About simonbesar@gmail.com
Why do “Free Thinkers” all Seem to Free Think the Same Free Thoughts?
A few years ago, when Covid was nascent and vaccines were not vexed, I published an article warning my fellow progressive thinkers of traps that had been laid for them by some very unscrupulous people.
The world was in lockdown, anxiety was rife, and all that some of us had left was the internet. Facebook and YouTube cashed in big time, filling our virtual worlds with whatever material was most likely to get us intrigued or enraged, preferably both.
The bait in these traps was always some juicy piece of news. Whether the stories had a slight grain of truth was utterly irrelevant, anything that touched a certain nerve would do. It’s still going on today.
Countless videos with ominous music and fast-talking hosts warning of the “elite” who somehow secretly control everything in this chaotic human realm. The tone is urgent and views are stated with absolute authority. Freshly baked facts are slung at you ten at a time with no chance to question them. They go straight into your brain like a subliminal ad.
The picture they paint is of a simplistic, caricature world populated by goodies and baddies – heroes who “speak out” and just the right number of villains. Anyone who dies suddenly is without the slightest doubt a victim of vax. This universe is a nuance-free zone.
The greatest thing about the freethink paradigm is that everything fits together like an eight-billion-piece jigsaw puzzle. No matter what happens in the world, the free thinkers know immediately who is responsible and why it was done. No room for doubt. No need to question their sources. Everything makes perfect sense.
I have watched in dismay as friends have descended the same tediously predictable path from liberally minded progressive to freethinking clone. From vaccines to WHO, WEF to Soros, climate change denialism to sneaky support for the despotic exploits of Putin.
Hmmm I wonder who could be making up all this bullshit? Surely not Wagner or the richly funded fossil fuel think tanks or right-wing book burning gay hating idealogues? No! Truth Tellers only of course.
The thing about bullshit is that you can keep on making it up and lay it on as thick as you like until facts are so smothered in a squelchy, sticky layer of excrement that they are mulched out of existence. No prizes for guessing what type of weeds grow out of this ideological compost heap.
Exchanges with free thinkers on social media rarely rate as conversations. Always the same repetition of supposedly supressed information spruiked by a thousand angry podcasters. Vehement, combative, insulting, unable to assimilate new information or critique their own views. It feels like they are reading the chapter of Pfizer from the Bible of Rant.
Those who fail to buy into the freethink fantasy, are branded as foolish, mask wearing sheeple brainwashed, by the MSM.
I’ve been pretty patient to date but now I’ve had a gutful. The reason is The Voice.
Now that I see my gentle, hippy friends lining up with Hanson, Dutton, Murdoch, Abbott, Palmer and all their insidious crew to scuttle the one chance in our generation to say YES to our indigenous siblings, I have had enough.
Every day I see new lies being excreted from the disingenuous disinformation matrix about The Voice. I don’t mean the no case as presented by some Aboriginal campaigners for whom it is not enough. I am talking about absurd and damaging nonsense.
It’s not elite pedophiles or the communists or Bill Gates or the WHO pulling the strings of this referendum folks, not even the WEF. It’s a majority our Aboriginal brothers and sisters asking to finally be heard.
The Street-kid Entrepreneur
I met Ram Ballav sitting at a scrubbed pine table in his eclectically decorated Ramsterdam Café. He is a short, jovial Nepali with a straggly beard and mischievous eyes, whose features hail more from the Indus than the Himalaya. The building is little more than a shed with an unlined tin roof, concrete walls on three sides, and a glass wall facing the apocalyptic smog of a busy thoroughfare. The windows have external roller shutters which are closed at night, so the building resembles a large garage surrounded by a jungle of pot plants.
The bower bird of Boudhanath
The walls and shelves are cluttered with odd pieces of paraphernalia that Ram has collected in his 38 years of life, from bottle top collections to a large Australian flag hanging proudly upside down. Perhaps his predilection to collect is relic of the time when he was a penniless child plying the streets of Kathmandu. A smattering rickety of tables of various heights is matched with cane or plastic chairs like a hipster café, and there are hundreds of books and DVDs on display.
“Simon, do you think we could do music shows here?” he asks, sucking on a cigarette.
“Of course mate, it’s perfect,” I assure him, assessing the homely ambience. “We can call it the Monthly Music Lounge.”
Starting with a monthly show, The Lounge grew to being a gig every week – up until Covid hit that is. I have seen how this open-hearted man created a community hub in a region where night-life is almost unknown. We once had to drag him bodily out of the police van following his arrest for allowing us to keep drinking after 9 pm!
Humble beginnings
Ram was born in the sub-tropical flatlands between the great Himalayan range and the border with India to a subsistence farming family. Whatever they needed that could not be grown on the family plot, his father traded for home grown tobacco at a weekly market.
Tragedy strikes
Ram’s father died when he was five of an unknown illness. Apparently, their family did not believe in modern medicine, trusting instead the local shaman. With no man to help tend the fields, Ram’s mother took him and his younger brother back to her remote family home, high in the Himalayan peaks.
Life’s tough in them there hills
By 9 years old, Ram was working as a shepherd earning a measly Rs 500 per year, which was worth around $20 at the time. A local man offered him that sum every month, should he come to Kathmandu and work in a factory which sold Tibetan carpets right across the world. There might be one in your living room.
The breadwinner
Ten-year-old Ram vowed to work there for one year, then return home and give his saved funds to his mother. He worked hard in slave-like conditions 12 to 15 hours per day along with other children, drawing only minimally on his salary.
Unthinkable cruelty
When the year had elapsed, Ram went joyfully to his employer to collect his wages and return to his family. He was immediately fired and told he had no claim on his hard-earned. So, at the age of eleven, he found himself destitute in the streets of a city he knew almost nothing about with no way of getting home. In fact, he no longer even knew the name or even direction of his village.
Life on the skids
A small gang of street-kids took him in and showed him how to survive the bitter winter by snuggling up with sleeping dogs. They told him where he could hide his belongings during the day, and how to eek a few rupees out of rag-picking or begging from foreigners. His first English words were “One dollar please.”
Kindness is king
Then one day his luck changed. A Swiss charity took interest in his little group and began taking an interest in them, eventually admitting them into their children’s home. On a visit to the clinic, Ram met his second mum to be, Jenn Cleary, A young American blues singer. Tears well in his eyes each time mentions her, so thankful is he to her for transforming his life.
A taste of business
At 15, he found part-time employment working for an American who rented out rooms to foreigners. Quick to learn and eager to work, Ram became acquainted with the tastes of the strange Buddhist devotees from around the world who flocked to live around the holy Boudhanath Stupa, a Buddhist Mecca of sorts.
His first enterprise
After finishing school, Ram rented a tiny space on a side-street where he stocked the best range of CDs, books and pirated movies in town. He watched films obsessively and became the human Wikipedia of cinema for the area, able to name almost any movie from description of a single scene. His amazing knowledge and happy-go-lucky demeanour ensured the popularity of his shop.
Moving on
When the time came to leave the children’s home, he set his knowledge to work, and with the assistance of his previous employer, rented an entire flat, letting out the spare rooms to foreigners. He now owns a three-storey building with a range of bedsits and apartments, although he still sleeps in the café himself.
Single parenting Kathmandu style
A short marriage a decade ago gifted Ram with a bright and talented son, of whom he has sole care. The two of them live more like brothers than father and son, sharing a love that fills Ramsterdam Café with light each time Benju performs CCR on his guitar.
Genesis of the music lounge
When Ram first asked me if we could organise performances in Ramsterdam Café, he explained that because his second mum was a musician. Given that he can’t afford to go to the USA to see her play, he wanted to create a venue where she could perform. This was the driving force of Ram’s wish to create a café in the first place – to honour the person who helped him all those years ago.
A family lost
As for his real mum, she knew nothing of him for seven years. She came repeatedly to Kathmandu searching desperately for her missing child, and one day stood unwittingly only metres from the door of the Children’s home while Ram was inside.
Reconnection at last
When Ram was 17 years old, he encountered the very man who had taken him from his home so many years ago just walking down the lane. Rather than being angry with him as one might expect, Ram was overjoyed, and the next weekend, they travelled together to his ancestral village.
A stranger in his own home
Ram prayed that his mother would recognise him, and posed as a visitor from the city. After sitting with his mum and grandmother in the family tea hose for an hour, he had almost given up hope. However, when his younger brother returned from collecting wood, he flew straight into Ram’s arms. It was tears all round after that, I believe.
Ram’s message to the world
Firstly, to all the street-kids, and people who are doing it tough; “I was just like you,” he says. “Be honest and you will have a better life. Just be honest.”
“As well,” he added, “I want to tell those foreigners who sponsor one child for a few hundred dollars every year that I have such a great life now because of one woman. I feel so grateful that I met my second mum.”
Covid strikes a bitter blow
In March 2020, I said goodbye to my dear friend and musical collaborator and made a last-minute dash for home. What would become of my friends in Nepal, I could not know. Covid has been tough all round, but imagine building a business from nothing based on the tourist trade, only to have your entire market wiped out overnight. Almost two years later and travel is still at a trickle. Unlike Australia or New Zealand, there is no safety net, no business assistance or special benefits – just the mortgage and very little trade.
Your turn to help
Hopefully things will improve for Nepal before too long, but right now Ram has bills to pay. After surviving the streets as a kid and two years of depleted trading, he needs a little help. Anything you can spare would be fantastic! Just click this link and get out your card.
Ramsterdam Go Fund Me campaign
Then, next time you visit Nepal, you too can visit the iconic Ramsterdam Café!
COP-Out 26
What would a man with a lump of coal be doing at a climate change conference?
You can’t polish a turd.
But you can varnish your coal to prevent it from polluting the hands of a subservient political lackey. This is exactly what happened to the shameful prop that was paraded around parliament by the little-known slogan bogan who not-so coincidentally was shortly after anointed as this nation’s leader by Murdoch-Mining coalition. Likewise, our fossil fuel loving Prime Minister is being buffed up to be such a shiny supporter of climate action that his minders hope the rest of the world will be too dazzled by his sheen to do a Google search.
Are they really that easy to fossil-fool?
A recent BBC exposé divulged the disgraceful secret lobbying of countries such as Australia and Saudi Arabia which aims to white-ant international consensus on reducing carbon pollution. “One senior Australian government official rejects the conclusion that closing coal-fired power plants is necessary, even though ending the use of coal is one of the stated objectives the COP26 conference.”
Gaslighting Glasgow
Despite having spent 250 mil of your hard-earned on refurbishing his public private jet, the Liar from the Shire has been reluctant to jump aboard and show his smirking face at COP26, possibly the last chance for humanity to seize any remaining opportunity to mitigate climate Armageddon.
Murdoch’s Mind-change
However, in the shadow of an apparent about-face on climate rhetoric from News-corpse, Engadine’s favourite son has concluded that his presence at the climate Kaffeeklatsch is essential. Are we to conclude from this that those who have so staunchly undermined global efforts to reign in emissions have suddenly decided to forego the millions in support that they enjoy from the mining lobby? Are we to assume that the spoils so liberally showered upon recently retired parliamentary pawns is no longer a carrot that our politicians are drawn to?
Trojan Horse
Might the truth be that the fossil fuel mafia have determined that the risk of non-attendance is too great, as the world might agree to meaningful targets in our absence? Does Morrison think that seasoned world leaders will fall for his banal rhetoric while our backroom negotiators unleash maximum havoc?
Actions speak.
Environment minister Susan Ley has recently approved three new coal mines (there are currently 50 such projects under construction or in planning), after having struck down the gargantuan Asian Renewable Energy Hub, which was set to create 3000 jobs in the remote Pilbara.
The Nationals are revolting.
While some pragmatic Liberal MPs have realised that the public have grown wise to the lies, and are urging meaningful action on emissions, the Nationals appear trapped in psychotic delusion. One might assume that the resources minister of a wealthy and educated nation would give enough of a shit about his job to have at least cursory familiarity with available technology. On the contrary, when asked if he still believed that renewables don’t work, Keith Pitt declared, “solar panels don’t work in the dark,” which is like saying that dams don’t work when it’s not raining.
Holding us to ransom
Although only a piddling 4.5% of Australians voted Nationals in the last election, their MPs are pissing on the will of the 78% who believe that we should adopt net zero carbon emission targets by 2050. They have now delivered their ultimatum to Morrison outlining their demands in return for in principle agreement to support Morrison’s bogus net zero strategy. Would you like to know what special favours are being extorted from you the taxpayer? Sorry, that’s a secret.
Can We Flatten the Energy Curve?
Cash was tight when I moved to my first bush property. We saved our pennies and built a cosy shack, but running water was a luxury beyond our means. The idyllic waterholes of Eden Creek lay nearby, so we hauled it two buckets at a time; around ten minutes work to gain 20 litres.
Machines rule
Eventually, we manifested a 4 500 litre tank and borrowed a fire-fighter pump. With an investment in a roll of poly-pipe, we were ready for an exciting upgrade! I took one litre of petrol down to the pump, fuelled it up and pulled the chord, rushing back to the tank as the old beast roared into action. Within minutes, the tank was overflowing.
Water tank full and the fuel tank as well
To my surprise, pumping 4 500 litres of water had used less than a cup of fuel, costing 30 cents and saving me 225 trips to the creek.
Understanding the concentration of energy
This demonstrates the power of fossil fuels. According to mathematics, the energy contained a single barrel of oil is equivalent to a human working 8 hours per day for 11 years.
Abundant energy – humans proliferate
With the onset of the industrial revolution, this energetic wealth, accrued over millions of years, ignited the population bomb. The transition of human society from hunter-gatherer to agrarian systems swelled our numbers from 50 million to 600 million over the space of 5000 years. However, in the 200 years since industrialisation, we have mushroomed to nearly 8 billion and counting.
Too much, still never enough
Meanwhile, energy use per capita has skyrocketed as well! We are hooked on the quick fix of easy energy for nearly every action we complete – from our mass-produced food to the cotton of our sheets.
Net energy gained
In agrarian societies, every calorie burned working on the land returns ten calories in produce. However, by the time food reaches your refrigerator in 2021, it has taken up to 10 calories of energy to deliver every one that you get to eat.
What about renewables?
Every form of energy that we use has an environmental imprint, be it the energy that it takes to create the device, the mining and production of materials, pollution caused by manufacture, or other impacts such as the damming of rivers and the leakage of heat from all our gadgets.
Heat is energy
In fact, if we continue to grow the world economy at 2.3% as the balmy economists insist is necessary, heat leakage alone will raise the temperature of the atmosphere to 100 degrees within 430 years. That’s without even taking greenhouse effect into account! Remember, 2.3% growth means doubling the economy every 26 years, ie exponential growth.
Are we all doomed?
The only solution to this self-destructive addiction is a radical winding back of our energy usage. However, our entire infrastructure – the buildings, roads, dams, factories etc have been created with an enormous amount of energy, back in the days when oil bubbled out of the ground with very little input. Today, when the extraction methods include fracking and tar sands, it can take a barrel of oil to produce just three. Still, we have enslaved ourselves to an endless treadmill of energy usage simply to keep our lifestyle on track.
Dollars not sense
Of course, all this is the natural result of judging our progress by GDP rather than any true measures of planetary and human wellbeing.
A new paradigm is needed
We have to lose faith in the myth that progress can be measured by numbers on a page and that the belief in eternal growth on a finite planet is somehow sane.
Buddhist Songs For Children
BUDDHIST SONGS FOR CHILDREN
Shortly before I left Australia at the beginning of the year, I was approached at a Buddhist gathering by a woman who was preparing to open a new preschool ( named Blue Lion) in Singapore under the auspices of our common teacher Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche. She asked if I might write a few songs specifically to fit into the curriculum of their new school.
“Sure,” I agreed. I mean….how hard can it be? Write a couple of ditties for small children.
Zoom calls are the flavour of the year, and it was on one of these strange methods of communication that I learned the full scope of what I had agreed to. An old friend of mine, Heather Sanche from Vancouver Island, is designing the curriculum and has big ideas when it comes to music.
“Well, we need one for packing away the toys, another for lining up, and another one before they eat their lunch,” she explained.
“Okay so three songs….that should be okay.” I replied
“Oh no, we need one for each theme as well, like impermanence and community. And then we want some for the ceremonies too.”
By the time we had isolated every nook and cranny of the curriculum which required a song, we were at a count of 16. I remember muttering something about it being a 70’s double album, however having worked with a committee some years back trying to establish a Buddhist primary school in Lismore, I know how difficult it is to get something like that off the ground.
I was happy to volunteer, but that is a lot of songs!
Wherever I travel in the world, I bring the bare essentials to do home recordings, but I need help to produce a song to professional quality. I enlisted my mate Gary Dyson from London, well-known for his beautiful voice and innovative dance tracks, to help in production. He was happy to assist, but strapped for time as the UK was just opening back up from Covid suspension. That was when we learned that all the songs were to be translated into Chinese, so we would have 16 more versions to record!
I needed some help, so applied to the Khyentse Foundation in the USA for a grant, given that they were already supporting the preschool. Luckily, they could see the value of the project and approved my application….on condition that I write a few more songs for the Middle Way School near Woodstock.
With a modest payment available, I approached a young musician and producer in New York named Max Milner, who is bringing his huge talent to the project.
Even though the team in Singapore are translating the songs into Chinese, and we can use the same music track, I still need somebody to record the Chinese versions. I decided to contact a rap artist/comedian from Shanghai named Tadi, who magically appeared in Bodh Gaya, India a couple of years back, when I needed somebody of just his talents for a big show I was running. Tadi wrote straight back to me saying, “You won’t believe this! Two weeks ago, I opened a new recording studio designed especially for children and families. I have kids coming in to sing every day and we are looking for original material for them to record.”
So, despite the Covid doom and gloom, the future of Buddhist songs for children is looking bright! If you would like more information, please follow my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/simonthomasmusic/ or visit me on Bandcamp https://simonthomasmusic.bandcamp.com/. I will make all the songs available by donation when they are ready.
Is Eau De B.S. The New Patchouli?
There was a time when I found it quaint to see chemtrails posters festooning the cafés of our Rainbow Region, with their terrifying claims and dire grammar. I was tickled by the slavish devotion of my friends to the latest super-food served up by the lucrative healthy eating industry, and the way that a humble herb could be assigned with the power to solve every problem known to society.
We chose not to vaccinate our own kids in the 90s after being handed a dog-eared manila folder filled with horror stories from the immunisation front line. Not that I thought it doesn’t work for anybody, but it was just not for us. I was a connoisseur of conspiracy theories, shouted from soap-boxes in Sydney’s Domain, and was fascinated by how “free thinkers” could be duped by the most self-serving of gurus. It was endearing, harmless even.
The age of social media has changed all that.
Now that we are living through a true global crisis, I find my once comforting Facebook echo chamber reverberating with an ever more polarising din of fiercely held views gleaned almost entirely from YouTube propaganda and bleakly partisan memes.
The problem with the social media business model is that the only currency is clicks. There is no prize for integrity, accountability is pitifully absent, and sheer deception is rewarded even by those who recognise it. Many people even share the vile rhetoric spat from the mouths of their avowed foes just to demonstrate how delinquent these people are, seemingly unaware that every share is a reward, and every click is encouragement to continue along the same deranged path.
Fear and outrage are the drivers of the social media business model, and any hint of nuance is punished with a barrage of meaningless propaganda or accusations that the person questioning is, in fact, the gullible one. Like George Bush Jr diplomacy, you are either with us or against us.
Much of this so-called Truth is generated in Russian troll farms or fossil fuel funded think-tanks. In their crusade to discredit the science of climate change, conservatives have intentionally dismantled our trust in science and crippled our powers of critical thinking. Well-funded organisations identify and mercilessly exploit endemic, often justified fears within the progressive side of politics, thereby harnessing an army of social media warriors who spread their misinformation and exacerbate fault-lines on the political left. Divide and conquer. The Russian government, hell bent on dismantling society in the USA have the perfect tools in social media and a willing fool in the Whitehouse who is happy to encourage the notion that truth consists of a number of different alternatives. Every time we unwittingly share one of these memes, we undermine the very freedom of our own society.
It’s so tempting to just hit the share button when you see some post that jives with your personal world view, even if you don’t really know what the source is. I know I’ve done it.
Suddenly, the so-called mainstream media, which at least has accountability to their shareholders, their readership, the government in some cases, defamation law, etc, is considered to publish only fabrications, while anything that reeks of bullshit is TRUMPeted as Truth just because it appears on YouTube. Any attempt to withdraw a video from circulation, no matter how untruthful or deceptive it may be, is held by many to be proof that it is actually true, and that the dreaded “they” are too frightened to let it remain on view.
You don’t need to be a trained journalist or an expert to make a YouTube video, just a good performer. Many of these videos are highly produced to achieve maximum manipulation of our senses, making them difficult to disbelieve, even if they are sheer propaganda.
Back in February, when the COVID-19 news story became Godzilla, I predicted that the first person to link the incendiary topic of 5G with the epidemic would make their fortune. Better still, throw in vaccination for added clicks. This is not because of my psychic powers, but because I have made YouTube videos myself, and I know how the paradigm works.
Still, I was shocked when so many of my friends rabidly shared a video created not by a virologist or specialist in EMF, but a professional liar who has made his career publishing books about reptilian shape-shifting aliens who supposedly crossed the galaxy in order to work in a bank….wearing a tie!
That sure puts a commute from the western suburbs into perspective! I wonder what the exchange rate will be when they get back to their home planet with all those dollars?
The result of all this is that we now live in a post-truth society where a narcissistic sociopath who lies from the moment he opens his eyes until whenever he finally stops tweeting in the early hours can be elected to the most powerful position in the world – complete with control over enough nuclear weapons to turn the entire planet into a toxic wasteland at the touch of a button.
Is this the free-loving society that the Aquarius founders imagined?
Lockdown Thanksgiving
LOCKDOWN THANKSGIVING
I rejoice for the oil that didn’t get burned and the plastic that never got sold
I’m glad for the ones who had time with their kids
For the games that they played and the stories they told
My heart skips a beat when I think what a treat
It must be for many I know
To shun the alarm and lay arm in arm
With their lover because they have nowhere to go
I’m happy to hear that the skies became clear where they used to be smoggy and brown
Of streams running clean where pollution had been
Wild animals strolling through town
How good it must be for the fish in the sea
For the dolphins and walrus and seals
To have less of our muck in their gills getting stuck
And no plastic straws in their meals
My friends are all baking and cooking a storm, they’re getting their hands in the dough
They’re treating their bunch to a long, loving lunch
They’re changing from fast food to slow
They’re getting all mellow and playing the cello
Or starting a new renovation
Or making a bench while practicing French
Or entering deep hibernation
I think what a fool I was back at school, and how much I hated to go
I’m sure there are some who are glad to be home
It wasn’t at school where I learned what I know
Perhaps it’s a chance for them just to dance
They might even learn to be kind
Or how to take care of the little ones there
I don’t call that falling behind.
And then there are folk who are actually stoked to be finally left all alone
To sit with themselves, with their mind and their heart
And literally chill to the bone
For them it’s not scary being lonesome and hairy
In fact, they’re enjoying the peace
I know that for some, their time has now come
And this lock-up is more like release
I wonder sometimes what we’re all gonna feel when this virus has loosened its grip
Will we see that this part of our lives was quite real
Or think it was some kind of trip
I hope we might cherish all things that will perish
The fleeting, the fragile, the frail
I hope we will be a new kind of free
When we flee from our self-imposed jail
Escape from Kathmandu
November 20 2019: I book a flight to Kathmandu with China Southern for February 15, my Himalayan home.
December 31 2019: China informs the World Health Organisation about a strange new virus.
January 20 2020, Australia’s first Covid-19 case.
February 1: Australia bans foreigners arriving from China.
February 2: Being a “responsible traveller”, I cancel my China flight, rebook with Thai to return in June.
February 20: Kathmandu…. friends, parties and plenty of gigs. All I need to do is chill, for sure it will be over by June.
February 28: Italy to go into lockdown, outbreaks throughout Europe.
March 1: First death in Australia. Lucky I am in Nepal where we don’t have it.
March 11: Australia extends entry ban to South Korea, Japan and Italy, thousands of flights cancelled.
March 12: India closes its borders. There is now no way I can leave Nepal by land. Friends and family urge me to consider returning. I begin searching for a cheap flight out.
Friday the 13th: I resolve to move my ticket forward. After hours on the phone, I hear first available flight is the 24th but he cannot change till Monday.
March 15: Australia and New Zealand enforce 14 days self-quarantine for arrivals.
March 16: I wake late to a panicked message from my partner Kim in Christchurch. She offers to fly me back on the first flight regardless of cost. I line-up at the airline office. The Friday call has led to nothing, they move me to April 1.
I search flights again. Despite Kim’s offer to pay, I settle for a cheaper one to Christchurch on the 22nd with Qatar.
March 18: Australia urges all citizens to return home immediately.
March 19: Jacinda Adern announces a ban on foreigners entering NZ unless they are residents or partners of a Kiwi. I do have a Kiwi partner and have lived there 4 of the last 6 months but how do I prove that? Nepal announces that airlines including Qatar will be banned from midnight on the 20th. I spend half the night trying to book another flight. The earliest I can find is the 23rd. The internet too slow, timing out when I try to pay. After an hour, the 23rd is no longer available, so I try the 24th. When this fails a third time I go to reload the details, suddenly a ticket via Singapore is available for the 20th! Kim has woken up and manages to book with good Kiwi internet. There is a choice: either to Brisbane or Christchurch direct. Nobody thinks NZ will admit me so I opt for Brisbane. Thanks Kim!
March 20: Fruitless hours trying to contact NZ immigration before heading to the airport. Suddenly, my “under the radar” lifestyle seems a liability as I assemble the meagre documents proving my Kiwi credentials. Nepal continues on as normal. My local friends believe that the toxic smog protects them from Covid-19.
At check-in, I ask if I can change my destination to Christchurch. He rings immigration in New Zealand and they knock me back.
March 21: Transit in Singapore. I make another attempt to change to NZ, but encounter a very grumpy clerk. Immigration say “no” again.
In Brisbane I self-isolate in a hotel and book a ticket to Christchurch for the 23rd.
March 22: Cooped up in the hotel, I watch a video where illusionist Derren Brown demonstrates how to hypnotise a stranger into doing what you want them to do. I rehearse half the night. Singapore closes its borders.
March 23: I approach the check-in counter. “I am on my way home to Christchurch,” I tell the woman. As I pass my documents I say, “Oh I left my umbrella outside the window.” She looks a little dazed. I look her straight in the eye and say, “I’m a resident and you are going to check me in.” She nods, rings up immigration and convinces them I should be allowed. Thanks Derren!
It is the last Virgin flight from Brisbane to Christchurch possibly ever. Half of the passengers are laid-off staff. The stewardess gives a moving speech as we land. We applaud in joyful relief.
As we disembark, we are informed that all of NZ will be under 4 weeks self-isolation. That’s fine by me. Thanks Jacinda!
Now Is Not The Time
An ode to Scott Morrison, prime minister of Australia
Statesman and prime minister of Australia representing our proud nation in Fiji
Now is not the time to talk about how climate change has contributed to the catastrophic bushfires in Australia. Now is not the time to discuss the drought. Now is not the time to evoke the fact that the greatest river system on the world’s largest island has dried up three years earlier than it otherwise would have due to mismanagement. Now is not the time.
Now is not the time to mention that in 2006, the Australia Institute warned our government that by 2020, we would be facing severe threat of bushfires. Now is not the time to question why 23 fire chiefs, who lobbied the government for months trying to explain about the looming bushfire risk were denied access to the prime minister, while mining companies met with an open door. Now is not the time to reconsider the staggering $4.7 TRILLION per year that the taxpayers of the world fork out to subsidise fossil fuels. Now is not the time to wonder why fires are burning in forests that have stayed wet for millions of years. No, now is clearly not the time.
Now is not the time to worry that the world’s population of insects has declined by 80 percent in the past thirty years, or how that might affect the rest of life on earth. Now is not the time to fret about why 90 percent of the water-birds in New South Wales have disappeared. Now is not the time to get all sentimental just because human beings have eradicated 60 percent of wildlife and half of all the plants since 1970. Now is obviously not the time.
Now is not the time to get in a tizz about the plastic rubbish that is choking the oceans so much that by 2050, there will be more of it in there than fish. Now is not the time to obsess about the toxic effects of 144 000 chemicals which human beings produce. Now is not the time to brood about the haze of poison smog which blankets much of our precious planet. Now is manifestly not the time.
Now is not the time to question the policies which allow foreign corporations to buy up all the groundwater in Australia. Now is not the time to stop giving overseas mining companies access to unlimited water. Now is not the time to ask whether it really is a good idea to have multinationals open up water bottling plants which deplete the local resource and produce nothing but plastic bottles. Why would we do that now?
Now is not the time to worry that rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are stripping essential nutrients out of our food. Now is not the time to be paranoid about how intensive farming has rendered bacteria immune to antibiotics. Now is certainly not the time to mention that in New South Wales alone we are clearing 27 000 hectares of native vegetation every year. Now is demonstrably not the time.
Now is not the time to change your trousers just because you leaked a little urine and are representing our proud nation in another country, Mr Morrison.
Now is not the time.
Now is not the time.
Now is not the time.
HAS AUSTRALIA GONE TO THE (SNIFFER) DOGS?
Has Australia gone to the (sniffer) dogs?
NSW Police strip search 120 girls
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TAKING REFUGE
After a hectic few months back in the Northern Rivers, I am enjoying the quiet life across The Ditch in the “Castle of Clear Light” overlooking picturesque Corsair bay.
LIKE THE GOOD OLD DAYS!
There is something comforting about Kiwi society that breeds nostalgia for an Australia that I once knew, and can now barely recognise back home. Twenty-seven years ago, I was a footloose traveller with a European partner and the dream of settling in a place where our children could thrive in clean, healthy environment within a supportive and caring society. Although we had options throughout the EU, the Rainbow Region of Northern New South Wales was a no-brainer. Conservation battles had been won, the climate was kind (no 39 degree days in spring), and if things went downhill financially, we could always find government support without being treated like a criminal.
News story: Cashless welfare card fails the human rights test say lawyers.
ARE WE BECOMING A FASCIST STATE?
On my recent visit, it seemed like every time I looked at the news, I witnessed some new atrocity against our society, our well-being, and the very land which supplies all of our daily needs. These crimes are committed by our own governments and the corporations which fill the troughs from which their political snouts guzzle.
Mining firms worked to kill off climate action says ex-prime minister. (He should know.)
Stripped bare – Australia’s hidden crisis
$80 Million taxpayers money for non-existent water
Groundwater – the new frontier for corporate profits
Adani coal mine gets FREE limitless water against scientific advice
THERE ARE NO “TWO SIDES” TO THE SCIENCE
11 000 scientists declare climate emergency
I find it incomprehensible that at this late stage of ecological collapse, our government is not only selling us out to mining billionaires and water thieves, but threatening to jail anybody who has the temerity to speak out about it; journalists, whistle-blowers and activists alike. It is a dark day when even the Murdoch press are protesting against the secrecy and obfuscation of the bungling lackeys that they themselves installed.
Newspapers redact their own front pages
ROME DIDN’T BURN IN A DAY….
They say that Nero played the violin while Rome burned. In Australia, our cack-handed, self-serving so-called leaders are bulldozing coal onto the fire while criminalising the fire brigade.
Free speech is a thing of the past
IT’S NOT TOO LATE
Scientists have laid out a plan to mitigate the damage to our climate and planet by good old fashioned methods of locking the carbon back into the soil at a cost of $300 billion. That’s what we spend on the military every two months.
TRUE LEADERSHIP
The New Zealand prime minister recently brought down her wellbeing budget saying; “Nobody wants to live in a country where, despite a strong economy, families are homeless, where our environment is being rapidly degraded and people with mental health issues do not receive the support they need.” Amen, crack a tube….(to my non-Australian friends, this means open a beer!)
DO AUSTRALIANS STILL BELIEVE IN GIVING EVERYONE A FAIR GO?
Have Australian people got meaner along with the government policies over the past couple of decades? When I was an apprentice in the 80s, I used to attend protests. The guys with whom I worked thought it was a bit strange but they didn’t hate me for it. Nowadays, I see vile vitriol and death threats being spewed out against protestors, even children, by apparently ordinary people. What is going on? Why would a hefty percentage of Australians feel so angry about children appealing for a less polluted world?
THE SYSTEM IS BROKEN
It seems as though our divisive majoritarian two party political system has fanned the winds of hatred, empowered the amoral, and set our country on a catastrophic course of self-destruction. The politicians who succeed in this system are the wreckers ascend the ladder by tearing down those around them, including enemies in their own parties.
A BETTER WAY TO GOVERN
I find it instructive to note that New Zealand, like the Scandinavian countries, has a multi-party system of governance. To succeed in this paradigm, leaders need the skills to empathise with and unite disparate groups. In Australia, it is the scum of Machiavellian ideologues, whose only skill is to undermine and vilify, that rises to the top of the swamp. It is no coincidence that the five Nordic countries, all governed by consensus democracy rate in the top ten globally for happiness.
EVANGELICAL FANATIC
Remember, we voted in a prime minister who doesn’t believe that human activity could possibly effect the climate, but does believe that Noah built a boat by hand when he was 600 years old, and saved every species of animal in the whole world. Except unicorns of course. Such a bummer about the unicorns.