We are starting to reap the consequences of what was warned about 25 years ago

Apart from anything else, this country is awash with dangerous chemicals such as glyphosate, neonicotinoids and other pesticides and we are always the very LAST country to ban them.

http://www.panna.org/blog/mexico-ousts-glyphosate-and-gm-corn

Kiwi men on track to have zero viable sperm by 2040 - scientist

Newshub,

26 February, 2021

A scientist studying human fertility has warned Kiwi men's sperm counts are dropping so rapidly, within a couple of decades there might be none left. 

In 2017, Shanna Swan - an epidemiologist at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York - co-authored research looking at falling sperm counts in New Zealand, Australia, Europe and North America. 

Looking at 185 studies dating back to 1973, Dr Swan and her team found a 50-60 percent decline between 1973 and 2011. 

It was sparked by a paper she saw while on sabbatical.

"I spent six months... looking in detail to see, was this decline due to different method of measuring sperm, or recruiting men, or where they more obese or did they smoke more?" she told Environmental Health News this week, promoting the release of her new book Count Down: How Our Modern World Is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, and Imperiling the Future of the Human Race.

"Were there other things that could explain the decline? After six months of work, the answer was no. The slope had not changed after all that analysis." 

So she started the proper research that would result in the shocking 2017 paper published in journal Human Reproduction Update - which found the decline was indeed real, consistent and showing no signs of slowing down.

Dr Swan says at current trends, it's on track to hit zero between 2040 and 2045.

"What does that mean? These are median sperm counts - which means half the men in Western countries will have no sperm. This is a big problem, if it were to come to that... If things continue in the same way, it looks very grim for our population survival."

Similar drops in sperm quantity weren't seen in men from South America, Asia and Africa - the scientists unsure whether that was significant, or just because they didn't have enough data from those regions.

So what's behind the drop in Western men's virility? The initial study didn't go into that, but she does in the book. 

"I think everyone agrees this is not genetics - this is too fast for an evolutionary change, we're talking about 40 or 50 years," she told Environmental Health News, saying that environmental and lifestyle factors are likely to blame - including the effects of pesticides, cosmetics, foam furniture, paper plates, work stress, fatty food, processed food and packaging. 

"The chemicals I'm particularly interested in... are those that affect the body's hormones. The reason is that reproduction depends on healthy hormones. Anything that would interfere with the body's natural hormone system... is going to challenge the reproductive system." 

"If women want to have a baby, they are often told, 'Clean up your act,' " Dr Swan writes in the book. "But it's probably more important for men to do so." 

Of course none of this is new.

We are starting to reap the consequences of something that was warned about a quarter of a century ago.

This book is just as seminal as Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, but far less-known

 

Our Stolen Future: Are We Threatening Our Fertility, Intelligence and Survival? A Scientific Detective Story

"A critically important book that forces us to ask new questions about the synthetic chemicals that we have spread across this earth."—former vice president Al Gore, author of An Inconvenient Truth

Our Stolen Future examines the ways that certain synthetic chemicals interfere with hormonal messages involved in the control of growth and development, especially in the fetus.

The developing fetus uses these natural hormonal messages, which come from both from its own hormone system and from its mother, to guide development. They influence virtually all of the growing individual's characteristics, from determining its sex to controlling the numbers of toes and fingers to shaping intricate details of brain structure. 

Scientific research over the last 50 years has revealed that this hormonal control of development is vulnerable to disruption by synthetic chemicals. Through a variety of mechanisms, hormone-disrupting chemicals (also known as endocrine disrupting chemicals or endocrine disruptors) interfere with the natural messages and alter the course of development, with potential effects on virtually all aspects of bodily function.

Our Stolen Future explores the scientific discovery of endocrine disruption. The investigation begins with wildlife, as it was in animals that the first hints of widespread endocrine disruption appeared. The book then examines a series of experiments examining endocrine disruption of animals in the laboratory which show conclusively that fetal exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals can wreak life-long damage. These experiments also reveal some of the biological processes by which these chemicals have their effects, and that endocrine disruption effects can be caused by exposure to infinitesimally small amounts of contaminant. Moving from animals to people, Our Stolen Future summarizes a series of well-studied examples where people have been affected by endocrine disrupting chemicals, most notably the synthetic hormone dietheylstilbestrol (DES), to which several million women were exposed through misguided medical attempts to manage difficult pregnancies in the 1950s, '60s and '70s.

Our Stolen Future then asks a broader, more difficult and more controversial set of questions. Given what is known from wildlife and laboratory studies, and from examples of well-studied human exposure, and given that exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals in the real world is widespread at levels comparable to those sufficient to cause animal harm, what effects should health scientists be looking for in people in general? Effects to be expected include declines in fertility and other impacts on the reproductive system of both men and women, impairments in disease resistance, and erosions in intelligence.

Reinventing the wheel?

Here is a contemporary study on glyphosate

In stunning revelations from a study on female mice from the Department of Animal Science at Iowa State University it was revealed that ovarian weight and follicle number were altered at a glyphosate dose level of 2 mg/kg and that chronic low-level exposure to glyphosate altered the ovarian proteome, which could ultimately impact ovarian function.

https://sustainablepulse.com/2020/07/13/new-studies-show-glyphosate-causes-infertility-and-reproductive-health-damage/#.YDlsPCo9C3c

ADDENDUM:

We received the following text from a friend:

It appears that virtually no-one knows that this class of systemic herbicides called aminopyralids- also known as auxin inhibitors and hormone herbicides-are so devastating.

Fyi these are not your standard Roundup (glyphosate)  

type things.

While Roundup is a nasty piece of work for chronic stuff, 

these are next level for acute effects  

https://www.ehow.com/list_6903884_effects-hormones-used-weed-killers.html

The dangers of Roundup grossly underestimated

The author will deny it but we are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction.

Don't expect any of this to be revealed in this country. We are as dependent on Roundup as we are on 1080.

Glyphosate Worse than We Could Imagine. “It’s Everywhere”

Glyphosate residues have been found in tap water, orange juice, children’s urine, breast milk, chips, snacks, beer, wine, cereals, eggs, oatmeal, wheat products, and most conventional foods tested. It’s everywhere, in brief.

Global Research,

27 April, 2019

As new studies continue to point to a direct link between the widely-used glyphosate herbicide and various forms of cancer, the agribusiness lobby fights ferociously to ignore or discredit evidence of human and other damage. A second US court jury case just ruled that Monsanto, now a part of the German Bayer AG, must pay $ 81 million in damages to plaintiff Edwin Hardeman who contracted non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma cancer. The ruling and a line-up of another 11,000 pending cases in US courts going after the effects of glyphosate, have hit Bayer AG hard with the company announcing several thousand layoffs as its stock price plunges.

In a trial in San Francisco the jury was unanimous in their verdict that Monsanto Roundup weed-killer, based on glyphosate, had been responsible for Hardeman’s cancer. His attorneys stated,

“It is clear from Monsanto’s actions that it does not care whether Roundup causes cancer, focusing instead on manipulating public opinion and undermining anyone who raises genuine and legitimate concerns about Roundup.” 

It is the second defeat for the lawyers of Monsanto after another jury ruled in 2018 that Glyphosate-based Roundup was responsible for the cancer illness of a California school grounds-keeper who contracted the same form of cancer after daily spraying school grounds with Roundup over years, unprotected. 

There a jury found Monsanto guilty of “malice and oppression” in that company executives, based on internal email discovery, knew that their glyphosate products could cause cancer and suppressed this information from the public.

A new independent study shows that those with highest exposure to glyphosate have a 41% increased risk of developing non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) cancer. A meta-analysis of six studies containing nearly 65,000 participants looked at links between glyphosate-based herbicides and immune-suppression, endocrine disruption and genetic alterations. The authors found “the same key finding: exposure to GBHs (glyphosate-based herbicides) are associated with an increased risk of NHL (Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma).” 

Further, they stated that glyphosate “alters the gut microbiome,” and that that could “impact the immune system, promote chronic inflammation, and contribute to the susceptibility of invading pathogens.” Glyphosate also ”may act as an endocrine disrupting chemical because it has been found recently to alter sex hormone production” in both male and female rats.

In a long-term animal study by French scientists under Gilles Eric Seralini, Michael Antoniou and associates, it was demonstrated that even ultra-low levels of glyphosate herbicides cause non-alcoholic liver disease. The levels the rats were exposed to, per kg of body weight, were far lower than what is allowed in our food supply. According to the Mayo Clinic, today, after four decades or more pervasive use of glyphosate pesticides, 100 million, or 1 out of 3 Americans now have liver disease. These diagnoses are in some as young as 8 years old.

But glyphosate is not only having alarming effects on human health. Soil scientists are beginning to realize the residues of glyphosate application are also having a possibly dramatic effect on soil health and nutrition, effects that can take years to restore.

Killing Soils too

While most attention is understandably drawn to the human effects of exposure to glyphosate, the most widely used agriculture chemical in the world today, independent scientists are beginning to look at another alarming effect of the agrochemical– its effect on essential soil nutrients. In a study of the health of soils in the EU, the online journal Politico.eu found that the effects of spraying of glyphosate on the major crops in European agriculture is having disastrous consequences on soil health in addition to killing weeds.

Scientists at Austria’s University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna showed that casting activity of earthworms had nearly disappeared from the surface of farmland within three weeks of glyphosate application. Casting is the process of the worm pushing fertile soils to the surface as they burrow, essential for healthy soil and plant nutrition. A study at Holland’s Wageningen University of topsoil samples from more than 300 soil sites across the EU found that 83% of the soils contained 1 or more pesticide residues. Not surprisingly,

“Glyphosate and its metabolite AMPA, DDTs (DDT and its metabolites) and broad-spectrum fungicides… were the compounds most frequently found in soil samples and at the highest concentrations.”

The use of various pesticides, above all glyphosate-based ones like Roundup, has exploded over the past four decades across the EU much as across the USA. The agribusiness industry claims that this has been the key to the dramatic rise in farm crop productivity. However if we look more closely at the data, while average yields of major grains such as rice, wheat and maize have more than doubled since 1960, the use of pesticides like glyphosate-based ones has risen by 15-20-fold. Oddly enough, while the EU requires monitoring of many things, monitoring of pesticide residues in soil is not required at the EU level. Until recently the effects of heavy use of pesticides such as Roundup have been ignored in scientific research.

Evidence of soil experts is beginning to reveal clear links between use of pesticides such as glyphosate and dramatic drops in soil fertility and the collapse of microbe systems essential to healthy soil. Worms are one of the most essential.

It’s well-established that earthworms play a vital role in healthy soil nutrients. Soils lacking such are soils that deprive us of the essentials we need for healthy diets, a pandemic problem of soil depletion emerging globally over the past four decades, notably the same time frame that use of pesticides has exploded worldwide. Earthworms are beneficial as they enhance soil nutrient cycling and enhance other beneficial soil micro-organisms, and the concentration of large quantities of nutrients easily assimilable by plants.

The EU puts no limits on how much glyphosate can be put on crops even though it is established that glyphosate can kill specific fungi and bacteria that plants need to suck up nutrients in addition to its effects on earthworms. That is a major blind spot.

Where now?

What is becoming clearer is the colossal and obviously deliberate official blind eye given to potential dangers of glyphosate-based pesticides by regulatory bodies not only in the EU and the USA, but also in China, which today produces more glyphosate than even Monsanto. 

Since the Monsanto Roundup patent expired, Chinese companies, including Syngenta, Zhejiang Xinan Chemical Industrial Group Company, SinoHarvest, and Anhui Huaxing Chemical Industry Company, have emerged as the world’s major producers of the chemical as well as largest consumers, a not good omen for the future of the legendary Chinese cuisine.

Glyphosate is the base chemical component for some 750 different brands of pesticides worldwide, in addition to Monsanto-Bayer’s Roundup. Glyphosate residues have been found in tap water, orange juice, children’s urine, breast milk, chips, snacks, beer, wine, cereals, eggs, oatmeal, wheat products, and most conventional foods tested. It’s everywhere, in brief.

Despite the overwhelming evidence, however, EU Commission bureaucrats and the USA EPA continue to ignore prudence in not banning the toxic chemical pending thorough independent investigation over longer time. If I were cynical, I would almost think this continued official support for glyphosate-based herbicides is about more than mere bureaucratic stupidity or ignorance, even more than simply corruption, though that for sure plays a role. The nutritional quality of our food chain is being systematically destroyed and it is about more than corporate agribusiness profit.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

This is John Key's New Zealand

The New Zealand I grew up in was insular, egalitarian and a country that looked after its citizens,if in a rather patriarchal way.

Now we are a country that have normalised the rampant poverty that has overtaken us during 30 years of neo-liberalism.

I remember a quote by someone saying that they wanted to introduce the “reforms” over a 20-year period so there would be a generation that had no memory of what life was like before.

We have been so overtaken by a dairy industry that has destroyed our waterways that a large town’s drinking water has been contaminated.

We are so tied up with international chemical multinationals like Monsanto that a corrupt EPA comes up with findings that contradict what the rest of the world is finding.

We conspire with American courts to have information on human rights campaigners released to Kazakhstan.

All this the day after we learn that the NZ government co-operated in hounding a NZ citizen,building up a false case of “terrorism”.

Human rights are being destroyed as I write this.

This is the country in which I live.

Schools close, anger grows as tummy bug spreads through Havelock North

Hawke's Bay health authorities knew about faecal contamination of Havelock North's drinking water more than 24 hours before they alerted the public

Stuff,

15 August, 2016

The Hawke's Bay District Health Board said on Monday it believed between 1000 and 2000 people had been affected by the bug in the town's water supply, almost certainly campylobacter.

Twenty people are in hospital, including two who are critically ill, and all Havelock North schools have been closed as the community fights the spread of the vicious stomach bug.

The town's supply has been chlorinated to kill the bug, and Hastings District Council has brought in tankers of uncontaminated water so residents can fill containers from the street.

* Two patients critical in hospital as gastro bug in Havelock North shuts schools

* Widespread vomiting and diarrhoea gastro outbreak in Havelock North

The community was first warned about the gastro illness outbreak on Friday evening, and told to boil drinking

The DHB's medical officer of health, Nick Jones, said that did not sound alarm bells because, in almost all similar cases, it turned out to be the tanker, not the water, that was contaminated

The tanker operator was told not to distribute the water, probably collected on Wednesday, and to sanitise the tanker.

Prime Minister John Key said on Monday that it was "highly likely" the Ministry of Health would hold an inquiry into the outbreak.

"The focus at the moment is on getting people well and ensuring others don't get sick. In time, however, we need to establish how this has happened and how it can be prevented from happening again."

Havelock North resident Richard Waterer talks to Gilmours Pharmacy co-owner and pharmacist Liz Dixon about treating his 80-year-old sister-in-law for the gastroenteritis bug.

He said the results of a water test were due back on Tuesday, which would confirm the cause, and whether was animal faeces.

He understood the water was tested on Tuesday last week, and the results were clear. Cases of the bug were first picked up on Wednesday and another test was done on Thursday, which showed a low degradation of the water supply.

The DHB and the council said they did not know what caused the contamination, but would hold an independent inquiry in a bid to find out, and would consider claims for compensation from those affected.

"This can never happen again," said Hastings Mayor Lawrence Yule, who has apologised on behalf of the council to those affected.

The DHB is also investigating the death of an elderly resident at a Havelock North rest home, who had gastro-type symptoms. The person had been tested for campylobacter, but the results were not yet back.

With about half of all students and a large number of staff off sick, Havelock North's eight schools will be closed until Thursday.

RESIDENTS ANGRY

Among those hospitalised was Rachael Campbell, who followed instructions to keep hydrated but was drinking contaminated water.

She became sick overnight last Tuesday and had two spells in hospital.

"It wasn't until I got home [the second time] that I heard about the water [contamination]," she said.

Fiona Hosford, who has been nursing sick 8-year-old daughter Elsa since Friday, said she was angry that the first she knew of a widespread problem was when a family member called her about 8pm on Friday.

"People are not on Facebook on Friday night, and that seems to be [the authorities'] only means of communication," she said.

But Yule and the DHB said residents had been informed by various means, including news media and Facebook, as soon as information was available.

"We had 40,000 hits to our Facebook page on Friday night," the DHB said.

In previous years New Zealand never got any international media attention except as a beautiful country with lots of sheep.

Now weare getting a lot of unwelcome attention.

From alJazeerah

‪Homeless in New Zealand - thousands living in garages and cars

Once a pioneer of the social welfare state, New Zealand now has over 40,000 people who are homeless, forced to live in their cars and in garages as a result of rapid house price and rent rises and a shortage of social housing. Al Jazeera correspondent Tarek Bazley visits South Auckland and meets two families – one with six children living in a derelict garage, the other who lived with three teenagers for months in their car – and charts the country’s fall from and egalitarian society to one with deep divisions of wealth

And the Guardian - 

New Zealand's most shameful secret: 'We have normalised child poverty'

One-third of the country’s children, or 300,000, now live below the poverty line – 45,000 more than a year ago

Unicef’s definition of child poverty in New Zealand is children living in households who earn less than 60% of the median national income – NZ$28,000 a year, or NZ$550 a week.

The fact that twice as many children now live below the poverty line than did in 1984 has become New Zealand’s most shameful statistic.

“We have normalised child poverty as a society – that a certain level of need in a certain part of the population is somehow OK,” says Vivien Maidaborn, executive director of Unicef New Zealand.

“The empathy Kiwis are famous for has hardened. Over the last 20 years we have increasingly blamed the people needing help for the problem.

“If you can’t afford your children to have breakfast, you’re a bad budgeter. If you aren’t working you’re lazy. But our subconscious beliefs about some people ‘deserving’ poverty because of poor life choices no longer apply in today’s environment. We have to ask ourselves as a society, are we really prepared to let our children grow up this way?”

For a third of New Zealand children the Kiwi dream of home ownership, stable employment and education is just that – a dream.

For poor children in the developed South Pacific nation of 4.5 million illnesses associated with chronic poverty are common, including developing world rates of rheumatic fever (virtually unknown by doctors in comparable countries such as Canada and the UK), and respiratory illnesses.

Meals are irregular and nutritionally poor, consisting of meat pies, hot chips and 99c white bread. School attendance may be patchy or skipped entirely, and protective clothing and footwear for the harsh New Zealand climate is a luxury.

While poor children don’t die of starvation in New Zealand, they increasingly live a strained existence.

“Poor children in New Zealand don’t fully participate in life, they miss out on so many things that make life rich and meaningful,” says Linda Murphy, a social worker with the Auckland City Mission. “Like music, like sport, like a full education, like the expectation that they will grow up and find a job.

“The momentum in these young lives becomes about survival, nothing else.”....[ ]

This excellent documentary by Alister Barry tells how all this started.

NZ EPA glyphosate findings biased due to Monsanto connection

Wake Up NZ,

16 August, 2016

In 2015, the New Zealand Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) came under public fire for electing chief executive Allan Freeth, former CEO of PGG Wrightson and vocal supporter of genetic engineering.

This is due to a strong conflict of interest previously supporting big biotech corporations like Monsanto, and now being in charge of protecting New Zealand’s environment from the same corporations that he used to work closely with.

It’s then of no surprise to see an EPA commissioned review of glyphosate, the main ingredient in the controversial Monsanto weed killer RoundUp, claim it is “unlikely” to be carcinogenic to humans.

Last year, PGG Wrightson took over exclusive wholesale rights to Monsanto’s Roundupherbicide. Combine this with Freeth’s years spent in corporate boardrooms partnering with Monsanto, the conflict and bias becomes clear.

This is an excellent example of corporations exerting control over the science via calculated placement of figures into positions of power, despite obvious conflicts of interests.

Green MP Steffan Browning has been vocal on the topic, especially the appointment of Freeth to the EPA: “He was the person that bought genetic engineering to Wrightsons, and they’ve been the one that have been pushing for the forages particularly to be genetically engineered and was baiting his frustration with the regulatory position at the time that was holding up those things getting out into the environment effectively.”

The glyphosate report was produced by Dr Wayne Temple, a retired consultant toxicologist who has also recently produced a statement of evidence commissioned by Canterbury Aggregate Producers for their application to deepen Christchurch quarries below water table levels. This application has resulted in opposition by both Christchurch City Council (CCC) and Environment Canterbury (ECan), with the majority of public submissions received being in strong opposition to the deepening due to the potential damage the city’s water tables.

Rather than undertake New Zealand based research on glyphosate, Temple’s conclusions were formed through review of overseas studies. His opinion differs greatly to the findings of the World Health Organisation (WHO), which concludedthrough the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) that glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic to humans.”

The IARC note that ‘glyphosate has been linked to tumors in mice and rats — and there is also what the IARC classifies as ‘mechanistic evidence’, such as DNA damage to human cells from exposure to glyphosate.

Kathryn Guyton, a senior toxicologist at the IARC and one of the authors of the studycommented, “In the case of glyphosate, because the evidence in experimental animals was sufficient and the evidence in humans was limited, that would put the agent into group 2A.”

EPA manager of hazardous substances and new organisms Asela Atapattu suggested the reason for the commissioned report was to address New Zealand local councils’ growing concerns surrounding the currently popular weed killer by providing them with some ‘real science’.

It’s clear that in this case, ‘real science’ is simply a vested interest opinion commissioned by those with ties to the corporations who stand to lose millions in profit if glyphosate is banned, being lazily broadcast in the media by NZ Farmer editor Gerard Hutching as new scientific findings.

For almost five decades big tobacco corporations joined forces to fight against the mounting scientific evidence of the drug’s addictive and harmful effects to human health to protect profits. The tactic behind avoiding the facts shown by data and argued by scientists is known as shedding reasonable doubt, and is today still used tomanipulate consumers into doubting scientific evidence.

This is currently evident in New Zealand in terms of glyphosate, due to the recent public petitions raising safety concerns with local councils and requesting the product be banned. The inevitable response of funding reports denying the dangers of glyphosate can be clearly seen as an attempt to manipulate public opinion to keep their product on the shelves.

Overseas, a recent survey found that two thirds of Europeans support a complete ban of glyphosate due to the dangers to public health. It’s not surprising when traces have been found in the urine of people from 18 different European countries, as well as in 60% of breads sold in the UK.

By sharing unfounded reports, peer reviewed by only the EPA and Ministry of Primary Industries (MPI), those with vested interests protecting GE and glyphosate have begun seeding doubt into the minds of the public through an ever obliging media, which for years has been lacking the fundamentals of proper journalism.

Allan Freeth has a clear conflict of interest in his appointment to the EPA having previous strong ties to big biotech corporation Monsanto, and any reports commissioned under his leadership should be disregarded in favour of analysing the real science currently used by the WHO in determining danger to the general public.

Freeth should be removed as CEO of the NZ EPA and replaced with a chair that does not have clear ties to the corporations which our environment needs to be protected from.

Kazakhstan demands Kim Dotcom's old firm Mega hand over data

Kazakhstan has won a legal battle in New Zealand against the Kim Dotcom-founded Mega company over an alleged hack on government computer systems.

The government of Kazakhstan claimed thousands of sensitive "stolen documents" were uploaded on an archived website hosted by Mega Ltd.

Mega said on Thursday the request and the new High Court judgment were concerning, given Kazakhstan's abysmal human rights record.

The former Soviet republic claimed links to the stolen documents on Mega's website were also posted on another site, Kazaword.

It asked the High Court in Auckland to issue a subpoena, requiring a Mega representative to attend court for examination, and to produce documents in Mega's possession.

Mega opposed the application.

But in a decision released on Thursday evening, Justice Simon Moore directed Mega to return to court, and produce documents to identify the IP addresses and email addresses of some of its users.

Mega was also directed to share these users' contact details, as well as account and payment information.

The judge said Mega's testimony and documentary evidence would have to be given to a United States district court judge in New York.

Kazakhstan filed a civil action in the United States against the alleged hacker or hackers. The New York court then asked for the New Zealand courts' assistance to get the necessary information.

However, the judge said Kazakhstan would have to pay all "reasonable" costs incurred by Mega in supplying the US court with this information.

Lawyer Daniel Kalderimis​, acting for Kazakhstan, said the republic's application was granted "in its entirety" and now he would need to liaise with Mega's lawyers to make sure both parties had a way of carrying out the judgment.

Mega chairman Stephen Hall said it had been an expensive legal battle so far.

"Obviously we're very disappointed ... We're very concerned about the human rights record of the Kazakhstan government."

Hall said there was no evidence the actual hacker was the same person who uploaded the documents to Mega.

He said law-abiding Mega customers had no cause to be concerned about their data being shared in relation to the Kazakhstan case.

Mega would take legal advice over the next few days over how to proceed.

Jesse Seang Ty Nguy​ and John Andrew Sorensen​ are Mega's two other current directors.

Human Rights Watch said Kazakhstan heavily restricted freedom of assembly, speech, and religion, and in recent years jailed or fined dozens of people after peaceful, unsanctioned protests.

Dotcom founded Megaupload in 2005, and relaunched it as Mega in 2013, a year after the dramatic armed raid on his Coatesville mansion.

He has since disowned the company. Last year he told Newshub that Hollywood interests had seized all the Mega shares in a family trust established for his children.