Book review – The art of War by Sun Tzu

10 lessons from The Art of War by Sun Tzu:

1. Know your enemy and know yourself. This is the most important lesson in The Art of War. If you know your enemy and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles.

2. Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak. This is a lesson about deception. By appearing weak when you are strong, you can trick your enemy into underestimating you.

3. Attack where the enemy is unprepared. This is a lesson about surprise. By attacking where the enemy is unprepared, you can gain an advantage.

4. Make use of spies. Spies can provide you with valuable information about your enemy.

5. Use terrain to your advantage. The terrain can be a powerful tool in battle. By understanding the terrain, you can use it to your advantage.

6. Be flexible. The situation on the battlefield is constantly changing. You need to be flexible in order to adapt to these changes.

7. Concentrate your forces. Don’t spread your forces too thin. Instead, concentrate your forces on a single point of attack.

8. Strike at the enemy’s heart. The heart of the enemy is their will to fight. If you can break the enemy’s will to fight, you will win the battle.

9. Use deception. Deception is a powerful tool in war. By deceiving your enemy, you can gain an advantage.

10. Know when to retreat. Sometimes, the best course of action is to retreat. By retreating, you can preserve your forces for future battles.

These are just a few of the many lessons that can be learned from The Art of War.

This book is a classic for a reason. It is full of wisdom that can be applied to all aspects of life, not just war.

About Jacinda Aderns new ‘award’

Do you think Jacinda deserved a damehood?

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/06/saint-jacinda-becomes-a-dame/

It obviously wasn’t for causing the most racial division by a PM or any of these:

The Day Jacinda resigned, news was pushed aside of food price inflation data released showing the highest rate of increase in more than 30 years.
Sixty-four percent of Kiwis, across all ages, believe New Zealanders are more divided than ever.

Violent crime is up 30 percent. Retail crime is up 40 percent.
Gang memberships are up over 60 percent and in five of our police districts we have more gang members than we now have police officers.

Number of attacks on police has almost doubled in last 2 years.
3,500 families live in motels paid by the tax payer, and over 400 families live in cars.

Number of Kiwis living in cars has more than quadrupled since 2017.

Gross debt figure is now $722.62 Billion, up 47% from 5 years ago.
Under Jacinda, tax take in 2017 was $69 billion, now it is $107 billion, an increase of $38 billion in tax every year = over $100 million in extra tax every single day! That’s $17,500 in extra tax per household each year.

Average weekly rent in 2017: $400, in 2023 up 50% to $600.
37,000 more kids are in benefit dependant homes than when Labour’s government took power 5 years ago.

Stats NZ data showed a deficit of $10.5 billion between export earnings and import costs for the year ended June, the highest annual deficit since current records began in 1960.

Ram-raids on retailers have soared under Labour, with a more than 500 per cent increase within the first six months of 2022 compared to the same period in 2018.

In a multi nation survey involving 12000 people, NZ is now ranked 51st out of 52 countries for best place to live, no.52 was Kuwait.
This was a Government elected to make housing affordable, help those less well off, reduce child poverty, and give us a kinder, more united society.  On every front, it could not have failed more profoundly.

316 foreign entertainers, including 64 DJs, were fast-tracked through MIQ in 2021.

Taxpayers have spent $1.2 billion on MIQ – $660 for every household in the country.

Labour has taken away all healthcare targets. Every single healthcare metric has gone backwards in the last five years, even though Labour has increased healthcare spending by 68%.

Doctor GP waiting times are now 5th to bottom of OECD countries (38 countries). Access to GP’s is the first thing to go in a failing health system.

Patients waiting for specialists for over a year has gone up 17 fold since 2019.

Emergency Department wait times are now the worst in at least a decade, with more than one in five people waiting at least six hours for treatment.


Ramping hours (Ambulances sitting outside ER waiting to get patients in) went from 3000 hours per in 2019 quarter to 9756 hours per quarter in 2023.

Burglaries crime stats:
49% were under 18 years old, and 51% of those did not face court action. 112 between 0-17 arrested received a family group conference – that’s it.
Most were just formal or informal warnings. 94 didn’t receive any consequence whatsoever.

25% drop in prisoners, just ‘let out’ doing community sentences, while there has been an increase in offending against prisoner officers.

For more than three decades, the Swiss Institute for Management and Development (IMD) has compiled annual rankings of competitiveness for 63 of the world’s most important countries. Back in 2017 when Labour took power, New Zealand ranked #16 – ahead of Australia at #21. Five years on, New Zealand has fallen to #31, while Australia is now ranked #19.

Over the past few years, we have plunged in economic performance, falling from 22nd to 47th place.
Government efficiency has also deteriorated markedly from 7th to 17th place.

Consumer confidence in New Zealand now stands at the lowest level since Westpac’s Consumer Confidence survey began in 1988.
And, perhaps most damningly, for the first time, a majority has a negative 5-year outlook on the economy.

After 6 years of a Labour government, emissions have increased and the importing and burning of coal has more than doubled – all after Jacinda declared climate change is her ‘Nuclear free moment’.

Govt car fleet grown 16% for past 3 years and 1000 of them are petrol or Diesel, their stated ambition on being EV by 2025 is a joke.


Public sector managers have been growing at nearly twice the rate of frontline workers since the current Government came to power.

More than 100,000 students were chronically absent from school.
70% of NZ businesses have no confidence in this government to steer them through the economic down turn.

Nearly 5000 New Zealand nurses have registered to work in Australia since August. As of March 4th 2023, only 1 nurse has arrived from overseas in NZ.

2023: 19,000 nurses have left the profession in the last 5 years under this Labour government. In 2017 it was under 3000 leaving compared to 5000 leaving in last year – a 60% increase in nurses leaving.

80,000 public submissions opposing Three Waters were not only ignored by Labour, they then tried to sneak entrenchment through.

In December 2022, NZ 13-year-olds recorded their worst-ever score in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study.”

Unknown

A Nation Divided and Misinformed Cannot Progress. It is Time for Scientists to Set the Record Straight

Shared from the Hatchard report.. https://hatchardreport.com/a-nation-divided-and-misinformed-cannot-progress-it-is-time-for-scientists-to-set-the-record-straight/

On March 29, 2021, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, then Director of the US CDC, reassured the American public and the world on MSNBC “Vaccinated people do not carry the virus, and don’t get sick.” She was lying.

Emails obtained under a freedom of information request show that as early as January 30, 2021, soon after the vaccine rollout began, she was fully aware that vaccinated people were getting sick with Covid. At the time, she was referring to these as ‘breakout infections’ in her private correspondence.

So why do people in authority like Walensky blatantly lie to the public? After all, she is not alone, we have a whole host of public figures in New Zealand who similarly feel unconstrained by the truth.

In July 2021, I was invited to participate in Covid-19 discussions with New Zealand experts. As a result, I wrote dozens of detailed emails sounding the alarm about vaccine safety and efficacy to many prominent Government advisers, all of whose names have featured prominently in the media. I received the following replies, among others. Without exception, to a significant extent, they sympathised with my concerns based on the scientific references I submitted:

“…the vaccines are only in their first iteration. Israel is effectively Pfizer’s real life laboratory…” and my comment: by inference NZ was also being subjected to an experiment, we were known to be lab rats.

And

“…..We are like lemmings walking towards and off the cliff – it seems very dire for anyone with kids and hoping for their future.”

And

“you are right that studies have also shown that high vaccine coverage will not…contain outbreaks.”

And

“I share your concerns about long-term effects of Covid-19 and the need to consider these.”

And

“…the uncertainties are large. I agree about the importance of trying to keep an open, evidence-informed debate about future options.”

And

“Our knowledge base is incomplete and will continue to be incomplete as the virus evolves”

And

“I think you may be right that opportunities should be taken to promote preventive health measures”

I have to presume that our government received similarly cautious advice. Certainly, the Skegg Committee report to parliament recommended frequent review of the outcomes of Covid response and newly published papers. So why didn’t the government undertake reviews? Why did they close the door on myself and others who were asking questions? Why did they order social media to cancel open debate?

Why Are None of These Privately Cautious Scientists Speaking Up Publicly Now?

Why did Ardern, Hipkins, Bloomfield, and Verrall tell the public mRNA vaccines were completely safe and effective, contrary to the cautious advice of their experts? Why did they institute coercive mandates resulting in loss of employment and schooling? Why did they tell the technocrats and bureaucrats in the health service to switch into high gear and deny the existence of mRNA adverse effects? Why did they institute saturation advertising and paid media coverage promoting ideas they knew to be false?

More to the point, why are government ministers still doing it? Dr Ayesha Verrall, our Minister of Health, still has a pinned tweet on her Twitter feed (a pinned tweet is the first you will always see) originally posted May 10, 2020 saying:

If you read scientific papers, you will realise that Sweden, who avoided lockdowns, did get a lot right. A literature review and meta analysis of 32 studies in July 2022 found that lockdowns in 2020 had little to no effect on Covid mortality around the world. As a result, Sweden’s no lockdown policy resulted in better economic outcomes and better educational outcomes. Crucially prestigious Pew Research concludes that the Swedes emerged from the pandemic a more united society as a result.

So New Zealand will not be awarding Nobel prizes for medicine anytime soon, but our health minister still wants us to BELIEVE contrary to the evidence.

It is hard to escape the notion that Ardern was a person with fanatical beliefs who changed who we are as a nation for the worse, dividing us along false lines.

Ardern ignored scientific advice, she used PR tools and coercion to enforce her own opinions against the cautious tone of her advisors. She aligned herself not with the New Zealand people but with overseas commercial interests and avowed globalists. In this, incredibly, she received the support of all parties and politicians.

It is hard to say anything new about this sorry situation except to ask how can we reunite as a nation? I have received private letters from some in our scientific community thanking me for speaking up, but now can you also please speak up publicly? Perhaps you were coerced into towing the government line as many were, but now the damage has to be repaired. We have become a polarised nation. No nation divided and misinformed can progress. Covid policies and mRNA vaccines have left us sick, dispirited, ignorant of facts, and poor. It is time to do the right thing and set the record straight.