The Day I out-ran the Israeli Defense Forces.

Posted on September 18, 2018 by Kevin Hester — 10 Comments

In 1981 I was backpacking through South East Asia when I found myself on Freak Street in Kathmandu, Nepal also known as Jhhonchen tole.

I was staying in a $1/night back packers with a group of Kiwi friends.
In those days the electricity supply in Kathmandu was very erratic and came and went without warning, many times every day. If you wanted to have a hot shower you had to que for your turn at the communal bathroom, when the power was on. No electricity, no hot shower. If the power went off you had to decide to wait in the que until it came back on or go away and que again later.

I was in the que when a group of young Israeli’s from the Israeli Defense Force walked up to the door and took control of access into the bathroom.We were arrogantly told we’d have to wait until they were finished because they had just arrived on leave after being on patrol in the occupied territories in Palestine. and they had priority at the showers.

The people in the que began to complain and all of the soldiers became angry and argumentative. It was all about their (God given) rights and we had none.

After a few moments of heated discussion I triggered a thermo-nuclear response by foolishly spouting “Sometimes I think that the only thing Hitler taught you people was how to behave like fascists.” One of the soldiers turned purple, veins bulging in his neck and temples and charged at me. When I played rugby ( poorly) my position was half-back, one of the skills any half-back develops is the ability to avoid large opponents diving on you.The bigger they are, the harder they fall, on you!
I managed to avoid the assailant and ran for the exit hearing behind me a brawl breaking out and the screams of men and women from the que. Mea Culpa.

Down the stairs and out the door I scarpered and next minute I’m sprinting down Freak Street in rugby shorts a singlet and bare feet. No wallet, shoes, passport or money with members of the IDF in hot pursuit. I think it is fair to say I am lucky they weren’t armed.
I ran and ran and ran like Forrest Gump, with a posse from the IDF close behind. I had just returned from tramping in the Annapuna ranges where I had been treking at over 2000m in elevation. One of the things that happens when you have been at altitude is your blood becomes highly oxygenated and when you come down to lower levels you feel very fit and have hightened stamina. Added to the situation was the fact that I felt that I was running for my life. I suspect the altitude training may well have saved my life or at least a brutal beating.
Through markets, narrow streets and busy footpaths I sprinted with the IDF in hot pursuit. This went on for a few hours with me ducking and diving, slowing down to catch my breath and looking over my shoulder and in front of me expecting an ambush at any moment.

After a few hours of running, ducking and diving, I found that I had outrun the IDF. Now I had to decide what to do next. I knew I couldn’t just return to the hotel but we did have a local cafe where we as a group had eaten, so I cautiously made my way back there.
When I arrived at the cafe, low and behold there were my erstwhile friends, some with visible wounds.
After I had scarpered, the soldiers had beaten all the people who had remained. It was my first personal experience of collective punishment. My battered and bruised friends described the brawl as viscious with the soldiers applying all their training.
As you can imagine my friends were furious with me for starting a conflagration which left some of them battered and bruised and all of them on the street because it was made clear to them by the soldiers that they had to leave the hotel.
Fortunately for me, my friends had packed my bags,wallet and passport and had not abandoned me.

What this behaviour did to this 21 yr old was make him a life long supporter of Palestine and her people and challenged me to confront Zionism at ever opportunity. In both of the conflict zones I have lived in, draconian and reactionary totalatarian behaviour created more resistance, it never quelled it.

Collective Punishment;
The people of Palestine are always subjected to collective punishment. One person fires an ineffectual missile out of Gaza and the entire community are collectively punished, this is a war crime.
It is quite possible and even highly likely that many of those rocket attacks are false flags being hoisted by a fifth column in Gaza deliberately triggering a response from the apartheid state.

When I was in my mid twenties some 5 years later I arrived in Republican West Belfast in the occupied 6 counties of Ireland. Alongside amazing murals of our struggle I was proud to see beautiful murals supporting Palestine. Check out the work of my comrades at Gael Force Art for numerous examples.

I was always challenged when considering the issue of the armed struggle in Palestine, South and Central America, Africa generally and in my parents and ancestors country of Ireland.
The amazing woman below Patsy Marron convinced me that it wasn’t our choice because our community was under occupation and armed attack and we had a duty to defend our communities. The people of Palestine have exactly the same rights and duties.
In the photo below Patsy who is over 90 yrs old, was at a demo in her native West Belfast recently. Rock that!

Anyone who follows this blog ( hit the subscribe button) will know that I believe that we are in the early stages of runaway global warming leading to the collapse of industrial civilisation and the extinction of most if not all complex life on this belleagured planet.
Never underestimate the damage all of this imperialist and colonial warmongering has inflicted on the biosphere.
If your an environmentalist and not an anti-imperialist you’ve missed one of the major drivers of the sixth great extinction.

If I could have one wish before collapse unfolds it would be to see a sign like the one below in Aotearoa New Zealand. We kicked the Israeli ambassador out of Aotearoa once before, let’s do it again.
I took this photo in Harare in 1991 hence the poor resolution but it’s the message that counts.
It’s way past time to end the never ending nakba.
Irish Solidarity with Palestine

Posted in Resistance, Social Justice

Last Born in the Wilderness – At The End

Posted on September 11, 2018 by Kevin Hester — 8 Comments

It was an honour and a pleasure to be collaborating with both Patrick and Rob on this important work, having the kind of conversations we desperately need to have but most resile from.
The audio from the interview is embedded here;

“How do we live with the fact that we are destroying our world? What do we make of the loss of glaciers, the melting Arctic, island nations swamped by the sea, widening deserts, and drying farmlands?”
“Because of social taboos, despair at the state of our world and fear for our future are rarely acknowledged. The suppression of despair, like that of any deep recurring response, contributes to the numbing of the psyche. Expressions of anguish or outrage are muted, deadened as if a nerve had been cut. This refusal to feel impoverishes our emotional and sensory life. Flowers are dimmer and less fragrant, our loves less ecstatic. We create diversions for ourselves as individuals and as nations, in the fights we pick, the aims we pursue, and the stuff we buy.”
The Greatest Danger by Joanna Macy
In the interview I mentioned Cormac McCarty’s amazing book “The Road”
“If you looking for “Mad Max” like Popocalypse – don’t bother! This is Apocalypse without makeup and glamour. It has a profound,shocking,visceral,autopsy like effect,and yet it has immensely warm and uplifting moments.The cast is stellar and it performs in a stellar fashion.Amazing movie ,based on an even more amazing novel by Cormack McCarthy,the last of american giants of prose.”
If after watching the trailer below you are as intrigued as I am you’ll find “The Road” audio books on You Tube or buy a paperback to read for when the internet disappears.

Patrick Farnsworth has posted the the podcast on his Facebook page Last Born in the Wilderness, follow Patricks excellent work there or subscribe to his You Tube channel here;

“The greatest shortcoming of the human race is it’s inability to understand the exponential function”. Albert Bartlett

Follow Dahr Jamail’s Climate Dispatchs at Truthout for noticifations on the release of his latest book and speaking tours including ours in Aotearoa N.Z. in 2019 if it all holds together that long.

Stephen Jenkinson on Grief and Climate Change.

Posted in Catastrophe, Collapse, Near Term Human Extinction--NTHE

“Perfect Conditions” for Collapse

Posted on September 6, 2018 by Kevin Hester — 2 Comments

In the September episode of Nature Bats Last host Kevin Hester interviewed author Vanessa Blakeslee the show is embedded here;

Many thanks to Patrick Farnsworth from “Last Born in the Wilderness” for allowing us to use his short interview with Vanessa as an intro. Patricks seminal work can be found on You Tube here; Last Born in the Wilderness. On Facebook here; Last Born in the Wilderness.

“Forging connections in perilous times” Patrick Farnsworth
Vanessa mentioned the recent article from Jem Bendell titled; The Study on collapse they thought you should not read yet !

“A research paper concluding that climate-induced collapse is now inevitable, was recently rejected by anonymous reviewers of an academic journal.It has been released directly by the Professor who wrote it, to promote discussion of the necessary deep adaptation to climate chaos.”“I am releasing this paper immediately, directly, because I can’t wait any longer in exploring how to learn the implications of the social collapse we now face,” explained the author Dr Bendell, a full Professor of Sustainability Leadership.”
Former guest on the show Professor Paul Ehrlich has recently been quoted on the coming collapse in The Guardian in an article titled; “Collapse of Civilisation is a near certainty within decades”.

Vanessa’s Facebook pages are Near Term Human Extinction Support Group
and Vanessa Blakeslee Perfect Conditions Stories;
I mentioned Dahr Jamail will be launching his latest book in January titled “The End of Ice”. Dahr will be doing book launch tours in the USA, Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, here’s a taster; Update on the State of the Planet: How Then Shall We Live?

Watch this space for more information as we plan Dahr’s book launch tours;

Posted in Abrupt Climate Change, Collapse, Near Term Human Extinction--NTHE, Podcasts

The Canary Is Dead.

Posted on August 29, 2018 by Kevin Hester — 10 Comments

Today I had the honour of being interviewed by Anson Nash an inspirational 17yr old from Washington discussing the unfolding consequences of our unraveling biosphere. We discuss that fact that all the warnings have been ignored and that we have crossed a multitude of tipping points, are now descending into the abyss and the fact that I refuse to be the last generation of elder lying to the last generation of youth. It was a remarkably philosophical conversation with a remarkable young man.

Our youth are being lied to by the big NGO’s and world renowned climate scientists like Michael E Mann
I have embedded links below to various subjects we discussed like Global Dimming and the water vapour feedback loop due to having another 7% water vapour in the atmosphere for every 1C we warm the planet.
We discussed population overshoot and my interview on Nature Bats Last with Professor Paul Ehrlich author of “The Population Bomb”.
Anson mentioned that the French environment minister quit live on air saying : “I don’t want to lie to myself any more”.

I quoted Michael C Ruppert saying “Until you change the way money works you change nothing”.
“The scientifically neccessary is politically unfeasable and the politcally feasable is scientifically irrelevant” William Rees.

I would very much like to receive feedback from young people who hear this interview, feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments section below.

Canary is dead

Posted in Abrupt Climate Change, Methane, Near Term Human Extinction--NTHE

Scientific Mal-Practice from the Mann Himself

Posted on August 8, 2018 by Kevin Hester — 22 Comments

In an August the 5th 2018 article in Salon titled “On Climate Change it’s time to start panicking” Michael E Mann bare faced lies to an unsuspecting public saying that it is still possible to avoid a dangerous 2C temperature rise on this beleaguered planet.
“The good news is that humanity hasn’t passed the point of no return, at least when it comes to the total destruction of our species (we have definitely passed that point when it comes to avoiding any kinds of lasting consequences). If we are to stave off even worse examples of extreme weather than the hurricanes, wildfires, floods, droughts and heat waves we’ve already experienced, however, we need to start implementing intelligent policies — and do so now.”
At this point in the article I urge informed readers to get a bucket to spew into when you read the following orchestrated litany of lies from the Mann Himself;

“I would place a price on carbon,” Michael E Mann, a Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science at Penn State, told Salon by email. “Whether this takes the form of a carbon tax (a revenue-neutral carbon tax? fee and dividend? cap-and-trade?), I leave that to the policymakers to determine as long as they accept, as the premise for policy, what the science has to say about the reality and threat of climate change. The price on carbon needs to be set such that it leads to a reduction in carbon emissions of several percent a year for the next few decades. If we do that, we can avoid a catastrophic 2C (~3.5 F) warming of the planet.”

If the reader has been paying any attention at all regarding the unfolding catastrophe and is aware of all the tipping points we have already crossed, they will know that this goal is impossible and the statement a blatant lie from a world renowned scientist. The ‘Go to guy’ for the corporate media. How dire must the situation be for Mann to be lying blatantly like this?
How the fuck will a tax over “the next few decades” prevent us from crossing the 2C rubicon when we are already something like 1.7C above the 1700 baseline, the only one we should be using. Factor in the 10 to 30 year lag between cause and effect of our emissions and it’s clear 2C is an impossibility?
For pities sake, 2C is baked in now, not decades into a future that will never arrive.
I take no pleasure in calling Mann a liar but the facts speak for themselves.

I’ll give you a hint where this is going to and coming from; “He also rejected the idea promoted by many on the left that a lasting solution to global warming is impossible under a free-market capitalist economic system.” “I’m unconvinced that is true,” Mann explained. “In the past, market mechanisms for pricing environmental externalities have worked. We acted on acid rain and ozone depletion within a market economy framework. The real problem, in my view, isn’t the nature of our economic system, it’s the way that special interests and plutocrats have blocked the sort of common-sense market approaches to dealing with environmental problems that were once supported by democrats and republicans alike. The problem is the moral and ethical rot that now lies at the very center of the republican establishment, the lack of good faith and the total sellout to special interests and plutocrats.”Can you Smell a free-market capitalist rat yet?

Not only is the liar saying that market forces can fix this predicament, he’s blaming the Republicans. Hilary Clinton’s script writer couldn’t have put it ‘better’. Maybe they wrote it for him?
Mann is patently owned by the very same corporations that are grinding the living planet into dust.
We have covered previously on this blog the “Total Lack of Urgency” being shown by scientists when covering our predicament. Contrast that with Meyer Hillman’s owning up on his death bed; “Were Doomed, Meyer Hillman on the climate reality that no one else will dare mention”
Typically The Guardian in their title above ignored the seminal work of Professor Guy McPherson who has been raising the extinction alarm since 2012.
Check out this excellent expose’ of Mann making a liar of himself “Irony of Inaction- With “Honest” MIchael Mann

There is no past analogue for the rapidity of what we are baring witness to.
There has been a flood of articles recently from very mainstream as well as alternative media about the climate crisis where they admit that 2C is no longer attainable and that we are heading for dangerous climate change ( appallingly Greenpeace said on twitter today that 1.5C is achievable !!!!! Now they are outright lying as well.)
The media have been forced to address the predicament because of the rapidity of change yet still they aren’t conveying the true severity of the unfolding catastrophe and the rapidity of the change.
I’ve repeatedly quoted Albert Bartlett with his seminal statement “One of the greatest shortcomings of the human race is it’s inability to understand the exponential function”. We are now in the non-linear stage of the unraveling, there are few alive who will understand how quickly it will fall apart from here on despite our efforts to convey the urgency of the situation.

Kevin Sandbloom from Black Bear News also calls out Mann and his ‘tax’ and the nuclear industry for their lies in the following embedded link; French nuclear productionreduced by 31 GW due to heatwave !! So much for Nukes saving the planet from climate change!
The two embedded links below cover both an overview of abrupt climate change and an explanation of the rapidity we should brace for;
Overview Of Abrupt Anthropogenic Climate Change

Edge of Extinction: Rate Matters

Utah Phillips

Posted in #Followthemoney, Abrupt Climate Change, Catastrophe, Feedback loops, Near Term Human Extinction--NTHE

Paul Beckwith, Gary Null and Kevin Hester analyse the rapidly unfolding Climate Catastrophe

Posted on August 3, 2018 by Kevin Hester — 2 Comments

Gary Null, founder of The Progressive Radio Network interviews for the “Progressive Commentary Hour” Canadian scientist Paul Beckwith and Aotearoa New Zealand climate researcher and activist Kevin Hester on the ongoing non-linear unraveling of the biosphere.
The episode is embedded here;
“Because of social taboos, despair at the state of our world and fear for our future are rarely acknowledged. The suppression of despair, like that of any deep recurring response, contributes to the numbing of the psyche. Expressions of anguish or outrage are muted, deadened as if a nerve had been cut. This refusal to feel impoverishes our emotional and sensory life. Flowers are dimmer and less fragrant, our loves less ecstatic. We create diversions for ourselves as individuals and as nations, in the fights we pick, the aims we pursue, and the stuff we buy.”
“Of all the dangers we face, from climate chaos to permanent war, none is so great as this deadening of our response. For psychic numbing impedes our capacity to process and respond to information. The energy expended in pushing down despair is diverted from more crucial uses, depleting the resilience and imagination needed for fresh visions and strategies.” Quote from Joanna Macy The Greatest Danger.

During the interview the studio played the audio from a brilliant You Tube animation created by artist Ken Avidor, titled “Countdown to Extinction” embedded here; Countdown to Extinction

Corroborating links to issues that were discussed in the show are embedded below in no particular order;
I firmly believe that the true severity of the crisis cannot be understood without an understanding of Global Dimming;

Overview of Abrupt Anthropogenic Climate Change

Kevin Hesters “Nature Bats Last” show archive is embeded here
Paul Beckwith discussed the dangers of hitting Wet Bulb Temperatures.

President Niinistö in North Russia: ‘If We Lose the Arctic, We Lose the World’
What is it with scientists on their death bed fessing up about the severity of the crisis as Mayer Hillman does below?
‘We’re doomed’: Mayer Hillman on the climate reality no one else will dare mention

Posted in Abrupt Climate Change, Feedback loops, Gary Null, Paul Beckwith, Podcasts, Rapid Climate Change

The Climate and Extinction Crises on Black Bear News

Posted on July 26, 2018 by Kevin Hester — 9 Comments

Kevin Hester and Kevin Sandbloom from Black Bear News discuss the unraveling of the biosphere,the convergence of ecological collapse,the re-rise of fascism and the attendant risks as the planets ecology and social order both stumble toward collapse. The interview can be viewed on You Tube here;

“Because of social taboos, despair at the state of our world and fear for our future are rarely acknowledged. The supression of despair, like that of any deep recurring response contributes to the numbing of the psyche”,from The Greatest Danger by Joanna Macy

The Australian Bureau of Meterology currently has us on El Nino “Watch” with a prediction that we may enter a new El Nino in the southern hemisphere spring.
“An El Niño event has been predicted for the end of the year, leaving farmers already struggling with a devastating five-year drought facing disaster.The Bureau of Meteorology announced the odds of an El Niño system forming this year are now twice as high as normal.” Weather catastrophe: Farmers crippled by the ‘worst drought in 100 years’ are facing another TWO YEARS of scorching temperatures and no rain

I believe that the next strong El Nino will inflict the final blow for the Great Barrier Reef which is already in hospice due to previous recent bleaching events. Worldwide tourism accounted for 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions from 2009 to 2013

We are in the early stages of runaway global warming that will lead inevitably to the total loss of habitat on planet earth. What geoengineering lengths will the psychopaths in the military industrial complex go to to slow down the armageddon? I believe we will see an orchestrated nuclear winter. The Inevitability of Nuclear War and Subsequent Nuclear Winter When a nuclear detonation takes place, if your fortunate not to be in the targeted zone, question the empires narrative, the likelihood of a “False Flag” being used is very high.

To fully understand the severity of the converging crises we face it is imperative to understand that when civilisation collapses or a major event shuts down the airline industry we lose the cooling effects of “Global Dimming”. This was shown in stark relief when after 911 in the USA unfolded and commercial airline flights were cancelled for the first 3 days scientists recorded an immediate 1C + temperature increase.
View the BBC documentary Global Dimming here;

The interview with Professor Paul Ehrlich titled “The Annihilation of Nature” mentioned in the interview is embedded here;

Posted in Abrupt Climate Change, Collapse, Interviews, Near Term Human Extinction--NTHE

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