And As For New Zealand's 'Punching Above Its Weight' On the World Stage Under the Globally-Acclaimed, Youthful and Charismatic Leadership of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern...How Come No-One Has Bothered to Inform Folks Overseas That New Zealand Inc Is No Longer (Even Amongst) the Global Covid-Beater/s...Just Look at Our (Now Regularly) Horrendous Death Stats These Days...Yet (I'll Also Readily Concede) You'd Be Equally Hard-Pressed Finding Even One Major Media Outlet Commenting Critically Thereupon...

Yet As to That Rerun of An All Too Familiar Script, I.e. the On-Again, Off-Again 'Massacre of the Innocents' in the Good 'Ole U S of A, It's Deja Vu All Over Again the Umpteenth Time...PLEASE - PLEASE - PLEASE - At Long Last LEARN! No, Not From Aotearoa-New Zealand's (Unimpressive, & Anyhow, Incomparable), Record Thereabouts, But, Rather, As That Bastion of Left-Wing Political/Social/Cultural Commentary, the 'Democracy Now' Broadcast Out of New York City, Readily Concedes, From ENTIRELY ANOTHER Australasian Nation, (New Zealand's Next-Door Neighbour) the Land of Oz Itself...In the Aftermath of/Fallout from the 1996 Port Arthur Massacre in Tasmania...& By One of Australia's Longest-Serving & Most Respected, Yet Deeply Conservative Leaders No Less, John Howard...

But Hurrah to P M Ardern's (One-Time) Religious Fellow-Traveller, Former Republican Presidential Nominee Mitt Romney...From One (Former Mormon) Politician to Another Mormon Politician, As It Were...In, Once Again, Standing Out - Usually Almost Entirely Alone - From the (*Republican Party) Crowd...In Offering (At Least Some Tentative) Constructive Ideas/Suggestions Regarding How to - At Long Last (But Who's Realistically Maintaining Any Hope Any More?) - Deal To/With America's Ongoing, Seemingly Never-Ending Horrendous Incidence of Gun-Fuelled Mass Shootings...

*An organisation which renowned linguist/scholar/political commentator Noam Chomsky has labelled "the most dangerous institution in the history of humanity"... 

"Disinformation"? What Searing Shortsightedness/ Incredible Irony (to be Generous) - Stupefying Spin/ Disingenuous Dissembling (to be Way Less So)...

Whilst gun-toting criminals run amuck as gang-fuelled crime quite literally goes berserk in her home city of Auckland, Aotearoa-New Zealand's internationally-extolled leader struts the world stage championing our post-mosque massacre gun buyback 'success', when - if said legislative changes adopted post-March 15th 2019 say anything - they reinforce the very point then (numerically inconsequential) opponents made at the time...

I.e. in thus, effectively emptying out the guns in circulation amongst the law-abiding citizenry/community, the Government was thereby, ipso facto, leaving them in the hands of the criminal fraternity, who, one could rest assured, would indeed not hesitate even one moment employing whenever and however they saw fit...

And meanwhile Prime Minister Ardern preaches to the (global) converted about the dire dangers of this day of disinformation...

Talk about disingenuous disinformation! 

As For That Other Boris - No, Not THAT BORIS (Yeltsin) Who Inadvertently & With the Best of Intentions Helped Install His Nefarious & Wicked Successor - i.e. the Former Russian Diplomat in Geneva) Boris Bondarev - What A Brave & Rare Act of Civil Disobedience, One Sadly Likely to Evoke the Deadliest Response Possible...

But As For (the Lovable Rogue Who Is) Boris Johnson (To Those Who Have Responsibility in These Matters, I.e. Johnson's Parliamentary Colleagues in the British Conservative Party): Be Done With Him Once & For All...Seeing As Eyewitnesses Present Have Verified That the (Covid-19-Defying) Downing Street Parties (One & All) Were Routine (Affairs): Hey, What Remains to Be Understood? - Seems Pretty Much a Slam Dunk to Me (& Surely to Any Other Disinterested Observer)

I find I cannot get past comments of Newstalk ZB's bi-weekly correspondent Rob Little to Mike Hosking the other day...

"Boris Johnson's, in UKspeak/speech, "I take responsibility" "(i.e. for whatever occurred under the now notorious 'Partygate' affair), "means, in New Zealandspeak/speech, I take no responsibility whatsoever!"

Incidentally, "[Labour leader] Keir Starmer didn't even do anything (in the ballpark of what Johnson did). But he made the mistake of calling on Johnson to resign [if he was found to have been in contravention of covid rules]...(and so had no alternative but to (hypothetically) offer his own resignation were he found to be in breach of the same).

Anyhow, surely the true 'smell test' - for PM Johnson, if for no-one else - is *WWCD, i.e. 'what would (Winston) Churchill do? And anyone having to take the time to even consider that question is unfamiliar with that larger-than-life persona, for honour and integrity were central to Churchill's very person, making such a question rather rhetorical and redundant... 

*A bespoke variation upon the classic WWJD, i.e. 'what would Jesus do?'

No, we're not considering mere trivialities of a casual drink or several here, it's a matter of principle and integrity, for people across the length and breadth of the United Kingdom were unable to attend the final moments of dying relatives under the strict (if **understandable) covid protocols instituted by Johnson's Government...  

No, hypocrisy under these rules and regulations - i.e. expecting the common plebs to 'do as we say, not as we do' - is without excuse, and worthy of the direst consequences politically; end of story.

Having said that, however, I would myself be willing to break such a law - and face the inevitable repercussions - were my Mum say to be in her dying days...

...but, just so there's no misunderstanding, like Martin Luther King I would be prepared to face the legal consequences, however unjust, of doing what I considered the right and proper, dutiful and loving thing upon such an occasion...for some laws are just so (i.e. unworthy of dutiful obedience); however one must ever and always be willing to suffer (however unjustly) for what one believes and knows deep down to be the right thing to do...

Labour's Eschewed Its Working-Class Roots (in New Zealand as in the U K) In Favour of the Socially 'Enlightened'/Progressive Middle-Class Professional Set: So You're Asking Why Such (WC) Voters Are Deserting Them In Droves in Both Jurisdictions (for the Conservative Party in Great Britain, and for (their ideological bedfellows) the National Party in New Zealand)?

For a good all round backgrounder on the situation - vis-a-vis the New Zealand context, that is - you could hardly do worse than consult the insightful musings, reflections and research of long-time left-wing political activist and commentator Chris Trotter, who once presented a public lecture here in Dunedin, NZ in which he graphically detailed and explained the mass exodus of party members from NZ Labour in the 1980s, once like its opposite number the NZ National Party a mass membership political party...

...and all essentially because a once socially conservative and economically leftist party embraced the very opposite: laissez-faire economics a la Reaganomics & Thatcherism and social liberalism/radicalism... 

Aged Care/Home Support Carers/Workers: Aussie Labo(u)r (Government-Elect) Embraces 'Em, Kiwi Labour (Government) Increasingly Alienates Them: So You're Seriously Asking Why the Selfsame Are Busily Exiting 'God's Own' En Masse?

Yes, I exaggerate, but I hope you get my point... 

Upon This My 666th Blogpost Herein, How Very Appropriate That It Coincided With the Speaker of the Parliament of Aotearoa-New Zealand's Apparent Assumption of Papal Powers...

As he himself disclosed to a no longer aghast House of Parliament today, in response to some pithy repartee from the ever quick on his feet, off the mark and on point Act leader David Seymour, that

- no, I just have to quote Speaker Mallard word-for-word -

"The member [i.e. David Seymour] knows my rights in here [Parliament's Chamber] are pretty much absolute."

Nuff Said. Yes, Mallard's assumption of papal prerogatives, privileges and powers is now well-nigh absolute!

Awaiting the Announcement - of a Decision Evidently Already Made - of the U S Supreme Court Upon the Last Half-Century's Culture Wars-Inciting Roe Vs Wade Legal Precedent Upon Abortion...

But how come mainstream media rarely inform us - here in God's Own, anyhow - that far from outlawing the practice, said long-awaited decision is simply to turn the ever-contentious matter over, (hopefully) once and for all time, to the jurisdiction of America's fifty-some individual states...

...for their own respective individual determinations thereupon...

But What Rank & All Too Typical Shamefaced, Shameless & Shameful, Thoroughly Reprehensible Hypocrisy of Labour's Deputy Leader Angela Raymer, Affecting Some Sort of (Typically Femi-Nazi) "Oh poor me!" Pose When She Herself Acted Shamefully and Shamelessly - In the Feminine Equivalent, So to Speak, of Mr Parish - But, Far More Worryingly & Seriously (& Light Years Removed From His Own Self-Inflicted 'Crime' Only Really Injuring Himself & His Own Soul) As An Agent Provocateur of Sorts to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson In Work Time In Those Selfsame (Un)Hallowed Chambers of Parliament...

Methinks Neil Parish, M.P. - Nabbed for the High Crime & Misdemeanour of, Wait for It - (No, Not Even) Surreptitiously (Apparently) Viewing Pornography During Work Time - Was/Is a Relative Innocent in the Overall Scheme of Things (British Politics & the Like), But Will Serve As An All too Convenient Fall Guy for Great Britain's Ruling Conservative Party, & Its Leader in Particular

Disclaimer: 

Pornography is and ever has been an utter scourge upon all and sundry in Western society, though admittedly I too was an innocent childhood (teenage) victim of the same, as myself and a sibling surreptitiously removed/replaced various (of our father's) intriguing copies of Playboy and Penthouse out of/back into their respective possies from time to time... 

For Once, the Better Person Won...& THAT Person Was a Jesuit!

In Other Words - & Despite Constant Outcries of the Me-Too Movement & the Like to the Contrary - the Man Ain't Always the One at Fault: Far From It!

Yes, Josephs still exist in this world of ours, and one day - perhaps very soon - their heavenly Hero will Himself vindicate them...

...for good. 

(Admittedly & Shame-Facedly) A Trivial Topic in the Overall Scheme of Things (Playing Out Globally At Present), If Not For Those Directly Involved, But I Just Can't Help Myself On This Occasion...Though Not/Never A Fan of His Rendition of My All-Time Favourite Movie, *Charlie (**Willy Wonka) and the Chocolate Factory, Johnny Depp's (Well-Publicized) Defence Overnight Against Charges of Domestic Abuse...DO HAPPEN TO BEAR THE RING OF TRUTH & AUTHENTICITY...Though Apparently Their Former Counsellor Reckoned They Engaged in Some Degree of (Agreed Upon!) Mutual Abuse...

 */** Respectively the book and film titles of this all-time classic...

Postscript:

I was seriously wrong/mistaken/mis-/ill-informed, they're both mad as hatters, real basket-cases, even worse than Yours Truly, and some of my acquaintance, were that possible...

Are My Conclusions Upon This Blogsite (& Nuff Said) A Contradiction-In-Terms...Well, YES (& No)...- I Find I Simply Cannot Help Heralding the Refreshing Sight/Prospect of a World Leader 'Wearing His Heart Upon His Sleeve', A Real NO-GO Area in This Day & Age of Deep-Seated Duplicity and Double-Dealing...

In That Vein I Find Myself - In This Day & Age of Playing it Safe & Never Letting Others Know What One Really Thinks & Feels (Afraid of Upsetting the Apple Cart & Ruffling Any Number of Highly Sensitive Feathers), Almost Awestruck By & Unable to Control My Involuntary Inner Reaction of 'Hear, hear!" Upon Hearing and Witnessing (Upon the Box) the Other Night, United States President Joseph Biden - FAR FROM RESILING AN IOTA From His 'Reckless & Precipitous' Remarks Concerning Vladimir Putin - Actually, Unbelievably Doubling Down Upon the Same...Suggesting Not Just That He Never Meant/Intended Them To Be Taken 'Literally' (by the Russians/Putin Etc) As Any Kind of (New and Worrisome, Regime Change-Oriented) Policy Tweak/Redirection, Those Remarks Merely Being His Own Personal & All-Too Human If Highly Visceral Reaction to/Take on the (In)Human Tragedy Unfolding Day-by-Day In (and Around) the Ukraine, But Moreover, and More Importantly, HAD NO INTENTION WHATSOEVER of Backing Down From Or Retracting/Walking Back Said Remarks...

And neither should he. For once he's effectively called Putin's bluff, well knowing that were the Russian President to use such as a pretext for a full-on nuclear war with NATO et al, he'd have already decided upon the same already...

Nevertheless, if it does serve to fuel Putin's ire (and doubtless Putin'll twist it for all it's worth), and it does, however indirectly, contribute to WW111, *we'll doubtless one and all retract such an apology and resile ourselves from he same, judging Mr Biden somewhat differently...

Perhaps America's second ever Roman Catholic president is taking a leaf out of his forbear's book, JFK coining that unforgettable "better dead than red" line, which thankfully - after a precipitate eleventh-hour standoff at both the Bay of Pigs & in the Cuban Missile Crisis...saw the Russians - under the cool and collected leadership of the relatively enlightened Nikita Khrushchev, back down... 

*If we're even around to do so, that is...

Or, rather, the Judgment Books of Heaven one day soon will, as a depopulated Earth itself gives way to the long-anticipated Second Coming of Jesus Christ, and, after a 1,000-year interim during which the saints themselves participate in a careful examination and perusal of selfsame books of record, they are opened to the (stunned) sight (and subsequent subdued silence) of one and all...

"Here I Stand - I Don't Care [Give a Fig-Leaf/a Rat's Razoo] What Hollywood [Et Al] Says": A Refreshingly Honest - If Ever So Politically Incorrect, In-Your-Face - Sentiment Florida's Republican Governor Ron de Santis Was Reported Having Expressed in Regards to the State's (and Nation's) Ever More Vocal & Frankly Intolerant and Militant LGBT 'Leadership' , & In Particular to the Federal (&/Or State) Mandating of LGBT Etcetera Propagandist Brainwashing of - Would You Believe It - Kids From Kindergarten Age & Upwards...Unbelievably, In That The Old (Sarcastic) Adage 'Only in California' No Longer Applies, 'Californication' Now Truly a Plague Across the Entire Length & Breadth of the DIS-United States of America...

Something/a matter, incidentally, upon which the Russian President is, oddly enough, 'right on'...

Oh for more people - women and men, boys 'n girls (whether 'teeny-boppers' or pre-adolescent) - with the grit, the gumption, the gall (& the gonads, if you will); the moral calibre, the depth of character, to do the same; to call a spade a spade, and to do so unapologetically and forthrightly, 'devil take the hindmost'...

But before you rather automatically and reflexively relegate my views to those of some prehistoric cave-dweller, and instantly and instantaneously 'discontinue' reading my blogposts and make me the sorry little subject of your upcoming round of 'cancel culturism', let me respectfully beg to differ (from that rather harsh and negative assessment/evaluation), and remind you that such bold and courageous stands and stances actually follow in the footsteps of and in the good old tradition of such moral giants as...

Martin Luther King: in our own day willing to go to gaol and beyond - and even die if necessary, as ironically he eventually did as a martyr in the righteous cause of civil rights for *all Americans - in defence of those timeless principles of truth and justice, of life, liberty and happiness for all people...

His namesake, 450-some years previous, Martin Luther: who nailed his 95 theses to the door of that fabled church in Wittenberg (Germany), ***declaring: "Here I stand, I cannot [in good conscience] do otherwise."

Or as a certain modest, self-effacing servant of that selfsame God once put things (in a classic quote it would be hard to better):

The greatest want of the world is the want of men -

men who will not be bought or sold;

men who in their inmost souls are true and honest;

men who do not fear to call sin by its right name;

men whose conscience is as true to duty as the needle to the pole;

men who will stand for the right though the heavens fall.

(P. 57, Education.)

(Though I've no doubt whatsoever that the writer, Ellen Gould White (nee: Harmon), would've included women in that statement were she to be alive today.)

*As a song my (almost 24-years deceased) beloved Grandma (Wilhelmina) - 'Billie' as she was affectionately known - once shared with me, 'Jesus Loves the Little Children', expresses things:

Jesus loves the little children, **all the children of the world...

red and yellow, black and white, **all are precious in His sight,

Jesus loves the little children of the world... 

**In 'quoting' said song of yesteryear I'm only too well aware that folk reading this may well turn upon me and, as folk in His day did with Jesus, (effectively) say: "Physician, heal thyself!" In other words, I'm declaring the 'all-importance' of love, whilst evidently denying the same to a large number of people...i.e. those affiliated with the LGBT community...

Not at all, not even on your nelly - if you happen to have one, which is doubtful...

Jesus Christ had and displayed - once for all time - His undying love for every single person who has ever lived, yes, even the likes of Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Pol Pot, Mao-tse Tung, Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic, Vladimir Putin - just to name a few of the infamous 'characters' who've strode, larger than life, across the stage of human history...

upon a lonely cross (of Calvary) outside the city gate (of Jerusalem) on Golgotha's hill in Palestine...

But the love there demonstrated proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was sin which caused the death of God's dear Son, and that that sin is so deadly serious that it cost the very life of God to atone...

...so let's beware of considering and treating anything that God's own word deems sin/ful to be anything but...

No, in this life we may not always - or ever - understand all the whys and the wherefores - if anyone was ever a fly on the (night)wall listening to my 'conversations' with my Heavenly Father sometimes they'd realize I know of what I speak (although they'd find it odd that a Christian could carry on so, and might well even disbelieve that I was really one after all, but be that as it may)... 

***Admittedly it's quite possible, though such a sentiment well expressed Luther's feelings upon that fateful occasion, he actually spoke those words on another, such as when he faced the intimidations of cardinals and prelates and priests in a convocation of a church court...

Postscript:

And yes, though it's taken me a heckuva long time to 'come out' and 'out myself' (as it were) - but certainly not in the way that folk hearing such a disclaimer normally assume one means - I will here and now declare my conviction that (the now in/famous) kiwi-born 'Australian' Israel Falau...

did absolutely nothing wrong a couple years ago when he simply echoed the Holy Bible's declaration that there are various sins/sinful practices which - unrepented of - will usher one into eternal darkness

But more on that on another occasion, suffice to add (Jesus' own most searching words, ones among many He fearlessly uttered which are strangely neglected by those who only seem to hear and notice His gentle, meek and mild sayings in accents of softest love & doings of merciful lovingkindness )...  

...that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God...

I'm sorry, folks, yes, Jesus Himself did say such a thing, and as the 'ole sticker succinctly puts it:

God said it - I believe it - and that settles it.

El finito. End of story. Nuff said.

The Fellow's [Ukraine's U N Ambassador's] Theology May Well Be Questionable, But His Sentiment is Spot-On: Yes, God On High Can Forgive ANY & EVERY Sin, Even the Most Heinous & Reprehensible, & Folk Go Absolutely Nowhere Upon Death; They Stay Dead in the Ground, Awaiting the Resurrection (of the Good, to Eternal Life; & of the Evil, to Everlasting Death)...But Those Involved in The Sins Solomon Singles Out (Under Divine Inspiration) As An Abomination to God, Such As the Shedding of Innocent Blood - Unless Converted & Brought to Repentance - Do Indeed, Upon That Fateful DAY of the LORD, Go Straight to Hell (i.e. the Lake of Fire), Whereupon There'll Be No Second Chances...

 For it is appointed unto men once to die, [and then] the [J]udgment...

Putin Putting All the Pieces Into Play to Position Our World Into Its Final Chapters...But Thank God, I've Read the Last Page (& Several Earlier, Penultimate Ones)...And He Ain't Even Mentioned (Explicitly, Anyhow), He's Such a Cipher In the Ultimate Scheme of Things - If. Admittedly, A Rather Potent and Presumptive, Presumptuous & Precipitous - & Cruel, Callous, Criminal & (Self-)Condemned Specimen of Inhumanity...Who's Put In A 'Good' Showing Now To Be Placed Right Up There Next to Adolf & Co (I Kid You Not)...

And the fact that he's seriously considered and consulted the Chinese Government means this fellow is playing for keeps and will stop at absolutely nothing in his bid to achieve the unachievable and defend the indefensible...

For God's sake he must be stopped (though it won't be by earthly means or arms). No indeed.

Marina Ovsyannikova, Heroine For Our Times

To Be Continued...(or see 'I Realize You Might Not Happen to Agree, But This Is How I See It Anyhow')... 

Putin a War Criminal? For Real, & A Helluva Lot Worse: Hey, Even Adolf Hitler , Ferocious Fiend (in Human Skin) That He Was, Didn't Deliberately Target/Single Out Orphanages, Kindergartens & Old Women (& Men)...

*A murderous despot hunting down and poisoning political opponents...

*A petty tyrant thus quashing legitimate dissent at home and abroad...

*An imperialist abroad with no qualms about murdering innocent civilians posing him no threat whatsoever...

In fact, as Newstalk ZB's London correspondent Rob/Rod Little summed him up so succinctly yesterday morning: "Many think Putin's insane - mad...he's not mad/insane, he's evil."

And believe me or don't, people, there's one heckuva qualitative difference!

Disclaimer:

Though I'm not for a moment even pretending that Hitler & Co did not systemically hunt down, capture, 'ship off' and ultimately dispose of all manner of folk, without any regard to age/vulnerability/innocence...

...only that he and his own did not systematically identify, target and then blow to smithereens such folk...

Perhaps (you could well argue) a technical point of quibble-some value, but one that strikes me anyhow.

Heartfelt-ly Honouring Russian Heroines and Heroes One & All: All Those Courageous Russian War Dissenters Coming Out of the Proverbial Woodwork Throughout the Length & Breadth of the Land - Yes, Apparently Even Including Siberia - To Register Their Heartbreak and Disgust at the Loathsome Deeds of Their Dastardly 'Leader'...Boldly Going Where So Few of Their Compatriots Have Ever Gone Before Or Are Now Prepared to Go: to Face the Full-Fledged Throttle of Putin's Police State Henchmen

Yeah, *"Don't [Let's Not] Mention [That There's] The War [Going On - in the Ukraine]"...Unless, That Is, You're Up For/To 15 Years Behind Bars in Sub-Arctic Siberia

*With due acknowledgement to Basil Fawlty (John Cleese) for that unforgettable refrain in his unforgettable TV sitcom...

Freedom May At Times Mean One Has Nothing Left to Lose...But One Thing's For Certain: Championing True Liberty Will Always Cost Us Something, As President Joe Biden Convincingly Declared to His Countrymen and Women This Very Day, As He Appealed for America-wide Support WHATEVER THE ECONOMIC PAIN While Acknowledging the Major (Energy) Sanctions His Administration Was About to Authorize/Institute; & As the Fleeing ............ Intoned (to His Beloved Kiri) As the War Machines of the Invading Martians Settled in the London Commons During the Ongoing Onslaughts in HG Wells' Seminal 'War of the Worlds', "There Are SOME THINGS Worth Living For...& SOME THINGS WORTH DYING FOR"

And so one cannot but admire the staunchness and stamina being shown - on display to the whole world - of Ukraine's gutsy statesman for our times, Volodymyr *Zelensky...

...nowhere seen as dramatically as he this very day 'virtually' addressed the UK House of Commons in a speech which channeled that never to be forgotten rallying speech of Winston Churchill to his people...

...declaring Ukrainians would fight the invading Russians in the fields and in the forests...

wherever the shameless invaders might approach them...

Winston Churchill would have joined the standing parliamentary ovation...

Would he what!

P.S. No, not Yelensky!

Yet Perversely/Ironically Enough, There's Really Only One Person (Other Than Putin Himself) With the Ability - Somehow Or Other - to Speak to the Mind of the Russian President and Get Him to Desist and Back Down (From His Military Escapade & Nuclear Brinkmanship): Believe It or Not, Folks, It's Donald J Trump...Yes, I'm Being - Deadly - Serious!

Just as only he - as U S President - was able to do so then with both Putin & Kim Jong-En(sp?) of North Korea...

Yes, weird (if not wonderful) as it sounds, they're on the selfsame wavelength, so to speak...they speak the same (despotic), incoherent language, and can (intuitively) pick each others' brains (if they can find anything there)...

But more importantly by a long shot, he probably wouldn't seriously listen to pretty much anyone else...

Yet As We NOW All Know (If We Somehow Didn't Already/Previously) Putin Has Always Had An Extra Weapon In His Arsenal - A Special Trump Card (No Pun Intended) Up His Back Pocket, the Nuclear Option...God Help Us All!

Hurrah to Russian Doctors - & Military Leaders/Political Figures Et Al, and Russians Throughout the Land - Appealing (At Doubtless Great Personal Cost) to President Putin to End This Wretched Military Escapade...to Kazakhstan for Refusing Russia Military Equipment &/Or Airbases... & to Governments Here & There for Closing Off/Shutting Down Financial Safety Nets/Loopholes for Russian Oligarchs...But First & Foremost to the Ukrainian People As a Whole...for Rising Up As One (Wo)Man and Letting the World, the Russian Military & In Particular Vladimir Putin Know - In No Mealy-Mouthed Fashion & Uncertain Terms - That They Will Not Let Him Achieve His Grisly Object...& That Even If It Cost Each One of Them Their Earthly Lives...

For as Someone is reported to have once declared:

(S)he who saves her/his [earthly] life will [ultimately] lose it, and s/he who loses her/his [earthly] life will [ultimately] save it. 

This is [true] love, that one lay/s down his life for his friends.

Or as another person once said: truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne...

Yet that scaffold holds/sways the future, and beyond the dim unknown, God standeth behind the shadows,[still] keeping watch over his own...

But Trump Simply Can't Help Himself, Though This Time He's Overplayed His Hand - & His True Nature is Openly On Display For One & All to See

Accordingly if any otherwise decent and sane Americans - erstwhile supporting Donald J Trump - wanted any remaining reason why he is completely unfit to ever resume presidential duties (as of late 2024/early 2025 in particular) then they need look no further than his latest series of Putin plaudits over recent days apparently...

What an utter obscenity and disgrace.

Yes, DJT's plumbed new depths of depravity - and for him that's saying something!

Hey, now at last may true evangelicals throughout the United States of America come out en masse and formally renounce their idolatrous and sacreligious alliance with this extremely unpleasant individual...

...before it's forever too late...before God decides your idolatrous identification with him prevents you from being fit and proper representatives of His 'down here below' and so identifies you with him that in ultimately dealing with and to Trump He has no alternative but to deal with you in like manner...

For if we refuse to separate ourselves from sin, then we become intrinsically identified with it and in ultimately dealing with it and destroying it God has no alternative but to destroy us alongside it!

Bravo to the Many/Numerous Gutsy Russians Coming to the Fore At This Dire Juncture to Let Putin Know They Ain't Fooled One Whit: Believe it or Not, There Remain True Russian Patriots Not Under Putin's Thumb, Though Forthwith They'll be Summarily Frogmarched Off to Prison If Not Siberia...

600 or 6,000-odd people across 62 Russian cities apparently...

Postscript:

For the inside story on the person who helped Putin become one of the most powerful people on the planet, you could do worse - in my own humble opinion - than view/read my four (or so) successive blogposts on my original nuff said blogsite, c/o

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

Seriously, folk, they're worth a read - if I do say so myself... 

Yes Indeed, Now Be Very Afraid, Taiwan...Mainland China Will Doubtless Utilize This Crisis As a Unique Opportunity, As an All Too Convenient Distraction for Achieving Its Own Nefarious Purposes in the Asia-Pacific Region...& Learn Ukraine's (and Indeed Hong Kong's) Lesson (Fast): In Your Moment of Ultimate Extremity, the West Will Not Come to Your Aid (Anytime Soon)

But what ought it to do...start WW111? 

Hifaluting Western Protestations Nothing More Nor Less than a Paper Tiger (with the Possible Exception of the Aussies): In a Turn of the Bitterest Irony. the Nation Earnestly Desiring NATO Membership and Encouraged by One & All Along That Selfsame Path for So Very Long...Will, In Its Moment of Direst Need, Receive NO HELP WHATSOEVER From That Very Organisation (and Its Major Component Parts)

'So 'don't put your trust in fancy promises'.

See 'the Cunning Cat & His Company' (in Aesop's Fables, Golden Press/Western publishing, 1965). 

Or as *Aesop again might characterize it, a friend in need is a friend in deed.

See 'The Travellers and the Bear' (ibid).

Also, actions speak louder than words.

Again, see 'The Lions and the Hares', ibid.

Volodymyr Versus Vladimir: What a Study in Contrasts!

The diminutive, modest and self-effacing, courageous would-be martyr, Volodymyr Zelensky, versus the cowardly, self-worshipping, wannabe 'real man' Vladimir Putin!

Vladimir Putin? You Can't Negotiate with a Thug and a Gangster and a Schoolyard Bully

 Or, 'A bad excuse is good enough for a bully'. 

See 'The Hungry Wolf and the Lamb', Aesop's Fables, 1965 edition).

Alternatively, 'Some people believe that might makes right'. 

Likewise, see 'The Lion's share', ibid.

The Leopard, Folks, Ain't About to Change His Spots Anytime Soon: Once a KGB Agent (Provocateur), Ever & Always a KGB Agent (Provocateur)

We can change everything except our nature.

See 'Venus and the Lovesick Cat' (Aesop's Fables, 1965 edition). 

Vladimir Putin? He Ain't a Clone, Folks - More's the Pity

Or, alternatively, a 'puppet'? Only of his own narcissistic, delusionary, messianic self-talk. 

The Book/Film 'Yoyo Rabbit'? Sorry (to Disillusion Y'all), Adolf Hitler Was No Laughing Matter: Not Now, Not Ever

'Othering' Others, In Particular Small & Unpopular Minorities, Has Ever Had a Rather Fraught & Tragic History...And So, Perhaps Y'All Had Better Take Your Covid Mandates & Go & Stick Them Somewhere Where the Sun Never Shines - For All Our Sakes Ultimately...

They came for the Jews and I said nothing because I wasn't a Jew...

Then they came for the mentally infirm and I said nothing because I wasn't mentally infirm...

Then they came for the sick and decrepit and I said nothing because I wasn't sick and decrepit...

Then they came for the Gypsies and I said nothing because I wasn't a Gypsy...

Then they came for the communists and socialists and I said nothing because I was neither a communist nor a socialist...

And finally they came for you and me but there wasn't anyone left to speak out and up for us...

Postscript:

Admittedly I'd concede a rather imprecise rendition of that famous, memorable sentiment (but best available recollection for the present).

Are Hungary and Poland -'Illiberal Democracies' That the European Union and Court of Justice Argue They Most Definitely Are (Notwithstanding) - Nevertheless Correct in Asserting These (EU Etcetera) Have Not Only Exceeded Their Just Mandate and Authority, But Their Recent (Re-)Actions Against These Two Sovereign Nations Represent a 'Cultural Creep' Towards a (Re-)United States of Europe? You Better Believe It!

Two Prominent Jesuits (Emmanuel Macron & Pope Frances): Leaders of a New, Reunited Europe? Hey, Even the BBC Itself Suggested Macron Fitted the Bill

I'm Hardly Seeking to Justify Putin Et Al - Leastways in Sync With The Chinese Dragon - But (I'm) Sorry to Say, (U S President) Joe (Biden) Is - Quite Simply - In, Out of His Depth, Over His Head...And Who Knows What Soon Befalls Our Troubled World, Let Alone the Much-Abused Nation-State of the Ukraine...

 To Be Continued...

Upon This Inglorious 77th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz/Holocaust (Generally), May I Post My Personal Tribute to Victims and Survivors and Those (Such as the Much-Resented Simon Weisenthal Institute) Doing Their Darnedest to Bring Justice To Such

And though it in no way diminishes the evil of said infamy, I personally believe, as someone who considers himself a careful Bible student over many decades, that one way the Lord on High will one day bring good out of that most diabolical chapter in (in)human history...

...is by using it to shine a spotlight upon that equally infamous and diabolical chapter in human history, the Cross of Calvary (whereby an Individual as opposed to an entire people group, suffered horrendously at the hands of a merciless and unmerciful bloodthirsty mob)...

in this way (and I fully appreciate the thought/insight may well not be original, though I did indeed come to/arrive at it on my lonesome (with the Holy Spirit's guidance I have little doubt):

When in years to come - if that's how long the prophecy has to run - the Jewish nation is beseiged around and about by, according to Scripture, pretty well every nation upon earth, and perhaps two-thirds of their populace is wiped off the face of the earth (if that fairly common interpretation of prophecy is indeed correct), they will recall the treatment meted out to One of their own in the faraway distant past...

...and then everything will quite literally 'click' for them...

No, I'm in no way, shape or form seeking to find yet another sort of justification or rationale or excuse for those aforementioned horrors and barbarities and evil - God, as the Newer (and indeed Older) Testament scriptures make very clear, is not - indeed cannot be, consistently with His holy and loving character - ever 'the Author of evil'...

And yet, as Romans 8:28 makes abundantly clear, 'penned' by a man who in earlier times was a most relentless, brutal and bloodthirsty foe of the new sect of 'the Way' as it was then termed, God has a way of taking the most horrible things and making something beautiful out of them...

And thus and so the wonderful prophecy of the penultimate book in the Old Testament will yet come to fruition:

And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.

And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.

In that day shall there be a great mourning in Jerusalem...

And the land shall mourn, every family apart...

It's - LONG PAST TIME - the U S of A Acknowledged Its Own Inglorious Role In Baiting the Russian Bear: Its Unashamed and Quite Simply Shameless and Shameful Post(Cold)-War Triumphalism - Indulging Self-Righteous Self-Exaltation and Smug Gloating Over the Ex-USSR Post-the Fall of the Berlin Wall and Implosion of the Soviet Union - Has Yielded Its Baleful Fruit of Long-Simmering Resentment On the Part of the Russian People and Leadership...And, I'm Sorry to Say, the Fault Has Not Been With the Latter...

Though it doesn't justify the Russians - aka Vladimir Putin - amassing troops upon Ukraine's border: far from it (indeed, their ongoing effective war of attrition against Ukrainians begun back in 2014, far as I can discern, hasn't ever actually ceased, though admittedly news reports from the Crimea and the Ukraine generally these days are extremely sketchy at the best of times - and as that deep and profound thinker Smeagol-Gollum well put things "These aren't decent times!")...

Nevertheless 'the West' (as in the United States of America) has long since wrong-footed the entire situation (by which I refer to its aforementioned post-Cold War triumphalism, in particular its unwarranted and prideful attitude and posture) and has thus in a large measure contributed to things deteriorating to their present-day state.

But expect a long-overdue apology on the part of the Yanks? - you better forget it!

Being ever and only in the right means, as one songster so (un)aptly put matters, never having to say you're sorry...

But only in the mind and heart of an arrogant believer in the Cold War era maxim that might ever makes right, and victory calls for a sense of smug self-satisfaction and gloating...

...rather than a much more appropriate sense of modest self-abasement and gratitude.

Having long since chosen the latter course, whatever the relative rights and wrongs of the military actions of the current Russian regime, America's trajectory is sadly ever onward, as secular observers have long since noted, from (long since becoming) the self-anointed global cop...and ultimately into an inglorious outworking of the Scriptural depiction of Revelation's false prophet speaking like a dragon and enforcing the sign, the mark, of the first sea-beast's authority...

And believe you me, the end-game will not be pretty, not one wee bit, I can readily assure you!

One Hum-Dinger Of A Brat: (One-Time) Cardinal Ratzsinger, Long-Serving Head of the Roman Catholic Church's (Modern-Day) 'Inquisition', Aka Pope Benedict XVI, Is Effectively Implicated As Coverer-Up-In-Chief Of the Vatican's Crimes Against Kids: Hey, How About, As My Brother Just Said, HIS BEING EXCOMMUNICATED? Yeah, Right (As Kiwi Billboards Might Express Matters)!

The Party Is Finally Over For Boris Johnson, And The Chickens And Roosters Are Busily Scrambling Over Each Other to Find A Place to Roost

The bottom line is, the optics, as they say, are simply awful/dreadful: in what can only look like a one-fingered salute to the British people in *their hour of trial and tribulation the national powers-that-be seem to be having a jolly old time, thank you very much, at the expense of the longsuffering masses.

It simply doesn't, to use another phrase much in vogue these days, pass the sniff test. That's all there really is to it folks - it's that simple.

And I 'say'(as in print) **that with a tinge of sadness in my voice (i.e. 'heart'); as someone who has found Boris Johnson a bit of a lovable rogue, an idiosyncratic character and comic if you will, but an endearing one at that.

Yes, for folk throughout the length and breadth of the land to be going through the hard yards, the 'hard yakka' as it were through the ongoing ***'gift that keeps on giving', as in covid, and then to turn on their TV sets/tune in to their radios/open their newspapers - yes, and/or 'google it'/'hear' via the internet in one way or another - and see numerous ****'juicy and salacious' tidbits day after day (as the story is drip-fed into their respective media) showing/revealing a smirking elite knowingly and shamelessly getting away with 'stuff' that the plebs and peasants - "let 'em eat dirt!" - could only dream of (in their state of ongoing restrictions) and in the full expectation moreover that their hijinks and frolics will never see the light of day (as in the public glare)...

...could not but strike any wholly impartial and unpartisan observer as an *****unprecedented degree of arrogance and hubris and overreach heretofore unheard of...

...'stuff' ultimately reaching to the very highest echelons and corridors of power, and necessitating one  - and one only - immediate response, one which is so clear and obvious that I'll simply leave you to work it out yourselves, to follow the trail wheresoever it happens to obviously lead...

And that arguably it really requires a mass resignation (of involved ministers and MPs) and/or a snap election to give the British people the chance to start afresh...and asap. (Though I fear for the Brexit, were that admittedly extremely remote and unlikely eventuality to transpire.)

Yes, Labour's (comparatively) new leader is definitely onto a winner (with the people of the United Kingdom) in relentlessly pursuing this (with a zeal befitting Sherlock Holmes in relentless pursuit of the latest clue however labyrinthine the particular tunnel he next entered and explored), and could hardly be faulted were he to press his newfound advantage home without any further ado to the nth degree and beyond...

What else can he realistically be expected to do?

Credulity can only be stretched so far, and it has arguably already been extended well beyond breaking point...  

*As they collectively endure one of the worst outcomes of any nation in the global coronavirus pandemic.

**That is, all the preceding (and all the rest of my opinion piece). 

***As one (if not various and sundry) wag/s has/have well expressed matters.

****Metaphorically speaking, that is!

*****One of such a serious nature that it makes those of ******'our own' David Clark look like minor misdemeanours in comparison...

******David Clark being the New Zealand Government Minister who hardly ingratiated himself with the kiwi public a year-and-a-half ago or so when he, as Health Minister during the global pandemic that is covid-19, went off mountain bike riding, visiting a local beach, and moving house while everyone else trembled in their boots almost setting a foot out their doors.

(A Rather, If Necessarily, Belated) 'Tribute' (Of Sorts) to America's 'EPIPHANY' - i.e. January 6th, 2020 - A Year On: "Good Night, America, How ARE You, Don't Ya Know Me, I'm [Update: I Once WAS] Your Native Son?"

A classic opportunity for behind-the-scenes bipartisan collaboration upon removing Donald J Trump 'el permanente' from the American political scene was then lost for good; and, like so many scholars and academics etcetera, I suspect the opportunity will never come again...

And thus and so that eerie painting that that wag (I mention around Election 2020; upon either this or my other, original blogsite) in the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention Hall was ruminating and reflecting upon (during my brief visit in August or so 1992) perhaps *verily represents the sun descending (off the landscape) - as opposed to rising - permanently on the once proud and great (and once global trend-setting) U S 'experiment in democracy'...

Afterthought: 

Curiously enough, my long-deceased American grandmother would've turned 120 on that day... 

...and perhaps equally eerily, her name, 'Elvera', itself meant the truth.

Acknowledgment:

FULL CREDIT to the (introduction to the) third and final stanza in Arlo Guthrie's inimitable classic 'City of New Orleans'...

TO BE CONTINUED...Sometime soon, don't know when...

Typical (NZ Mainstream) Media Reporting Upon How EVERYONE Is Now Heartily Sick & Tired of Hearing Ceaselessly About 'Covid-Covid-Covid' And Moreover Are Showing Ever-Increasing Signs & Symptoms of Mental Unwellness Over It...And Yet Does THAT At Long Last Stop or At the Very Least Put Ye Proverbial Dent In Their Ceaselessly Going On & On & On About It, Ad Infinitum? NO SIRREE, Not A Jot, a Tittle or Even an Iota...

Whilst Austria (and Soon Germany?) Reinstitute the Sort of Measures Unseen Since and Eerily Reminiscent of Their Inglorious Past, & The British P M & Associates Epitomize Hypocrisy Incorporated As They Are Caught Having Mandated Their Own People to "Do As We Say, Not As We Do"...99 Principled 'Tory' Parliamentarians in the British Conservative Party Break Ranks to Register a Principled "NO" to the Slippery Slope of Vaccine Passports

Disclaimer:

And though Yours Truly has (reluctantly, last-minute) accepted being issued with such, it is only because the realities of being a home carer for my aging mum necessitate my obtaining supplies at all costs in any number of unforeseen eventualities...

Postscript (January 2, 2022):

Not that she could care less 99% of the time!

Post-postscript:

Apparently my 1,001st (or, less likely, my 1,000th) blogpost (over my eight different blogsites) since I began blogging back in mid-2012.

And Trump Himself - As In He of the Donald J Variety - Appears Increasingly Likely to Stand Again in 2024, Scoop the Republican Party Sweepstakes, & Go On to Re-Seize the Nation's and World's Supreme Political Position...To Americans' and Earthians' Eternal Sorrow & Regret...

Whilst in the U S of A, 'Roe Vs Wade' Is Tottering, Teetering on the Very Brink...Of Complete & Irrevocable Repeal & Annulment: 'States' Rights' May Well Trump Federal Law Before the Dust Has Finally Settled

And Meanwhile, In Lil' 'Ole Godzone the Show is Well & Truly Over As Well: I'm Sorry to Break the Unwelcome News, Jacinda & Co, You're Now Living on Borrowed Time...

Get A Grip On Yourself, Boris - You Delivered the Brexit in No Uncertain Terms - But Now You're Coming Unstuck Bigtime, Or Am I Understating Things Bigtime?!?!?

But As for Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's Apparent Sense of Entitlement Vis-a-Vis Our Parliamentary Speaker's Preferential Treatment in the Parliamentary Sweepstakes (As to MPs' MIQ-Free Travel)...& In Her Rather Sheltered, Even Naive Response to Protesters, Demonstrators, Hecklers, Stirrers & Assorted Agitators As She's Openly Demonstrated Over Recent Weeks - When Unavoidably & Uncomfortably 'Up Close & Personal' With the Like...

Like/enjoy it she may well - and perfectly understandably - not...

But, hey, it's called freedom of speech and expression, a thing apparently increasingly in contention in Western society in general, but here in particular as her Government - using the cover of the March 15th massacre (by an unhinged Aussie gunman), and despite strong protests by the Christchurch Muslims  whose relatives were killed - proceeds apace with (preparing) generally and roundly criticized and condemned 'hate speech' legislation...

Yep, the woke brigade and cancel culturalists alongside the politically correct wouldn't even know much less respect the sacrifice/s previous generations made - at the cost of their very lives - to secure such freedoms for succeeding generations...

But we better care...if we know what's good for us...for after they've done with the easy stuff, what's the chances even probability they're comin' for us next, or someone near and dear to you...  

Yes, Covid-19 is VERY, Is In Fact ALL TOO REAL, And Moreover Is Comin' to a Place/Residence Right Near/Nextdoor to You - and Yours - Anytime Soon (If Not Sooner)...But Let's Beware of Making It (& All Things Covid/Coronavirus) the Bee-All & End-All of All Things Healthwise...

And of thereby condoning, even promulgating a mindless, moronic, brain-dead conformity to the state more reminiscent of Big Brother's never-ending surveillance and browbeating and emotional/ psychological intimidation (and ultimately physical torture) of Winston Smith et al...

Of labelling, pigeonholing, ostracizing, scapegoating, and eventually condemning via some latter-day tinpot judge, jury and executioner regime whosoever happens - for perfectly genuine and heartfelt reasons of their own - to resist and oppose 'joining the club'...

...having elevated 'the Covid' to the status of a wholly untouchable sacred cow...

It's BS, folks, truly. 'Coz though in our 'new normal' 'flu deaths and the like may well be plummeting - an unexpected and welcome side-effect of the stringent measures being adopted globally (and here in NZ) to combat the coronavirus...

...folks with life-threatening cancer are evidently not getting the urgent attention and treatment they so desperately seek, demand and require, and meanwhile mental health casualties and even fatalities are spiralling out of control, even as it were 'going through the roof', conveniently out-of-sight and out-of-mind to those so adroitly governing the global response to covid...

She May Well Have Given Thoughtful & Considered Reflection to Her Intemperate Outburst at the Recent Labour Party Conference, & Duly Apologized to Understandably Offended Conservative Party MPs...-and Admittedly My Impression (from Newstalk ZB's UK Correspondent Rod Little's Discussion Thereof a Few Weeks Ago) that Raymer Had Effectively Slurred (By Implication and Insinuation) Voters in the British Midlands and Northern Industrial Heartland Who'd Voted 'Tory' in Droves In General Election 2019 was Mistaken...But Even Her Uncategorical Slur Upon PM Boris Johnson Seems Way over the Top & Utterly Unbecoming of an Heir-Apparent (Given Time) to the United Kingdom's Top Political Role...- and Surely Would Not be Tolerated AN INSTANT in a Male Politician...

You've Really Gotta Give It to Greta...For Calling Out the *"Vain Talkers & Pious Professors" (of Our Present-Day Global Climate EMERGENCY): "GREENWASHING" Is, If Anything, A Satirical Understatement, A Genteel Euphemism For What They Patently Failed - Yet Again - to Achieve At Glasgow...But Hey, They All Feel So Much Better For Letting Off So Much Hot Air (Yet Again): Surely THEY Should Be the Ones Whose Verbal Belching/Verborrhea Ought to Be Limited/Taxed Into Extinction Rather Than That of the Comparatively Innocent Methane-Emitting Bovine...

*As former ACT NZ MP Stephen Franks I believe expressed things (on this or a similar, but not entirely unrelated matter) upon RNZ National's weekday Panel a few days ago...

Postscript:

Or, as fellow Cop26 attendees (Friends of the Earth or Greenpeace) has so aptly put it: "It's twiddling our thumbs and wishing for the best."

Going On BBC World Radio's 'Trending Now' Programme This Morning (New Zealand Time), Defining 'Greenwashing' As Being: 'Pretending to be more 'green' than you actually are...using/employing deception to do so' (to paraphrase programme producers/directors Merlin Thomas/Marco Silva (&/or programme hosts etc)): Hey, That Sounds AN AWFUL LOT Like Aotearoa-New Zealand's Present-Day Labour-Green (Climate Change: "THIS IS OUR NUCLEAR MOMENT") Coalition Government (Doesn't It?!?!?)

And no, I ain't jokin' or jivin', much less trickin'...though the above are arguably treatin' us all like lemmings... 

('We've) One Thing On Our (Collective) Minds, "It's Covid, Stupid!" How the (Understandable) Media Obsession With All Things Covid Is Starting to Seriously Derail Proper Attention to and Due Consideration of Some FAR MORE SIGNIFICANT & WEIGHTY Matters of Global Import, Or, Seriously Folks, There's MUCH More to Life than the Coronavirus...BUT - to Paraphrase That Aged Denizen of Truth & Wisdom, Alfred E Newman, "I Dunno What THAT is"...

To Be Continued...(when I've caught up with a few of those things in my own life, having wasted so many seemingly on all things covid of recent times)...

Wuhan Revisited: (As a Guest Author on the Mike Hosking Show **Revealed This Very Morning) The Truth Has Been & Is Being 'Outed', & Ultimately Will Indeed Be Unveiled for All the World's Waiting Population to See...Despite All the Various & Assorted Appeasers & Acquiescers in the Chinese Government's Covid-19 Coverup...

*And not a moment too soon...

**Not in those precise words...

Postscript: And evidently the  greatest 'witness' to give evidence thereabouts is a longtime Chinese activist who - in great contradistinction to so many - has evidently conclusively confirmed that China's present topdog (& Associates) has indeed - and long since - previously authorized the very sort of thing of which his administration is presently being accused...

*No thanks to the World Health Organisation quite evidently...

Freedom...Yes, It's Verily 'Just Another Word for NOTHING LEFT TO LOSE' (As the Composer of That 'Ole Classic 'Me 'N Bobby McGee' Expresses So Very Aptly, Succinctly & Perceptively)...And Thus And So Many Lockdown Protestors & Other Assorted 'Anti (Covid-19) Vaccers', In Giving the Thumbs Down to the Present (Admittedly Quite Understandable and Semi-Rational) Global Paranoia/Hysteria Over the Coronavirus...DO PERHAPS HAVE A NOT ALTOGETHER ILLEGITIMATE POINT TO MAKE...

Indeed, as former Key Government cabinet minister Christopher Finlayson aptly expressed matters upon RNZ National's esteemed (weekday) Panel the other day...

the present *tidal wave to dis/allow people access to places and events purely upon **said basis does carry rather eerie reminiscences of a rather worrisome moment in 20th century affairs...

*Entirely my own phraseology.

**Ditto (i.e. the carrying and presentation of a 'Covid passport').

Are We to - CAN ANYONE - Really Believe That the Significant & Praiseworthy Dutch Holocaust Memorial Unveiled A Few Days Ago...Will or Even Ought to Serve As a (Salient) 'Warning Against the Consequences of Racism & Discrimination'? Really? Hardly, Folks! A Hitler Had a Deeply Considered, Carefully-Formulated, Articulately Communicated & Thoroughly Enacted Master-Plan: to Eradicate Jews, Gypsies, 'Inferior' Races, the Mentally & Physically Infirm, Homosexuals, Socialists & Communists Et Al...Hardly on even the same planet, let alone galaxy, much less universe, as ye low-level, garden-variety racists and xenophobes...I Mean, Really...

Typical conflation as per usual to the nth degree and well beyond - of otherwise doubtless reasonable and rational individuals (making such outlandish claims, that is)... 

If (Supposed Media Lightweight) Jack Taime's 'Q&A' Current Affairs Programme This Morning Is ANYTHING TO GO BY, The Guy's Modest Softly-Softly Approach Would Seem to Prove the Truism of Ye 'Ole Adage: One Obtains More Nectar from One by Honey than by Using El Usual Cudgels: WHAT AN EFFORT...& He's Certainly Put Himself in Both Winston Peters' & Christopher Luxon's 'Good Book'/Graces!

New Zealand Government Seems to Have Put/Placed Itself in an Invidious, Blatantly No-Win Situation/Scenario: Change (Auckland) Covid Level Monday (Or Whenever) Whilst the Ongoing Outbreak is ANYTHING BUT PROPERLY CONTAINED (In Ye Hermetically Sealed Container As It Were) And WHAT DOES THAT SAY ABOUT ALL THE TIME & TROUBLE & EFFORT NZ INC HAS THUS FAR GONE THROUGH On the Way Toward A (Soon-To-Be, & Inexplicably So) 'Eradication'/Elimination' Strategy No Longer...?

As Billy Joel Also Said - Again, In a A Wholly, Altogether Different Context - 'You May Be Right', BUT...:And In Such A Spirit Joe Biden Ought to Be Exceedingly Careful Vis-a-Vis His Precipitate Nationwide (Public AND PRIVATE) Covid-19 Vaccination Work Mandates...Lest He Stir Up Ye Proverbial Hornet's Nest, Open a Canful of Worms, and Release A Pandora's Boxful of Trouble Upon His Nation & Its Liberty-Loving Citizenry

*Hypocrisy, It's SUCH A Well-Frequented Mode of Conduct, 'Coz So Very Many Are Tremendous Talkers Whilst Being Depressingly Delinquent Deliverers...

 Or, let's let all the whole wide world celebrate NZ Inc's "wonderful contribution" to climate change 'action' while conveniently ignoring the fact that we just (last year) imported more fossil fuel-derived coal than ever before...

...whilst giving the (virtue-signalling) lead to other nations by not curtailing our carbon-consuming global jet-setting while ostensibly in the very pursuit of that very thing, an objective we've been heard declaring an 'emergency' worthy of our utmost attention and prompt, decisive action...

*Due credit/acknowledgment to Billy Joel and his deeply insightful song 'Honesty', which I've paraphrased more closely in times gone by...

It'd Be Harder to Uncover (Albeit in Broadest Daylight) A More Egregious Example of the Collective Loss of Historical Memory Than Those Petty & Paltry, Sordid & Small 'Men' and 'Women' Presently Seeking - Wholly in Vain, Incidentally - to Diminish the Mana of One of History's True Greats: Sir Winston Churchill: Who Of Course Is Renowned for That Wonderful 'Ole Maxim: (S)he Who Forgets [the Lessons of] History Is Doomed/Bound to Repeat It/Them: Yes, They'd Have Acclaimed & Cheered Neville Chamberlain From the Rafters, Even Doubtless Likewise Pronouncing 'Peace in Our Time': Nazi Collaborators One & All (Yes, Even You Supposedly 'Progressive' New Zealand Greens)!

Whilst Teresa May Acquits Herself With Aplomb As She Wrests the Mantle of True & Tireless Advocate for the World's Teeming Masses of Needy & Oppressed From All Other Pretenders To That Most Worthy of Offices...Speaking Up Awhile Ago for the United Kingdom's Aid Budget to be Significantly Increased, and Now Addressing and Challenging, Even Politically Assaulting (So to Speak), her Prime Ministerial Successor in Her Ablest of Articulate Advocacy for the Abjectly Abandoned Afghanis in Their Darkest Hour...

Trump Et Al May Snidely Snipe From the Safety of the Sidelines, Even Mercilessly & Smugly Gloat Over the Biden Administration's (Admittedly, Own Goal & Self-Perpetuated) Dilemma & Now Abject Abnegation of Responsibility in Afghanistan...Fair Enough I Suppose...But Let's Not, Let's Never Forget that He & His Presidential Predecessors (AT LEAST As Far Back As George W) Have Blood In Abundance Upon Their Hands Over the Situation There...And Arguably Donald J Trump's (Original) Very Departure Date for US Troops There Reveals the Real Facts of the Matter...Meticulously Manipulating Matters to Heap Maximum Disrepute Upon His Successor (the Original Evacuation/Withdrawal of Troops Being Scheduled for Around Inauguration Day 2021 - A Little Like Ronald Wilson Reagan's Own Similar Behind-the-Scenes Skillful Manipulation of Things in Iran in early 1981)

Though it's hard to escape the contrary argument that Trump was taken offguard by what happened in Presidential Election 2020 - anticipating this of course by his casting disrepute and infamy upon that election in the leadup to it - for in his heart of hearts (if he has such!) he really didn't expect anyone else - whoever s/he might be - to be able to beat/best 'im...

...and of course still doesn't believe anyone did!...still not having conceded (and with no intention to ever do so; still trumpeting "that stolen election" disinformation 'fake news' trope)...

the last refuge of a congenitally poor loser 

With Remarkable & Admirable Zeal Worthy of a Far Better & Greater Cause, Lockdown Protestors & Anti-(Covid-19)-Vaccinationists Unknowingly Give Ammunition to Those Whose (Secretive) Purposes are Far More Nefarious Indeed...

To Be Continued... 

It Only Took Another Olympics To Remind the World that Belarus Cannot Avoid Getting Up to Its Old Tricks...So Good On Poland for Having the Guts, the Gumption and the Gonads to Vouchsafe the Safety & Security of that Gutsy Young Belarussian Athlete/Gymnast...Who Skedaddled Recently to Preempt an Instant Deportation Back to Lukashenko's Unfriendly Unwelcome...

You - in this case she - can bet your - in this instance, her - life that were she to be returned to her Belarussian homeland, she'd have been in rather deep doggy doo-doo, apparently aka Lukashenko's own brother (high up in their Olympics Committee, no less, c/o some good ole-fashioned Trumpesque nepotism at the highest levels)...

Under the rubric of her supposedly problematic mental health (as is all too common in the modern-day Games) she was in line to be given the right unroyal heave-ho and bullied (even if 'only' psychologically) into due submission - if not in fact a whole lot worse...

But the gal was not for being hoodwinked and silenced and dealt to

So all the best for her future prospects elsewhere and a well-earned good riddance to Lukashenko's Belarus...

Yes, it'll doubtless take every single last one of those ten-some years she named till she's indeed able to return there...

But who knows? The peoples' uprising at the outset of 2021 (I believe; or was it a year earlier?) failed to overturn his tyrannical, despotic, Putinesque rule - no doubt with 'friends in (Russian) high places', to be sure...

So how long the longsuffering Belarussians will put up with Russian Czar-apparent Putin's satellite drone running roughshod over all their civil liberties is a moot question indeed...  

...though naturally enough they'd generally be only too well aware that if they, the Belarussian mice, clamber for liberty too loud and long, the Russian mogey'll come down hard and fast and with some rather awful finality (upon one and all who dare to challenge its territorial aims and ambitions and assumptions)...

Sometimes It Is No Bad Thing - As A Character In Peter Jackson's, Francesca Walsh's & Philippa Boyens' Cinematic Interpretation of JRR Tolkien's Classic Lord of the Rings Trilogy Might Have Expressed Matters - To Be On the Wrong Side of Popular Opinion (At Least in One's Own Political Party) And the Right Side of History('s Ultimate Verdict): Yes, Congressionwoman and Congressman Cheney and Kinzinger Might Well Be Dressed Down, Dissed and - Eventually - Dumped by Their Respective Republican Party Renominating Committees, But Who Ultimately Cares?: To Do the Right Thing While the World Frowns Upon You and Looks the Other Way Is What Will Let You Leave A True - Rather Than Another Mere Ditto - Mark Upon the Pages of History...

On the Half-Year Birth Anniversary Of One of America's Greatest Sons of All Time, Martin Luther King Junior, I'll Yet Pay Unexpected Tribute Here to the President Who Recognized His Unparalleled Contribution to U S Society...to the Extent Of 'Forever' After Memorializing His Birth-Date In the (Temporal) Annals of Everyday American Working Life: Yes, There's A - There Are Indeed Many - Perfectly Legitimate, Eminently Reasonable Reason/s Why the 39th President of the United States of America, RONALD WILSON REAGAN, Was So Exceedingly Popular - Among His Fellow Americans Anyway...And It Just Won't Do to Simply Dismiss Them Due to An - Equally Understandable - Sense of Loyalty/Allegiance to His Unfortunate Predecessor, JAMES EARL CARTER, Who, Despite Living An Exemplary Post-Presidential Life In Which He (Has) Excelled As 'Both' An Outstanding Persona, Humanitarian Extraordinaire and Peace-Maker All Wrapped Into One, Nevertheless Had a Rather Fraught Presidential Tenure (Much As a Distant - and Equally Devout Christian - Predecessor, Herbert Hoover, For That Matter, Himself Did)...

To Be Continued (Shortly)...

Tuesday, July 20th (NZ time)

Though I personally do not and have never subscribed to neoliberal economics aka deregulation c/o  Reaganomics/Thatcherism (in the USA/UK) or c/o Ruthanasia/Rogernomics (here in New Zealand) - and so find myself far more aligned politically/economically to that ever economically consistent long-time politician Winston Peters than to his Labour/Green Party detractors who for all their criticisms have long since tended to walk a somewhat different walk from the high-minded talk they seem especially adept in...

Yet I recognize many Americans saw otherwise - however wrong they were! And so, I do not rate Reagan well on the economic equity score, though I realize the stock market rallied strongly under his watch...

But on those global matters of moment Reagan was the man of and for the moment...

presiding over the gradual and ultimately speedy demise of the *Evil Empire (i.e. the Soviet Union/USSR: or Union of Soviet Socialist Republics - since split into smithereens and its basic 15 constituent parts). But he was most assuredly not alone, either in temporal or, for that matter, supernatural helpers, in this success - and those who suggest otherwise ascribe to the man far more impact than anyone is warranted and likewise infinitely more credit than he is due...

That all being placed firmly upon the record and all being said, I intend to now summarize why **I consider Reagan overall right up there among America's most 'successful' and significant presidents. But I certainly do not intend to skirt over those elements of the Reagan Administration which earned my ire, and, more importantly, the anger and disgust of multitudes (especially worldwide), and will succinctly come to a close by mentioning two long-term issues which Reagan (and co) either courageously tackled or ultimately - and, arguably, cowardly - failed to deal with; leaving a legacy for his (presidential) successors and succeeding generations (of Americans) - in the former instance, of good or weal; in the latter of evil or woe...

President Ronald Reagan's outstanding achievements and/or personal assets/attributes were, however seemingly 'simple' and uncomplicated, nevertheless, as the wag might express it, eminently profound, forming the basic constituents contributing to my overall positive assessment and favourable evaluation of his presidential (and thus *******political) legacy...

In (necessarily) bullet-point inventory, I consider these (the particular order in which I list them - apart from #1 & #2, which also should have been reversed - not necessarily signifying their relative importance) to have been/consisted of:

#1: his - already acknowledged - pivotal historic role - with lotsa divine assistance I hasten to add! - in the incredible, and incredibly rapid, demise and self-destruction of the USSR and Eastern Bloc...

#2: Not - as so many (including, admittedly, yours truly, at times) expected - ***********pressing the button and ending it all for one and all...

#3: Understanding the American people - incidentally, as a dual American kiwi since birth with parents who moved to God's Own/Godzone 60-some years ago now and growing up with that background as well as numerous grandparental visits and moves here over my childhood years, plus having spent almost three years in the USA myself in the early to mid 1990s (like John Key and David Cunliffe, evidently),  and eagerly devouring Times and Newsweeks galore throughout my lifetime, I can claim to know somewhat of which I speak - in a way in which few other Americans presidents before or since have: I'd say, with the notable exceptions of (interestingly, Reagan's own (birth family's) childhood hero) FDR - who had the common touch down to a fine art, and tuned it to perfection as radio finally came into its own; JFK - who symbolized and embodied a new generation's (and my mum's own) hopes and dreams for a new day and age for America and the world; and Abraham Lincoln - who had an intuitive grasp upon both the nation's pulse and yet 'the better angels of [their] nature(s)'; of course, like JFK 100 years on, cruelly gunned down by the assassin's bullet...

...JFK being of course in the view of many the victim of a deep state conspiracy, whereas it has actually been well established that - irrespective of the situation for JFK - Abraham Lincoln most definitely was such indeed. (For more info upon the same, please refer to a 42-pager I did on the run-up to American presidential election 2016, in which I myself expose what I believe to very possibly have been a conspiracy behind that election - but not remotely the one the media has long been suggesting...).

It's entitled 'If It Looks Like a Setup, and It Sounds Like a Setup (etcetera etcetera etcetera),Then...' (Forgive me for temporarily forgetting the precise name of it, it is located upon 'NuffSaid' and was posted upon August 22nd, 2016). Interestingly, in a subsequent discussion of conspiracy theories - when, following Donald Trump's totally unexpected presidential victory the very airwaves and blogosphere were seemingly literally swarming with conspiracy theories - an American couple interviewed by RNZ National's Nine to Noon host, Kathryn Ryan, in January or February 2017,  declared that the one conspiracy theory they felt comfortable stating possessed some credibility was that pertaining to President Abraham Lincoln's assassination - the very such theory my own conspiracy theory associated with presidential election 2016 related to - (or had serious 'links' to, in the modern vernacular)... 

#4: (Likewise) implicitly understanding the proper role of pretty well any government to be necessarily self-restrained and restricted for the good of all in society - remarkably similar to Margaret Thatcher's own world view - Reagan once famously quipping as to the best thing a government could do consisted of essentially leaving people alone...

#-1: Yet upon the domestic front poverty and inequality burgeoned and rampaged away, the rich got steadily and inordinately far richer, the poor oftentimes had the shirts ripped off their very backs...whilst the military consumed exorbitantly larger shares of the nation's wealth, money which if given in foreign aid throughout the darker recesses of the world would have not only relieved abject poverty all over the globe but, more importantly for a nation whose guiding light has so often sadly been enlightened self-interest, could have, like the unfaithful steward of Jesus' telling parable who was told he'd been found out and was about to be summarily dismissed from his stewardship, whereupon he got his act together and used any remaining largesse in his possession to ensure his long-term survival 'into everlasting habitations', would've given America some real leverage throughout the world and thus protected it from the sort of well-deserved acrimony and hostility that it has long since incurred across the globe...

Yes, though foreign affairs was far and away Reagan's unexpected 'strong suit', this (misguided aforementioned, however unforeseen) global consequence of his policies domestically was not at all the only fundamental weakness or poor judgment call that he and his administration made on the world scene.

#-2/-3/-4: (The) Iran Contra very nearly precipitated Reagan's latter stage impeachment, but more concerning to biblical students such as myself were his - perfectly understandable - rapprochement with the papal state, i.e. the papacy/the Vatican, as he and his administration allied itself with the selfsame - in the person of Pope John Paul the 2nd - in order to rid our world of the scourge of the aforementioned 'Evil Empire'...yet that selfsame rapprochement carrying within it the seeds of the final endtime crisis, the long foretold 'Great Tribulation' so soon to afflict all dwellers upon the Earth...

...when the papal power, representing Roman Catholicism, unites in another 'unholy alliance' with Apostate Protestantism (and third world spiritualism) to bring about the crisis of the ages, in which religious intolerance is once again elevated to global dominance and persecution run riot...

Curiously enough on the other hand the Reagan Administration's Central American policy approach helped fuel another wing of said 'Church of Rome', the (in)famous 'Liberation Theology', a 'theology' especially championed by the Jesuit order of Catholics throughout the length and breadth of the Americas, at least 'south of the border'...

The Administration's actions in Central America were especially critiqued for their perceived sanctioning of human rights abuses in Nicaragua and El Salvador in particular - the so-called 'death squads' chief in notoriety amongst these; an 'episode' indeed which at my Dad's funeral service in 2005 I discovered he'd decided to formally and permanently renounce his American citizenship (back in the mid-1980s) and even the one-time conservative firebrand Barry Goldwater, still serving in the US Senate, accused Reagan and co of violating international law whilst engaging in helicopter gunning of folk in those selfsame Central American conflicts...

And yet oddly enough an equally significant 'third strain' of in/actions - constituting 'the road (not) taken' and/or the opportunity (not) seized - might equally be seen as having a major bearing in the ultimate verdict of history upon Reagan and his administration, the two issues being ones which are ever so domestic and ever so American, indeed the twin lenses through which the watching world generally now pretty well sizes up the States: guns and healthcare (from the time Barack Obama arrived in office through the years of his literal presidential successor Donald Trump right on down now to Obama's ideological (and personal) successor, his former Veep-turned-President Joe Biden).

Though - if only through the unfortunate circumstances of his near assassination in 1981 - Reagan's right-hand-man James Brady helped engineer the congressional enactment of the famous 'Brady Bill' gun law, and thus secured the only real at all restrictive gun law in America in arguably its entire history, and thus ensured Reagan's place in U S history as a (if ever so reluctant, carried kicking and screaming so to speak) champion of gun reform, showing unwonted courage in choosing the road less travelled as my well-beloved 'idol' Scott M Peck might have expressed things, or 'seizing the day' as another folk hero of mine, the equally 'late, great' Robin Williams, might have put matters...

if Ronald Wilson Reagan had metaphorically 'bitten the bullet' on another matter he would have secured for himself the long-term endearment of Americans rich and poor, liberal and conservative - individuals admittedly, not well-heeled corporates and interest groups! - for time to come...and made his childhood hero Franklin Delano Roosevelt exceedingly pleased with and even inordinately proud of him for time and immemorial...

Doing something that no Democrat could (easily) get away with - though admittedly Obama ultimately did; by the barest skin of his teeth; and losing almost the entirety of any remaining political capital he still had in the process: achieving health reform and universal healthcare for all Americans as a birthright...

But sadly he was borne down upon - psychologically intimidated (at least, the prospect of the same as his top aides warned him of what might befall him if he pressed ahead with the selfsame) by the American Medical Association, and that, as they say, was all she wrote...

*I'm not arguing here as to whether Ronald Reagan's negative evaluation of the Communist Bloc was a perfect assessment in every respect - though apparently multitudes/the great mass of Eastern Europe anyhow voted with their feet (both en masse on the streets and more importantly in literally physically  overturning such regimes) in hearty approval as nation after nation within that one-time impenetrable and impervious Iron Curtain fell like dominoes throughout especially the later 1980s to secede from such oppressive ironclad domination and subjection...

As to whether the United States of America is itself not increasingly becoming the very embodiment of the evil it once so vigorously and thunderously denounced is another matter, and for some biblical commentary thereupon I can only refer you to other blogposts of mine upon both this and my original blogsite, 'Nuff Said: My friendly neighbourhood take upon this, that and especially the other', upon http://nuffsaid:consideryourself-frombothsidesnow.blogspot.co.nz/ (or .com/).

But also - and more recently (in the overall scheme of things) - upon three of my newer blogsites, i.e.:

'Can Ye Not Discern the Signs of the Time?' on http://666Babylon666.blogspot.co.nz/ (or .com/)

'I Realize you Might not Happen to Agree, But This is How I See it Anyway' on http://irymn.blogspot.co.nz/ (or .com/)

'Sorry to See Ya Go...It's Nice to Remember' on http://sotoseygitnitore.blogspot.co.nz/ (or .com/)

That'll give ya plenty to occupy the wee small hours...

**Yes, I well recognize I have no especial credentials for engaging in such an (essentially) academic exercise - and those I ***do possess would be passed over as so much piffle and self-serving oneupmanship by most casual observers...

***Such as a minor in Political Studies/Science, major in ****English (in my *****midlife years)...though - to my mind and way of thinking, anyhow - far more significant and personally meaningful was managing to obtain 82 in School Cert(ificate) History - eat yer heart out, ******Ian Dalziel! - 

****That course (English) effectively being arguably even more 'political' (as in partisanly so) than PS.

*****'Midlife' meaning halfway plus to my allotted 'threescore and ten' years (as that great man of God, Moses, expressed things in the 90th psalm; or, rather, that 80 years of life included a 10-year bonus upon the standard 70-year human lifetime of most people; that is, if one considers the added 'labour and sorrow' of such a fourscore year lifespan to be anything of a bonus!)...

******An old schoolmate and longtime friend who always claimed to have been unfairly 'pipped at the post' by me back then, managing second in the class at 81 (percent). However, seeing as I didn't feel I'd managed to get enough swatting in prior to that examination, and so staying up way into the wee hours if not the entire night beforehand to not lose my natural advantage (I kid!), but at least to do myself proper credit on a subject where admittedly I seemed to be the teacher's favourite, I swatted a possible question on the precursors and conditions which led to the enacting of FDR's New Deal' programme... and guess what special question was in the day's test...?

*******Reagan was also of course - prior to his second (this time successful) presidential gambit - two-term Governor of California, interestingly succeeded by maverick (and perceived radical) Democrat Jerry Brown, who, incredibly enough, returned to governorship there at the ripe 'ole age of ********77, and proceeded to 'clock up' a succession of subsequent terms establishing him as apparently the undisputed longest-serving governor of any U S state, fullstop.

In my own modest estimation, however, I feel - ultimately - more 'on the page' with Reagan, who - though most definitely no (wild-eyed) social liberal as was Brown; or dope-smoking (and police-busted) throwback to the radical, promiscuous sixties - apparently was much more sensitive to the likes of solo mother welfare recipients (though partisan political opponents would fail to confess any such things); perhaps one reason why that old reactionary political dinosaur, *********/************Eugene McCarthy no less, threw in his own support behind Reagan in the 1980 presidential election...

********Proving once for all, as that all-time great 20th-century statesman (Sir) Winston Churchill himself most assuredly did, that the mid-seventies is just the right time of life to re-launch one's political career...and then some!  

*********Of course the 'peace candidate' back in 1968 and - initially anyhow - in 1972; caught in that timeless snow-bedecked photo op when I believe he announced his decision to quit the **********race... 

**********The race, that was, to secure the Democratic nomination for president that year (to go on to face Richard Milhaus Nixon). Nixon eventually secured a massive landslide victory over his ever so honourable Democratic Party opponent, George McGovern, who, as many still recall, decided to ditch his one-time Veep (Vice-presidential) candidate Thomas Eagleton (due to mental health issues), and - less well known - at one time did seriously consider Republican Mark Hatfield as his running mate; the sort of gracious and welcome bipartisan gesture that has long since vacated the American political scene..

***********I refer of course to thus authorizing the start of what would have instantly escalated to WW111, and blown us all away...

But I well realize of course that there but for the grace of God went other (both previous and subsequent) U S presidents, such as - in particular: JFK (the closest some suggest we've ever yet come to global Armageddon; at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis and/or the Bay of Pigs 'incident'); Jimmy Carter: when a 'simple' computer error evidently nearly saw Carter activate the nuclear codes; and how could we ever forget Donald J Trump, whose avoidance of an all-out military confrontation with Iran at least - but how many like ************Hillary Clinton warned of the possibility of nuclear war (i.e. with America's long-term superpower adversaries Russia and China; let alone 'lil 'ole North Korea) under his watch? - was *************itself a spectacular miracle of sorts...

************Not that other long-term reactionary, John Pilger, I note; no, he considered Trump a far safer pair of hands at least vis-a-vis seeing off any potential nuclear conflagration that might occur during his (yet future) administration than those of the likes of long-term foreign hawk Hillary Clinton.

Yes, I essentially 'jest' in attributing reactionary 'status' to John Pilger or for that matter Eugene McCarthy, but I do so as a devil's advocate as it were, simply showing the absurdity of such a claim.

*************For a brief (and hopefully witty) reference to such see one of my newest (and most unknown) blogsites, an obituary/tribute to the Goodies' Tim Brooke-Taylor and Aotearoa-New Zealand's one and only John Clarke (Fred Dagg): 'Always Look On the Bright Side of Life...We Don't Know How Lucky We Are'; located on http://goodygoodydaggdrops.blogspot.co.nz/ (or .com/)...

Acknowledgment:

This 'article' was inspired by (and probably otherwise wouldn't have come about) due to a chance interview watched upon (Radio Rhema's) Shine TV (the night of Sunday July 18th?), in which Gary Hoogvliet engaged in an extensive, leisurely chat with Reagan's presidential executive assistant Peggy Grande...

...and, moreover, wouldn't have occurred without the helpful assistance of the much and ever-underrated footnote...(as folk upon RNZ National such as weekday Nine to Noon host Kathryn Ryan were also discussing the other day).

Good On Ya, Louisa Wall (For Having the True Courage of Your Convictions, and the Willingness to Go Public With 'Em): Despite a Rather Derogatory (If Non-Abusive, Non-Defamatory, Much Less Nasty) Reference To You in the First Half-Year My 2 Original Blogsites Went On-Line 8-and-a-half to 9 Years Ago, I've Had to COMPLETELY Re-evaluate What I Said Then About You (& William Su'a Sio for that Matter): Though I Might Well Still Happen to Agree With the Aforementioned Upon So-Called 'Moral' Issues, THAT'S ABOUT IT: NO, Despite Never Being Placed In Cabinet - Probably 'Coz You're Simply Just A Little Too Candid & Frank & Forthright On Too Many Topics and Perhaps Not Perceived as Enough of a Team-Player (A Big Deal Naturally in a Sports-Mad Nation Such as Ours) - I'd Wager (Though Again I Have No Real Proof of It) That YOU'RE The REAL Mover & Shaker in This Present Government...And For Me Anyhow THAT'S Saying Something

Vis-a-vis the 'Organ Harvesting' of Chinese citizens...

...and having myself occasionally met and chatted to/with members of China's expatriate Falun Gong community over recent years, I'd suggest Ms Wall knows exactly whereof she is talking and raising concerns...

Does she what!

At LONG Last: A Media Outlet (In This Particular Instance Aotearoa-New Zealand's Own RNZ National) Prepared - As My Own Blogsite Has So Determinedly Maintained Since Its Inception Pretty Well On 9 Years To This Very Day - To Verily 'Bestow[ing] Brickbats and Bouquets With Fear Of And Favour Toward None': Guyon Espinor's 4-Part Series On Sunday Mornings - 'The Red Line' - Dealing With China's Increasingly Problematic Role in World Affairs - Including Here in God's Own/Godzone/NZ INC...

It is simply hard to praise him (and the programme) - and his co-creators and investigators - enough...or, for that matter, RNZ National for having the guts and gumption to actually air such a show - in view of the obvious ill-will of Mainland Chinese authorities in regards to such...

So, for once - and believe you me it's a rare thing for this 'pale, stale, male' whose views upon this, that and the next thing are so out of favour with that station these days to actually do so...

an unreserved, unambiguous, no ifs, buts or maybes even countenanced, plaudit 

Yes, The Chinese Dragon Is Meanwhile Hissing and Roaring For All To Behold: What A 'Magnificant' If Supremely Menacing Demonstration of Military/People Power The Other Day...With ONLY TOO MEANINGFUL THREATS To Any and All Nay-Sayers & Critics To Dash Their Bodies, Bloodied and Battered, Against China's Great Wall (One of the World's Historic '7 Wonders')...

 And meanwhile, where have several high-flying NZ politicians been thereabouts over recent times?

Effectively wining and dining *'the Great One' himself...

Sure, Helen Clark, herself 'sporting' no small pretensions to the position of a fully-fledged governing member of Winston Smith's world, having set things in motion here by ably enacting arguably the world's first trade agreement with Mainland China, has since been joined and putatively surpassed by her immediate prime ministerial successor...

John Key not only making it abundantly clear that he wasn't willing to brook much vocal opposition to his Government's own progressively cosier relationship with the power, but now being effectively 'outed': by his own honest admission, admittedly, as a good personal friend of China's supreme leader... 

*No, here I refer not to Donald J Trump's own nomenclature, but that of the present Chinese Premier...

Yes - However Endlessly Decried & Defamed The Former National M.P. Has Been - One Cannot But Say, Vis-a-Vis the Increasing Chinese Intrusions and Incursions Into NZ Inc (and the Rest of the Western World For That Matter - Alongside the Little Nation-States of the Pacific; Plus African Nations Near & Far) Over Recent Years, Even Decades...JAMI-LEE ROSS WAS INDEED RIGHT ALL ALONG

Yes, Godzone/God's Own (I.e. Aotearoa-New Zealand) Is Indeed - As the Good Professor (Paul Buchanan) Has Succinctly Stated: "In A Quandary of Its Own Making": Having Quite Literally Made A Rod for Its Own Back...

Or are you too among the plethora of naive and gullible simpletons who happen to believe those now seeking to terrorize our universities here are not plants of the CCP?

Tell us another one!

But meanwhile, where is all the due alarm and, in this instance, appropriate 'moral panic' - or, rather, the moral fortitude and fibre - from those 'good folk' here in Aotearoa-New Zealand, anyhow, who are never at a loss and ever to be found whenever it comes to bagging the Aussies and the Yanks for their own apparently never-ending violations of ethics upon the global scene, especially when it comes to issues/matters of spying (etiquette), ill-/mal-/mis-treatment of immigrants and refugees, military incursions and the like seemingly here, there and everywhere?

I.e. the self-righteous Left who are never backward in not coming forward whenever powerful non-Western nations are well and truly in the firing line? Those perennially strident voices ever so eloquent in pointing out every last Western foible and failing and consequently singling out America, Canada, the United Kingdom and the nations of what was once termed 'Western Europe' for criticism and abuse...

...whilst ever looking completely askance and disappearing into the veritable woodwork any time an anti-Western country or jurisdiction evidences gross and glaring human rights abuses and other evils?

Yep, predictably, as per usual, nowhere to be found!

And the Chinese Dragon - OCTOPUS - Is Meanwhile (While Covid-19 Provides A Useful Cover and Diversion) Extending Its Nefarious Tentacles Across Our Globe In Each & Every Direction...Yes, Even Down Under Into the Land of Oz and Godzone...

Sadly, An Apple (A) Daily Could Not Ultimately Keep the Chinese Dragon Away...

But be aware, peoples, the saints their watch are keeping, and the cry goes up: "How long?" 

Vis-a-Vis Vladimir Putin's Remarks Concerning the USA At His Recent Summit With 'Uncle Joe'(I Mean Sam): Despite Myself And Without Seeking IN ANY WAY, SHAPE OR FORM To Justify Or Condone Russia's Present Leadership Much Less Its Reprehensible Record Upon Political Opponents (Such As Alexei Navalny): Methinks the Russian Kettle Is Not Half Wrong In Gamely Suggesting That the American Pot Is Itself Not Entirely Squeaky Clean Either...

Piers Morgan Ain't 'Alf Right ON...No, The Fella's Succinctly Summed Up Our Day & Age, With Knobs On...

And the Chinese Dragon Doesn't Escape/Evade Anyone's Notice Either...As They Brazenly Enter Taiwanese Airspace With An Effective 'Up Yours' & 'Dare Me' Challenge to the Rest of the World: So What're Y'all Gonna Do About It? Good Question. Sadly, Nothing Much; Even, (The)Truth (The Whole Truth) (& Nothing But the Truth) Be Told, STUFF ALL!

Puttin' Putin Upon Notice - And Not Before Time: President Biden Lays Down the Gauntlet (& In No Uncertain, Mealy-Mouthed, Namby-Pamby Fashion)

If Covid-19 Can Make A Government('s) Fortunes, Then, Ipso Facto, It Can Just As Easily Break 'Em: Some Emerging and Ominous Cracks Appearing In The 'Thus Far, Picture Postcard Perfect' Response of New Zealand's Ardern-Led Labour Majority Government To the Coronavirus...

 -As witnessed in the vaccination rollout debacle on the streets of our main city, Auckland, yesterday evening, as shown upon the 6p.m. News Bulletin of Newshub TV3...

If British Labo(u)r is Summarily Trashed/Trounced/Routed in Today's Parliamentary By-Election, It Has Only Itself to Blame/It Cannot Blame Anyone But Itself/It Fully Deserves What(ever) It Has Coming/Everything Coming to It...-It Has Totally Deserted and Alienated Its Traditional Voting Base (Though Newbie Leader Keir Starmer Can Hardly Be Blamed; He's Probably Done the 'Bestist' Anyone In the Party Could've Done In the Circumstances)...

In what can only be deemed the bitterest irony, by eschewing Jeremy Corbyn's radical economic plans and by simultaneously dining out at the altar of political correctness/identity politics/cancel culture/virtue-signalling/post-nationalism - and all the rest of the horrid socially 'progressive' agenda - it has jettisoned any remaining commonality it once so proudly shared with its traditional, heartland, working-class base...

...evidently having learnt next-to-nothing from its absolute thumping in the December 2019 General Election. 

As Rod/Rob Little, (Aotearoa-New Zealand's) Newstalk ZB U K correspondent (on the Mike Hosking Show) so aptly expressed things this very morning, the Labo(u)r Party's working-class heartland base in the industrial north didn't really mind/object all that much - the very converse in fact! - to socialist-style economics (my terms, not Mr Little's), but what they do find all too difficult to stomach - and will doubtless give full vent to in today's parliamentary by-election there - is the party's extreme social liberalism (again, my own phraseology/summation of the gist of Little's comments).

Not altogether that different from yours truly, who, though never a voter for, much less a supporter, let alone a paid-up party member of any left-wing party here in New Zealand - though the local Social Credit party official here did (at his own expense; and ever so briefly) make me a member of the party not long after my own unsuccessful attempt at political office as an independent in our 2008 General Election - came to see as much in relation to New Zealand's own Labour Party awhile ago now...

...especially whilst hearing noted political scholar/author/pundit/friend and party colleague of my long- (16 years)deceased Dad, one-time New Labour/Alliance Party political activist/co-founder and regular blogger/editorial writer Chris Trotter at a public meeting in our hometown DCC Public Library:

Trotter chronicled in fascinating and meticulous detail how literally hundreds of thousands of active, generally evangelical members of Aotearoa-New Zealand's own Labour Party left/abandoned /deserted/forsook the party in mega-droves in the early-to-mid-nineteen eighties as social reforms such as the landmark Homosexual Law Reform Bill promulgated and pushed relentlessly by 'social progressives' passed into law here - against the petitioned opposition of 700,000-some signatories...

Much in the same vein as yours truly, who, while never an actual Labour voter as such, ever had strong political sympathies in that particular direction (and even more to the left, embracing both the then Values Party and the Social Credit Political League)...

...being - actually very much like Social Credit - pretty well ever decisively left-of-centre on economic matters whilst strongly right-of-centre upon 'social issues', whereas Labour - especially following the forced retirement of thrice-losing Bill (Wallace) Rowling and his replacement by the charismatic, Norman Kirk-like (and similarly to Kirk, socially conservative and globe-bestriding) David Lange - adopted pretty well hook, line *and especially sinker a right-wing Thatcherite/Reaganomics economic deregulation regime whilst actively embracing social causes promoted by the professional 'chic' set... 

*I jive in those italicized words, I simply couldn't resist the unavoidable emphasis...

P.S. Hopefully Nicola Sturgeon (SNP) lot itself gets spanked by Alex Salmond's renegade/breakaway rump/faction, deservedly so in light of the way she has apparently and to my mind and that of many others (especially 'Scotlanders') trashed the well-and-justly earned reputation of the party's former (?and founding?) leader...and moreover, to merely satisfy/gratify political ambitions - while quite possibly fully knowing the allegations against him were so much mere flim-flam, flotsam and jetsam; but well realizing the penchant of today's mainstream media to swallow wholesale any and every allegation and accusation, however tenuous, against **middle-aged white males, to placate Feminazis Incorporated...

**'Pale, stale males' as some wags have termed us...

Too Little, Too Late: Though Prime Minister Ardern Appears To At Last Give Speaker Trevor Mallard A Well-Deserved Serve, Following the Remarkably and Admirably Similarly Unsparing Chris Hipkins...Her (Effective In-)Action/s Thereabouts Are Simply Another Instance of 'Too Little, Too Late', While Stealthily and Shrewdly Changing the Narrative New Zealandwide, To Pleasanter Matters of Her Wedding-To-Be...

But sorry, folks - especially you natural justice-denying Greens (a sorry remnant of a once proud party): hugging someone not only doesn't constitute rape, it don't even remotely approach sexual assault...

...unless, that is, you're living in George Orwell's 1984, a very scary place in which, as the Good Book itself so aptly puts things, good is now evil, and evil good, black is white and white is black etc etc etc...

But the Holy Bible also therein pronounces a curse upon those partaking of such self-delusion, declaring

Woe unto thee who [do such]...

"Don't Mention the Genocide": New Zealand Lawmakers Finally Get Around to Debating China's Horrible Little 'Secret'...Of Their Mis/Ill-Treatment of Uighurs (& Others) in One of Its Far-Flung Provinces...

...And Act New Zealand especially covers itself with 'glory' in its prosecution of such...

as indeed even do the other four speakers (Labour's Foreign Minister, Nanaia Mahuta, National's one-time leader Todd Muller, the Greens' Gohriz Ghahraman, and the Maori Party's co-leader, what'shername...

And though I'd been privately disparaging, even excoriating both major parties and their seemingly softly-softly, don't rattle the feathers approach, agreeing with that taken by Act, the Greens, and the Maori Party ...that the on-the-ground reality of genocide (in Xinjiang Province) ought to be specifically named and shamed... 

...I'll concede after hearing Mahuta speak that no, until such a charge of genocide is *actually conclusively proven and established, it is the better part of valour (my description) to hold one's fire/keep one's powder dry, but that yes, such a serious possibility *most definitely necessitates due investigation...

*But, of course, unless you've been living in ye proverbial cave over recent times, you'll well realize that the chances of China's CCP authorities allowing United Nations investigators in to determine such is about as likely as their doing so vis-a-vis the origin of Covid-19, which itself is **about as probable as any or all the folk claiming to have set foot upon the moon admitting publicly to not actually having done so...

**Though of course yours truly doesn't for even a split-second countenance that ***far-out conspiracy scenario, I'm simply employing it in our discussion to make a point...

***For no other reason than the simple one that if indeed that epochal event had not taken place, you tell me how you'd keep 180,000 or so NASA scientists and the like collectively shut up for half a century, with not one of them ever breaking ranks to spill the beans, and that despite there doubtlessly being lucrative pecuniary rewards in so doing...

JFK & FDR - & LBJ Thrown in for Good Measure: The New President Morphs into an Amalgam of and Channels the Spirits of Presidents Past to Reclaim the Office of Mantle-Bearer for the Great Society and the New Deal...Whilst Republicans & Their Lawmakers Tremble in Their Boots Whilst Correctly Perceiving the Chance for Unprecedented Gains in the 2022 Midterms

All Credit to the Key Government's Hobbit-In-Chief (As In Supporter of the New Zealand-Based Making of the Movies), the Honourable Christopher Finlayson, For Having the Guts and the Gumption To Publicly Declare Upon RNZ National's Ever-Esteemed Panel Pre-Anzac Day, His Own Reflections Upon the Untold Story of the Likes of Archibald Baxter and Other (Lesser Known) Pacifist Conscientious Objectors to WW1

Admittedly it often does seem to require being out of office to hear such personal revelations, though of course people change over time, and that obviously even includes politicians, however difficult that might be for many to really believe... 

May Chad's Popular and Long-Serving President (Mohannes Ibrey?) Debby Rest in Some Well-Deserved Peace: And What a Refreshing Thing, To Die While 'Doing the Decent Thing', Unlike So Many Recent Leaders of Western Nations in Particular: Out There Actively Supporting His Troops By His Personal Presence...Against That Scourge and Bane of Modern Humanity, Sissii Internationale...