New Zealand in turmoil – when will the lying stop?

The 100 Days – Claiming Back New Zealand – www.100days.co.nz

https://www.spectator.com.au/author/amy-brookeexample-com/

Of course it is not just New Zealand. The West is in disarray. An outstanding example is the sheer cowardice of institutional hierarchies, including our universities, letting women down by endorsing the ultimately ridiculous,  far from rational claims by transgender activists that although they are provably biological males, hey presto!  They are suddenly female. We are apparently now required to believe this. In fact the deliberately proposed restrictions on freedom of speech might well have anyone questioning such an absurdity accused of a hate crime.

In an age of mental and emotional confusion, where changing fashions are so readily endorsed, it is a great sadness that so many have now lost touch with reality, or are so unsure of their own personhood, that they have come to believe that they are what they are not. But isn’t it the task of our thinkers and achievers to support the truth of these issues – rather than immediately endorse the claim of any male stating he has become a woman – with no biological evidence at all to support this fact? It is also by no means irrelevant that, this way, men who fail to compete at the top in various men’s sports will defeat women when competing against them, with all the advantages of male biology. And what about men insisting that, as they are females, they must be admitted into women’s prisons – with the result that women inmates are now being issued with contraceptive devices?

The attack on the truth of issues is now spreading into so many areas that from where it is coming raises an important question. Any direct attack on the truth of things is not motivated by anything other than an agenda of badness – a fact that Christianity has long recognised. However, with the receding tide of Christian belief, society has become more and more in disarray, drug-ridden and violent, which points to a fact of great importance  – that it was the tenets of Christian belief, emphasising the requirement of the individual to ultimately answer to God for his or her actions, which stabilised the West. Where the attack on Christianity has been successful, the vacuum it has left is obvious.

New Zealand has its own particular challenge at the moment. A minority-only  group of immensely powerful and privileged activists, apparently obsessed by a degree of part-Maori inheritance, are challenging our very democracy. Complicit is Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who has refused to state why she is endorsing the sheer untruth of maintaining that the Treaty of Waitangi established a partnership between the Crown and Maori.

If this is in fact a lie, why is she supporting it? What is her own agenda?

 Having learned from past mistakes and worse, when the British Crown somewhat reluctantly stepped in at the urging of powerful tribal chiefs to establish a Pax Romana over New Zealand, the intent quite plainly shown in the three articles of the Treaty of Waitangi was that both the prior Maori inhabitants and the new colonists would have the same rights and protection for their assets under the Crown.

There was never any question of a partnership and the issue never arose – ridiculous as it is – until about the mid-80s, when young Maori activists returned from their Marxist camps overseas, armed with the knowledge of how to white-ant our democracy. They were primed to plant the seeds of disaffection and grievance to persuade the gullible how cheated they had been by the coming the colonists. The enormous advantages which in fact accrued to Maoris, as listed in this Spectator article, illustrate the opposite.

In fact, there was no Maori nation as such – so no separate entity existed to which the Crown could possibly link in a partnership. The notion is an absurdity. There were instead disparate, independent and hostile tribes up and down the country constantly at war with one another  – as in fact in many ways some powerful iwi still basically are – intent on achieving advantages solely for themselves at the expense of all others.  The Crown could not possibly have joined in a partnership with these quite separate tribal groups… some of which did not even sign the treaty

However, this canard of a partnership is now being claimed because it has become a peg upon which hangs the call for co-governance of this country by powerful tribal groups. Their strategy is to claim the existence of a partnership so that both the Crown, represented by our government, and a hierarchy of ambitious part-Maori (by no means representing the majority of those of Maori descent) can join in ruling New Zealand.

It is a preposterous notion and the fact that Justice Robin Cooke, somewhat given to ponderous pronouncements, reportedly declared in 1987 that the Treaty of Waitangi created a relationship between the Crown and Maoris  as “somewhat akin to a partnership” subsequently caused a lot of the ensuing activism. It was an ill-thought, careless definition which any lawyer would know could be immediately challenged.

However, Cooke has been by no means the only member of the legal fraternity to be less than scrupulous in his use of words…with a former Minister of Justice claiming that the treaty is “a living document…”leaving the way open for activists to claim its meaning needs to be constantly reinterpreted..always to their advantage, of course… Yet this is sheer nonsense: the treaty is a document anchored in time and place.

What is also overdue for assessment is that this treaty, like so many other treaties throughout history, could well be relegated to the dustbin of history – so that it can no longer be used as a focal point for dissent.

It is no longer needed, given that a genuine democracy – which we should be reclaiming – respects the rights of all citizens and acknowledges their equality under the law, irrespective of ethnicity.

Ardern’s destructive government needs to acknowledge this – and our elusive Prime Minister should be pressed on why, based on no legal evidence whatsoever, she keeps claiming the Treaty of Waitangi established a partnership.

Why do our mainstream media not press her on this issue?

Would it perchance be because they are paid to not do so?

No wonder the country is in turmoil.

 © Amy Brooke

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Mad or bad?

Vladimir Putin is quite sane: So, what explains him?

As this year accelerates, many still have precious memories of the most loved time of the year, worldwide – the Christmas festival, celebrated throughout Christendom, and even by those of other faiths who regard Christ predominantly as an important prophet.

However, I recall a dismissive radio presenter claiming that the celebration of Christmas was originally simply an opportunistic grab by Christians to take over a pagan celebration. There is no evidence, he foolishly and inaccurately pontificated, that the Christ child was even born around this time of the year.

He couldn’t have been more wrong, although the word “Yuletide”, the pagan mid-winter festival, has left us with the reminder of a pre-Christian world. It existed long before the apostles, following Christ’s teaching, set out on lengthy, lonely journeys to spread his message of redemption to a world plagued by confusion, the worship of multiple deities and the barbarity of warfare.

This sounds somewhat familiar. Moreover, in what has too commonly been hailed as a post-Christian age, the problem of evil at work in human affairs is one to which commentators are increasingly turning their attention. The ludicrous attacks on reason, on the reality of essentially indisputable facts, has today become more prevalent than ever before in almost every aspect of our lives.

Etiology of evil

Various theories have long been proffered to account for some human beings’ brutality and viciousness at levels incomprehensible to most people. However, the crucial question is whether inherently evil behaviour is simply the result of warped minds – or whether there is an independent entity which can operate through individuals receptive to the ability to hurt, torment, and painfully kill others – or even to simply enjoy dominating, intimidating, and sowing dissent.

The appalling attack launched by Vladimir Putin against the people of Ukraine may well place him among individuals history now regards as unspeakably evil – the Hitlers, the Stalins, Pol Pot and arguably now Xi Jinping – all tyrants whose hubris caused and causes immense hardship and worse to their own people, as well as those whom they oppress. But from where comes the motivation for possibly sociopathic or even psychopathic behaviour?

There is no disputing that all people of all religions have looked beyond this world for some deity or gods, some, not all, benevolent. The very word religion comes from the Latin “ligare” – to bind and “re” – here meaning “back” – referring to some supreme entity which mankind has long thought exists elsewhere.

Christianity yields to none in promoting the greatest teaching of all, the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

God incarnate

The arrival of Christianity, centred, as St Paul reminds us, on the reality of Christ’s resurrection, changed all this. As he pointed out, if Christ did not rise from the dead, “then our preaching is in vain”. In other words, Christianity depends on what was claimed as actual fact by those who saw the man claiming to be the Son of God dying in agony on a Roman cross. They testified later that he appeared to them as promised on the third day after his death.

Was it true? All the apostles except St John, into whose care Mary, the mother of Jesus, was given, are believed to have been martyred, utterly convinced by what they had witnessed, by Christ’s teachings, and by the miracles he performed.

His existence is confirmed in both Jewish and Roman histories. Such testimony to his claim was given by Christianity’s earlier believers that, hounded and persecuted, whole families were savaged by lions in the Roman amphitheatres, or covered with tar and set alight by the Emperor Nero to die agonisingly as human torches.

It takes a great deal of courage to accept a horror ahead, when making an easy choice would avoid this prospect. Yet down through the centuries, increasingly so in today’s world, Christians are and have been persecuted, tortured and executed for refusing to abandon their beliefs. And although we respect those determined to live good lives while following their own, often inherited, religious practices and beliefs, Christianity yields to none in promoting the greatest teaching of all, the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

Prince of this world

This is obviously not a philosophy to which Russia’s President subscribes. However, undoubtedly if all, including the world’s leaders, lived according to this precept – an eminently superior one, given that people worldwide want protection for their families, especially their children – peace would be universal. Many indeed try to live according to this fundamental Christian teaching. So, what has gone wrong down through the centuries?

Does the answer come through Christ’s warning about what he called the Prince of Darkness – a supreme entity of evil in this world? It is something he emphasised more than once – that this world belongs to this being, understood to be because the first human beings did what they had been asked not to do. Our inheriting of Original Sin has been regarded as its consequence.

There is little doubt of the capacity of each of us to be tempted towards both our better and our worse natures.

Simply a myth? There is little doubt of the capacity of each of us to be tempted towards both our better and our worse natures. St Paul’s warning was: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

He maintained that evil exists as an actual being, operating where it can through individuals – in Christ’s own words, as “the evil one… a murderer from the beginning… a liar and the father of lies.”

In the crosshairs

If such an entity as the devil exists, its strongest target would be Christianity – with the Catholic Church tracing its descent from St Peter, upholding the traditional beliefs and truths it teaches. However, dissent is now an issue here, with long-established traditions being challenged, to the concern of conservative Catholics.

The concerted attack upon Christianity throughout the 20th century, particularly assisted by communism and fascism, was launched upon a world wearied and weakened by two horrific world wars. Is a devil’s greatest triumph persuading the modern world that he does not exist, as G.K. Chesterton averred?

The gradual move to ridicule teaching children at Sunday schools has so long extended to the mindless disparaging of Christianity, that the Smart-Smart People, delving instead into more fashionable religions and alternative beliefs, are even tolerating the folly of the growing promotion of Satanism, particularly within the United States.

The question remains. From where has ensued the increasing attack on actual realities, the essential truth of things in so many aspects of our lives that little-challenged absurdities – amounting to deranged thinking – are increasingly invasive? Little wonder at the growth of the culture of despair, trapping so many in alcoholism and drug-taking.

Are we the richer for this? In the words of Matthew Arnold (Dover Beach):

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round
earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle
furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing
roar.

And for the people of Ukraine, facing the evil actions of an individual unmoved at the prospect of so many innocent individuals – men, women and children – wounded and dying while trying to defend their homeland the question remains – what entity of evil underpins all this?

Amy Brooke is an award-winning New Zealand children’s author, commentator and critic. Visit her websites at www.amybrooke.co.nz and www.100days.co.nz

Categories: Foreign Affairs, ReligionApril 13, 2022

Author: Amy Brooke— Visit my homepage and children’s literature website: www.amybrooke.co.nz www.100days.co.nz

Christchurch – and saying goodbye to so much…

https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/03/christchurch-and-saying-goodbye-to-so-much/

Or see:

Christchurch – and saying goodbye to so much                                                       

Our saddest times are when those we love leave us. What when there is not even time to say goodbye, with the pain and confusion even worse?  Everywhere the hearts and minds of New Zealanders, irrespective of their personal faiths, reached out to the victims of the appalling massacre in Christchurch of Muslims, family people attending a mosque, murdered in an act so evil few would have credited it happening in this country.

There are undoubtedly lessons to be learned from this. What we should worry about is that some of these may very well be the wrong ones, and may be used to advantage those whom no country ever lacks – those few, very determined, radicalised individuals anxious to undermine it – with the help of history’s “useful fools” who, as always, fall into their hands.  Among those most likely to produce overreaching, knee-jerk regulation in response will be our politicians.

Ironically, what the media are of course actually avoiding mentioning is how very rare in the West is such an assault against on a Muslim community  – contrasted with the sustained attack upon Western democracies long mounted by Islamic fanaticism. The latter is of course rejected by moderate Muslims, very often even its first target, but,  like all so called “ordinary people” worldwide, basically as conservative and motivated by love for their families and friends as those from all  other countries.

Ordinary people? I recall once stopping at a Muslim coffee shop near Wellington. I’ll never forget the sheer kindness of its owner, Abdel,  who insisted, without payment, on giving my sister and me a special cup of coffee and an almond biscuit when he found we had just left from farewelling my mother.

I recall, too, years ago, the young Chinese university student from a sheltered building in almost torrential rain at Canterbury University. With the tarmac virtually a flooded lake, she saw me trying to juggle an umbrella and saturated map, and came to help me locate the building I needed – ending up equally saturated.

And strikingly, Cliff Emeny, the New Zealand fighter pilot to whom I dedicated my book “The 100 days – Claiming back New Zealand – what has gone wrong and how we can control our politicians,” who contacted me when a Dominion columnist, raising questions about what was happening to our democracy. It was Cliff who sent me to check out the only genuine democracy in the world, Switzerland,   whose people control their politicians  – not vice versa. Shot down in Burma in World War II,  tortured by brutal Japanese military to reveal the whereabouts of his squadron, Cliff was tied each day to a stake in the burning sun. However, Japanese night guards crept out to untie him, lying him down to sleep,  giving him food,  drink and sleep – retying him in the morning before the day shift took over.

What happened in Christchurch is an appalling, shocking reminder of the reality of evil. Throughout Western countries, there has been rising concern that Islamic fanaticism, turning also upon its own people, was reaching even further  achieving damaging mileage through the emotional pressures of the refugee movement. The consequences for societies such as Angela Merkel’s in Germany, where Isis members have openly boasted of successful infiltration –  while posing as genuine refugees  –  have included  the marked rise of terrorism, including  leaps in both violent crimes and attacks on Western women.

New Zealanders have only gradually become aware of the very real threat posed by transnational terrorism, which the Australian government identified in 2004 as a threat to Australia and to Australian citizens.   From 2000 onwards tensions rose between Muslim immigrants and a wider Australian community,  particularly given the reporting of gangs of Lebanese men sexually assaulting Australian women.

Reflecting on the humanity of people worldwide used as political tools and cannon fodder by ambitious leaders, one can see the commonality between those who are now saying they have had enough, New Zealanders among these – but rather late in the day. Being somewhat over–sheltered, with no historically aggressive foreign countries pressing on our borders  has led to that our present, incredibly naïve Prime Minister even dismissing the possibility of  Russian spies in our country. And now, with Communist Chinese funding being questioned in relation to political donations,  that our equally  challenged National Opposition contains a former Communist Chinese spymaster, hiding his credentials at the time to gain List entry into Parliament,  beggars belief.

Change has been so incremental that it is very late for non-politicised individuals to realise how much has regressed since we were regarded as  “God’s own country” and “the best place in the world to bring up children”. Contrast this with the Left’s now domination of the teacher unions; the dumbing down,  quite shocking propagandising of the schools curricula replacing valuable, worthwhile content;  and the abuse of children by its progressively worse “liberalising” –  to the extent where it is now proposed that destructive transgender indoctrination be forced on schoolchildren – irrespective of the objection of parents.  The American College of Pediatricians’ warning that  – “Conditioning children into believing that a lifetime of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex is normal and healthful is child abuse”  –  cuts no ice with our neo-Marxists infiltrators long gaining control of the directions of education  –  and of mainstream media in this country.

The result? The pernicious attack on free speech, the essential component of a genuine democracy by those bludgeoning New Zealanders with the name-calling of hate speech, racism, homophobia – any verbal bullying tool to hand. And foremost among New Zealanders’ concerns has been the fact that the unctuous calling for “diversity”  by the virtue-signalling evades the fact that diversity, divisiveness and division are wedges used to destroy the essential cohesiveness of a stable society.

A huge challenge lies ahead, to prevent the excuse of the dreadful happening in Christchurch being used as a tool to further target those raising genuine concerns  about so much decision-making from which recent governments have very much  excluded New Zealanders.

 

© Amy Brooke

 

Christchurch –  and saying goodbye to so much

 

 

Tired of our media’s witch-hunts, and their political favouritism?

Election year – and we’re ill-served by partisan media – like Fairfax. Given their love affair with the National Party, when do they ever comment, for example, on the fact that good old Bill English, following on from good old John Key, and so often the mouthpiece for his boss when it came to making unpopular statements, admitted that “the government may beef up the Overseas Investment Office to make it quicker for foreigners to get permission to buy New Zealand assets.” ** As for their hate affair with Donald Trump, when do we ever get analysis as good as this? https://thefederalist.com/2017/06/07/james-comeys-latest-statement-is-an-indictment-of-comey-not-trump/

and https://spectator.org/prosecute-comey/

Not from the talking heads of our second-rate media,  who for weeks now have been obsessed with peddling whatever anti-Trump venom they can gleefully get hold of. And their cartoonists defy convention by their sheer nastiness…rather than insightfulness.

When our journalist deify themselves as Seekers after Truth and Justice, it’s always rather amusing. As far back as November 2016, senior media individuals, editors, deputy editors, etc. of our dailies, particularly of Fairfax, signed a full-page advertisement in national newspapers. They were vigorously arguing that the Commerce Commission’s decision to refuse a merger of Fairfax media and NZME (New Zealand Media and Entertainment…although they didn’t bother to explain this) was wrong. Congratulating themselves on having 30 editors signing their names to this open letter, they castigated the Commerce Commission for not sticking to “the economic analysis” but straying “into intangibles such as the quality of journalism, and unquantified risks to editorial independence.” Hmm.

In appealing to the general public they would have been wiser not to boast too much about the quality of journalism in this country, pretty awful at best in daily newspapers (and this is even when ignoring gratuitous mistakes in grammar and syntax).  No suggestion of balance is evident in relation to issues such as the near hysteria over supposed man-made global warming (even though well-established science journals are now back-peddling on this extraordinary, politicised phenomenon, and some well-regarded scientists are saying we are on the brink of another mini-ice-age. http://www.express.co.uk/news/science/611111/Former-government-expert-disproves-climate-change-and-says-world-will-soon-cool-down …

However, editorial bias – and gullibility – has become so flagrantly obvious, with these dissenting voices suppressed in our mainstream media.  Moreover, lack of any objectivity in most editorials (unsigned, of course, although this luxury is not given to correspondents) is matched by the widespread knowledge that many letters to the editor are now suppressed simply because they annoy the letters editor, who doesn’t agree…so doesn’t want them to see the light of day. So much for fair debate.

It’s not just the extraordinary venom of the anti-Trump phenomenon fanned by the virulent rhetoric of the Left, and financially supported by Clinton supporters. Shockingly the latter are attempting to overthrow a legitimate change of Government in the USA – the verdict of the American people at election time – by unconstitutional means – by the misinterpretation and fabrication of facts – and even by the not so covert encouragement of violence.

For weeks now my own local Fairfax daily has published quite appallingly slanted  editorials buying into every anti-Trump denouément  – without making any attempt to provide their  dismantling – readily available by first-class investigative journalists abroad – but not, of course, any in this country. The Washington Post  has long been infamous for its unacceptable bias and its peddling of leaked and quite wrong information, no doubt on the premise that if enough lies are told they’ll eventually achieve what the Post so badly wants – the indictment of a president, regardless of the fact that that thoroughly dreadful pair, the Clintons (read Nobody Left to Lie To, by Christopher Hitchens, himself a Democrat who simply couldn’t defend the  widespread corruption that surrounded Bill Clinton’s presidency – let along Hillary’s lies).

Top overseas commentators now argue with good reason that if truth and justice prevailed, Hillary Clinton would now be behind bars. She was an inferior candidate who deservedly lost an election – but the darling of The Beautiful People, the Hollywood actors – whoops – Stars! –  media sycophants  and pop music celebrities never slow to advance their superior opinions. Every socially and morally destabilising issue pushed by the bullies of the Left has found a listening in Hillary (as with Obama) – whether supporting the horror of “partial birth” abortions (removing the brain from a baby emerging into the world”… or whether the new fashion for identifying oneself as transgender on the basis of arguing that identity choice beats natural biology. In the name of “tolerance”, the bully boys and girls on the Left demand that those in conscience opposing these and other new and destructive social practices must be punished, silenced, or hauled before the courts for “discrimination”.

In its obsession with Trump, no doubt  making mistakes along the way, but apparently determined in principle to respect his reform programme of returning respect for the forgotten people of America, blue collar workers and families, our media let us down. Those targeted by the” liberal Left” even include Christians,  now demonised by the media (though it has been Christian values which  have underpinned and stabilized our democracy).  Their extreme partisanship shown towards our former PM – the glib and slippery John Key, for example – contrasts with the bile heaped upon New Zealand First leader Winston Peters, which has been quite blatant. Yet Peters speaks more than any other politician for backbone New Zealanders.

Returning to the signed letter to the Commerce Commission, we can only shake our heads when we read, “ensuring that a diversity of views, perspectives, experiences and issues are covered is an editor’s most fundamental task.”

There’s more:  “…we have never been swayed by political or commercial influence.’’ And, to the Commission, “You say that it is important that members of society – government, corporate and private citizens – are not able to influence one provider with the opportunities for differing views to be expressed.  We agree, and as gatekeepers as of many of the most august newsrooms and publications in the country would never let that happen.”

Oh no. Dearie me… August? And it reads as if they actually believe it.

 Let’s remember that they said this, that they actually put it this into writing. And it let’s insist that from now onwards they translate their flowery rhetoric into actual practice. Starting with examining the phenomenon of hate being deliberately fanned against Trump in the US, and in this country and sheeting it home to where it belongs,  would be a belated start. Just some effort, at least,  to provide objectivity on crucial issues would make a nice change.

**http://www.investigatemagazine.co.nz/Investigate/17341/amy-brooke-downplaying-the-very-real-threats-to-nz/?mc_cid=e632cab3ff&mc_eid=2eadea2444

**And for the important stories which are so relevant in election year,  check out

http://www.investigatemagazine.co.nz/Investigate/

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