An early work-in-progress dedicated to helping,
circuitously, precipitate the Great Mobilisation
Dare to be wise!
Kant
Contents
author Cimino
work-in-progress published 20240721
I’ve seen the flame of hope among the hopeless
And that was truly the biggest heartbreak of all
That was the straw that broke me open
Bruce Cockburn, 1999
Liberty with which to End Child Hunger: In the fight to preserve liberty, or a survivable climate, the fight to end child hunger must the first to be won. Pictured is the firstfrom that particular shipyard Liberty ship to launch at the new, state-owned shipyard at Cape Fear River, North Carolina—other photographs attest to a crowd of 13 000 having attended the launch. The ss Zebulon B Vance, as the usahs John J Meany, served the latter years of World War II as a hospital ship. In addition to kitchens, modular clinics, field hospitals, housing and schools could all be manufactured in Aotearoa—from planted, locally-grown engineered timber—high-cube-shipping-container dimensioned. image East Carolina Digital Collections
Food, clothing, shelter, and something to hope for—to paraphrase Norman Kirk. For generations now, increasing numbers of New Zealand children have routinely gone without food, and without hope, a crime perpetrated by the ungrateful 1984 usurpers of the Greatest Generation and a once-noble Labour Party machine. This takeaway brigadewhich Cimino refuses to dignify with its accepted title, the Fish and Chip Brigade didn’t win but were gifted an election, much less did said greasiesNew Zealand vernacular for take-away fish and chips munchers earn a mandate for the secret, state- and society-destroying agenda they gleefully set about enacting.
At the heart of child hunger in Aotearoa was the confused capitulation of a once proudly egalitarian society, to neoliberal ideology. Forty years of neoliberalism’s odious trickledown dogma delivered an immense disparity in prosperity, for example: a 14-fold prosperity-score disparity between the opulent 9.8 of Ōrākei, depravedly indifferent to the 0.7 of Ōtara–Papatoetoe. Hungry children can’t be allowed to live in hope for another 40 years for neoliberalism’s wrongs to be reversed, when the first liberty kitchens could be being prototyped and trialled, within months.
From his earliest awareness of individual dispositions, Cimino had always thought of himself as an optimist, even owning the Pollyanna end of the spectrum. It is days like this, when the day dawns clear and cold, when his Wordle start word has come up trumps, and when Biden has done the decent thing by quitting his run at re-election that nurtures Cimino’s determined undying ember of optimism. As was the case when Robert Mulddoon had drunkenly demonstrated his use-by both to his party and too the opposition, his desperate bid to hold onto power gave agency to those with anti-state inclinations. As demented as President Biden’s dogged 2024 re-election campaign was, Cimino prayed that the Democratic Party, 44 years after the Republicans chose a compelling face—Reagen’s, but particularly the compelling voice to go with it—comprehends it didn’t just need to listen to George Clooney, but to nominate him. Six decades ago, a mid-inauguration president implored:
…ask not what your country can do for you…
Would that that shadow-of-its-former-self Democratic Party today imagine itself a great, new beginning. Although it often doesn’t feel like it, Cimino knows he’s not the only one who imagines a practicable path to a wholly democratic democracy. What he has yet to glimpse elsewhere is an inkling of anyone else who sees the polycrisesfossil-fuel, biodiversity, population, equity… Great Mobilisation as the way past the short-termism and division that afflicts humanity. The valiant few intent on creating a world where policy-making is elevated from the filth of the political cock-fighting pit, such as Professor Sir Peter Gluckman with his Wicked Problems, Policy and Politics , rightly identify the need for long-term reform and early investment to break the cycle. While Cimino agrees and applauds, he sees these long term radical changes as exasperatingly difficult to sell to a society, short of a campaign funded by a record, $2.04 billion Powerball jackpot, or catapulted by a video going viral—think Daddy Yankee and Despacito ’s 8.4 billion viewsas of 202406. In this age of rupture, rather than risk reform withering on the vine while the world doubles-down on de-democratisation, a demonstration by Aotearoa–Australia of practicable, profoundly democratic mobilisation must be mounted, and all the more compelling if partnered with Canada, post Carney’s middle-powers doctrine. Central to any paradigm-establishing war on child poverty are the shipping-container-dimensioned modules to create anything from a single, standalone breakfast kitchen to sustain children who, through no fault of their own have arrived at school too hungry to think, to entire schools for those orphaned or otherwise separated from those who would care for them…
To be continued…
Thorium-Powered vs. Net-Zero Hopium: Unveiled at Marintec, December 2023, China’s state-owned Jiangnan Shipyard has credibly signalled how the world’s 200 million teu containerTEU: Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit trips a year could be accomplished—24 000 at a time, by the likes of the thorium-powered kun-24ap depicted here—fossil-fuel free and considerably faster. rendering Jiangnan Shipyard
Hopium wars Light the Fuseoriginally the Mahurangi Magazine, but rephrased and Israeli/US-Iran War updated as a Light the Fuse footnote argues that megamobilisation is the best antidote for the net-zero hopium that so concerns Hansen et al. In the absence of megamobilisation, net-zero-hopium market-forces overwhelm all objectivity, putting civilisation and the biosphere at risk of crossing one too many tipping point and passing the point of no return. What should give humanity pause is that even in peacetime, no climate scientist can provide an ironclad assurance that there is time to prevent tipping points dominoing past the point of no return. Nothing points towards the Climate Polycrisis overwhelming civilisation more ominously than the current part-First World War, part-War of the Worlds waged by Russia against Ukraine, that genocidally waged against Gaza by Israel, the Israeli/US-Iran bring-them-Donald malaprop-a-minute Trump obliviously signalling his cartoon-caveman instinctsback-to-the-stone-ages Donald malaprop-a-minute Trump obliviously signalling his cartoon-caveman instincts[sic]Donald malaprop-a-minute Trump obliviously signalling his cartoon-caveman instincts War, and other ongoing wars too sickeningas so powerfully and definitively used by, if not coined by, Bruce Cockburn, in the context of CIA-funded covert wars to relate.as so powerfully and definitively used by, if not coined by, Bruce Cockburn, in the context of CIA-funded covert wars The best contribution the West can make to end the scourge of kleptocracy and warfare is to demonstrate that it will, belatedly, decisively put civilisation-and-the-biosphere ahead of its own, selfish materialistic interests. Just one example: Boeing is still considered too big to fail despite systematically divesting itself of the ability to reliably design and build airworthy passenger aircraft—in time, coincidentally, for what categorically needs to be the end of the if-I-can't fly-somewhere-balmy-of-a-winter-every-winter-life’s-not-worth-living era. Boeing, reinvented, could find redemption as a public-benefit entity, manufacturing the accommodation modules immediately needed to house the United States’ half-million homeless, and the planet’s three billion by 2030—honest employment for every hardworking quality inspector ever purged or otherwise put to the sword by Boeing, and then some.
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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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