by Caitlin Johnstone

Ahh, that’s much better. Problem solved.

British empire smut rag The Times has a new article out titled “Azov Battalion drops neo-Nazi symbol exploited by Russian propagandists,” which has got to be the most hilarious headline of 2022 so far (and I’m including The Onion and other intentionally funny headlines in the running).

“The Azov Battalion has removed a neo-Nazi symbol from its insignia that has helped perpetuate Russian propaganda about Ukraine being in the grip of far-right nationalism,” The Times informs us. “At the unveiling of a new special forces unit in Kharkiv, patches handed to soldiers did not feature the wolfsangel, a medieval German symbol that was adopted by the Nazis and which has been used by the battalion since 2014. Instead, they featured a golden trident, the Ukrainian national symbol worn by other regiments.”

Yeah that’s how you solve Ukraine’s Nazi problem. A logo change.

Claiming it’s “Russian propaganda” to say the Azov Battalion uses neo-Nazi insignia, and is ideologically neo-Nazi, is itself propaganda. A month ago Moon of Alabama published an incomplete list of the many mainstream western outlets who have described various Ukrainian paramilitaries as such, so if it’s only “Russian propagandists” who’ve been saying the Azov Battalion is neo-Nazi then Silicon Valley social media platforms should immediately ban outlets like NBC News, the BBC, The Guardian, and Reuters.

Before this war started this past February it wasn’t seriously controversial to say that Ukraine has a Nazi problem except in the very most virulent of empire spinmeister echo chambers. Even in the early days of the conflict it was still happening with mainstream publications who hadn’t yet gotten the memo that history had been rewritten, like this NBC News article from March titled “Ukraine’s Nazi problem is real, even if Putin’s ‘denazification’ claim isn’t.”

An excerpt:

Just as disturbing, neo-Nazis are part of some of Ukraine’s growing ranks of volunteer battalions. They are battle-hardened after waging some of the toughest street fighting against Moscow-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine following Putin’s Crimean invasion in 2014. One is the Azov Battalion, founded by an avowed white supremacist who claimed Ukraine’s national purpose was to rid the country of Jews and other inferior races. In 2018, the U.S. Congress stipulated that its aid to Ukraine couldn’t be used “to provide arms, training or other assistance to the Azov Battalion.” Even so, Azov is now an official member of the Ukraine National Guard.

So plainly it is not “Russian propaganda” to highlight the established fact that there are neo-Nazi paramilitaries in Ukraine who are receiving weapons from the US and its allies. The change in insignia isn’t being made to correct a misperception, it’s being made to obscure a correct perception. 

The change in insignia is a rebranding to a more mainstream-friendly logo, very much like Aunt Jemima rebranding to Pearl Milling Company due to the Jim Crow racism the previous branding evoked. The primary difference is that the corporate executives of Pearl Milling probably aren’t still interested in turning America back into an apartheid state.

As journalist Alex Rubenstein noted on Twitter, al Qaeda in Syria went through a similar rebranding not long ago for the exact same reasons:

Azov is the new al-Qaeda in Syria: "We aren't al-Qaeda! We split from them. Sure, all of us are former members but our new group, Jaysh al-Zawahiri, isn't down with that sort of thing! We still fly the black flag but changed the words on it. Now please us send more weapons." https://t.co/coh8mZPNLQ

— Alex Rubinstein (@RealAlexRubi) May 30, 2022

Indeed it is very normal for the US and its allies to provide backing to fascistic extremists in order to advance imperial agendas, because those tend to be the armed factions in a given area who are willing to inflict the brutal acts of violence upon their countrymen necessary to facilitate those agendas.

From far right militias in Latin America to tyrannical jihadists in the Middle East, this pattern of backing murderous fascists and then having to manage public perception of their depravity has been going on a long time. After the US alliance began working with al Qaeda-aligned factions to push regime change Syria, it eventually became necessary for them to rebrand to appease public concerns about their image. When the US-backed Contras were committing human rights atrocities in Nicaragua to stomp out the leftist Sandinistas, the Reagan administration was launching a massive perception management campaign to manipulate the way people see the situation.

In Ukraine, neo-Nazi paramilitaries just happen to have been the armed thugs who were depraved enough to do what the empire needed done on the ground. As Ukrainian-American peace activist Yuliy Dubovyk explained for Multipolarista, they were the ones who were willing to fire upon their own countrymen in eastern part of the nation.

The people in Donetsk and Luhansk were less lucky. The coup government dispatched the military to suppress their insurrections.

At first many Ukrainian soldiers refused to shoot at their own countrymen, in this civil war that their US-backed government started.

Seeing the hesitation of the Ukrainian military, far-right groups (and the oligarchs that were backing them) formed so-called “territorial defense battalions,” with names like Azov, Aidar, Dnipro, Tornado, etc.

Much like in Latin America, where US-backed death-squads kill left-wing politicians, socialists, and labor organizers, these Ukrainian fascist battalions were deployed to lead the offensive against the militias of Donetsk and Luhansk, killing Russian-speaking Ukrainians.

Full article

from the Taxpayers Union

Thanks to the generous support of tens of thousands of New Zealanders, later this week we’re taking to the road to fight the Government’s Three Waters proposals.

>>> Click here to add your name to the Stop Three Waters petition

With the support of our grassroots network, we’ll be spreading the message directly within the local communities whose water assets Nanaia Mahuta is trying to remove from local control to put into ‘co-governed’ entities.

The roadshow will highlight just how unpopular these proposals are, put pressure on those few councils still holding out from resisting the Government, and pile the pressure onto Labour’s provincial MPs who are the key to overruling Mahuta’s undemocratic agenda.

While the media continue to run Mahuta’s lines about Three Waters our people-powered effort is exposing why Three Waters is zero gain, and holding her to account. Come along to show your support.

We’ve decked out a campervan with ‘Stop Three Waters’ gear and, starting this Friday, will be meeting local ratepayers, mayors, councillors, and community leaders in 39 local centres across the country.

Come and meet the team

Louis, Annabel, Josh, Levi, Connor, and the whole Taxpayers’ Union team over the next five weeks. 

We’ll be holding old-fashioned soapbox events outside local councils and in town squares across the country. We are inviting local leaders to come and speak out against Nanaia Mahuta’s asset grab and sign our “Community Leaders’ Appeal to Protect Local Democracy and Stop Three Waters” addressed to the Prime Minister.

And regardless of Three Waters, we’re keen to meet Taxpayers’ Union supporters across the country.

The full itinerary is available here and we will be updating this, and our Facebook page, as the roadshow progresses with exact times and locations for each stop.

Not quite as long as Dear Leader’s crippling of Jacindagrad (Auckland) last year, but likewise awful and completely unnecessary. From the Daily Mail:

• Shanghai’s two month lockdown has been lifted with residents now allowed out
• China’s ‘zero-Covid’ strategy has led to harsh lockdowns after other countries unlocked their economies 

The news brought about an outpouring of exhaustion from residents, with one taking to the state-owned social media platform Weibo to write: ‘I’m so emotional that I’m going to cry’.

Others greeted the news with scepticism over the communist regime’s reliability.

‘Please don’t be lying to me, I’m numb,’ said one mistrustful post.

The easing of curbs applies only to those in low-risk areas, which are home to about 22.3 million people, according to government data. People will still be required to wear masks and are discouraged from gathering and encouraged to get vaccinated. 

The city-wide lockdown has fuelled public anger and rare protests, as well as pummelled supply chains and China’s economy.

Read the rest

by Jim Cable

New Zealanders should know that Jacinda Ardern’s claim that the 2019 Christchurch mosque massacre was New Zealand’s “darkest day” is wrong. 

The PM should be called out for her public preening and virtue-signaling, and for blatantly making political capital out of tragedy.

There are a number of historical events in which many more than 50 people died.

PUTTING TRAGEDY INTO PERSPECTIVE

• 60,000 dead over 1821–1840 when Maori murdered other Maori during the inter-tribal Musket Wars or starved to death because their tribes neglected cultivation for fighting.

• 1200 dead in the 1834 Sacking of Taranaki’s Pukerangiora Pa by Tainui invaders. Death toll included around 150 Te Atiawa whose skulls were personally staved in with his mere by Tainui paramount chief, Te Wherowhero, who only stopped because his arm became swollen and tired.

• 257 dead in Air NZ Flight 901 airliner crash, Mt Erebus, Ross Island, Antarctica, 28 November 1979.

• 256 dead in Hawke’s Bay earthquake of 3 February 1931.

• 200+ dead. 1820s Southland tsunami Orepuki Beach.

• 189 dead in 1863 HMS Orpheus shipwreck 7 February 1863 off Manukau Heads, near Auckland.

• 185 dead in Christchurch earthquake of 22 February 2011.
• 151 dead in Tangiwai disaster train wreck/lahar 24 December 1953 Whangaehu River.

• 134 dead in 1879 Little Waihi landslide Waihi Village.

• 131 dead in SS Tararua shipwreck 29 April 1881 off Waipapa Point.

• 121 dead in SS Wairarapa shipwreck 29 Oct 1894 off Great Barrier Island.

• 87 dead in the Fiery Star shipwreck of 11 May 1865, 240 km off the Chatham Islands.

• 75 dead in the Penguin shipwreck 12 February 1909 off Cape Terawhiti.

• 68 dead in the General Grant shipwreck of May 1866, Auckland Island.

• 65 dead in the Brunner Mine disaster 26 March 1896, Westland.

• 65 dead in the Kakaramea landslide, 7 May 1846. Tuwharetoa tribal leader Mananui Te Heuheu Tukino II and most of his family were killed in the landslide.

• 53 dead in Wahine shipwreck 10 April 1968, Barrett Reef, Wellington Harbour.

• 52 dead in 1865 City of Dunedin shipwreck, 20 May 1865 off Cape Terawhiti. By some retrospective accounts, between 250 and 600 passengers perished, but these reports were 20 or more years later.

• 51+ dead in Blizzards and floods July 1863 — August 1863 in Central Otago goldfields. The actual death toll was probably higher because of the transient nature of the miners and the ruggedness of the country.

• 51 dead in Christchurch mosque shootings.

Sent to us by a reader who recommends it be listened to at the same time as seeing what the Jacinda regime is planning with its Digital Identity Bills here and here.

from the BBC :

New Zealand’s capital, Wellington, has been ranked one of the least affordable cities in the world for buying a property. The picture is also grim for renters, with a 12% rise in prices in the past year. That, along with increases in petrol and food prices, has led many to consider moving to nearby Australia — where they have the right to live and work.

Chris, a builder, his partner Harmony (pictured) and their four daughters recently left Wellington to start a new life in the Australian city of Brisbane. Despite owning their home and earning reasonable salaries, they were still struggling.

“We have four kids, so it was expensive. We’d notice Australians saying you know the cost of living is going up — but that was the cost five years ago in New Zealand,” says Chris.

Leaving New Zealand and the rest of her family was a difficult decision for Harmony. But she says the move was necessary for the children.

“You can’t make a living in New Zealand. There is no living. You just go backwards. You don’t get a choice if you want live, you have to move, or New Zealand has to change. I want a future for my children and there is none in New Zealand,” she says.

The New Zealand government has tried to increase some short-term measures like fuel subsidies and halving the cost of public transport — but for many, it’s not enough.

Full article

Strictly it’s not a fuel subsidy, the Jacinda government has simply reduced the tax on petrol to where it was when National left office. —Eds

from newsroom.co.nz

Not so long ago the delivery of newsprint was a sure thing for local newspaper publishers. Now they’re facing a price shock that could send some of them to the wall – with free community papers likely to be the first to go. 

“It got delivered to our door. It was as easy as it could be,” says Aaron Buist, chief executive of Beacon Media Group in Whakatāne. 

All that changed when Norske Skog’s paper mill in Kawerau closed last year, and publishers had to go offshore – to Norske Skog’s Tasmania mill – for their paper. They got a real taste of the supply crisis that’s hit newspaper businesses around the world, sending costs soaring. 

Full article

by Guy Hatchard

We are just now becoming more aware of gag orders affecting reporting of adverse effects following ‘vaccination’.

Apparently, hospital administrators are keen to avoid any publicity that might suggest an increased incidence of cardiac events and other common covid ‘vaccine’ side effects.

Their motivations for this are unclear, but we have previously noted a lack of New Zealand data for specific conditions. I have received a number of anecdotal reports from hospital staff and patients around the country concerning high rates of hospitalisation and death attributable to vaccine injury.

While scare stories of serious covid infection outcomes are given wide publicity, gagging of hospital staff effectively hides the prevalence of adverse effects from the public. This has the effect of preventing the public reaching informed conclusions about the relative safety of covid vaccination.

A UK coroners court recently found that a 26 year old graduate student who died from a blot clot in his brain following an AstraZeneca injection was given incorrect and out of date information about the risks—a situation we face in New Zealand every day where saturation advertising claims safety and efficacy contrary to available data.

Covid ‘vaccination’ is a Significant Risk for Women

Women are denied informed consent by gagging orders on health professionals and the deliberate withholding of data

March 2022 saw the publication of paper “Patient Betrayal: The Corruption of Healthcare, Informed Consent and the Physician-Patient Relationship” which found “a significant risk associated with Covid vaccination among women of reproductive age and during pregnancy”.

It also reported that in September 2021 the American Board of Obstetrics & Gynecology (ABOG) had threatened their 22,000+ constituents with disciplinary actions, including revocation of licensures and board certifications if they questioned the safety of the Covid ‘vaccination’.

This gagging order occurred in the absence of reliable data indicating safety for pregnant or menstruating women. Such discussions are also deleted from social media platforms.

Unprecedented Surge in Decidual Cast Shedding

The unprecedented character and extent of injury to menstruating women was reported in April 2022 in a paper “COVID-19 and the surge in Decidual Cast Shedding (DCS)”.

DCS is historically a rare gynecological event, with less than 40 cases reported in the medical literature over the last 109 years. The paper reports 292 cases of DCS following vaccination.

DCS is a synchronized detachment of the entire decidualized layer of endometrium, and it passes from the uterus through the cervix and vagina. It appears to be associated with blood changes caused by Covid vaccination, but virtually no investigation has been undertaken until now, despite very high volumes of self-reported menstrual irregularities.

Pfizer Adverse Effects Withheld From the Public

The latest release of Pfizer adverse effects document which occurred on May 2nd, 2022 reveals that between 82-97% of pregnant women in the Pfizer vaccine trials lost their babies.

45% of the 270 pregnant mothers reported adverse clinical events, more than 60% of these events were rated as serious. Facts which Pfizer withheld from the public until ordered to release them by a federal judge.These recent findings highlight systematic attempts to hide the extent and serious nature of Covid vaccination injury to women. Over the next few months, we expect that more scientific assessments will begin to reveal the long term effects of Covid vaccination, not just for women but for a very large range of serious conditions affecting all ages and genders.

Continuing attempts to hide or delay the publication of data or suppress the discussion of scientific findings unfavourable to vaccine safety, and the censure of medical professionals who wish to offer informed consent, amount at the very least to a conspiracy of silence, and, at the worst end of offending, to an attempt to pervert the course of justice.

Be safe, stand strong, and stick together

When the Governor came here, he brought with him the Word of God by which we live; and it is, through the teaching of that Word, that we are able to meet together this day, under one roof. Therefore, I say, I know no Sovereign but the Queen, and I never shall know any other. I am walking by the side of the Pakeha. –Distinguished Ngapuhi chief, Tamati Waka Nene

One of New Zealand’s top historians

By Roger Childs

Kapiti is fortunate in having one of New Zealand’s best historians. In recent times Waikanae-based Dr John Robinson has been writing a book a year, often on topics that other better-known historians have avoided.

John Robinson, however, is prepared to boldly and honestly take on some of the tougher topics of New Zealand history and politics such as the truth about the Treaty of Waitangi, tikanga in the modern era, Unrestrained Slaughter on the inter-tribal wars and He Puapua on the Maori elites program for co-governance. His latest book is on the important Kohimarama Conference where 162 years ago more than 100 chiefs endorsed their support for the colonial government and the changes it was implementing.  

The research of John Robinson is always thorough and meticulous, his analysis thoughtful and perceptive, and the conclusions he reaches are carefully backed up with evidence. The Kohimarama book is subtitled “Chiefs Support Christianity and the Queen” which clearly indicates two crucial commitments tribal leaders made at the Conference.

A large gathering of native chiefs

The chiefs from across the country, but mainly from the North Island, gathered at Mission Bay in April 1860 at the invitation of Governor Thomas Gore Browne. They were there to discuss the way ahead for Maori people and the positive hopes for their future relationships with the colonial government and white settlers.

It was probably the largest gathering of Maori chiefs in New Zealand’s history. With Governor Gore Browne presiding and Native Secretary and Land Commissioner Donald McLean also involved in spelling out government policy and answering questions, the chiefs pledged loyalty to Queen Victoria and emphasized their commitment to Christianity and support for the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi (Te Tiriti o Waitangi). However, there were a wide range of topics raised and they were not always resolved.  Many chiefs mentioned that they needed to go back to their tribal areas and discuss possible policies and future developments with their people.

Clears messages of support for the colonial government

The comments of Hemi Matini Te Nera from Ngati Hourua were typical of their wishes: “I shall not join that evil (the Maori King Movement). All I desire is to live on terms of friendship with the Governor and Queen. Under the old law we perished; under the present law we live.” Many chiefs endorsed these sentiments and there was a general desire expressed for living in peace with the growing number of white settlers. 

There was also much criticism of Wiremu Kingi’s rebellion in Taranaki and the increasing extremism of the Kingites following the death of the highly respected first “king” Te Whero Whero. His great wish was in line with the mood of those gathered at Kohimarama namely for Maori to peacefully work with the colonial government for the benefit of both races.

There were also plans discussed for the colonial government to provide tribes with wide powers of local government, equivalent to states in the USA — runanga — and to have annual conferences of chiefs.

Unfortunately, in 1860 the conflict in North Taranaki and the later Kingite Rebellion in the Waikato overshadowed the importance of the Kohimarama Conference. 

Plenty of background

As well as providing comprehensive coverage of what was said at the various sessions by the chiefs, Gore Browne and McLean, John Robinson provides background on the significance and difficulties of the interaction between a highly developed western civilization and a neolithic (late stone age) culture which had had no knowledge of the thousands of years of developments in European, Asian and Middle Eastern societies. He also touches on the very rapid acceptance by many Maori leaders and their people of the political, economic and social opportunities provided by the colonists. However, he stresses that in 1860 the way ahead was still uncertain for the young colony.

An interesting feature of the coverage is the many direct references on the full report on the Kohimarama proceedings provided by the Maori Messenger, a government-sponsored bilingual paper. 

Putting Kohimarama in context

In the later sections of the book there is detail provided on developments that occurred after the Conference related to attempts to avoid conflict with the Kingites; the offers of runanga, the outbreak of war in the Waikato and later attempts to encourage Maori leaders to work together. 

There is also an analysis of how historians in the modern era have taken a revisionist approach to the 1840 Treaty and the Kohimarama sessions that followed twenty years later.

Throughout the text quotes are carefully footnoted and there is a comprehensive list of references and a useful index. Perhaps the greatest strength of the book is that the story of Kohimarama is based around what the key players of the time actually said. John Robinson puts the large conference in its historical context which is long overdue. Highly recommended.

(The Kohimarama Conference Chiefs Support Christianity and the Queen by John Robinson is available from local bookstores or direct from the publisher https://trosspublishing.co.nz/ for $35 postage-paid within NZ.)