by Wally Richards

GARDENING IN THE FUEL CRISIS

We live in interesting times as the Chinese philosophers would tell us which equates to saying that many things are happening, most of which are concerning.

This is the opposite to boring and non-eventful.

The events happening in Iran and the incredible disruption to world trade from fuel shortages looming on the horizon are bad enough, but even worse is the increased cost of everything that is still obtainable as many things will be hard to obtain.

During the week I was talking to my supplier in China and was advised to order anything required quickly as factories all over China are closing down mainly because they are not able to get raw materials.

Agriculture in NZ will have problems obtaining the man-made fertilisers that they have used.

Likewise NZ manufacturers of plastic containers now have problems obtaining raw materials.

So how does that affect us gardeners?

Seeing that many of us don’t use man-made fertilisers and opt for the natural things like animal manures and Real Blood & Bone, we can still grow healthy vegetables and save money on food bills and medical expenses.

Over the last few months I have written about becoming more self-sufficient by extending gardens onto lawn areas which is a common sense move, plus petrol for your lawn mower will be more expensive if available [it’s not really a big cost, though —Eds].

Time is running out, daylight saving ends on Sunday 5 April and then we will notice how much the hours of daylight have reduced.

To overcome the slow growth of our vegetables, spray every day or two over the foliage with Liquid Sunshine; which you make yourself from molasses and Magic Botanic Liquid. (MBL)

The recipe is simply a tablespoon of molasses dissolved into a litre of hot water and then 10 ml of MBL added.

You can get a cheap 25 kg bucket of Black Strap Molasses for just $69.99 from PGG Wrightson.

Many will remember as a kid being given a teaspoon of molasses as a heath supplement by our mothers.

There was a very good reason for that as the typical constitutes of Black Strap Molasses is ME estimated (MJ of ME per kg) 12, dry matter 760 g/kg, soluble sugars 510 g/kg, calcium 8 g/kg, crude protein 69 g/kg, magnesium 4 g/kg, nitrogen 11 g/kg, phosphorous 0.6 g/kg, potassium 38 g/kg, sodium 0.4 g/kg, sulphur 3 g/kg, cobalt 1 mg/kg, copper 4 mg/kg, iodine 0.5 mg/kg, iron 120 mg/kg, manganese 69 mg/kg, zinc 11 mg/kg and DCAD 226 mg/kg. That’s a lot of goodness for you and your family and a great food to have in your food store against hard times.

Using it regularly on your vegetable plants this time of the year will keep them growing like they do in the long day light hours of summer.

The foliage on the treated plants will also get bigger than normal meaning that like a bigger solar panel the plant can collect more light and make more carbohydrates from the sun light it receives.

It will also increase the flavor of the vegetables and fruit you grow.

You may recall my recent article about converting very quickly an area of lawn to a vegetable garden by using cardboard.

Here is the information again…

You can convert a area of lawn to a garden very quickly.

Choose a place which gets sun for most of the day and ideally a bit sheltered if possible.

Mark out an area about 2 metres long and about a meter wide and mow that area as low as possible.

Around the area dig a trench about half a spade deep and 10 cm wide.

This will assist with drainage and be a mowing strip.

The sods removed can be put into a pile in a waste area for use in future.

Now over the selected area put a good layer of cardboard to completely cover the low-cut grass.

If you have plenty of cardboard from cartons cut down, you can have a double layer.

Wet the cardboard down and over it sprinkle any animal manure, sheep manure pellets, Wallys Real Blood & Bone, Wallys BioPhos and Calcium & Health.

Cover this with a layer of compost about 5 cm or more deep (use my favorite compost from Daltons).

Now into this layer you can plant seeds or seedlings.

All the goodies sit on the cardboard which the roots of your vegetables will grow down into and though the cardboard.

It is by far the best to plant seeds of cabbages, cauliflower, swedes, lettuce etc. at the right spacing apart. Carrots, parsnips and onion seeds should be sprinkled down a row and sprayed with Magic Botanic Liquid (MBL) to speed up the germination.

Later on you can thin out the young plants to ensure ample room for those that will mature.

Not only will it reduce your food costs but increase your health and youthfulness.

I have a few gardeners about 100 years old who I talk to at times, they are much fitter than a lot of younger people. These mature gardeners just love their gardens and grow a lot of the food they eat hence for their well-being at a ripe old age.

Garden well and live long and healthy.

P.S. I received the following from a friend that keeps tabs on whats happening I will share with you:

Many of the ‘Elite’ (especially American) are indeed buying up “bolt-holes” and “bunkers” here in supposedly “safe-harbor” NZ in fear that the United States is soon going to be nuked by Russia or China. We even have IMF and World Bank senior officials buying up bolt-holes around here at present where I live as well (Tauranga).

So we’ll be lucky to be here in NZ if and when it all goes ‘belly up’.

Phone 0800 466464
Garden Pages and News at www.gardenews.co.nz
Shar Pei pages at  www.sharpei.co.nz
Mail Order products at www.0800466464.co.nz

by Professor Jerry Coyne

I’ve spent a lot of time pushed many electrons going after the fallacy in New Zealand that indigenous “ways of knowing”—in this case from the Māori—are just as valid as so-called “Western ways of knowing,” which is what Kiwi Wokeists call “science”. You can see my pieces here, but there are many.

This sacralization of the oppressed, whereby the beliefs of minorities are given extra credibility, has now spread to Canada, a pretty woke place. Lawrence Krauss, who now lives in British Columbia, was astonished and depressed to find indigenous (Native American) superstitions treated as science in the secondary-school curriculum.

You can read his lament by clicking the article archived here.

Quotes from Krauss’s piece are indented, and my comments are flush left. This battle apparently needs to be fought in every country where science, which is not “Western” but worldwide, has been diluted via the efforts of “progressives” who think they’re doing a good thing. They’re not: they are impeding the education of kids by conflating superstitions and established science.

Check out the links in the first paragraph:

I now live in British Columbia (B.C.). A colleague recently forwarded me the current B.C. high school science curriculum for grades nine and twelve. It includes an embarrassing amalgam of religious gobbledygook and anti-science rhetoric. It is an insult to school children in B.C. and does a disservice to the students of the province at a time when understanding the nature and process of science is becoming increasingly important to their competitive prospects in a world dominated by technology.

You may wonder how religious fundamentalism could so effectively creep into the curriculum in a progressive place like British Columbia. The answer is simple. The religious nonsense being inserted into the curriculum has nothing to do with Christian fundamentalism; rather, it is Indigenous religious nonsense. And in the current climate, Indigenous “knowledge” is held to a different standard from scientific knowledge—or, rather, to no standard at all.

. . . In the B.C. science curriculum for grade nine, this agenda is explicit. Students are expected to: “Apply First Peoples’ perspectives and knowledge, other ways of knowing, and local knowledge as sources of information.” “Ways of knowing” are defined as “the various beliefs about the nature of knowledge that people have; they can include, but are not limited to, Aboriginal, gender-related, subject/discipline specific, cultural, embodied and intuitive beliefs about knowledge.”

Here’s one example of how indigenous knowledge dilutes superstition. Like me and many others, Krauss has no problem in teaching this stuff as “social science or history”, but bridles at equating it with science:

For example, lesson three of the “BC Grade 9 Student Notes and Problems Workbook,” contains a section entitled “The Universe: Aboriginal Perspectives.”

Over the course of two pages, the creation myths of various aboriginal peoples are described in detail, as “beautifully descriptive legends depicting the relationship between Earth and various celestial bodies.” Such subjects as the creation of the universe by a raven; the presence of water everywhere on Earth except on Vancouver Island; the eternal efforts of the Moon to get some of that water to drink; how and why a divine son and daughter team set out to make the Sun traverse the sky, while ensuring that it seems to stop in the middle of the day; how one of the jealous siblings turned into the Moon; how lunar eclipses occur when the spirit of Ling Cod tries to swallow the Moon; how one constellation of stars is the remnants of a giant bird that flew up from Earth; and how the celestial raven eventually released the Moon, stars, and Sun from boxes, in that order.

These are quaint myths, and one can imagine how a reasonable science book might describe how we overcame these prehistoric notions to arrive at our modern understanding via the process of science. Instead, the conclusion at the end of this chapter reads, “These stories parallel the Big Bang Theory.”

The only answer to that is, “No they don’t.” Krauss continues:

As if the insults to the process of science reflected in these curricular statements weren’t bad enough, when the workbook actually discusses science, it gets it all wrong. For example, the book states that, “Indications are that all galaxies are moving away from a central core area. Thus, the universe is said to be expanding.” In fact, the central premise of the Big Bang picture of our expanding universe is that there is simply no centre to the universe. The Universe is uniformly expanding but not from a single central point, but from everywhere. Elsewhere, the process that describes the power generation in stars is listed three times as nuclear fission. This is the opposite of the actual process, nuclear fusion, which explains how light nuclei combine to form heavier nuclei.

This is not surprising, for the people who tout indigenous knowledge as coequal with modern science often are not conversant with modern science. This is also true in New Zealand: advocates for native people simply look for parallels that can be used to say, “Look—indigenous people had a parallel but equally correct way of understanding the universe.” And the answer to that, too, is “No they didn’t.

The damage done to children’s education, and to science itself, are obvious, but summed up by Krauss at the end:

The understanding of the modern world is based on science and that understanding was built up, often at great cost, by overcoming myth and superstition. It is a giant leap backwards to cater to such superstitions in a misguided attempt to somehow pay back Indigenous peoples for historical wrongs. Students today had nothing to do with the sins of the past, and we owe it to them to teach them the best possible science we can. That means separating religious myths from science, and in the process actually trying to get the science straight. The B.C. science curriculum is a disgrace on both counts.

Amen. I suspect the only reason this tactic hasn’t spread to Europe is that they have—with the exception of the Sámi of Scandinavia—almost no indigenous people to sacralize. But India has plenty, and already science is being diluted there by Hindu “ways of knowing”, including the government’s establishment of institutes tasked with revealing the scientific wonders of cows and their urine, dung, and milk. When I visited India on a lecture tour, I spent a long time listening to credible scientists beef about (sorry for the pun) the stupidity of the government’s dilution of science. Their complaint? “Where’s the beef?”, for despite a big government expenditure, there was little to show. That’s what happens when “scientists” are more or less ordered to come up with results wanted by others.

Professor Jerry Coyne is an American biologist known for his work on speciation and his commentary on intelligent design, a prolific scientist and author. This article was first published HERE

Next it will be trumpeters and bagpipers!

Sweden banned fluoride in 1971.

55 years later they rank top 3 lowest cavity rates in the world.

Nobody in American dentistry has explained that.

So what did they replace it with?

The answer is embarrassingly simple. So simple it makes you angry that nobody told you sooner.

Teeth are made of one mineral. Hydroxyapatite. 97% of your enamel is crystalline hydroxyapatite — nothing else. That’s what enamel is at a molecular level.

Cavities happen when acid dissolves that mineral structure. Crystals break down. Gaps form. The wall weakens from within.

Fluoride coats the outside of that wall.

Temporarily.

Then acid breaks through anyway.

Then you drill. Then you fill. Then you pay $400.

Then you come back in six months.

That’s not treatment.

That’s a subscription.

Sweden looked at that subscription in 1971 and cancelled it.

They put the one mineral teeth are actually made of directly into their toothpaste. Applied to your enamel every time you brush. The gaps fill. The crystal structure rebuilds. The wall gets stronger instead of weaker.

One is a paint job.

The other is architecture.

Sweden chose architecture.

In 1971.

The rest of the world is still selling paint.

50 peer reviewed clinical studies confirm the mechanism.

55 years of Swedish dental records confirm the results.

Top 3 lowest cavity rates on earth confirm the decision was right.

This was never secret.

It was just never mentioned.

By anyone with a financial reason to mention it.

There’s no money in a toothpaste that actually works.

There’s a lot of money in one that almost does.

Your teeth can rebuild themselves.

They always could.

They just need the one mineral they’re made of.

This is what Sweden used in 1971.

It’s finally available here.

I don’t usually share stories this personal.

But listening to the Free to Speak podcast [above] this week, where Kellie-Jay Keen (Posie Parker) discussed the events at Albert Park three years ago, I’ve been reflecting on how that day changed me, changed how I viewed New Zealand, and, ultimately, changed my direction in life.

I had lived away from New Zealand for twenty years. When I returned in late 2020, I felt as if dissent or discussing differing viewpoints had become somehow dangerous, and the range of things you were allowed to say in polite company had narrowed dramatically.

I was concerned about the growing encroachment on women’s rights. Women were being silenced, shut down, and shouted over just for wanting to speak.

They were called bigots, transphobes, nazis and fascists.
Groups like Speak Up for Women were banned from holding meetings at public venues. I believed then, as I believe now, that all people deserve dignity, safety, security, and autonomy — but there seemed to be no space left in New Zealand where people could calmly discuss whether rights might conflict and how to navigate that respectfully, without it descending into name-calling and abuse.
When I heard about the Let Women Speak gathering at Albert Park, I decided to go.

I was nervous, and I thought it was ridiculous that I was nervous. I am a 6 foot tall, middle-aged Pasifika woman who has lived in places with real unrest, violence and disparity. Why did I need courage to attend a public gathering in broad daylight in central Auckland?‘

It’s Just A Park’
“It’s just a park,” I told myself. “It’s a Saturday morning in New Zealand.”
I expected protesters. I am a great believer in the right to protest and counter-protest. I expected noise, placards, disagreement. That is democracy – often messy and passionate.
What I found was something else entirely.

The conversation between Dane and Kellie-Jay that prompted my reflections. 

Around 40 to 50 people, mostly middle-aged or elderly women, had gathered at the rotunda. They were surrounded by roughly 2,000 counter-protesters.
The noise was deafening.
The aggression was visceral, and then it got physical.
Posie Parker was doused in tomato soup.
Metal barricades were knocked down as the mob closed in.
A 71-year-old woman was punched repeatedly in the head by a young man.
Several women made emergency calls to police requesting help.

I was shocked, disturbed and, quite frankly, I was frightened.
I linked hands with three others, forming a chain, heads down, pushing our way through the crowd. That is how we left Albert Park. Pushing through a mob, scared for our safety, all because we wanted to hear other women speak.

Kellie-Jay takes a selfie after being attacked.

What I Saw vs What Was Reported

I went home shaken and turned on the news. The media described it as “joyful, life-affirming and full of love.” A peaceful counter-protest. I sat in my living room and could not reconcile what I was hearing with what I had just lived through. The fear, the violence, the deliberate silencing of women who had every right to be there — entirely absent from the coverage.

What I had seen with my own eyes and what was being reported were two completely different events.

To this day, I regard Albert Park as a shameful episode in New Zealand’s history, in which thousands of people and the media reveled in the deliberate and violent silencing of women.

The Independent Police Conduct Authority has since confirmed what those of us who were there already knew. Their February 2025 report found police risk assessments were inadequate, resourcing was insufficient, and the response did not have sufficient regard to public safety. Just 33 officers for over 2,000 counter-protesters.

I Could No Longer Be A Bystander 

The very next day, I went to a Free Speech Union screening of Last Words, a documentary featuring free speech scholar Jacob Mchangama.

I did not know anyone there. I just needed to find people who could help me understand what had happened, and how our country had drifted so far from the open, tolerant society I thought I had come home to.

Later that year, I flew to Christchurch for the Free Speech Union’s AGM. I met people who shared my conviction that free expression is not a luxury – it is the foundation of a functioning democracy. I was invited onto the advisory board. And the rest, as they say, is history.

I am now the CEO of the Free Speech Union. I did not plan this. Three years ago I was a bystander in a park, frightened and shaken. But Albert Park would not let me go.

In three years, we have taken cases to the High Court, filed submissions on every major piece of legislation affecting expression, lobbied successfully for legislative change, brought world-class speakers to New Zealand, and built a network of thousands who refuse to be silent.

Now we want to go further.

Next, We’re Building Something Bigger
Defending free speech is not just about legal cases and submissions. It is about people. It is about community. When whole topics become unsayable, society does not become more harmonious. It fractures.

In the coming months, we are relaunching our membership offerings with exactly this in mind — building a real community around the Free Speech Union.

Not just a mailing list, but a living network.

More community events. Peer-to-peer support for people facing pressure at work or in their community for holding unpopular views. Local gatherings, speaker events, and spaces where honest disagreement is not just tolerated but welcomed.

If you are reading this, you probably had your own Albert Park moment [we did at Julian Batchelor’s event in Lindale that same year, see this post —Eds].

The point where you realised something had shifted and someone needed to stand up.

We are building something bigger now.
A community that does not just defend the right to speak, but exercises it – together.
We would love you to continue to be part of it.

Thank you for standing with me on this journey.
 

by Rachel Blevins

The Pentagon is reeling, after Iran destroyed a crucial $270 Million E-3 Sentry spy plane—of which, the U.S. Air Force has just 16 left—in an attack on an air base in Saudi Arabia, that also took out multiple refueling tankers.

Not only are the E-3’s not in production anymore, but the Wall Street Journal is reporting that the closest replacement, a Boeing E-7 Wedgetail, would cost $700 Million to produce and the program is “years behind schedule.”

Reports say the Trump Admin is planning for “weeks of ground operations” in Iran, but at the rate they’re going… Washington is looking at more embarrassment and more American soldiers coming home in body bags.

This, as Israel continues to commit horrific war crimes in Lebanon, targeting and murdering three Lebanese journalists in a car… and then proceeding to strike and murder the nine paramedics who rushed to their aid.

---

SOURCE LINKS:

• 29 March 2026 – $270M E-3 Sentry spy plane demolished by Iranian attack at Saudi air base: photos
• 29 March 2026 – WSJ: Crucial E-3 Sentry Aircraft Damaged in Saudi Base Attack
• 29 March 2026 – Drop Site News on X: “Iran’s attack on Prince Sultan Air Base destroyed a U.S. command aircraft that will cost $1B+ to replace — and possibly destroyed three Stratotankers costing $80 million each”
• 28 March 2026 – Kelly Grieco on X: “Iran damaged a U.S. E-3 Sentry AWACS at Prince Sultan Air Base yesterday. The USAF has 16 left, nearly 40% are already in theater, and there’s no production line to replace them. This is one of the most strategically consequential losses of the war so far”
• 29 March 2026 – Damaged U.S. Jet’s Nearest Replacement Will Cost More Than $700 Million
• 29 March 2026 – Telegraph: Russia gave Iran satellite images of US base before strike
• 28 March 2026 – Israeli Strike Kills 3 Journalists in Southern Lebanon

• 29 March 2026 – Asem Alnabih on X: “Among the harsh details that have not left my imagination since yesterday is that the martyr Fatima Fatouani got out of the targeted car, wounded and bleeding, only to be pursued by the occupation’s aircraft, which bombed her again and confirmed her death in a criminal scene against a civilian, unarmed female journalist.”
• 29 March 2026 – DD Geopolitics on X: “IDF Photoshopped a photo of Al Manar journalist Ali Shuaib, who was killed in an IDF strike yesterday. The IDF had claimed he was part of Hezbollah’s Radwan Forces, but later admitted to Fox News that the image they published showing him in military uniform had been photoshopped.”
• 29 March 2026 – Muhammad Shehada on X: “Here’s Ali Shoaib reporting from right next to Israeli soldiers in Sep 2023 If he was a ‘Radwan force elite combatant,’ why didn’t they arrest him? how come they didn’t feel threatened by him while standing literally next to him?”
• 29 March 2026 – Houthis join Middle East conflict
• 26 March 2026 – Bab al-Mandeb Strait: another key shipping route under threat
• 29 March 2026 – WaPo: Pentagon prepares for weeks of ground operations in Iran
• 29 March 2026 – Iran warns UAE could face sweeping retaliation if US ground invasion begins

By Roger Childs

… in recognition of the significant contribution you have made in writing and recording the history of the Kapiti Coast District. –Citation for the special award to Chris Maclean from Mayor Jenny Rowan in 2012

Many readers, especially Kapiti folks, will be familiar with Chris’s excellent books on Kapiti and New Zealand history, biography, tramping, landscapes and the wider environment. Having covered a range of topics he finally decided in the mid-2010s to write about himself, and the book is sub-titled A Memoir of Writing and Publishing in New Zealand. It does actually go beyond this as Chris Maclean had an earlier career as a talented stained-glass window designer. 

At school he enjoyed writing and was told he had a way with words. This encouraged him, supported by his erudite mother Joan, to start on his first book, appropriately about home turf: ‘Waikanae Past and Present’. He published this himself using his mother’s maiden name in his publishing company – Whitcombe Press.

After an extensive section on his stained-glass work, the following chapters feature his various books – Waikanae, The Sorrow and The Pride, Tararua, Kapiti, John Pascoe, through to Tramping: A New Zealand History.

Tremendous efforts helped by many

Chris Maclean is warm in his praise of those who assisted him – family, friends, publishers, editors, layout experts, booksellers and fellow writers and researchers. A number of his books were co-authored – after his mother worked with him on Waikanae, Jock Phillips collaborated with the war memorials book and later Shaun Barnett co-wrote the tramping history with him. 

All his books have been very thoroughly researched and superbly illustrated. Many involved travelling round the country, interviewing key people and in the case of the environment books, getting into the New Zealand hills and mountains. As part of his preparation for writing Kapiti, Chris explored along all the tracks that were used to eliminate possums and paddled around the entire island.

Some of his works required rewrites and revised layouts because Chris Maclean is a perfectionist. He consulted widely and used a wide range of primary and secondary sources. Not surprisingly his books were welcomed by booksellers and earned appreciative and positive reviews.

Warts and all

A Way with Words is a very truthful autobiography and the readers get all the highs and lows of Chris’s life and work. There is the disappointment of a pink blotch on the first double page spread in the first printing of Tararua and the tragedy of not being able to publish the biography of talented Kiwi artist John Bevan Ford because his first wife objected to some of the later content. (Ford was well known overseas and earned a half-page obituary in The Guardian.)

But we also get the fulsome praise of so many who had contact with him, and the warm appreciation and support from book sellers and fellow writers.

It is fluently written, superbly illustrated and leaves no rock unturned. He gives his views on many issues of the day from 1080 poison to coastal hazards. 

This is a book which will interest the serious reader about a man who has not only been an outstanding writer and publisher, but also a compassionate family man and friend, stained-glass artist, tramper, kayaker and mountain biker. He worked so very hard to achieve his many goals.

Iran has fired 2,238+ missiles/drones at the United Arab Emirates in the last 4 weeks — and will probably fire a lot more

• Ballistic Missiles: 378 total.
• Cruise Missiles: 15 total.
• Drones (UAVs): 1,835 attacks detected