I am currently in Vietnam for a long-planned family trip.
My wife is Vietnamese and we have brought our 3-year-old son here to visit his grandma and maternal relatives for the first time.
This is my fourth visit to this fascinating country, but the first during its ‘dry’ season. The southern half of Vietnam has two seasons only – the dry and the rainy.
We are based in a location which is under 10 degrees north of the equator and I can tell you it’s hot – sticky, humid, the kind of weather where you need to have a cold shower two or three times a day to maintain a basic level of comfort.
When checking the local temperatures I am surprised at how low they are. The hot days I mentioned are recorded as only being around 26 to 28 degrees celcius. I have never experienced anywhere near the same level of heat in New Zealand, yet in a normal summer you will see temperatures in our traditional ‘hotspots’ listed in the late twenties to early thirties. Either the recording of temperatures in Vietnam is too low, or ours is too high.
I recently saw a doomsday map produced by climate alarmists which showed the entire country of Vietnam under water by the year 2050 due to ‘rising sea levels’. I am not sure how that will be possible as the coast in our area is a good 10 metres above the waves on average.
Vietnam is a developing country of 100 million people. The biggest city, Ho Chi Minh City, (also known as Saigon and commonly abbreviated to HCMC) is a behemoth of a metropolis, with a total urban population somewhere between 20 and 22 million.
Watching the HCMC 5pm rush hour is an unforgettable experience – a huge mass of humanity on the move at the end of the work day. Millions of people on motorbikes are travelling in every direction with virtually no road rules in force. Somehow, in this chaos, the traffic keeps moving and everyone gets home, road-rage free.
Tens of millions of people here rely on oil and gas to survive day-to-day. If the man-made climate change cultists back in Wellington think Vietnam (or the scores of other countries like it) are going to give up cheap fossil fuel energy then they are living in a dream world. It will never happen, especially as we move towards a multi-polar world led by BRICS. The use of fossil fuels will only accelerate as countries like Vietnam continue on their economic development pathway. The notion that we should punish hard-working kiwi farmers out of existence for something they are not responsible for is not only stupid, it will kill our Golden Goose. It’s economic, and ultimately social suicide.
It’s been interesting to observe Vietnamese culture and society in the context of New Zealand’s current train-wreck political and social system.
Vietnam is a one-party communist state. In the eyes of most kiwis communism represents the ‘evil of all evils’. We have a belief that democracy is inherently a better system than communism. Having spent a lot of time in Vietnam, I am not so sure.
In the west we have preconceived ideas about what living a communist country would be like. We have this notion that such societies are not free, that their populations are enslaved against their will and are unhappy, their cities slums, and countries backward.
The reality in Vietnam is the complete opposite. I have been privileged to see and experience a stunning country, where the vast majority of people are happy and feel fulfilled with their lot in life, even those who live in poverty. I have found beautiful vibrant cities that never sleep. I have found a society that trusts and respects their government, and a government which does not micro-manage the lives of its people.
I am no disciple of communism, and Vietnam has its flaws for sure, but it seems to me that the question of whether communism or democracy/capitalism is the best model for social economic and political governance is irrelevant. To a large extent, the left wing/right wing dichotomy, as it pertains to arguments about the best form of government, is also a waste of time.
The most important consideration is whether a government is ideologically passive or aggressive, and whether the system in which it operates can provide adequate checks and balances to counter overreach. There are good communist governments, and bad ones. There are good democratic governments, and bad ones.
It may come as a surprise to many kiwis, but the Communist government here is ‘hands-off’. As long as you don’t (excuse my French) ‘piss people off’, you are pretty much free to do whatever you want.
Even geting a visa to come here was easy – pay USD $25, complete a simple ten minute online form, and you will have a one, two or three month tourist visa.
Contrast that with the rigmarole my wife (who holds a Vietnamese passport) had to go through just to get a transit visa for a 2 hour stopover in Sydney. She had to give a full biometric fingerprint sample to the Australian government, as well as complete a detailed online form with documentary evidence. Tell me then, which government is the paranoid control freak? Communist Vietnam, or ‘Democratic freedom-loving’ Australia?
Want to sell organic natural medicines? Want to set up a restaurant or cafe business? Want to teach English? Want to start a shop selling Scuba gear? Go for it. Only the limits of your imagination and determination will hold you back here in Vietnam, although learning the language is advised. Whereas in New Zealand, the government interferes in everything – you need government permission or a licence to do anything which entails earning money. There’s so much red tape in NZ, so many regulatory barriers to getting ahead. And on top of this the NZ state thieves a good percentage of your earnings through taxation.
The life-blood of the Vietnamese economy is free enterprise – the tens of millions of small-time traders who operate free from government interference and regulation, and taxes. There’s no social welfare system so you have to make money to survive and put your children through school. Cash is king. Every road is full of shops of all description – retail, restaurants, primary produce, bakers, fishmongers, consumer electronics, furniture, stores selling clocks, shoes, t-shirts, suits – you name it, everything. The result is a resourceful, hard-working, peaceful, patriotic, focused population.
In New Zealand just two companies control virtually the entire grocery market. In other sectors – clothing, fast-food, banking, petrol, insurance etc a similar model exists where a small number of the same brands (usually not even owned by New Zealanders) dominate the market. We have little real choice. Honest, free enterprise in New Zealand is dead, killed off by the control freaks in big government, by big foreign brands and shopping malls.
In the spiritual and religious realm Vietnam also thrives, contrary to what many in the west would believe, as communism tends to be associated with ‘godlessness’. Buddhism is alive and well, and the scale and beauty of the Catholic cathedrals, which are packed each Sunday, magnificient.
The education system is also of a high standard. I have met many school-aged children here and they take their studies very seriously. There is an emphasis on learning English, maths and science. There’s none of the woke ideological time-wasting rubbish prevalent today in our school system. Vietnamese kids are intelligent, articulate, and most of all respectful. They respect their elders. They work hard to get ahead – from 7am to 5pm six days a week they are at school learning, and Sundays are often taken up with extra privately-paid classes.
The Vietnamese also do not wallow in the pits of historical injustice. This country was bombed into the ground and sprayed with chemical weapons by the Americans just 50 years ago. While not forgotten, nor forgiven, the country has moved on and has got on with life. The old division between north and south is gone. In my conversations with locals I have never detected any animosity towards the Americans, nor the previous colonial masters, the French, despite the many atrocities perpetrated by both. We could learn a lot of lessons from this attitude.
In early February I was in central Auckland for the first time since the lockdowns. The place was dead and hardly anyone was about. There were more seagulls than people. The scene was symbolic of New Zealand, a country which in my eyes has become decadent and lost its soul, its identity. And I fear it’s only going to get worse because there’s no going back now on the climate change and co-governance agendas – both of which will fundamentally change the fabric of our society, for the worse, forever.
The last three years have shown up New Zealand’s democracy for what it is – a grand illusion. By stealth and treachery the New Zealand state will ultimately devour individual autonomy and freedom, a process which is well underway but which few today have the ability (or will) to recognise. COVID has shown that we do not have sufficient checks and balances to stop the process. All aspects of our lives will be centrally controlled by an aggressive government, a corrupted media and a select group of mega corporates. They will exploit the numerous weaknesses in our constitution to force unpopular, non-consensual and self-destructive agendas onto our society. Sadly, given the experience of COVID, most kiwis will simply fall into line believing they still live in a free democratic society, unaware they will have become what they fear the most – a totalitarian communist state.
Can this be avoided? Yes, but fundamental changes are needed.
New Zealand is in urgent need of constitutional reforms that will impose strong checks and balances on the executive branch of government. There needs to be a clear separation of powers between the executive, legislature and judiciary, and each must be given the powers necessary to provide effective checks and balances on the others. The ‘Gold Standard’ template is the American Constitution as it was enacted and envisaged by the Founding Fathers – yes, America today is corrupt basket case politically, but the US constitution model worked well for at least 150 years, and we can learn from, and avoid, the mistakes made in the modern US system.
Such change cannot be achieved within the existing political system. New Zealanders will have to fight for it. And unless that happens my son ironically will have to grow up in communist Vietnam in order to enjoy the freedoms and decent education system I was lucky enough to benefit from in the land they once called ‘Godzone’.
Excellent piece, and on the money Ed. I will be passing this on to several people. Thank you. 👍
This is s GREAT PIECE!!! It is a similar scenario in Russia, whereas ‘The West’ has become a totalitarian police state in many nation-states, with over-regulation, high taxes, and lack of ‘social norms’…!
General Tito ran his nation under communism, but was very moderate and quite lenient to allow great things to flourish.
Todays’ Russia has actually become more like what ‘The West’ was only 10 years ago, with freedom, extended liberties, and entrenching Russian Christian Orthodoxy which the Khazarian Zio-Communist mafia stifled for 75+ years, culminating in the Red Terror, death squads and the Gulag that murdered 65 million Russians, Ukrainians, and Eastern Europeans.
Putin realises and knows full well what the Zio-Communist J3w$ are attempting to do, and the Zio-Communist J3w$ have taken total control of the U.S., the U.K. and Western Europe.
Herein lies the problem in that once the Khazarian and AshkeNAZI J3w$ become entrenched like they have in Biden’s Executive Branch cabinet, then it becomes extremely difficult to effect change and get them removed.
The Vietnam Police Action (War) was started on an orchestrated lie with the ‘Gulf of Tonkin’ incident, just as the last two Gulf Wars were started on a lie with Saddam Hussein having ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’, Gerald Bull’s artillery pieces, and the false premise of Iraq invading Kuwait for fictional reasons.
Bottom line; any form of government is bad government when you have narcissists, sociopaths and full-blown psychopaths running the government, whatever form of government that might be! Those adverse characteristics are made worse with Zionists J3w$ entrenched, and employing Noahide Law, Talmudic processes, with subterfuge, blackmail and coercion to compromise a non-J3wi$h majority population.
J3w$ make up 7% of the U.S. population, but infest 76% of the U.S. Federal Government in so-called ‘elected chambers’.
Zelensky’s threat of sacrificing NON-J3wi$h American youth to fight and die in a J3wi$h-based Khazarian Proxy War in behalf of Israel will not happen at this point in time- Americans are now aware of ‘J3wi$h exploitation’ of their children dying in Israel’s proxy wars, paying billions of free money to Israel, being over-taxed as a result, and living with usary with the same paid to International J3wi$h Banksters who print money out of thin air. If we did that, we would be charged with ‘counterfeiting’, and sentenced to extreme prison sentences due to J3wi$h judges, lawyers, and Zionist NGOs pushing their ‘Israel First’ agendas against us Goyim (cattle).
I no longer patronise such Zio-J3wi$h businesses that have gained favourable business licence just for being who and what they are.
And the so-called ‘Christian’ Churches denigrate and belittle themselves with ‘The J#w$ are God’s CDhosen People.
Nothing could be further from the truth!
totally agree
Well said. It is remarkable how many people take for granted the chosen Jewish race, when God through His Prophets rebuked them, as did Jesus Himself. The notion of a chosen people is a fallacy promoted by Evangelicals and the Jews themselves to legitimise their claim to Palestine… I am not the first to have said this and will not be the last.
But it goes to show how blind we are to our own condition and the reversal of fortune. We are now paying the price for our own stupidity.
i was watching Lynette Zang yesterday evening on youtube.
She explains very well what is going on with the USA debt and the US dollar. What she says is scary( you can find it all on youtube if you google lynette zang). Anyway, she anounce that digital currency is on its way probably very soon, in 2023. Unavoidable. If you can spare the time watch her videos
So i also googled ” Bank for International Settlements”( bankers’ central bank), news. And yes they also are busy in Basel after the recent meeting of WEF to implement digital currency. So bankers and states are going to control us.
Her advice : buy as much gold or silver as you can otherwise, you may lose all your savings. She also explained that it is perfectly ” legal” for a bank to seize your assets. It already happened in 1973 in Cyprus. Paper money is already losing much worth in western countries with the galloping inflation that is going from bad to worst.
Otherwise, i wish ghe Editor and his family a very nice stay in Viet nam.
And perhaps prepare for a live in vietnam, you lucky man!!
Thank you for this OUTSTANDING editorial. This should be spread far and wide.
Please let me make some comments:
This report is reminiscence of a report about farming cattle. The farms (countries) have been created in the last decades, if not centuries, all over whole world. People think they have free choices. Well so do the cattle on the paddock.
When you say that “the left wing/right wing dichotomy, as it pertains to arguments about the best form of government, is also a waste of time.” Well, not for THEM. It’s their way of giving us ‘options’, but in reality both Left and Right are bought by the international bankster system, which does not care of which trough their cattle stock will drink out of. Government sold your children for the debt they bought your votes with.
And it stands to reason, that if one lives in an already controlled system, the ‘leash’ can be designed to seem less intrusive than in a de-mock-crazic country, where you face just other controls, before you are let onto the paddock.
This editorial is so good, that I’d lie to quote again: “New Zealand, (is) a country which in my eyes has become decadent and lost its soul, its identity. And I fear it’s only going to get worse because there’s no going back now on the climate change and co-governance agendas – both of which will fundamentally change the fabric of our society, for the worse, forever. The last three years have shown up New Zealand’s democracy for what it is – a grand illusion. By stealth and treachery the New Zealand state will ultimately devour individual autonomy and freedom, a process which is well underway but which few today have the ability (or will) to recognise.”
Brilliant!
BTW: the experience of ambient temperature is vastly an experience of humidity, much higher in Vietnam than in NZ. Works a bit like the ‘wind chill factor’.
right wing or left wing political parties are nowdays the same selfserving ideologies, but meant to divide the voting population. Divide and rule.
And many don t vote anymore because voting has become an illusion of democratie. Why care, he ??
Great to get articles like this circulating in NZ. Perhaps our govt isn’t the legal entity it leads us to believe…….
TIME TO ADDRESS NZ’S SECRET
1986 COUP D’ETAT
By Ian Wishart
Former High Court judge Robert Fisher, now a KC, argues in the NZ Herald that New Zealand is already a republic in all but name, and that Parliament could lock it in with a couple of legislative tweaks.
However, despite making a prima facie good case for his argument, there’s a massive elephant in the room that Fisher doesn’t address – and possibly doesn’t even know about: the secret NZ constitutional coup of 1986. It has given us an arguably illegal parliament for 36 years.
Let me explain:
Fisher KC makes the point:
“A republic has been defined as ‘a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch’. In New Zealand supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives.”
The last sentence in Fisher’s argument is commonly accepted in the legal fraternity and judiciary, but few have actually ever tried to join the dots to see if it’s true.
I have, and it isn’t.
Aotearoa New Zealand began its constitutional journey in the 1800s as a colony of Great Britain. The colonial parliament in Wellington was the branch of a constitutional oak tree with its trunk and roots in London. Other branches off that same tree trunk were the colonial parliaments of Australia, Canada and various smaller territories around the world. All of them, without exception, drew their authority to govern locally in Wellington, Canberra or Ottawa from laws drafted and enacted by the UK Parliament at Westminster, delegating local governance to the colonial parliaments.
Over the past 180 years, New Zealand’s parliament (and Australia’s and Canada’s) have been granted increasingly wider powers by London.
By the time the League of Nations was formed after WW1, NZ was acting as a sovereign state in its own right, but the trunk was still attached to the London tree: our parliament was still drawing its constitutional authority to govern NZ from the English crown and UK Acts of Parliament. By law, New Zealanders were “subjects”, not “citizens”.
The politicians in Wellington may have been “elected” by the NZ people, but they were elected only as “representatives” to a system set up by London and accountable directly to the Crown, not the people. Voters could change the faces, but they couldn’t change the system itself.
Fast-forward to one night in 1986.
The radically reformative Labour Government of Lange, Palmer, Moore and Douglas (I was Mike Moore’s press secretary at the time) hatched a plan so cunning you could, in the words of Edmund Blackadder, stick a tail on it and call it a weasel.
The plan was simple: declare legal independence from Great Britain, and turn the New Zealand parliament into the Crown itself by seizing all the power and authority from Westminster and enthroning a “Queen of New Zealand”.
They did this through the Constitution Act of 1986 and the Imperial Laws Application Act of 1988.
There was only one problem with this cunning plan: it was, and remains to this day, technically illegal and unconstitutional.
Here’s why:
When countries declare independence, there must be an absolute break in the consitutional authority. New Zealand MPs on the day before the Constitution Act was passed were still a branch of the London tree. Yet the day after they declared independence and cut their branch loose from the UK trunk, the New Zealand Parliament branch was miraculously still suspended in mid-air – but on whose authority did those MPs now govern?
In Ireland in the 1930s, the Dail (parliament) declared independence from England, but it had to be ratified by a public vote. In this manner, the Irish parliament swiftly found fresh constitutional authority for its existence and powers – from the Irish people. It’s a legal process known as ‘autocthony’, which loosely translates to finding a new constitutional source of power once you unplug yourself from the original power source.
This never happened in New Zealand in 1986. The local NZ media did not understand the implications of the Constitution Act, and the Lange government never told them. The public awoke the morning after, not realising New Zealand’s parliament had just seized absolute power and enthroned itself as “the Crown”. It never went to a public vote.
It was the ultimate smoky backroom deal, a quiet revolution. A very kiwi coup.
And ever since 1986, ruling politicians have done whatever they liked.
Remember what Robert Fisher KC said?
“In New Zealand supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives.”
No, supreme power is not held by the New Zealand people. We are still “subjects” – now of a parliamentary monarchy in Wellington rather than Charles III in London. That individual only remains the nominated face of the kingdom in Wellington at their invitation.
Had Fisher KC been talking of Ireland he would have been correct – sovereignty was accepted by the Irish people in a vote in 1937 and power then delegated to the Irish Dail.
But again, that never happened in NZ.
Our parliament has governed as supreme sovereign itself for 36 years and never sought ratification for that coup from the people.
Whatever path New Zealand chooses, whether a continuation of constitutional monarchy or republic, we have to legally clean up the aftermath of the 1986 Coup d’Etat. The UK Government had no authority to actually transfer the Crown to the NZ Parliament, because at the midnight moment of passing the Crown to Wellington its power to do so (an act of colonialism) ceased to exist like Cinderella’s coach. Likewise, Lange and Palmer had no legal ability to accept the Crown in 1986 – they had to get ratification from the people first. They never did so. Australia and Canada are in the same boat.
It’s time to face the elephant in the room, and merely changing a few words in legislation won’t cut it. We are not a republic in all but name, as Fisher asserts. Instead our plight is arguably more serious: we are an illegal, unconstitutional monarchy where Parliament in Wellington took supreme power for itself in 1986, and that power has intoxicated politicians ever since. Former Appeal Court President Sir Robin Cooke once famously opined that if Wellington ordered the deaths of all blue-eyed babies the courts would have to uphold it and the military enforce it.
The emperor has no clothes.
Copyright 2017, Investigate Magazine
PLEASE COPY AND PAST ONTO YOUR TIMELINE AND SHARE FAR AND WIDE.
Perhaps the govt and all associated have no legs to stand on when “enforcing” their legislations and regulations. I would rather die standing than live on my knees, the NZ govt rulings are a no thanks from me
Yes, way too much Govt. over reach in NZ now compared to 30 years ago all those in Parliament have totally forgotten their brief and that is to serve the people not rule them. Not one of them are worthy of a single vote. Talk about a free loading self serving power tripping rabble we are witnessing it..
And was not there any constitutional lawyers to re- write the constitution ? And have it approved by referendum ?
Then it is indeed a coup. And it is surprising that london did not react. The more as it was Thatcher in office.
And considering she sent the army to argentine
Spot on. The expansion of state control in NZ is scary. It’s going to get worse, they will regulate and control everything, and it’s all happening all inside the framework of our sham ‘democracy’ with the help of the NZ fake news MSM
Thought provoking article – well written and the comparison of NZ and Vietnam is sadly alarming for us here in NZ. Time for change – just look at the state of the country with the politicians in charge – a hopeless, state controlled, disaster. Brilliant piece.