - separately stated for sure, but perhaps relevant to the aforementioned reference:

The leech has two daughters - Give and Give!

Perhaps the Supposedly 'NICE' Left Ain't Necessarily So Very 'NICE' After All (is said and done)...Or Prithee Tell Me Why They're Not Rehiring/Re-engaging New Zealand's Longstanding and Well-respected Sexual Violence Campaigner/Advocate Louise Nicholas?

Or as the undervalued National M.P. and Nicholas namesake Louise Upston so ably articulated as she spoke at the conclusion of the parliamentary debate mid-afternoon today:

Why otherwise has the Government now dropped/dumped Louise Nicholas from her advocacy role on behalf of victims of sexual violence throughout Aotearoa-New Zealand?

As Upston well if succinctly expressed matters, there seem to be only three likely reasons (here repeated in the order she put them):

*She'd been increasingly (if privately/non-publicly) asking the Government a number of uncomfortable questions (presumably about their approach to the subject).

*Her erstwhile public criticisms of the (governing) Labour Party's own track record in the area, as per its youth camp scandal a year or so ago.

*The Labour Government simply doesn't like independent voices per se/fullstop;

(and certainly when it can't control those voices and the direction in which they might happen to go!)
(My own added explanation thrown in for good measure.)

A bit of a worry (as people say), and in my own view especially so in light of the way the previous (Helen Clark-led) Labour Government of 1999-2008 handled/dealt with New Zealand's late great prison reform advocate Celia Lashlie, similarly 'dumped' or the like for her own well-known independent-minded assessment of things in the criminal justice area...

No, the ultra-nice Left ain't really quite so nice after all, going by their (on-the-ground) track record anyhow!

But As Far As 'GodZone'/'God's Own' (Aotearoa-New Zealand) Being a "Hellhole" - According to the Jokester-in-Chief Currently Presiding Over the United States of America - Well, They Do Say (As We All Know) that 'It takes one to know one'...But In This Particular Instance It's Plain as Daylight that the Person Talking (Out of a Hole in His Head? - to be Generous!) is Wholly Lacking in THIS Quality (of Self-Awareness) Also

Necessary Disclaimer:
Though - to quickly clarify - I'm most assuredly not damning my own truly great nation as such a pit of the Devil, nor for that matter alluding to the increasing suspicion around the world that Trump's own nation seems to be rapidly hurtling under his watch in that particular trajectory, but to the man himself (having such *unChristlike qualities)...

As far as NZ Inc constituting a "hellhole", and that (in two other short news-segments in various press conferences etcetera) having recently experienced a "surge" or the like in our Covid-19 situation...

...again, for those pitiful enough to deign to even dignify such remarks by any sort of response whatsoever, anyone with any insight can only say 'Your envy is clearly showing, Mr President."

Though - as per usual - such offhand/'throwaway' (quite literally) comments and 'observations' are a proverbial country mile or thousand as far from the real facts as could almost be possible, why the heck wouldn't they be, and why the heck wouldn't America's present Pontificator-in-Chief be [envious of NZ Inc in general and its popular leader in particular]?

Jacinda Ardern has of course - indeed post-March 15th, 2019 and the Christchurch Mosques' Massacre - been quite literally feted from pillar to post by all and sundry, including and especially by such high-profile and long-respected magazines and newspapers as Time Magazine and the New York Times (including in headline articles and cover stories). But especially since New Zealand's significant - but no, certainly not unique - success in dealing to the coronavirus...

...though claims, including especially by Ardern and her political colleagues here, that the disease has been either eliminated or eradicated have indeed been proven over recent weeks patently untrue.

Yet to even attempt  to somehow make some sort of comparative disparagement of New Zealand, with its 22 deaths (all many months ago now) thus far (and, all told, 1500-odd cases of covid-19 from the get-go to today), with the present (and previous) situation throughout much if not all of the U S is so laughable as to be pathetic in the extreme...

but it sure is providing more than adequate cartoon possibilities and comedy fodder for kiwis...

*Again, to be perfectly measured as well as charitable.

But Having Said All of That (As I So Often Have to Say), NO, I Didn't Come Down in the Most Recent (Pre-Advent) Deluge. And YES, I'm Only Too Well Aware of and Acquainted with the Telltale Signs, Symptoms, Fingerprints, Signature of a Congenital Liar, Especially When HE (in this particular instance) is Blindingly Obviously Staring One Smack Dab in the Proverbial

And so it was yet one more 'clincher of a confirmation' for me when just yesterday (early) morning upon BBC Radio I heard that D J Trump's own sister (it seems) has just come out 'outing' her highfalutin' 'bro'(ther) as just such - having engineered the faking of a varsity degree no less (through the - evidently able - assistance of an erstwhile friend/acquaintance).

It is a matter of no small amusement (and sense of well-warranted deja vu) for me to have instantly recalled having, only a couple (if that) of weeks earlier, in chatting with my own brother, compared the U. S. President to and with an old family friend (and more significantly flatmate of 31-33 years ago)...

...whom a fellow flatmate - who found it quite unconscionable and moreover physically impossible to properly stomach (at the best of times) suffering any fool gladly - then likewise 'outed' for having falsely claimed (on an ongoing basis, as a source of pride and bravado, or rather braggadocio) to have spent a year or two at the (well-known internationally recognized) university here (in Dunedin, New Zealand)...

...but following hard upon some fancy footwork, meticulous inquiry and investigation was nowhere upon their books, i.e. had never ever done any such thing...   

"I Know a Predator When I See One." REALLY? I'll readily concede, that's a great, even high-flying declaration and sentiment. But (I just can't help myself, I have to declare) I'm of the old school, which still happens to believe that 'Decent' IS As 'Decent' DOES: And No, Whatever Donald J Trump's (Seemingly Innumerable, Even Incalculable) 'Faults', 'Failings' and Far More Egregious Crimes and Misdemeanours, There's An Old But Ever True Saying: Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right...

So no matter how 'decent' and 'Christian' Mr Biden may try to present himself to an unsuspecting, readily credulous, even, dare I say it, gullible (American) public,

a true - as in biblically orthodox, and Christ-following - 'believer' doesn't wink at sin...and/or gloss over or otherwise dismiss well-founded and substantiated allegations, and certainly not those of a serious nature...

...which I at least consider those emanating from his former aide, Tara Reade, to most definitely be.

As my own Master and Lord Himself so aptly put it two millennia ago (admittedly in an altogether different context, yet it is not irrelevant to mention here):

Unless you (yes, presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden) repent, you too will [ultimately] perish.

For, just as the 'good folk' of your native land, the U S of A, never ever really 'owned' as in publicly confessed and *repented of their great sin in relation to their countrymen and women - not only black Americans but native Americans as well - from centuries of slavery through the following century of segregation and all the rest, onto the systemic police brutality and violence (of the following half century) upon which the torch of light and truth has only now at last been brought to bear and shine,

unless you too own and publicly confess to and repent of - let the political fallout come as it well may - your own 'crime and misdemeanour' thereabouts, apart from proving yourself (never mind President Trump's own well-known and arguably way more egregious acts both personal and 'presidential',  whether pre- or post-inauguration) wholly unfit to assume the world's most powerful political post - alongside that of the Papacy/Vatican/Holy See of Rome - according to my Bible at least, and on associated good biblical authority, you not only are not in any way, shape or form a 'decent' person, much less 'Christian',

but, once again according to my reading of the word of God, will one day perish, and that for good!

*For true biblical repentance involves the sort of thing that my own nation of New Zealand and South Africa also has long since engaged in. Whether in the latter case the 'Commission for Truth and Reconciliation' or in the former the ongoing Treaty of Waitangi settlements throughout the length and breadth of Godzone/God's Own, repentance - to quote my blogpost title - is as repentance does...

...and involves a - substantial - measure of reconciliation and restitution...

...neither of which seem to have thus far occurred in the United States of America...

...and yet seem at long last - and not just from the political Left but from numerous standard-bearers of the evangelical 'Right' even - to be approaching full steam ahead... 

Plague, Pestilence...and/or Pestilential, 'Pestiferous', Pest (of a Fellow, I mean President): Facing the Crisis of the Ages

"In the year '20-20' " - in resonance with the famous introductory line/refrain/chorus - '25-25' - from the 1970s' chart-topping hit 'The Age of Aquarius' -

we Earthians (homo sapiens) are, it would appear, faced/confronted with the crisis of the ages:
covid-19/the coronavirus...climate change...the (current) American 'Commander-in-Chief'...

To reverse the order...

Donald J Trump (2020 and Beyond): is he the coming Antichrist? Well, some evidently believe so.

Is climate change/global warming not just 'for real', but is it set to put an end to life on earth as we('ve) know(n) it?

Or is it the unlucky last of these three, the dreaded and dreadful, deadly and devastating coronavirus/covid-19, that represents the crisis of our age...and indeed of the ages?

Or is the latter - indeed are all three - but the (biblically) necessary precursors to and of the coming crisis in the cosmic conflict...

...and moreover the celestial footprints in the countdown to Armageddon and the long-cherished, much-anticipated Second Coming/Advent of Jesus the Christ to our world?

Put on your seatbelts, folks, I can readily assure - if not reassure! - you that coming instalments in this here blogsite/blogpost  - alongside those in my original blogsite, i.e.

http://nuffsaid:consideryourself-frombothsidesnow.blogspot.co.nz/ (or .com/)...

and those in one of my latest websites, i.e.

http://666MYSTERY666.blogspot.co.nz/ (or .com/) -

will keep you well and truly strapped to your seats for the forseeable...

as - over coming days - weeks - months - years (if time and circumstances permit - 'all else being equal', in other words) -

these specific subjects, and many more related matters, are traversed in greater detail...

Yes, We're Indeed, Well and Truly Living in The Day and Age of Ye - Usually Impurely and Pettily - Partisan Press (or Rather (Mainstream Western) Media Generally), Whereby Their Motto (Unlike That of Yours Truly) Might as Well Be: 'Bestowing Brickbats and Bouquets With Fear (of) and Favour Toward None...-Yeah, Right!

Yes, 'The Media' These Days is Veritably 'Under (Rather Sustained) Attack' Upon Pretty Well All Fronts These Days...But Seldom from the Centre, Generally Not from the Right, and Almost Always from the (So-called) 'LEFT'...

Bravado, Bluster or Brave and Brilliant Declaration of Defiance Mellowed and Modified by Implicit Recognition of Providential Provision: Hong Kong Media Tycoon Jimmy Lai's 'Reading' of the "blessing of God" in his Patently Unjust Arrest...As the Selfsame Elevates him to Newfound Hero Status Throughout the Gutsy Little Island State as Ye Ole Saga of 'David versus Goliath' is Reformulated and Reconfigured for the Umpteenth Time...

And Regarding (My One-Time Rival for the Electorate Seat of Dunedin South, Soon to Become Known - 'Forever After' - as Taieri) Retiring M.P. Clare Curran's Recent Interview (Post Her Parliamentary Valedictory) Concerning the Present State of So-Called 'Journalism' (in God's Own/Godzone in Particular), as in the Glut of 'Editorializing' By (Especially) Political Correspondents at/from the Beehive...Her Criticisms, Whether Somewhat the Result of Jadedness on a Personal Level or Otherwise, Also (see Preceding Post) Pretty Much Sum Up the Current 'State of Play' Vis-a-vis the Prostitution of Modern-day Mainstream 'Journalism' Throughout At Least Aotearoa-New Zealand and the United States of America, Anyhow...

As For Ye Mainstream (Western) Media's Obsessive, Almost Paranoid Focus Upon All Things Trivial These Days...'Give Us (All) A (Collective) Break!' -That's A Futile Fancy However, As We're Long Past Time When, Quite Frankly,They Could Give A Damn...

As so eloquently conveyed (in quite different and far fewer words) by Newstalk ZB's nighttime talkback host Bruce Russell in the wee small hours overnight...

Hey, d'ya think the election of former celebrity host Donald J Trump might just have somewhat to do with this whole thing...

...as in the American media's own sensationalizing of all things trivial (as in his remarks about *President Obama's not holding United States's citizenship)?

No, I'm off on the wrong track entirely, aren't I...not!

Correction: no, the matter itself wasn't trivial as such, but the comment/suggestion that such a thing was the case was clearly such utter drivel that ye mainstream media ought to have instantly relegated it to the journalistic dustbin...

And As For Monsieur Macron Being the Solution to Lebanon's Woes: If He's the Answer, Lebanon's In Much Bigger Trouble Than Anyone Realizes...For Last I Heard (and Understood from History, Not Only That of Present-day France), the Jesuit Order - Far From Solving the World's Problems - Are Pretty Well One of The Chief Sources and Origins Thereof...

Believe me or not, but one day soon you - and this entire world - will 'discover' this way too late...to do anything about it...

For like the hapless Frodo in Shelob the Spider's labyrinthine maze, they'll then be trapped (with)in this evil ancient order's web, and will be helpless to pry themselves loose...

"Yes, I Might Not Happen to Agree With You, I Might Even Seriously Disagree With You...But I'll Defend to the Death Your Right to Say [What You Believe]"...NO LONGER, Apparently: How Have We Now Reached A Time and a Place Wherein This is No Longer True? (And, No, It's No Longer the So-Called 'Right'(Wing) That's - Generally - Abandoned This Time-Honoured Ethic (of Civility).)

And hey, as for mentioning/citing specific instances thereabouts, I really wouldn't know where to even begin...

And For That Matter, So Too Do the Lives of Hong Kongians...Uighur Muslims...and Mainland Chinese Christians - Among Numerous Other Similarly Situated Folk...

Yes, ZIMBABWEAN LIVES DO MATTER...However Much Ye Mainstream Western Media Might Cruelly and Callously Choose to Ignore Them...No Doubt Afraid of 'the Croc' himself...

Let's All Hereby Give a Due - and Wholly Overdue - Salute to Sean Wallace, aka 'the Dark Destroyer' (of 'The Chase' Fame)...But PLEASE, Oh PLEASE - Pretty Please (Even) - Spare Us All Some Very *Silly Virtue-Signalling by Some Very *Silly Virtue-Signallers Whose Unctuous Semantic Self-Righteousness Has Really, Quite Literally, Gone Off the Deep End...and Into the Abject Abyss...Where, In All Likelihood, Such Self-(Con)Gratulatory Do-Gooders Will Ultimately End Up...With Others Flaunting Their Superior 'Good Intentions'...Alongside the Blatantly Evil and Wicked, Including his (**or rather Its) Infernal Majesty - and **his/Its Myriads of Cohorts - **himself (Itself)...

Hey, if Sean himself is happy enough with (Chase host) Bradley (Walsh's) endearing, tongue-in-cheek monicker, who're all these condescending, patronizing busy-bodies and word police - well (un)worthy of a - prominent and permanent - place in 'the Ministry of Thought' (or the likes) in George Orwell ('nee': Eric Blair)'s epochal 1984, no less - to tell him otherwise...

*Due apologies to the likes of John Cleese (Basil Fawlty) and Co, whose own 'Ministry of Silly Walks' is simply not fit to be mentioned alongside such present-day 'ga-barge' (i.e. garbage), as well-known American radio preacher Chuck Swindoll has well enunciated it...

**As the brilliant H Scott Peck once expressed matters (in his inimitable People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil). He simply couldn't bring himself to assign any gender to the devil or Satan, finding 'him' (or rather 'It') from very real personal encounter/s to be in a category all his (or Its) own, one which Smeagol-Gollum (of J R R Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, or more likely Sir Peter Jackson Et Al's cinematic interpretation thereof) might well say was

"Not [a] decent place[-]." No indeed!

While Winston Likewise Makes the (Only Possible) Right Call...As Regards (Unilaterally) Revoking Our (i.e. Aotearoa-New Zealand)'s Extradition Treaty (For Repatriating Chinese Nationals) With Mainland China...

That is, the specific treaty pertaining to (extradition of) Hong Kong(ers), though I immediately assumed it was the *particular law that the John Key Government had enacted vis-a-vis extraditing Chinese nationals 'at trouble at home' (i.e. in and with the Chinese Governmental authorities)...back to Mainland China to face what would doubtless be 'rough justice' (to put it mildly) in their original homeland...

Yes, Deputy P M Winston Peters deserves nothing but commendation - and received the same from a plethora of people, including former National leader Simon Bridges among others, whose sole criticism - of it being a little late (if certainly the right and proper move to make) - cannot really be faulted, though Peters' (needed) 'machinations' thereabouts with coalition partners obviously necessitated much manoeuvring and finely-niched consultations - to avoid upsetting the apple cart, so to speak (due to needing to get the likes of the normally outspoken Greens to agree thereto, though perhaps in this case it was more a matter of placating cooler, more pragmatic (or, rather, wishy-washy and politically expedient ) heads within Labour)...

Yes, Winston most definitely 'made the right call', while - some/certain - nit-picking commentators, experts, political pundits and other policy wonks busied themselves splitting hairs and attempted - wholly unsuccessfully, I have to add - to besmirch him by damning his move with **faintest praise. As per usual.

But what conceivable alternative option could 'New Zealand Inc' pursue but to follow the United Kingdom and Australian governments' lead in effectively ripping up our own erstwhile version of said extradition treaty with the Central Chinese Communist Government, thus no longer enabling or facilitating the extradition/repatriation of Hong Kong residents here - and other NZ-based Chinese nationals - 'bequeathing' these (perhaps generally perfectly innocent) folk at the request of supposedly justice-seeking authorities in Mainland China...

...knowing full well the likelihood that compliance therewith - as with the five booksellers in Hong Kong a few years ago - would doubtless result in unfair trial and conviction, imprisonment and even death...

*...a law that at the time it was enacted I felt to be insulting, humiliating and obsequious - not to mention obscene and disgusting (and all the rest)...

...one of the particularly low moments of that Government, alongside the disgraceful lowering of the national flag to half-mast upon the death of the then Saudi crown prince (I believe)...

...alongside the equally disgraceful 'pulling up' of the [immigration] drawbridge upon refugees from war-torn lands such as Iraq and Iran (etcetera), nay from places that had undergone ethnic cleansing/genocide no less, (around 2010-2012 or so), despite Prime Minister Key's own grandmother (I believe) herself escaping thus to a safe harbour/haven in God's Own as a survivor of the Nazi Holocaust...

**However, listening in to RNZ National this very morning, I personally don't buy Peters' suggestion or rather explanation that our Government is ***not obligated, as per the UK for instance, in going even further and providing safe haven here for Hong Kongers (in HK itself) as per the UK and Oz are doing...

***I should correct that in this way: no, we're most certainly not legally obliged to do so - Peters' is eminently correct in that assertion, it's fairly incontrovertible...but many folk would suggest there's a much deeper obligation, and that's one called doing the decent thing, and that by any folk anywhere suffering unjust persecution and oppression...

...though in the current rather febrile and fevered atmosphere surrounding the ongoing, never-ending (anytime soon) covid crisis one can hardly see him receiving almost any let alone undue flack thereabouts...

Morality Trumps Mammon -Every Time: At Least for Those Who Still Happen to Believe that the Rights of Human Beings Supersede - By an Infinite Distance - Mere, Sordid, Pecuniary Gain (Vis-a-vis Independent M.P. Jami-Lee Ross's Call to Jettison 'Filthy [Chinese Governmental] Lucre' in Any Real Trade-Off Between Rolling Over or Standing Up to the Chinese (Communist Party) Dragon...Over its Ongoing, Egregious Offences Against People 'Domestically', Regionally and, Let's Not Forget, Globally)

Such 'egregious offences' including/comprising - but by no means limited to -

*The treatment of its ethnic (Muslim) Uighurs

* "        "            "  " newfound territorial 'appendage', the once proud little city-state of Hong Kong

*Its all too evident imperialist designs upon Pacific Island nations c/o oodles of foreign aid

*Spying on Overseas Critics in/Meddling in the Internal Affairs of New Zealand and Australia (in particular)

*Dismissing - and Glossing over the Investigation of - the Origin of Covid-19, Quite Easily the World's Worst Pandemic Since the Spanish Flu of the Post-WW1 Era

*A Brutal yet Under the Radar Crackdown Upon Human Rights in Mainland China, Not Least Amidst its Burgeoning, Even Exploding Ranks of (Underground, Home Churched) Christian Believers

And to round out the list (for a seventh 'offence' one never ever hears a mention of  - as NZ Deputy PM Winston Peters might put it, "Not a murmur, not  whisper" - from ye mainstream media), how about the following tidbit of info gleaned from an impromptu discussion with a stranger - ?Kevin? -  outside The Warehouse Central (soon to close) in Dunedin a couple weeks ago (now)...

*Citing a couple of the **various '-Stans' - as in Ex-Soviet Union/USSR Republic variety - in particular the 'K' ones, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan (but notably not ***Kurdistan), he informed me how - totally unbeknownst to me, and doubtless pretty well one and all - forces from/of the Chinese Mainland Government are apparently stationed in different parts thereof (as in an occupying force, akin probably to the Russkies in Crimea etc), militarily controlling the same

Though one expects some mainstream commentators - i.e. the ones ever and always enamoured with 'economic growth' and the like - to be ever strident critics of folk like Jami-Lee Ross and Winston Peters who to their immense credit do not happen to believe that filthy lucre (from China or anywhere else for that matter) is the be-all-and end-all of all that matters in life, what one might not expect is the reaction - or should I say 'non-reaction' -  of others in the political space, who're equally loquacious about their views upon this, that and the next thing...

Yes, how very interesting - but moreover utterly inconsistent - that some of the very ones - including standard-bearers upon the Western political Left, especially media-based...themselves one-time 'champions' (for want of a more apt term) of pretty well the first noted (presidential) advocate in the U S of A of such 'morality in foreign policy', i.e. President Jimmy Carter...-as against the likes of his (immediate) successor, Ronald Reagan-

now are quite literally nowhere to be found...

Double standards? Hypocrisy? You be the judge...but, quite frankly, it's proving increasingly difficult to arrive at any other 'logical' conclusion...

For my money - scarce as it ever is - I welcome Ross' (and Peters') 'interventions', small as they are (in the overall scheme of things) as a welcome breath of fresh air in global 'realpolitik'...and would remain 100% behind them even were they ultimately to result in a revocation (by China) of its 2008 free trade deal with our nation - evidently one of, if not the world's first - recognizing - for my part - that some things matter (a whole lot more) than a nation's financial balance sheet...

Being able to look at oneself (including as an independent, self-respecting nation) each and every morning with a clear conscience surely matters as much....

Do you not agree?

**Curiously enough an inexplicable source of (at times, i.e. over recent years) 10-20 or so 'hits'/results (as in page views by) upon both this (in particular) and my initial (Nuff Said) blogsite...

***Of course this is not - presently - an independent nation as such, but many (like myself) believe - long since - blimmin' oughta be...

And Though I, For One - While Perhaps Being Increasingly the Only One - Don't, As Yet, Consider Him the Devil Incarnate, At the Same Time You Have to Give It to (President) Donald J Trump (for This Much, Anyhow): He Sure as Heck Is No Rank Amateur at Making it Up as He Goes Along...

He's not only made a veritable art-form of the practice, he's pretty well ready to hand out PhDs in the same, with 'Summa Cum Laude' thrown in for added measure to those who're imitating his every move...

"Morally Bankrupt"? I'll Show You Morally Bankrupt, and It's Initials Aren't Invariably DJT, I Can Readily Assure You. No, They Have All Manner of Other Permutations, Well Known In Fact Upon the Global Scene...

To Be Continued...

Meanwhile Another Equally Potent and Problematic Dragon Arises In the East, Portending No Good Whatsoever to the Inhabitants of Planet Earth - At Least Not While its Current Leadership Maintains its Unholy Sway

To Be Continued...

Could the Present Occupant of the Oval Office/White House Actually Be the Fabled (as in Notorious) Villain of the Holy Bible - i.e. the Biblical Antichrist? Though Already Abundantly Acquainted With, Yea, Even Thoroughly Traversed in the Topic - and Moreover Utterly Invested in One Mightily, Even Completely Convincing (and Compelling) View of the Matter, as in (Biblical) Interpretation Thereof - I Nevertheless Highly Recommend My Readership - Such as it Still Remains - Look Up 'Benjamin L Corey' Vis-a-vis 'The Antichrist' Sometime Soon: His Own (Scripturally-Based) 'Argument'/Proposition is Not One Easily Sniffed At Much Less Dismissed Out of Hand, I Can Assure You!

Through 'Popular Demand' - (Probably) NOT - But At Least Due to My Evident Lack of Clear Explanation in My Last Blogpost (as Finally Sussed Out by Me, Having At Long Last Reread It) Vis-a-Vis THAT I'd Decided to Finish/Wind Up THIS Blogsite, Let Alone Explain Precisely WHY I'd Decided To...I'm - At Long Last - Resuming Writing Thereupon...As Of This Very Day (Quite Clearly)...

But, hey, it'd be wonderful to see some of my 'regulars' delving into my *six newer blogsites (as detailed in my previous post)...

...they certainly have much to say about some of the very serious 'stuff' inundating our species 'homo sapiens' ever since covid-19/the coronavirus broke loose upon a weary world mere months ago and began wreaking such unmitigated distress and devastation upon us all...

*Four (as cited thereupon), having added two other ones since...-but since hardly anyone seems to have bothered with those other (four), I'm starting to feel why bother...

IMPORTANT NOTIFICATION: Not A Proper (Blog)Post As Such, But Rather an Invitation to Loyal Readers...

...to re-join me anytime they like...

...upon (any of) my (three/four new) blogsites...

Which are - in chronological order (of creation):

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

Sorry to See Ya Go...It's Nice To Remember

I Realize You Might Not Happen to Agree, But This is How I See it Anyhow

Ye Can Discern the Face of the Sky, But Can Ye Not Discern the Signs of the Times?

Apologies tonight (what with Daylight Savings over overnight, I'm already long past my (new) proper bedtime, and what with the Covid-19 crisis constantly breathing down all our necks, the last thing I need to do is cause any health issues for my (resident) Mum)...

...so I'll locate and *provide the aforementioned blogsite addresses in the near future...

Suffice to mention for now that if you appreciate - no, I never said always agreed with! - my (second) longstanding blogsite 'davidedwinisms'...

...then methinks you'll take to the third of the above especially, and possibly the fourth as well...

...the other two being respectively a health blog and an obituary/commemoration 'number'...

*In the above order, here are the blog addresses (much simpler as it transpires than I'd recalled):

supacalifragilisticexpialidocious.blogspot.com

sotosey-gitnitore.blogspot.com

irymn.blogspot.com

666mystery666.blogspot.com

And if all else fails - in trying to get onto these blogsites - you can of course always flick a little 'http://' at the outset thereof...

HAPPY & PRODUCTIVE Blog-Browsing...and - I ever live in (rather forlorn) hope - commenting thereupon...

'Scuse - even correct - me if I'm wrong, even 'wresting the Scriptures', But prithee tell me if I might not just be onto something here...

I'm not laying down any hard-and-fast rules (and/or 'guesstimates' as such), much less engaging in that ever fraught, time-dishonoured activity of (prophetic) time/date-setting...

but, perchance, could the following succession of verses (in the Newer Testament Book of 1 Thessalonians) perhaps be somewhat indicative of where we presently stand in prophetic time?

But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.

For when they shall say, Peace and safety;

then sudden destruction cometh upon them...and they shall not escape.

(1 Thessalonians 5:1-3)

Interestingly/curiously, 'as fate would have it', just three verses earlier - and also quite clearly in the context of the Last Days of (the first) Earth's history, in particular concerning the events coinciding with the long-anticipated *Second Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ to Planet Earth, we read these words (amongst others less apropos to our discussion/consideration - although certainly not contradictory to that):

The Lord Himself shall descend from heaven...with the **trump (sic) of God

(1 Thessalonians 4: 16)

*Evidently the Koran also features reference/s to the Third Coming of Christ Jesus to the planet, (which, in the biblical version, occurs after the Millennium and in order to execute the much-heralded 'Day of the LORD' Great White Throne Judgment...upon everyone who has ever lived upon Planet Earth, or rather upon the unsaved; those not raised in the First Resurrection).

**Also alluded to in 1 Corinthians, in a major passage about the resurrection of God's (true) 'saints':

Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep [in (the first) death], but we shall all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye,

at the last trump (sic): for the trumpet shall sound,

and the dead shall be raised...

(1 Corinthians 15: 51/52)

Intriguingly - I'm hoping you'll agree - the trump rendering is only in the  Authorized Version, i.e. the King James Bible...

...and for my money, at least, shows that 'the One Upstairs', as people so often refer to the Almighty, does indeed have a sense of humour...and will ultimately have the last laugh!

Hey, as Far as These Increasingly Prevalent - if Interspersed and Intermittent - Outbreaks of Contagious Disease are Concerned, 'Wouldn't it be Loverly' (as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady might have put it) if the Omniscient Modern Media Occasionally Would Put Two and Two - or even Eight and Eight - Together and Suss Out that Perhaps it'd be Worthwhile Belittling Western Civilization's Once-Cherished 'GOOD BOOK' A Little Less and Actually Investigating Some of Its Time-Honoured Truths...Such as the HEALTH LAWS in the Torah, Which Helped Protect Ancient Israel from ALL MANNER of 'Stuff' Afflicting Contemporaneous Civilizations Such as the Egyptian (one), and Moreover Has Helped Provide an Effective Blueprint for Modern Hygiene and Quarantine Standards (to Name a Few)

Likewise the Present Frenzy Over the Supposed Evils of the Trendy Newfangled Fad of VAPING, and That of the Flavoured Variety in Particular - President Trump's Own (Unsurprisingly Strident But Typically Superficial and Amateurish) 'Intervention' Notwithstanding - Methinks is Another Instance in the 'Health Arena' of A Whole Lot of Hyperbolic 'Moral' Panic Effectively Serving to Downplay and Obscure the Equally Incredible SUCCESS of the Same in Helping People Worldwide 'Kick' What is Well-Known as Being an Extremely Hard Habit, Nay Addiction, to Break

(You're Just a) "Little Fella": 'Short People Got No Reason...Got No Reason...to Live...Short People are Just the Same as You or I': Again, take your choice, but for me, myself and I, alongside musical legend Paul Simon and the Global Midgets Society Incorporated, I'd Prefer to Defer to the Latter (Notion)...You see, I'm Likewise Somewhat Height (not to mention Physique!) 'Challenged'

And Though the Jury Still Seems Out - Global Media Hype Notwithstanding - It Would Appear the Coronavirus ('Covid 19') Could Well Be the Worst 'Pestilence' in Living Memory; or, Alternatively, A Far Tamer Version of the Good-Ole-Fashioned 'Flu': Take Your Pick, The Arguments are Pretty Strong Either Way

But for ye mainstream (Western, anyhow) media to now be getting so dumbstruck about people (such as here in Auckland, New Zealand) becoming duly beside themselves and 'hunkering down' as it were by stockpiling bulk supplies from local supermarkets of recent days...

...methinks, anyway, is just a tad (or two) rich...

Duh, what d'ya reckon has caused such an extreme alarmist response/reaction?

Though Petulantly Blaming President Trump for All the World's Ills Seems to Know No Bounds...

-as today's (New Zealand) edition of 'global award-winning', New York-based (and New Zealand broadcast) radio show "Democracy Now' *has overreached itself in doing...

*Or at least an intriguing university professor/lecturer **Sonia **Sligh interviewed by host Amy Goodman on Friday, February 28th (NZ time) in my opinion has, in somehow managing to link the U S President in with other xenophobic, conspiratorial and/or simply pig-ignorant responses to the present Coronavirus. Although admittedly her central contention has merit; that is, her thesis that it is all too easy to blame such diseases on the likes of 'foreigners' like the Chinese by framing them as 'foreign invaders' (of our supposedly 'healthful' Western lands), when doing thus and so is a way of effectively "obscuring our own (human) role in [effectively] developing [such maladies] [in the first place] [by] providing them a fertile breeding ground",

arguing this upon the basis of continual human encroachment upon global ecosystems (as a part and parcel of ongoing climate change)...

...and in particular the effective eradication of numerous habitats for bats, which happen to be the most common species of mammal (by a longshot)...

Interestingly, as per a talkback caller upon either Marcus Lush' Newstalk ZB Show the other evening or that of Miles .......... overnight, the bat being one (indeed the very last specified) of the 'unclean animals' cited in Deuteronomy 14:18 amidst the rather extensive lists of such verboten animals (livestock, mammals, birds, fish, rodents et al) in that Older Testament book (14:3-20) and that of Leviticus (11:1-30/31(-)41-43(-)46/47, especially in this case verse 19).

*Hopefully my spelling is correct - in both instances (i.e. first and surnames)...

Fire-and-Brimstone-Bearing Firebrand Sanders Trumps the Donald Each and Every Time...

Though I 'cannot', despite being a *lifelong dual (kiwi-American) citizen, in good conscience vote for him in this year's pivotal, even perhaps epochal, presidential election - were he the **eventual Democratic Party nominee - simply because he doesn't 'tick all the boxes', at least those that preeminently matter to me...

- that raw and ***real as, rough diamond political maverick (senator) from the northeastern shires of Vermont, personal/family ****namesake Bernie Sanders,

beats - hands down (and all the rest) - that slithery, snake-in-the-grass, snake-oil merchant *****from the Bronx, Donald J Trump, each and every time...

...whether he eventually succeeds in his presidential gambit or otherwise...

...just as the real-deal, ******finger-lickin' stuff his erstwhile equally-famous namesake 'Colonel Sanders' produced would ever trump that of a two-bit amateur, and likewise the unvarnished truth-teller ever and always trumps any and every purveyor of fake news...or, in 'the Donald's' case, an inimitable practitioner of super-*******nationalistic Machiavellian manoeuvring and realpolitik... 

*Possibly a lifetime citizenship (i.e. commencing at my birth, though as we know with one-time chess champion Bobby Fischer, by no means guaranteed one for life), though the reality of said status was only latterly acknowledged and confirmed upon my applying for a U S passport back in 1992 (or so) prior to moving there later that year for (what became) a three-year sojourn, said status indeed being denied those such as myself whilst the Reagan Administration bore sway...

**As he certainly deserved to be last time around, and was ultimately circumvented thereto by the machinations of the Hillary Clinton-supporting Democratic Party machine...

***Though, incidentally I hate/loathe/absolutely, heartily detest that ever-present inanity (of clicheville) of late, "The reality is..."...

****Being often referred to in my high school days (as some of my siblings, especially brother, doubtless were) as "Bernie", "Bernina" (after the then well-known sewing machine), etcetera... In later years this has morphed into an older church member (elder in fact) occasionally using "Bernard"
- doubtless as a term of endearment...

*****I do believe (as my all-time fave singer songwriters Simon and Garfunkel might have put it)...

******Though truth be told I haven't tasted the stuff since becoming a vegetarian/vegan 35 years ago soon...

*******Actually 'penned' originally (in my draft) as supra-Machiavellian, but somehow-or-other that word denoting misguided patriotism slipped in, and ********seeing it now it doesn't seem out of place...

********Even conjuring up for me those timeless words of that great wartime British bulldog, Winston Churchill, who if I'm not mistaken - and I admittedly may well be! - first coined that memorable line that 'Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel'...

Postscript (Tuesday March 3rd, following 'South Carolina' and just prior to 'Super Tuesday'; and as word has only recently reached God's Own of the retirement from the Democratic race of first Pete Buttigieg and now Amy Klobuchar):

Looks like the Establishment's at it again...ganging up upon Bernie Sanders just as it did last time around...c/o 'the man' himself ,i.e. (now former wannabe Democratic nominee) Pete Buttigieg...

...the very fellow who, according to Wikipedia, did a thesis or the like upon the standout quality of integrity Sanders brought to American politics (back in the day when Sanders was merely an independent senator from the state of Vermont)...

Go figure, folks...but the collective opposition is really a backhanded compliment, when you think about it, much as the devil 'himself' (or rather, 'itself', as H Scott Peck so ably argues in his seminal People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil)...

only ever sending his special forces, his elite troops as it were, after anyone truly posing a threat to his (very, very temporary, and soon to expire - bigtime - and in no uncertain terms) earthly empire! 

Post-Postscript (Wednesday March 11th, NZ time...following Joe Biden's pretty clean sweep (thus far) of '*Big Tuesday', of the Michigan primary in particular)

Ask not for whom the bell tolls - mark my words: the death-knell's just (now) sounded for the American Democratic Party...post-2020, and a Trumpian victory, resounding or otherwise...it'll permanently, irretrievably, irrevocably, irreconcilably split into two major factions/rumps, and will thus never ever again wield federal/nationwide power in the United States of America...

*For want of a better descriptor (as per Mike Hosking this morn on Newstalk ZB).

And as for 'Do Gooders' Incorporated Who've Managed to Foist Upon So Many of us Unsuspecting Plebs Throughout the World their Sophisticated Notions of Reusables and Recyclables, well...Tell THAT to Ye Average Punter Now Having to Forego the Mighty Handy Use of Those Plastic Supermarket Bags Once Employed Very Handily for Lining Household Rubbish Bins and the like...

Whilst Methinks Oftentimes 'the Cops' Cop Just a Tad Too Much Flak, When - from Personal Experience of Late - Their Ranks are Chockablock Full of Some Really Decent Ladies and Gentlemen...

And whereas my (aforementioned) 'observation' most definitely pertains to my own beloved land of Aotearoa-New Zealand, and doubtless many other - *at least largely Western, or at least European - lands of the world...

I'll just as readily concede that the systemic police brutality, nay outright criminality, exposed so damningly by said media throughout the U S of A over the past few years...

does indeed give any thinking - and moreover truly feeling - man, woman or child due cause for concern, and for pause in being too footloose and fancy free with baskets of bouquets (in that particular direction), that's for sure...

*And no, my comment therein is hardly xenophobic or imperialistic etcetera, simply the result of well-studied listening in to various media channels over my entire lifetime...though at times, I'll readily concede a whole lot quicker than many others, selfsame 'media' (to greatly generalize about the mainstream purveyors thereof) is ofttimes far from the standard-bearer of truth personified (as the recent decrying of all things 'fakenews'-wise might tend to suggest (and thereby fool many folks))...

Yes, This Present World is Full to Overflowing with Folk who Ever and Only (Suppose Themselves to) Perceive the Splinter in the Eyes of Others...

...yet unfailingly fail to notice the glaring beam within their own...

However we are advised and warned in the strongest possible language and upon the very best authority, that

Judgment without (any/the least skerrick of) mercy will be [i.e. come to/visit]
those who have shown no mercy...

Yes, of such it might rightly be said, as it was of the baiting and caviling, quibbling 'lawyers', scribes and Pharisees who verily hounded Jesus Himself to His very death...

tax collectors and harlots enter the kingdom of God before you

The True Gems in This World are Those who - like the late, great, but generally underrated Mike Moore - are Gentle on ('liberal with') Others and Hard on ('conservative with') Themselves...

...as a speaker in my particular denomination once elucidated upon at one of our annual or biannual/ biennial  'old-time' 'big tent' religious camp meetings...

...rather than those who are all too regularly tough on others and easy-ozy on/with themselves...

The contrast between the two couldn't be more stark, and heart-warming and/or bone-chilling...as Yours Truly had the great mishap to experience/encounter firsthand (once again) only yesterday...

Thankfully my LORD and Saviour is and was and has ever been of the former class...

...and that, as they say, has made all the difference in the world...

...and indeed universe...

...for all those willing to accept it...

Sending Off A True Kiwi Battler: (Though I Can't Join With Those Offering Their Heartfelt Tributes), 'in spirit' I'm one with Those Today 'Bidding Adieu' to the Best Prime Minister Aotearoa-New Zealand Almost Never Had - and then But for the Very Briefest of Periods - the 'Right Honourable' MIke Moore...

Evidently with a Christlike heart, in possessing that rarest of 'Christian' qualities, the ability to forgive those who had upset/offended/transgressed against him. Regretfully such an attribute, which made him most like His Maker/Redeemer, was simultaneously a great, if not Moore's greatest, political weakness... (according to funeral reportage on RNZ National this evening; from words of his longtime acolyte, his successor MP (in Waimakiriri, Christchurch), Clayton Cosgrove, or 'M(ike) M(oore) #2' as he was apparently known)...

Irish Nationalism Resurgent as Sinn Fein Stages Would-Be Electoral Upset in Irish Elections...

...though the post-election outcome is far from a done deal...whilst even recent Northern Irish polls - doubtless in the backwash from, and backlash over the United Kingdom's Brexiting, now all but a fait accompli - show how even a (if the barest of a) majority in that U K jurisdiction are now plumping for Irish reunification...  

So Hitler's A Jokester? -What A Sick Joke! (Reflections Upon 'New Zealand's' Win for 'Jo-Jo Rabbit' (c/o Taika Waititi) at this Year's Oscars)

Valentine's Day, 2020: Explication for Such an 'Unpatriotic' Blogpost

Yes, I refuse to join with those - including the much-feted TV3/TV1 Hollywood reporter Kimberley Crossman (I believe her name is) - who've been - understandably enough, I must concede - virtually beside themselves with bouquets innumerable for the incredible Oscar success of noted Maori actor Taika Waititi in this year's just-completed award ceremony in the U S...

For who doesn't like to celebrate, and profusely, the success of 'one of our own' in such global 'fests'?

That all doubtless being true, even irrefutable, I will never ever 'celebrate' a film which - even conceded to by said Oscar-winner himself, and pretty well any and every commentator introducing the subject, even upon the 'great day,' itself...

...in any way, shape or form - if 'merely' by its clear as *midnight comedic animatronics thereabouts - thus 'papers over' and satirizes what is generally accepted as being the darkest chapter in human history...

next to the horrid, very public, shameful and shameless execution of this species' Very Maker...and Redeemer...upon Golgotha, Calvary's **Cross some almost 2,000 years ago now...

*Yes, the saying is 'clear as daylight', but whenever and wherever Adolph Hitler's deeds are mentioned, such a word cannot decently be used in the same sentence...

**And no, I'm not hung up about whether it was a crossbeam (as commonly imagined and depicted) or simply a tree 'stake', as in a single vertical beam - quite frankly, folks, it matters diddly squat!

The REAL Stink Ain't the 'Poor-Shaming Smell' Highlighted in the Oscar-Winning Film 'Paradise'...But the Stench of Double-Standards and Hypocrisy Emanating from This Year's (and Other Recent) OSCARS

February the 14th: Explaining Why I'm Declaring Such

Where do I - can I - even begin...?

Suffice to say (for the present) that the very folk who so demonize Donald J Trump - admittedly and undoubtedly America's worst president, by a country mile, ever - and bend over backwards to placate any and every possible nuance of heightened sensibility and sensitivity in our oh so peculiarly touchy (and feely) 'generation'...

...evidently have no qualms whatsoever about downplaying, sidelining, effectively belittling the - still, and doubtless evermore -  raw sensitivities of survivors and loved ones of victims of this Planet's most atrocious sustained treatment of its own...

...which to her eminent credit the German Chancellor - unlike our own governments, both present and previous, of Aotearoa-New Zealand - has been anything but backward in making the focus of her dying days in office...doubtless, a cynic might add, with an eye to her long-term legacy...

And Yes, Bob (Sir Robert) Jones Sure Ain't the Only Fellow Who Simply Can't Suffer Fools Gladly...

Thursday February 13th: What I'm On About Here

And whilst the woman accusing Jones of blatant, unreconstruction-style racism, for which he is now in turn suing her for (character) defamation, is doubtless well within her rights to be upset, yea even verily outraged by Jones' (clearly satirical) opinion piece awhile ago (at least a good two years now, I believe)...

...hey, it's a free world and any and all of us (individually) have every right to be duly upset about any manner of 'stuff' currently 'going down' in our ever so fraught and fast-paced, frenetic and frantic, media-harried world these days...

...and moreover the absolute right and privilege to express ourselves thereabouts - people having gone to war and fought over this in WW11 and the like -

I nevertheless cannot but find myself tonight, following a lengthy 'snippet' from said trial upon TV 1's or TV 3's 6 p.m. Evening News Bulletin just a half hour ago or so, concurring with noted (independent-minded) Maori author/writer Alan Duff, who, at selfsame trial today, simply remarked...

...that though he'd never personally found Sir Bob Jones racist, more important still/by far from his point of view, was that

"there is an element in this country that takes offence at anything and everything...

...seeking to shut down legitimate debate..."

I couldn't have expressed it better myself...

Postscript (Midday, Friday the 14th of February - 'Valentine's Day', as fate would have it!)

Discretion ever being the far better side of valour (as I've occasionally stated over the blogging years, if in the more standard 'script')...

"Good on ya, (Sir) Bob", for having the presence of mind to gracefully withdraw your defamation suit; lest you - however inadvertently, otherwise be seen to join the ranks of the perennially outraged... though methinks suing for defamation - when(ever) one's 'good name' is being dragged through ye proverbial dirt and grime - is perfectly understandable, even right and proper...however (almost inevitably) unavailing, the way our injustice service works these days...

...my full understanding, even empathy thereabouts arising principally from a rather unpleasant, wholly unexpected incident occurring to Yours Truly only one-and-two-thirds years ago now...

...about which I've now (and hopefully never) any desire to 'regurgitate' (for public consumption), excepting to say/add that where one's reputation is concerned, seeking to redress that misconstruction, misrepresentation, misinterpretation is only entirely normal, a very human reaction and response to being unfairly (and even *maliciously) maligned...

*Though naturally the only sort of 'malign-ment' is ever and only of the malicious variety!

Yes, Ye Constantly 'Outraged' Outrage Industry is Starting to Really Bug - Annoy - Upset, nay, Utterly Outrage Me...-I kid ye not!

3 Days On (Thursday the 13th of February):  Yes, there'll be a whole lot more upon this matter in both this and other blogposts over coming weeks and months...

...yet even now it would appear that a crossroads of sorts has been reached - a high-water mark (zenith) leading to a subsequent and consequent nadir - and, as with the sacred cow of Political Correctness the public-at-large - at least throughout the Western World as such - is increasingly turning from it with loathing...

...seeing it for the shallow, superficial, emotive-driven react-ionary bit of flotsam and jetsam it most manifestly is (in all too many instances)... 

Speaking of Politicians Whose Star May Be Waning... Even If It Oughta Be Waxing...I Can't for the Life of Me Think of a Better Candidate Than 'Angela Merkel # 2'...

Friday the 14th of February (3 Days Later)

Though of course I know 'stuff all' about the woman primed and prepared, preened & predetermined to follow on in the not inconsiderable, even arguably herculean steps of the soon to retire, globally-respected and certainly redoubtable German Chancellor, the Eastern German-born and bred Angela Merkel...

...yes, off-hand I even *cannot state her name - my 'extensive', hastily-scribbled, copious notes thereabouts having been 'nicely' secreted to some obscure corner of the house (amidst the dust of my various and sundry pads et al) ever since hearing the news item upon a weekday edition of RNZ National's 'World Watch' midday radio programme (a couple days back)...

the two (main) 'issues' which were seen to have precipitated her premature downfall/demise were such as have been the bread-and-butter of my blogging of recent times, indeed even upon February 11th itself (when I made my initial, title-only blogpost thereabouts)...

To wit,

1: Making a joke at the expense of the ever super-sensitive trans (et al) community
2: Having the gall, the sheer temerity to essentially 'call out' the (internet-located) perennially outraged

...and for those 'high crimes and misdemeanours', doubtless worthy of the German equivalent of the threatened repercussions for the sort of things 'the Donald' has only recently emerged seriously 'scathed' through...

...she's evidently no longer a German leadership prospect, and so will no longer stand in succession line after Ms Merkel...

Utterly predictable, yes, but hardly a good development, especially not so for a nation which had heretofore pretty well dug itself absolutely and completely out of the rather sordid hole into which a one-time Chancellor with delusions of a new world order fashioned after his Aryan fantasies had well and truly dug the nation 70-some years ago now...

*Evidently (the tongue-tier) Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, though popularly referred to as 'AKK'.

Three Politicians Whose Star May Be Rising/Setting - Waning/Waxing - But Whose Impact Upon Politics (Essentially 'for Good') in the Early 20th Century/2020 Appears Undisputed...

The 'candidates' (for my bouquets) being...?

The Irish leader...a 'wannabe' Scottish premier ('First Minister'), and a would-be U S  President...

Valentine's Day, 2020

'Didya' guess (who my particular political 'notables' are/might be)? Leaving you now to surmise any possible connection you happen to see/discern between all three, they are (in the aforementioned order): *Ireland's 'Taoiseach' Leo Varadkar *Scotland's Ruth Davidson *America's Pete Buttigieg

Sunday the 16th...

In brief - and no, I won't be disclosing the 'connection' alluded to; until and unless, that is, one of you (i.e. my blogviewership) happen/s to come forth and make a guesstimate at least, coz hey, why should I do all the serious footwork, I mean, really?

- Anyhow, true to form - 'in the meantime' - I've somewhat resiled from one of my picks, and again, without my specifically stating which one, I'd like someone out there in cyberland to at least make another guess as to which one of these 'candidates' for blog-bouquetship I've now got serious second thoughts about, though it'll probably be fairly easy to guess from my subsequent 'treatment' of 'em all (in the next few paragraphs and/or days of mini-instalments herein)...

As to the (sequentially) first (as above), Ireland's 'Taoiseach' - hey, what a great word title! - I'll forego much additional for now, not because his re-instalment in the premiership there is doubtless rather problematic at present (as the recent Irish election resolves itself one way or t'other), but because I wrote reasonably extensively vis-a-vis Leo Varadkar -what I'm able to glean from this considerable distance, anyhow, and in view of the virtually nonexistent commentary over here about Irish politics (fullstop), excepting their two most recent and fairly well-publicized and canvassed referenda (on two of the major moral dilemmas/critical issues of our time on earth, i.e. abortion and same-sex marriage).

...about which - for those at all interested - I've written over the past year-and-a-bit in various and sundry blogposts (some of which are yet uncompleted), to wit

*'Partisan Political Paratrooper vis-a-vis Subtle, Serious Statesman: Though Championing a Similar Anti-Brexit Perspective, the Contrast Between Ireland's Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn Couldn't Be More Gaping (September 12th, 2019, on david edwinisms)

*A Person's A Person No Matter How Small: [Pope Francis' Making A Moral Equivalence Between Contract Killing and Abortion Couldn't Be More Apt etc] Later in 2018 (I believe), and upon my original (now inactive) blogsite htp://nuffsaid:consideryourself-frombothsidesnow.blogspot.co.nz/ (or .com/).

Sorry, time's been really squeezed with many unforeseen family commitments of recent weeks and months and I can't easily locate the exact info thereabouts, though those are pretty good 'stabs' therein...

To Be Continued...

Taking Pride in God's Everlasting Covenant of Mercy and Grace (and Thereby Reclaiming An Intergenerational Notification Binding Our Whole World): The - as in God's Own - Real Deal RAINBOW COALITION...for Now and Eternity

A Rarely Non-Partisan Player - or At Least Temporarily So - Upon the Highly Partisan, Ideologically-Charged, Cultural Wars-Riven Stage of Modern Era American Politics: In Bucking the Trend of his Senatorial Colleagues - However Events Ultimately Transpired, Even If President Trump was Not Impeached (a Second, and Decisive Time) - the Former Republican Presidential Contender Mitt Romney Deserves An Accolade: He Carefully Assessed and Closely Evaluated the Evidence (For and Against the Merits of Such an Impeachment 'Indictment')...and Reached a Simply Explained, Unambiguous Conclusion - of "Guilty, Ma'am (and Mssrs)"...WHATEVER his 'Honorary' Colleagues Might Think, and WHATEVER the Political (as in Electoral) Repercussions (for himself personally)

Making A Real (Heckuva, Helluva) Hoo-Ha Of Wuhan (China): A Global Epidemic, Nay Pandemic Sweeps the World, According to ye Mainstream (Western) Media ...Said Coronavirus Thus Far Having Claimed ...wait for it - (the grand total of) one, and now two! - people outside the People's Republic...

Without in any way seeking to downplay or minimize this serious health-related matter which has evidently claimed at least 425 citizens of Mainland China...

...it'd perhaps be useful to put things into a little perspective, such as the fact that every year evidently around 600,000-odd people die from ye ordinary, run-of-the-mill, garden variety 'flu' (as in influenza)...

So perhaps for once the Chinese authorities are not so very far off when expressing the utmost concern at the concurrent wave of (anti-Chinese) xenophobia increasingly - if fairly predictably - raising its ugly head in the fallout from the same, supposedly especially in the West...

....whilst at least for once acknowledging the Chinese Government's (c/o its local authorities) responsibilities thereabouts, vowing to bring the offenders to justice, and pledging better measures to prevent the same *'going forwards'...

*Much as I ever and always heartily detest the selfsame cliche, and I'm not for even a moment suggesting said powers that be employed such an abhorrent 'modernism'...

Postscript:
As with a blogpost I posted awhile ago now - vis-a-vis 'Raoul(sp?) Island' off the Bay of Plenty, to wit the tragedy afflicting visitors (mainly tourists) there when the volcano spent its long-gestated fury in no uncertain terms -

I can well appreciate the very tenor of my comments - in particular my long-winded, highfalutin' title - could well have struck some as somewhat insensitive, even heartless in view of the victims of said tragedies...

...and to that I'd have to concede: fair enough - as far as the immediate 'shock, horror' value of said comments and emphases is concerned...

However, vis-a-vis the ongoing Coronavirus, I feel compelled (as indeed I did even as early as over the wee hours following posting the same) to add the following...

...yes, if I can only - somehow-or-other - locate the same...

Postscript #1:
Indeed no less a leading light (luminary) than Steve Maharey, a senior cabinet minister in the Helen Clark Administration of 1999-2008 (here in New Zealand), upon yesterday afternoon's Newstalk ZB 'Gardening Show' with Jamie M(a)cKay, said pretty much the selfsame thing, using if anything even stronger language thereabouts...

...emphasizing the imperative - particularly in view of the (aforementioned) comparative global stats vis-a-vis ye 'good 'ole' garden variety (in)flu(enza) with its rather chilling number of fatalities annually - of keeping things in due perspective, making amongst many other similarly 'punchy' observations, one where he said that...

"There needs to be that caution...[lest we] overreach ourselves...[about how relatively dire this latest epidemic-pandemic truly is]...

...in view of what many of us, myself and clearly himself also, regard as an increasing media beat-up now fast approaching, yea surpassing - leaving in the veritable dust even - a veritable mass hysteria thereabouts...  

Transforming the American Presidency into a Literal 'Bully Pulpit', or, A Bully IS as a Bully DOES: Or If 'it' Looks Like a Bully, if 'it' Talks and Sounds Like a Bully ...Hey, How's THIS for a Real Revelation, Folks: No Quibbles - Ifs, Buts or Even Maybes - About it, 'it' IS - Beyond A Shadow of a Doubt - a Real, Identifiable, Certifiable BULLY

Threatening one's (political) opponents and critics with all sorts of - however undefined, vague and tacit/implicit - potentially scary and violent consequences/repercussions...

...simply for speaking their mind and voicing those criticisms and that opposition...

...is the stuff and traditional territory of tyrants, thugs and the like...

-the equivalent in the public square and political sphere of ye traditional schoolyard bully...

...only too used to and keen upon (pretty well literally) throwing *'his' not inconsiderable weight around...

It is - or was - the well-frequented haunt of such former Western leaders as New Zealand's own Rob (**Sir Robert David) 'Piggy' Muldoon and America's own Richard Milhaus Nixon, who, 'alongside' such international 'luminaries' as the likes of Mao Tse-Tung himself - the 'Great Leader' himself of China's Cultural Revolution - had the habit of keeping 'little red books'...in the former two instances containing the names (and addresses and contact details etc) of vocal critics and political opponents...

Yes, none of these (three), to mention but a few, were themselves strangers to employing the full armoury of the state - and some pretty fancy personal footwork in Nixon's and Muldoon's cases - when it helped in furthering, in prosecuting their own (generally small and sordid) agendas...

No, they each/all had no, or at least very few, qualms whatsoever about engaging the not inconsiderable power, leverage and tools/weapons of the state (security apparatus - and all the rest) in forwarding their own personal vendettas at whosoever they perceived as standing in their way...

Likewise - yes, at last the penny drops, for those held in a state of now intolerable suspense - 'the Donald' (i.e. United States President Donald J Trump) has once again wandered - quite knowingly and deliberately - into some dangerous, if not altogether unfamiliar, territory...

...by - rather explicitly and even with no holds barred at all - giving it to and sticking the boot into his former National Security Advisor, (the extremely hawkish) John Bolton...as the latter (at least for a brief spell; that's now all of course well and truly ended), following the public release of his book, was used by the media and Senate/Congressional Democratic lawmakers as a foil against Trump as the prospect of his being subpoena(e)d to serve as a Senate witness in his (now soon-to-end) impeachment trial/s temporarily approached high dudgeon...

...just as the President had ***previously 'served it' to the likes of former FBI Director James Comey, former Attorney-General Jeff Sessions, and former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson...

- hey, is there some sort of pattern emerging here?

In the process, naturally enough, Trump readily evoked (fairly just-below-the-surface) memories of his 2015/2016 presidential election campaign rallies... in which, you'll well remember, he 'outed' various highly vocal and disruptive individual protestors, openly threatening them via his lackeys and rally attendants with some rather unsavoury and thuggish repercussions, even outright violence...

But yes, though it seems a supreme understatement and anticlimax to state so now, that is - however typical and even predictable Trumpish conduct and modus operandi - plainly and simply completely unacceptable and intolerable behaviour for any leader anywhere in any sphere of public activity...

...but of course all the more so for any sitting President of the United States of America, one who in the very next breath is boasting he not only warrants re-election to arguably the world's highest political position, but declaring it's effectively a fait accompli, even a 'slam dunk' sort of a thing...

*Though, hey, let's not be sexist here...the most egregious example thereof during this particular pleb's high schooling was 'one' of three gals ('classmates'), who, back in the halycon years of 1979-1980 or so, successively reduced three female music teachers virtually to tears - and, no doubt alongside a nervous breakdown in each instance, certainly an early retirement...as we went through that many in just the one year...

**No, honorary titles are sure as heck no respecter of persons, that's for sure...

***Doubtless now among numerous - innumerable - others, and yes, at this stage I've lost count...

'Mike' (Michael Kenneth) Moore: Despite Accruing A Mere Footnote/Asterisk in the (Minimalist) Wikipedia Entry (for his name), As Perhaps the Last Remaining/Surviving 'Gentleman Politician' of 1970s'/1980s' New Zealand Political Life and Times, Many will Only Remember a Supremely Decent Individual who ever and always Conducted himself upon the Political Stage Here with the Utmost Grace and Aplomb - and (Genuinely) Good Humour...and yes, also such Attributes as 'Street Smarts', the 'Common Touch', a Natural (and Positive) Populism, and Much Insight, Perception...An All-round Asset to the NZ Political Scene in Almost Every Which Way...

"This Thing is From Me" - "Let God Be True, and Every Man a Liar"...saying, "My Counsels Will Stand, and My Purposes Will Be Fulfilled": Frail Humans Fail in Bending Every Effort and Manipulating Every Opportunity to Scupper Predetermined Divine Determination to Enable the United Kingdom's (once more Great Britain's) Decision to Exit European Union Entanglements

"The Only Thing We Learn from History is that We Learn Nothing from History": Humanity Apparently Doomed to Fulfil This Doleful Reflection upon Life as Last-Day Events Move Stealthily and Steadily Along, and Homo 'SAPIENS', Whilst revisiting and Commemorating one of the Darkest, Most Unbelievably Shameful and Hideous Moments in Human History, Puts All the Pieces in Place and Does Everything in its 'Omniscient' Ignorance to Recreate the Conditions that will Unfailingly Lead to A 'Second' Holocaust, one also Instigated Against 7th-Day Commandment-Keepers...

To Mark the Passing of Someone who - with Amazing Insight yet Expressing Such with Profound Simplicity - Rightly Discerned the Character of his Own People ('kiwis'): Adieu to Noted Historian and Freelance Journalist - and Latterly RNZ National Panellist - Gordon McLauchlan

Inconsistencies Abound - in Many, Arguably Even Most Quarters - In Polarities Upon Matters/Issues of the 'Right-to-Life'...

...whether the particular issue in contention happens to be abortion - capital punishment - war - euthanasia - 

-eugenics/cloning etcetera...

As ever, (much) more to come, as time and opportunity allow...

'To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven'; even to THUS reach my 555th blogpost ever (upon all my three blogsites combined)

More in days, weeks, months, (and possibly even years) to come, folks...

...as I reflect upon my blogging over the past 7-and-a-half years...

...upon my three blogsites, i.e. this one - http://davidedwinisms.blogspot.co.nz/ (or .com/) -
http://nuffsaid:consideryourself-frombothsidesnow.blogspot.co.nz/ (or .com/) - my original blogsite - and my very latest, located at http://supacalifragilisticexpialidocious.blogspot.co.nz/ (or .com/)

and in so doing - hopefully - provide not only some enlightening statistics (of all sorts) upon which places (i.e. nations and continental regions etcetera) are regularly 'tuning in' to this particular *'blogwidth', the sorts of stuff (that especially with the great benefit of reflection I can see that) I've been communicating about...or at least attempting to...

*There you have it, my second newfangled word in only a few days or so... 

Deciding Whether An Embryo Constitutes a Viable Human Life - Or Otherwise - is the Only Thing That is Important (in the Ever Contentious Matter of Abortion): Yes, (Acclaimed Writer and Moviemaker and all the rest!) Michael Moore, Once Again You're Spot-On: Your Logic is Impeccable, Watertight, Utterly Incontrovertible

Now as I come back to this particular (title only) post I realize that it's not quite the way Michael Moore said it, so stay tuned to coming instalments...as I, however briefly, return to what to my mind anyhow constitutes one of the all-time most insightful and profound yet incredibly simple public pronouncements upon the issue...

especially so, and all the more amazing, incredible and potentially shocking, even 'scandalous' from one in the vanguard of all things Leftwing in America and whose words have potentially serious implications for those on *his side of the arena, those in the forefront of the 'pro-choice' movement...

*Admittedly I cannot be dead certain about that, except that the tone of voice he used and the 'knowing way' he spoke with Amy Goodman of 'Democracy Now' the other day (a week or so ago) suggests without a shadow of a doubt that he is not among the 'pro-life' camp, that'd be pretty certain.

...Unless You're looking Down the Barrel of Untold Evil and Calamity Unheard of, that is, in Which Case it's one's Positive Duty to Raise Up One's Voice like a Trumpet, and yes - "Mr President" - show you, your - and "My people" their - transgression, and 'the house of Jacob' their [very] sins...

Apparently the American President is displeased with those who fail to do just that (*afore-blogged thing), i.e. ever 'look upon the bright' - and only and ever bright - 'side of life'...

But who could really blame him these days, beating on about the positive is really pretty well all he has left going for him...hoping and believing (against hope), trusting and (fervently, desperately) praying - though I doubt with ye good 'ole biblical 'sackcloth and ashes' or fasting! - that 'all these things' will, as in **an old-fangled, well-known magical incantation, just simply vanish of their own volition...

So choose/seek to "reject the prophets of doom and the perennial prophecies of the Apocalypse" as much as you may, "Mr President"...

...but the "jeremiahs' in your midst have been bidden to speak, and you forbid them at your own peril!

*So who says one cannot employ creative licence to create new words and terminology upon one's own blogsite?

**Though highly tempted to repeat this age-old magical formula (as in the very words thereof), I'll desist doing so, only too well aware of the undoubted and not inconsiderable 'power' - for evil and woe - that such occultic sayings really do have...

...and so I'll carefully and prayerfully revisit all my old blogposts sometime (sooner than later, hopefully) on all my three blogsites, especially my first and second, to root out and extirpate any and every such reference found therein...that I, in a moment of less care and more self-indulgent bravado, believe I may well have carelessly indulged in in times past...

To Be Continued...

"Al-ways Lo-ok on the Bri-ight Si-ide of Life"...Another "Goodie" and Python kicks the bucket: We'll Miss your Unique Sense of Humour, Terry Jones...-Here's Hoping you Discovered 'The Meaning of Life' in time, yes, 'The Life of Brian' - i.e.That (Life) of the Messiah Himself... That 'Naughty Boy' Nazarene!

Kudos [Credit, Fame, Renown, Prestige] & Acclaim to Camilla Cox: A Gutsy, Courageous Champion of the Underdog: in a Day & Age of Mealy-Mouthed Mousy 'Men'

Let me simply quote the (online) news release, which repeated the gist of what Ms Cox so eloquently presented upon the nightly news (of one of NZ's 6 p.m. TV (1/3) bulletins, and probably both)...

*A **feisty, determined and no-nonsense, 'take no prisoners' campaigner in full flight - and just beginning (to get into her newfound stride), Caroline Cox declared as follows:

"We have [walked?] 300 [kilometres] to make a change for our child and for all the people we have met on our long journey to arrive here and to have people bickering about 50 metres...

Our families are dying, families are being torn apart, and we have small-minded people bickering about 50 [metres] in a public space...

I'm furious and I'm disgusted and I'm disappointed with our politicians..."

*This introductory paragraph, incidentally, is entirely of my own creation, like it or lump it!

**Yeah, I know, such language in description of a female these days is - how shall I put it - 'off bounds', politically incorrect (to the nth degree and well beyond), misogynistic and all the rest...

Hey, who asked you to read my blogsite, anyhow?  ***Or for your opinion?

***Apologies, I have ipso facto by running this blogsite (and its original 'associate'), and moreover I even posted a couple or few - upon that very matter, i.e. the relative dearth of comments ever posted thereupon by all and sundry...

But it sure don't mean I have to agree with you, does it!?!?!                 

But Insults to the - Even Aotearoa-New Zealand's Own - Jewish Community Continue to Fly: Not Only is Another Synagogue Graffitied (with nary a report thereof (that I've come across, anyway) upon State-run Radio); But Our 'Progressive' Government Is Apparently Not Sending Anyone to Commemorate the 75th Anniversary Since the (Post WW11) Liberation of Aushwitz

Shame on you all, you supposed champions of 'minority rights' and 'oppressed communities' and the like...

And prithee tell me where that valiant defender of human rights worldwide is to be found in this impasse? I speak of course of Gohriz Ghahraman, the Green Party's spokesperson on such things.
Naturally, nowhere at all, but what would one expect...

But no credit to the previous crowd either, for despite Gerry Brownlie's strident criticism thereabouts vis-a-vis 'this lot', evidently back in 2010 they did the selfsame, i.e. stuff all; sweet nothing...and under New Zealand's first ever Jewish leader to boot!

Disturbing 'Developments' from a Disparate Duo, Deutschland and America: Shameful and Shameless Egregious Affront to the Legacy (& Memory) of the United States' Foremost Exponent of Nonviolence and Civil Disobedience, Dr. Martin Luther King Junior, in Guntoters' Descent upon Virginia upon his Celebrated Birthday; Whilst the Land that Gave us 'Schadenfreude' Witnesses Some Judge Handing Down a Sentence of - wait for it - 11! Years' Imprisonment for a Gory, Ghoulish, Ghastly Piece of Demoniacal, Devilish Dastardliness Which Germany Arguably Hasn't Seen Since the Third Reich

...and time here sadly doesn't permit me to add something which at least at first blush strikes me as rather hideous and in extremely bad taste all round: i.e. the portrayal of arguably the most evil man in history - a fairly hefty 'achievement', admittedly - in a comic, side-splitting portrayal...

...I speak of course of - what has thus far been conveyed via the media, anyhow - 'JoJo Rabbit' (or whatever it's called), the cinematic account evidently of Adolf Hitler through the eyes/lens of an imagined kiddie friend of his...

Putting Putin Back in For Life...-So Why the Virtual Conspiracy of Silence Thereabouts by the Western Media? -Why, They've More Important Matters to Attend to - NOT. Or, While the Mice are Away Playing, the Cat Gets Ready to Pounce!

'Graciously' Giving Someone the Benefit of the Doubt...when they sing to your own personal songsheet, that is...-But when the shoe's well and truly upon the other, opposite (political) foot, well, hey, that's an altogether different matter entirely!

Welcome, folks - 'wherever you roam'...no, not to the admission that 'the waters around you have grown', but to the era of petty partisan politics personified...

And no, on this particular occasion I speak not of or about the presidential impeachment trial presently underway in the U S of A, but to a much more mundane matter altogether...

...i.e. the spat between Democratic senators Sanders and Warren...

So, no, I don't believe it's really such a big deal that the Democratic Party presidential hopeful, the idiosyncratic, iconoclastic, inimitable and irrepressible - &, yes, occasionally *irascible - independent Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, is alleged to have suggested at a private meeting with his Democratic Party rival, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, that 'a woman could not be elected American president'.

Even were he to have actually suggested, or frankly flatly stated, as much - and I'd defer to Sanders' innate sense of honesty and integrity over Warren's any day (quite literally, it oozes from his every pore) - what would such a statement even mean anyway?

Possibly nothing more than his sense - as a longtime and however idealistic, ultimately pragmatic political operator - of what's actually achievable in the realm of U.S. politics...or at least likely to occur anytime soon...

...much as a fellow - admittedly male - American varsity student assured me way back in 2005 (I believe) when I was back at the University of Otago as a mature student, i.e. that (the continually tentative presidential contender) Hillary Clinton 'had no chance of becoming American president'...

yes, simply - essentially - for being a woman, though carrying the Clinton monicker was likewise no great asset either... And why, pray tell me? Just that he didn't believe the American people were yet ready for a female leader.

However, post America's first black president, I doubt it'd now be such a high hurdle for Americans to get their heads around...and personally I suspect it was the perception of Hillary as somewhat of **a socialist - believe it or not - that was the real limiting factor, oddly not such a limiting factor for Bernie himself (according to much opinion polling at least back in 2015/2016)...

*Like the rest of us, surely...

**Yes, someone told me this upon a bus once (while sojourning in the U S of A back in the early nineties whilst Mrs Clinton's 'beloved' was himself ***swanning (or perhaps the more apt term is ***'swooning') around the White House, ***ogling interns in and around the Oval Office...

...she being perceived as the far more leftwing and hence dangerous quantity by many Americans ...though admittedly at the same time being respected as a person of principle therein unlike her chameleon-like spouse...-my, how things've changed (vis-a-vis Hillary Rodham Clinton anyhow!)

***I jest of course, the sort of stuff William Jefferson has long been accused of amounting to a heckuva lot more in both 'qualitative' and 'quantitative' terms than such cute phraseology would suggest, and for the reader's interest going so far beyond 'mere' adultery and fornication to embrace sexual assault, and moreover rape, and also - in cohoots with Hillary - the planned and systematic elimination (i.e. murder) of any number of individuals who threatened to spill the beans upon them.

For those seriously interested in pursuing this further - those, that is, who aren't so readily fooled by the Clinton-loving media and politically partisan commentariat and their Hollywood acolytes who regard the aforementioned (the first two well-established accusations, that is) as either a bit of a bad joke (it only being a pity he was found out) and/or all a big conspiracy by right-wing talkback hosts and the like, I suggest looking up what I regard as my equal seminal work...

...alongside a 22-page 'backgrounder', 'Pope Francis the First: Sheep in Wolf's Clothing, or 'surprise, surprise': Wolf in Sheep's Clothing? (written in the weeks following the unprecedented elevation of a card-carrying Jesuit to the Roman Catholic Church's top position) in the first half of 2013...

a 42-page 'opinion piece' (I've presently forgotten the long-winded, highfalutin' title to!) posted on August the 22nd, 2016 in the run-up to Presidential Election 2016, which article (& mini-tome) gives viewers/readers an insight into what this punter believes the unusual, even sensational and thriller-worthy tale of what really was behind the selection of Donald J Trump as Republican Party nominee for President, a tale (if true, which I still believe with every fibre of my being, nothing having transpired in the interim to repudiate that interpretation in any way) that, I kid you not, is not only a whole lot 'stranger than fiction', so to speak, but which if established in or by a court of law would cause such repercussions politically and every other way that the second civil war that the nation has appeared inevitably heading towards over recent years, especially since that fateful election, would almost be a fait accompli, way ahead of when it might otherwise have seemingly occurred...(though for various reasons I don't anticipate it ever coming quite to that particular pass, if only just).

Part Two: So What am I Really Trying to Say Here? (All will be revealed in the not too distant!)

Awhile On (Tuesday the 21st)

The major point I'm making, or at least seeking to, is that...
...isn't it so interesting how such an allegation, which would doubtless raise merry hell if it were attributed to the likes of Donald Trump et al - or have hell to pay (for it) - would, were it alternatively linked to another prospective Democratic presidential challenger, speedily lead to calls, yea demands - and those none too polite! - for that person's speedy exit from the presidential race altogether...

Sorry, will need to leave this again, for me 'ole mate Sir Barry Humphries is callin' once again... 

Let's Hear it Loud and Clear - and with Bells and Whistles (and all the rest) - for Australian Sir Barry Humphrey's new (Tuesday evening) nature doco

This latest series (which started airing just last week) is essentially required watching...

Except for the equally mandatory/obligatory obsequious curtsy to the theory of evolution (and climate change for that matter), whatever one's personal views on either...

said show ticks all the boxes...

Yes, it's simply hard to commend it enough (even if I'm - of necessity, I must say - writing this in moments snatched from the show's numerous ad breaks; and hence necessarily missing many minutes of the program)...

So where do I start/what can I say? Let me list in bullet-point fashion its noteworthy, commendable features:

*Sir Humphrey's inimitable and altogether excellent, 'broadcast-worthy voice'...replete with proper and tone-perfect elocution and emphasis, enunciation and articulation...

*The excellent, almost perfectly ideal match between subject-matter and commentator...

*The very 'subject-matter' of Australia at the present moment in time...

*The beautiful, exquisite (especially upon show #1) and varied colours, contours, contrasts (and comparisons)...of the landscapes/scenescapes/panoramic views and vistas presented, done in the most wonderful kaleidoscopic fashion (as one would expect of such a high-calibre individual presenter)...

*The name of the show itself - The Magical Land of Oz: I love it!

There's only one major downside/drawback (from this particular punter's perspective, anyhow), one that really has nothing whatsoever to do with either Sir Barry or the 'topic' of his beloved Australia...

It's simply that - in terms of nature shows and commentary - it seems to me anyhow as if it'd have been 'right and proper' (and moreover, downright respectful and all the rest) ...

...to have noted and commemorated the recent passing/death of celebrated naturalist David Bellamy with one of his own special nature documentaries, if not instead of, at the very least in addition to...

...Humphrey's incredible offering...

But Before I do so (over subsequent days), "now for some light relief" (as either of the two Ronnies (Barker or Corbett) might have expressed things): All Hail to NZ's 'Unruly Tourists' (Summer (January) 2019), as per the hilarious offering late this afternoon of one Tim *Roxborough (Newstalk ZB talkback radio host)

Assuming he'll be gratified, even flattered - imitation being the best form thereof (and all that sort of thing) - firstly let me simply commend anyone reading this to view Newstalk ZB's 'Week on Demand' (and specifically 4.36p.m. through 4.38p.m. this afternoon; though the tiny two minute-long segment is introduced by the selfsame Tim *Roxborough by citing the time as '25 to five' (when it - pedant that I am; and so's you can locate the particular little section I'm referring to - was in fact 24 minutes to the hour))...

*Though the spelling seems wrong to me, from memory I do believe it to be correct...

To Be Continued...

Nature Red in Tooth and Claw - Survival of the Fittest - Climate Change a Trojan Horse for Far Less Savoury Agendas: In a New Series on 'Mother Nature' and Homo Sapiens' Subtle, Complex and Complicated, Intricate Interrelationship with...

...no holds will be bared, and secret agendas presently being advanced and expedited with all the intensity and passion and single-minded 'intolerance' of evangelical fervour will be exposed...

Hold onto yer seats, folks, as, in coming days and weeks, we explore some of the innate self-contradictions in today's self-complacent 'environmentalism'...

Things These Days As Often as Not Are Not What They Initially Appear: Let's Explode One Prevailing Myth That's the Very Epitome of 'Fake News' - or, When the Newfangled, Intolerant As (So-Called) 'LEFT' Doesn't Get its Particular Way and/or Can't Abide a Particular Outcome, It Apparently Has No Trouble Rewriting the Rules of the Game or Redefining the Terms of the Discussion (etcetera etcetera etcetera)...

To Be Continued (in the reasonably foreseeable)...