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By Olivia Pierson
[First published on Incite 21/12/18] "I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain." [John Adams to Abigail Adams, May 1780] In this letter to his wife, Abigail, Adams laid out a certain wisdom about a generational structure unfolding. Being one of America’s Founding Fathers and also a signatory to the Declaration of Independence, which brought about an unprecedented war with the British empire, Adams looked far down the road with optimism as he imagined the pursuits of his unborn grandchildren. His own generation, the Revolutionary Generation, after they had won the war of Independence, had to concern themselves with laying down a proper foundation on which to build their nation’s security around the Constitution and Bill of Rights. This defined and underscored American nationhood, thus setting the parameters of what being ‘an American’ would mean. With this security and political system well safeguarded, the next generation had then to concern itself with building sound institutions of learning, along with commercial infrastructures to advance the benefits of nationhood through practical work, trade and intellectual development. The generation after, being born into well-established security, sound institutions of learning and perhaps wealth, would have the luxurious freedom of pursuing aesthetics, architecture and cultural achievements, stamping their own personal signatures on the ultimate character of the nation their forebears had procured for them. Adams’ grandchildren lived through the years known in American history as the Era of Good Feelings which was marked by national cohesion with a strong sense of goodwill in the American identity and way of life. But beneath the surface of that reality, a political storm was quietly brewing, resulting in the American Civil War. Adams’ great-grandson, John Quincy Adams II, served in the Civil War as a colonel on the Union side, thus showing us that, once again, ‘politics and war’ become a general concern with a repetitive and almost cyclical predictability over 4 – 5 generations. To bring this point home, my great uncles served in WWI, all of them returning from Passchendaele maimed but healthy enough to smoke cigarettes and drink their daily flagons of beer into the 1980s. Because they were all wounded in the Great War, they did not serve in WWII some twenty years later. My own father, their nephew, born in 1939, became a naval officer in the Royal New Zealand Navy. He studied electrical engineering and navigation but lived in a time of peace and never saw war. To hear Dad speak about his time in Dartmouth and Greenwich, England, most of his enthusiastic memories are around cricket and rugby games played all over the United Kingdom and of long voyages abroad to keep a military presence and to maintain a peace which his generation had not had to go out and win. I’ve never seen war. My own children are all pursuing their various careers and have also never seen war – yet. But it feels to me as though we are all riding on the efforts of the generations who came before us, coupled with the strength of what Western democracies have shown themselves to be: monumentally stable and peace-loving, which is what our recent ancestors fought for them to be. Despite this, there is something brewing as we speak, and many of us feel as if we are about to watch the Western world descend into another cyclical crisis. That’s not an admission of any kind of determinism that such cycles are an absolute requirement in essence; they’re not. Crises happen because we get to a point in civilisation where several generations are so busy living, begetting, transacting, pursuing happiness and enjoying the offerings of peace, that we fail to pay sufficient attention to issues which may pose a threat, until these reach a crescendo which forces us to refocus our attention with some urgency on our wider values. There are many factors at work at the moment which are provoking instability and may lead to a crisis point, such as:
But perhaps the most dangerous factor that may lead us into a crisis is the apathetic outlook of three generations of voters who have utterly no idea how we ever came to inherit a remarkable civilisation where freedom, peace and tolerance are the absolute norms under which we live. Ironically, by far the most lethal ingredient of our era - the Information Age - is sheer ignorance. The battle has become, once again, a battle for the foundational security of nation-states against over-reaching globalist powers which seek to lord it over individual nations in the manner of authoritarian empires: Iran, China, Russia, Jihadists of every stripe, North Korea, the European Union and the United Nations. The greatest foe that all these despots currently face is America’s 45th president, who has had to shift his focus from building hotels and skyscrapers to studying politics and war, so that his great-grandchildren may inherit a free and flourishing country, as he did in his youth. If you enjoyed this article, please buy my book "Western Values Defended: A Primer"
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By Olivia Pierson
Far from being the transparent government Jacinda Ardern promised to lead, New Zealand has instead been betrayed after she and Winston Peters decided to vote in support of the UN Global Migration Compact. The two coalition leaders kept their decision-making hidden in secrecy, far from prying media eyes, stating only as late as two days ago that they had made “no decision yet” regarding the compact, then they quietly went ahead and voted for it (if they hadn’t already). Why the secrecy? Because the compact is deeply controversial among UN Member countries. Right at the very moment when Ms. Ardern and Mr. Peters were engaged in voting for this monumental decision to the future of NZ, a rebellion erupted in Belgium over Prime Minister Charles Michel’s intent to support the compact - a rebellion which brought down his government. Charles Michel resigned after a vote of no-confidence from his parliament. The United States was first to reject the compact; President Trump will allow no-one to interfere with his nation’s sovereignty and who crosses into its borders. Australia has rejected it for the same reasons, as has Switzerland, Latvia, Bulgaria, Austria, Italy, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Liechtenstein, Romania, Singapore, Chile and Israel. All of these countries know the compact is a threat to their national sovereignty… for it is in a myriad of ways, as Dr. Waheed Uddin, professor, consultant, former UN expert and author, explains here in this interview, The UN Migration Compact Is a Threat to Sovereignty of Free Member Countries: “A majority of these governments signing the agreement have not even debated it in their national assemblies and parliaments with the law makers and did not have open discussions. Although the UN migration pact is announced as non-binding but many of its 23 objectives imply that the countries must be abiding by prior intergovernmental agreements such as 2030 sustainable development goals (objective 20) and other objectives (12, 13, 22) directly interfere and coerce the UN bureaucracy to trash a country's own laws of border security and immigration control (objective 11, 12 and 13) and social security benefits (objective 22). The result is that unelected representative bureaucrats (who are immune to imprisonment for breaking local laws) get their ultimate goals of power and wealth over the governments of the world.” [Dr. Waheed Uddin 17/12/18] Yes, Dr. Uddin is correct - NZ is one of those countries whose government did not debate it in their parliament with law makers and did not have open discussions. As Todd McClay, National’s Foreign Affairs & Trade Spokesperson said yesterday: “Mr Peters has sprung the signing of the Compact on New Zealanders on the last day of Parliament, even though both he and the Prime Minister were this week still claiming no decision had been made. The Compact has been under consideration since February.” [Todd McClay 19/12/18] Ms. Ardern and Mr. Peters prefer to rule in darkness. Ostensibly non-binding or not, the most essential aspect of our leaders’ support of this agreement is their intent to allow the steady and regular flow into NZ of migrants from Africa and the Middle East, just as Europe and the UK have done. The UN wants to empty the migrant camps of refugees around the world, but don’t just take my word for it, take it from the horse’s mouth (no, I don’t mean Ms. Ardern’s). UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres wrote this statement at the beginning of this year: “We must take urgent action to assist those now trapped in transit camps, or at risk of slavery, or facing situations of acute violence, whether in North Africa or Central America. We have to envisage ambitious international action to resettle those with nowhere to go.” [Antonio Guterres 11/1/18] Mr. Peters campaigned for decades on a strictly limited-immigration platform. Many New Zealand First voters now feel utterly betrayed by him, and rightly so. I would’ve expected such sentimental, sloppy decisions from the softer head of Ms. Ardern, but Mr. Peters? I’m just glad I had the good sense never to vote for him. Mr. Peters says the aim of the compact is to reduce the risks that migrants face and mitigate the factors that keep them from having sustainable livelihoods in their home countries. Hence Europe’s careless immigration policies and the problems it has brought it have now become NZ’s problem to help solve. But were we its citizens properly consulted? No. Never mind that Ms. Ardern campaigned on "reducing poverty and homelessness in NZ,” she has now just signed on to importing even more poverty, including the mental impoverishment that the backwardness of the Islamic mentality brings with it…hey, but they bring us such exotic food and “cultural enrichment,” as bureaucrats like to phrase it. This “enrichment" has been devastating for Europe and the UK, evidenced by higher rape statistics, violence against women, acid attacks, polygamy, female genital mutilation and of course, the now common-place terror attacks. How will Ms. Ardern and Mr. Peters make sure that these cultural enrichments are not brought to our shores? They won’t because they can’t, as it is considered “wrong” to discriminate on the grounds of different cultural practices. Objective 17 of the compact chillingly states (you can read the full list of objectives at the end of this article): 17) Eliminate all forms of discrimination and promote evidence-based public discourse to shape perceptions of migration And right on cue, in his interview with Mike Yardley this morning, Mr. Peters said: "We are trying to stop the awful human trafficking of people, and the corruption of people. These are dreadful things which are happening around the world. You have a campaign strategy by the alt-right to try and spread misinformation on this, it is just not true.” [Winston Peters 20/12/18] There he is already implementing Objective 17 by trying to “shape” listeners’ perceptions with his public rhetoric, choosing to smear critics of the compact as some kind of organised campaign strategy by the “alt-right.” Let’s not forget that alt-right is defined as: “white supremacists/white nationalists, white separatists, anti-Semites, neo-Nazis, neo-fascists, neo-Confederates, Holocaust deniers, conspiracy theorists and other far-right fringe hate groups.” So much for evidence-based discourse. Mr. Peters is acting like a newly minted, obsequious little UN puppet - and only one day into promoting this god-awful compact. New Zealand’s annual refugee quota has been raised from 1000 to 1500 starting from 2020. Given that it costs $100,000 per refugee, per year, for the first three years, that equals a staggering cost of $450 million every three years being spent on rescuing the Third World. Is this what people voted for in Ms. Ardern? Or were they hoping to see her eliminate “child poverty” in NZ? Imagine what $450 million could do for NZ’s homeless. This official refugee quota will only keep growing, you watch. African migrants should be reallocated within African countries - there are 54 of them. Arab migrants should be reallocated within Arab countries - there are 22 of them, and many are oil rich. Let the Christian Arabs and Africans who are persecuted by the Muslims, be allocated to countries with a Judeo-Christian heritage. This is what our leaders should be pushing through the UN as member nations worth a damn - common sense. Assimilating people with similar cultural practices and similar ideologies is not exactly rocket-science, but herding them into foreign countries with deeply foreign values is a recipe for civil strife. Pushing the Third World into the First will only make the First World resemble the Third. Look at Sweden now. If this is the future of Western democracies, then where will the world find inspiration for peace, prosperity and authentic human flourishing? Mars? The 23 Objectives for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration of the Global Migration Compact: (1) Collect and utilise accurate and disaggregated data as a basis for evidence-based policies (2) Minimise the adverse drivers and structural factors that compel people to leave their country of origin (3) Provide accurate and timely information at all stages of migration (4) Ensure that all migrants have proof of legal identity and adequate documentation (5) Enhance availability and flexibility of pathways for regular migration (6) Facilitate fair and ethical recruitment and safeguard conditions that ensure decent work (7) Address and reduce vulnerabilities in migration (8) Save lives and establish coordinated international efforts on missing migrants (9) Strengthen the transnational response to smuggling of migrants (10) Prevent, combat and eradicate trafficking in persons in the context of international migration (11) Manage borders in an integrated, secure and coordinated manner (12) Strengthen certainty and predictability in migration procedures for appropriate screening, assessment and referral (13) Use migration detention only as a measure of last resort and work towards alternatives (14) Enhance consular protection, assistance and cooperation throughout the migration cycle (15) Provide access to basic services for migrants (16) Empower migrants and societies to realise full inclusion and social cohesion (17) Eliminate all forms of discrimination and promote evidence-based public discourse to shape perceptions of migration (18) Invest in skills development and facilitate mutual recognition of skills, qualifications and competences (19) Create conditions for migrants and diasporas to fully contribute to sustainable development in all countries (20) Promote faster, safer and cheaper transfer of remittances and foster financial inclusion of migrants (21) Cooperate in facilitating safe and dignified return and readmission, as well as sustainable reintegration (22) Establish mechanisms for the portability of social security entitlements and earned benefits (23) Strengthen international cooperation and global partnerships for safe, orderly and regular migration If you enjoyed this article, please buy my book "Western Values Defended: A Primer"
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