Contents
author Cimino
work-in-progress published 20260326
The evil that’s been done
Is still carrying on
Cat Stevens, 1971
Mutually Assured Destruction By A Thousand Cuts: Groundbreaking detective-fiction writer Wilkie Collins anticipated an assured-destruction weapon 75 years before its 6 August 1945 demonstration in Hiroshima, and arguably gratuitous, Nagasaki deployment on 9 August. Meantime, unarguably—and with or without a thermonuclear component—is the mutually assured destruction of a survivable climate, should the Great Mobilisation occur too late and too tentatively. photograph Cundall Downe & Co., 1864
While a full-blown World War III was always on the cards, it was also within the realms of the possible that Homo sapiens sapiensas opposed to Homo sapiens, to acknowledge Homo sapiens idàltu, and to avoid the more cumbersome alternative of ‘anatomically modern human being’, and for sheer cussedness could build a global democracy that relegated warfare on any scale to history. In 1945, proximate motivation for abolishing warfare was aplenty, not least the 75 million lives taken or lost in the just-ended World War II, and the 2.5 billion lives at stake in the imminently plausible prospect of an all-out, thermonuclear, World War III.
Mutually assured destruction had been conceivable at least 75 years before Hiroshima–Nagasaki. Woman in White author and playwright Wilkie Collins, on 7 August 1870:
I begin to believe in only one civilizing influence—the discovery one of these days of a destructive agent so terrible that warcapitalised, in original shall mean annihilation and men’s fears will force them to keep the peace.
Dated from 24 February 2022, Russia’s dictator grasped the dubious distinction of definitively ending the half-century-long Cold War phase of World War III—by initiating its mass-murderous, special-military-operation phase. Abandoned by the United States, the fatally flawed fundamentally undemocratic United Nations is finally reduced to tsk-tsking from the sidelines. Unlike the 2022– Russo-Ukrainian War, however, the Israeli/US-Iran War has precipitated a global economic crisis. Human casualties will include millions of lives lost and impoverished far from the immediate combat zone. Fundamentalist radicalisation will bequeath a murderous, multigenerational legacy. Millions will be martyred, and most martyrdom will be non-elective. No martyr will enjoyor has enjoyed any form of life after death, much less paradise, accompanied by the lurid adolescent embellishments cobbled from post-Quran depictions.
Unilateral and illegal, the inevitable humanitarian and economic crisis precipitated by the Israeli/US-Iran War is set to be just the latest that will be wilfully wastedunless, by some obscenely callous calculous, shock-doctrine spoils can be assessed as a good. Aotearoa briefly thrilled the world with its exemplarily demonstration of bubbleisolate-at-home, community-based bubbles—family or other, groups of individuals-based mutual kindness that likely saved considerably more than 20 000 New Zealand lives. What was utterly lacking, however, was the sharp infusion of low-carbon-infrastructure investment that would have ensured wholesome economic growth before, during, and after the crisis. Still signally essential is the South Auckland isolation hospital that could save many of the up-to 1500 annual influenza and pneumonia deaths when it wasn’t needed during pandemics. Meanwhile, given the shameless, relentless politicking by all parties since mandatory covid-19 isolation was lifted, it is small wonder that Aotearoa entered the Israeli/US-Iran War on the back foot and without a plan. After a predictable monthdiscounting the United States 22 June 2025 Operation Midnight Hammer prelude to 28 February 2026 of don’t-scare-the-horses days of nothing-to-see-here-folks, a targeted fuel subsidy by-any-other-name was announced.
Populist, restoration-of-the-status-quo responses simply dig an unscalable crisis/hole deeper. Only with practice will digging hand- and footholds while simultaneously accelerating the mobilisation become instinctive for politicians and voters alike. Long since, Aotearoa should have been on a grid-powered-everythingexcepting, that is, data centres dedicated to the gross misapplication of AI-that-can-be grid-powered build-out mission. Pouring billions into motorways might be a great way for political parties to guarantee generous transport-industry electoral campaign funding, but if Aotearoa is to put its back into building a living, breathing, demonstration of how the democratic Great Mobilisation instantly becomes the economy, profound democratisation, meanwhile, is integral and a given.
Do As China Does, Not Sells : China is prospering immensely by exporting EVs by the billions, while building out game-changing, practicable, grid-powered high-speed rail, and affordable, at-scale grid-powering fourth-generation nuclear power, to mention just two, massively significant low-carbon infrastructure technologies. chart Roosevelt Institute
Given the abject 80-year failure of the United Nations to do so, abolishing war must be re-embraced despite and precisely because of the war unleashed by the rogue, formerly at least putatively democratic United States, on 28 February 2026. In its magnitude, the elective Israeli/US-Iran War will likely totally eclipse the covid-19 pandemic in lives and livelihoods destroyed or diminished. Unlike the pandemic, which precipitated an unprecedentedly rapid practicable remedy in the form of deployable vaccines, at scale, no comparable, heroic, human-condition enhancing weapons are likely to be the product of this megayou say MAGA, I say mega—so’s not to dignify American exceptionalism for so much as a second-atrocity—this depravedly indifferent demonstration of unalloyed demagoguery.
Was the United States to immediately impeach and convict its rogue president and elect a radically reforming revolutionary government in the spirit of the text of its Declaration of Independence—
That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effectbring about their safety and happiness.[capitalisation normalised]
—the days of dictatorships, the invariable precursor to wars, would be numbered. To still have the power to lead such righteous global revolution, the United States, must act while it is still great at something—holding its 110-year, near-global economic hegemony.
With the launching of the Israeli/US-Iran War, the already fiendishly complex Great 3rd Millennium Polycrisis could all too obviously see the chances of salvaging a survivable climate extinguished. If there was ever a time for world leaders to be led by their better angels, now is that time. Whether two millennia of evil done swiftly answered with vengeful retribution can be paused or replaced by the beyond-urgent Great Mobilisation will never be known without some breathtaking act of self-sacrifice on the scale of Bob Dylan turning down Ed Sullivan. If he were a great man, Donald Trump could stop the world in its tracks. Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Ukraine could, and have everything to gain. Mojtaba Khamenei could revoke the fatwa calling for the death of Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie and his publishers, but even Yusuf Islam apologising for victim-blaming Rushdie could start a conversation. Cimino, of course, apprehended that few entertaining his preposterous not-the-great-New Zealand-novel premise would give much credence to the Middle East being the crucible in which global democracy could be alchemised. Cimino, nonetheless, persisted with his hypothesis. A diabolical confluence of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim fundamentalism had proved to be an irresistible global stage on which unprecedented demagoguery was playing out. This, he argued, could equally be the stage upon which a rational, humane, practicable pathway was laid out, whereby the polycrisis nettle could be grasped. With the world already facing the prospect of an economic crisis on the scale of the Great Depression, selling the Great Mobilisation might suddenly seem less radical; that there is no alternative.
Once Werealludes to Once Were Warriors, Alan Duff, 1990 World Leaders: Once a globally pioneering leader in hydroelectric power generation and distribution, Aotearoa trashed its legacy—and that of its laboriously constructed rail network—when it went all-in on road transport. Regardless of how many evs flood the roads, the young, the elderly, and the non-wealthy need comprehensive rail and road services, and bulk/heavy freight can only be intelligently and economically transported by rail. chart Ember
There are, of course, always alternatives, although it suited Margaret Thatcher’s neoliberal-fundamentalist, iron-lady agenda to claim otherwise, just as suited her, and her conservative-fundamentalist base to pontificate, but not act upon, climate. From the pathetically piecemeal, to the desperate, nations are scrabbling to save their respective economies. Virtually all of that hastily contrived expenditure will dig the hole humanity is in only deeper. A handful polycrisis analysts could have a preliminary great mobilisation guide for governments prepared in a week—such, in a halfways-rational world, would exist already, detailed, nation by nation, and continuously updated. Unlike the not-fit-for-purpose Sixth Assessment Report of the not-fit-for-purpose United Nations’ not-fit-for-purpose Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, this, living, guide to the galaxy would thrill readers—nor need it be utterly devoid of whimsyor irony. When the final synthesis report was finally released in March 2023, some of the critical research behind the 2021 IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, by 2026, is already a decade out of date. Meantime, communication about more recent findings, by the time the work sees the light of day, typically prefaces the report as grim/alarming reading, whilst hastily assuring readers that there is still time to reduce carbon emissions if the world acts quickly. Sadly, the only actions of significance that are taken quickly are warlike, overtly or covertly, or the shoring up of capitalism when said war threatens the global economy. Conceptually, were all members of the human race saintly and informed, the free or lightly regulated market would need no government. Life for the individual saintly sole, however, would be impossibly complicated. Every purchase would require an encyclopedia and profound understanding of the implications. Then there is the small matter as to how humanity might conceivably plan a rational and humane way out of the fossil-fueled swamp it is mired in, and keep the trains running—on time or otherwise…
If humanity collectively deserves to survive—with its arrestand the architects of that phase of its brutish special-military-operation phase, by its urgent, deliberative, radically democratic mobilisation—World War III will prove to be the war to end all wars.
To be continued…
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Disclosure The author of this novel modello is no longer the secretary of Mahurangi Action Incorporated or the Mahurangi Coastal Path Trust. The content published here, however, is that of the editorially independent, independently funded Mahurangi Magazine.
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