As the Middle East tragedy unfolded, I asked several friends how this was impacting them emotionally. Each one was seriously affected, with a range of emotions from rage to despair, sadness, grief, and helplessness.
They were outraged that all they could do was sit and watch the carnage and destruction and no one was stepping in to stop it.
This mayhem was triggered by a demented narcissist, led by the nose, like a prize bull, by Benjamin Netanyahu.
Trump is enabled by uniquely unqualified sycophants who will cover for him regardless of what he does and the lies he tells.
Perhaps the most dangerous is Pete Hegseth, US Secretary of War and former Fox News host. He doesn’t believe in the rules of the Geneva Convention that limit the barbarity of war and talks gleefully of giving ‘no quarter’ to the enemy, that is taking no prisoners, which is a war crime.
He has Deus Vult (God wills it) tattooed on his right arm – the Catholic battle cry of the First Crusade of 1096.
He seriously imagines he is on a mission from God to liberate the Holy Land and prepare for the Second Coming of Christ.
Trump and Hegseth amassed the largest force since the Iraq war to join Israel in pummelling Iran, killing their leaders and well over a hundred school children. Thousands of innocent people are being killed in Iran and Lebanon and civilian infrastructure and ancient heritage sites destroyed.
There seems to be no plan, no process for regime change, no exit strategy, just one giant mess.
The rest of the world is just starting to suffer the fallout from this growing catastrophe.
We haven’t seen anything yet. Petrol and diesel prices have risen sharply but there’s so much more to come. The UK Financial Times says this is ‘metastasising into a global calamity’.
We are already seeing farmers unable to sow and harvest crops and feed stock.
The Strait of Hormuz may or may not be opened soon, but the damage already done to infrastructure and refining capacity will take years to repair. The disruption already in the pipeline will most likely cause a serious global recession, a period of painful stagflation, stagnant growth, rising unemployment and significantly higher prices.
The Reserve Bank added to our pain by increasing interest rates. This, in my view, was a serious error. There is no possibility of curbing inflation caused by cost pressures such as higher oil prices. This inflation has not been caused by an overheated economy or increasing demand for goods and services. Interest rate increases at such a time merely hurt average people and further enrich those with cash deposits.
So, the question is: how are we all going to manage during these coming difficult times?
One thing we can be sure of, imported food travelling great distances will be a lot more expensive, not only because of transportation costs but growing, processing, and packaging costs will also skyrocket.
It’s estimated around 97 per cent of every product we buy contains oil in one form or another. This includes fertilisers, pesticides, plastics, clothes. The list is almost endless.
We can manage without some products, but not food.
We bumped into Helena Norberg-Hodge of Local Futures at the Byron Farmers’ Market on Thursday. She has spent decades working to get these farmers’ markets established. Our community benefits in many ways and it would be hard to manage without them.
It’s so good meeting the farmers who grow our food and knowing the food miles are so short. It’s a great community gathering every week.
Apart from our farmers’ markets there are food swap events popping up where people gather to swap surplus produce, cuttings, and seeds for no cost.
Locally-owned stores such as Fundies and Santos Organics stock fresh unpackaged organic produce.
In a sense we need to rediscover how people coped during the World Wars when everything was scarce, and every resource was precious.
In the UK families were allocated allotments of land, known as ‘Victory Gardens’, to grow their own food. Forty percent of all vegetables consumed were grown on these allotments.
We need our Council to assist families to grow their own food, both in community gardens and allotments. Vacant Council land can be used, even if only temporarily. Sharefarmers also need to be assisted to grow food on land that is now grazed by cattle working with landholders.
We need more initiatives and Helena Norberg-Hodge and Professor Michael Shuman, visionary of community economics, are hosting ‘Investing in Byron’s Food Economy’ at the Mullum Civic Hall on Saturday, 28 March from 2pm to 4.30pm to discuss how we can accelerate our local food growing.
Our community is incredible at coming together at times of crisis and natural disasters. We will see this community spirit in action again.
Richard Jones is a former NSW MLC, and is now a ceramist.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
