Interview from Voices for Freedom (NZ site, info below) EWR comment: NZ Medical Doctors have been instructed in no uncertain terms what is expected of them regarding the official narrative they must comply with with regard to the CV VX. Dr Sam Bailey is one of the medical professionals who signed a letter to the […]

Censured NZ Doctor speaks out … ‘The censorship is real …. Doctors fear losing their jobs’ — Rangitikei Environmental Health Watch

Scientists on a committee that encouraged the use of fear to control people’s behaviour during the Covid pandemic have admitted its work was “unethical” and “totalitarian”.

Members of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviour (SPI-B) expressed regret about the tactics in a new book about the role of psychology in the Government’s covid-19 response.

Scientists in the group now admit that they acted unethically last March, when they pushed the government to induce undue levels of fear in the population.

At the time they advised that “a substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened” by Covid-19, and therefore the government should increase “the perceived level of personal threat.”

Now a psychologist on the team says, “Clearly, using fear as a means of control is not ethical. Using fear smacks of totalitarianism. It’s not an ethical stance for any modern government.”

Another said in the early stages of the pandemic, “there were discussions about fear being needed to encourage compliance, and decisions were made about how to ramp up the fear. The way we have used fear is dystopian.”

Another was “stunned by the weaponisation of behavioural psychology… psychologists didn’t seem to notice when it stopped being altruistic and became manipulative. They have too much power and it intoxicates them.”

Yet another member of the group said, “people use the pandemic to grab power and drive through things that wouldn’t happen otherwise… We have to be very careful about the authoritarianism that is creeping in.”

So will the government listen to the scientists this time?

Read the rest

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You may wonder what effect all the fear-mongering had on general mental health, as well as on the economy. —Eds

Another beautiful Karl Webber photo.

Wellington Phoenix bans flags The Wellington Phoenix have spoken to Israeli striker Tomer Hemed after he wrapped himself in the flag of his homeland to celebrate a winning goal, saying the club needs to be “sensitive” to both sides of the Gaza conflict. It comes after Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa criticized Hemed two weeks ago, saying he “crossed the line when, after scoring a winning goal, he ran to a group of Israeli supporters, took one of their Israeli flags and wrapped himself in it.” What line was that? The line where the Palestine Solidarity Network feels it has the right to police Israeli people’s expression of their nationality and peoplehood? Fans are now being asked to refrain from bringing national flags to the Pheonix’s New Zealand home games due to growing tensions in the Middle East. Only New Zealand and Australian national flags will be permitted for display at upcoming games! RNZ bans comments on Laurel Hubbard stories Transgender weightlifter Laurel Hubbard, 43, is set to make history as the Olympic Games’ first transgender Olympian. But our national broadcaster, Radio New Zealand, has banned people from commenting on articles that discuss Hubbard’s participation on the broadcaster’s Facebook page. This move was also made by the New Zealand Herald, who said “Transphobia will not be tolerated on this page.” On Twitter, RNZ was no better — hiding (or reporting) comments that were in opposition to the transgender athlete being allowed to compete against born women. For a state broadcaster to be censoring comments on an article they have published because they fear what people may say about it is absurd and frankly scary.  RNZ hash-tagged their post with “#LISTEN”, but will they listen to the people of New Zealand who view Hubbard’s participation as unfair to natural-born women, but have nothing against transgender people identifying as the gender they wish?  We’ve filed a request under the Official Information Act seeking RNZ’s policy on this matter and their reasons for banning debate. After all, RNZ’s tag line is ‘news not views’ – let’s hold them to it. Auckland City Libraries sticks to its principles in the face of complaints from trans activists demanding the removal of controversial books from its catalogue You might remember earlier this month, we told you about how Mighty Ape had pulled two books from its catalogue after complaints from trans activists. The activists tried to demand the same from Auckland City Libraries, Stuff reports. Auckland City Libraries did the right thing when it described the ambit of its role as not extending to censoring or limiting what people may choose to read. Em, a transgender non-binary person who complained, said, “I think it’s reprehensible Auckland Libraries are providing access to hate speech while hiding under the cover of free speech.” Removing or suppressing material simply because it offends an individual or group would be unacceptable. Freedom of access to information is a cornerstone of western, liberal democracy, whereas no one, nowhere, has the right not to be offended. Why a small and vocal minority feels they have the right to decide for the rest of us what we can and can’t read is beyond us. It is worth noting that a similar campaign to remove the same books was recently waged in Ottawa, Canada. Irreversible damage went from having 30 holds at the Ottawa Public Library, to now having 162. A clear-cut case of the Streisand effect in action. Surprise, surprise! Censorship always backfires. We’re not often friends with Auckland Council, but credit where credit is due. Kudos to Auckland City Libraries for siding with the people, free speech and the capacity of people to make up their own mind! Fee-paying boarding school reports its chaplain to anti-terror unit Prevent for telling pupils in a sermon that they’re allowed to disagree with LGBT teaching. One of the reasons so many of us a fearful of hate speech legislation is because what is happening in the UK.  In the latest example of speech police going overboard, a school chaplain has been referred to anti-terror police for telling students that they’re allowed to disagree with LGBT teaching. According to the Daily Mail: A school secretly reported its chaplain to the anti-terrorism Prevent programme after he delivered a sermon defending the right of pupils to question its introduction of new LGBT policies. The Reverend Dr Bernard Randall told pupils at independent Trent College near Nottingham that they were allowed to disagree with the measures, particularly if they felt they ran contrary to Church of England principles. Among them was a plan to ‘develop a whole school LGBT+ inclusive curriculum’.Having decided that Dr Randall’s sermon was ‘harmful to LGBT’ students, the school flagged him to Prevent, which normally identifies those at risk of radicalisation. Police investigated the tip-off but advised the school by e-mail that Dr Randall, 48, posed ‘no counter terrorism risk, or risk of radicalisation’. Derbyshire Police confirmed that the case ‘did not meet the threshold for a Prevent referral’. This is where the story should have ended, but when you give busy bodies a hammer, everything is a nail. But in a disturbing development, Dr Randall, a former Cambridge University chaplain and Oxford graduate, claims that the school later told him that any future sermons would be censored in advance.  He also claims that he was warned his chapel services would be monitored ‘to ensure that… requirements are met’. Dr Randall was later dismissed. He is suing for discrimination, harassment, victimisation and unfair dismissal and his case is due to be heard next month. ‘My career and life are in tatters,’ he said. Campaigners said the case was one of the most extraordinary of its kind and raised disturbing questions about freedom of speech. Former Education Minister Sir John Hayes said, if the claims are proved, the school had ‘behaved appallingly’. Dr Randall’s sermon, delivered in the school chapel on June 21, 2019, was prompted, he says, by concerns from pupils about an organisation called Educate & Celebrate, run by Dr Elly Barnes, which was invited to ‘embed gender, gender identity and sexual orientation into the fabric’ of the school. In it, he said: ‘You should no more be told you have to accept LGBT ideology, than you should be told you must be in favour of Brexit, or must be Muslim.’ But he stressed the ‘need to treat each other with respect’. Several days later, he will tell the tribunal, he was called to a meeting and told the sermon was inflammatory, divisive and ‘harmful to LGBT pupils’. Dr Randall only learned about the Prevent referral because it was mentioned in documents given to him ahead of a disciplinary hearing. ‘I had visions of being investigated by MI5, of men knocking down the front door,’ he said.Trent College has a ‘Christian ethos’ and Dr Randall was appointed in 2015 to provide pastoral care, share the Christian faith and lead services in the school’s chapel. But he claims he found himself increasingly sidelined as the school began implementing the Educate & Celebrate programme. The MoS can also reveal that in legal proceedings against the school it will be claimed: Toby Young, of the Free Speech Union, said: ‘This is a fantastic sermon, reminding us no one has a monopoly on moral truth. For Bernard Randall to lose his job as a result of this sermon is scandalous.‘ What’s so depressing about his treatment is the message it sends to the pupils. The central theme of his sermon is that children shouldn’t be afraid to think for themselves. But the message the school has sent is the opposite. Schools should be teaching children how to think, not what to think.’ Andrea Williams, chief executive of the Christian Legal Centre, which is supporting Dr Randall, said: ‘Who are the extremists in this story? The partisan agency who teach young children that they can be born in the wrong body, or the school chaplain moderately presenting what the Christian church has taught about marriage, sex and gender for the past 2,000 years?’ The College declined to comment.UK Introduces Bill to Censor Legal Speech, Block Websites for Non-Compliance The UK government has introduced a draft “Online Safety Bill” which would force websites to clamp down on legal speech, and even block them if they don’t comply. Oliver Dowden, the Culture Secretary, said that the bill would “protect children on the internet, crack down on racist abuse on social media and through new measures to safeguard our liberties, create a truly democratic digital age” The bill creates a “duty of care” on websites to ensure that explicitly legal speech which has an “adverse psychological impact” is clamped down upon. This means that if the bill is passed, not only would there be a greater standard of what speech is acceptable online and offline, but the government themselves would pass the buck to that decision down initially to the Big Tech companies. “The Online Safety Bill introduces state-backed censorship and monitoring on a scale never seen before in a liberal democracy,” said Mark Johnson, the Legal and Policy Officer at Big Brother Watch. “This Bill is disastrous for privacy rights and free expression online,” he added. We’ll be following the UK Bill closely and are talking to MPs in New Zealand to introduce a similar framework here. Thank you for your support, Dr David Cumin Spokesperson Free Speech Union

At one time the UK Conservative Party, now governing alone, was a strong defender of Free Speech, viewing any measure to curtail it as extremely regrettable. Today it has become just as authoritarian and intolerant of dissent as the Labour Party, if not more so. —Eds

Simon Black’s weekly chronicle of the absurd, at sovereignman.com: Are you ready for this week’s absurdity? Here’s our Friday roll-up of the most ridiculous stories from around the world that are threats to your liberty, risks to your prosperity… and on occasion, inspiring poetic justice. “A man cannot get pregnant” is hate speech on Twitter […]

“A man cannot get pregnant” is hate speech on Twitter, by Simon Black — STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC

Martin van Beynen, 61, was an investigative reporter and columnist for Fairfax NZ, now Stuff, and the man behind the widely viewed Black Hands podcast about the Bain family murders, turned into a TV mini-series last year. Other accomplishments include authoring the book Trapped: Remarkable Stories of Survival from the 2011 Canterbury Earthquake.

He announced that a piece he composed for Stuff and posted on its site last Saturday was his last, saying:

“As an opinion writer, it’s easier to identify what you oppose rather than what you support. I don’t like being told I’m to blame. I don’t like zealots and young know-nothings telling me what to do. I don’t like wokeness or virtue signalling or cancelling people for some trivial perceived infringement of current sensibilities. I don’t like being told I’m privileged or that I had it too good because of being pale and male. I don’t like tailoring my views to suit a new zeitgeist. I don’t like the implication that everything done to improve people’s lives prior to the latest orthodoxy has been a disastrous failure and that some new system will bring in a utopia.”

It seems the editor/sub-editor couldn’t resist a parting shot, describing him in the headline as a “redneck,” which for a lot of people is reason enough to read his work. We wish him well.

A popular swimming spot, mentioned in our address on the KCDC Long Term Plan (see earlier).

But for all the glitz and glamour that was on display (in Brisbane), the nine tries scored revealed how far Australian rugby has to go against their high-octane cousins from across the ditch. –Christy Doran, Fox Sports

Only the Force get close

By Roger Childs

The pundits who predicted that the Trans-Tasman Super Rugby would be one-sided have so far been right – 10 matches, 10 Kiwi wins. In the weekends’ second round, the closest encounter was the Highlanders 25-15 win against the Western Force. The visitors always had the lead and were well lead by the effervescent Aaron Smith at half back.

The Force were definitely the most impressive Australian team and scored three tries to the visitors four on Saturday, and last week missed winning by just a coat of upright paint. However they have had two home games so far and it will be interesting to see how they fare in New Zealand.

Hurricanes have an easy win over the Rebels

The visitors had lost 3-50 to the Blues last week in Melbourne and so they were expected to  struggle in Wellington. However the Hurricanes made plenty of mistakes which kept the Rebels in the hunt well into the second half, however two late tries allowed the home team to seal the victory with a bonus point.

Julian Savea scored two tries for the second time in the competition and was just bundled out in the corner going for a possible third. The star in the backs was Ngani Laumape who had been rested last week. He was always dangerous on attack often bursting through in mid field and he set up his outsides well. On the left wing Wes Goosen made a number of swerving runs and was rewarded with a try in the second half.  

The lineout contest was even, however the Hurricanes had the better of the scrum battle. Second half tries to Campbell Wells and Campbell Magnay kept the Rebels in the hunt for a time, but in the end the classy combining of forwards and backs in the open leading to two late tries, saw the home team through to a comfortable win.

Crusaders on fire

This was the game of the round which saw the two champion sides clash at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane in front of a crowd of 42,000. The Reds had rested players the previous week after their win in the Australian final and were well beaten by the Highlanders. Back home on Friday night they were at full strength. They scored four very good tries including one where forward Harry Wilson sold a dummy to the visitors full back Will Jordan and went over in the corner.

However, the Crusaders who had a narrow win last at home last week, were often at their brilliant best and first five Richie Mo’unga had an outstanding game scoring three tries, feeding his outside superbly and not missing any of his eight conversion attempts. All the backs played well with right winger Sevu Reece having an excellent game, always looking dangerous on attack and scoring three tries. 

The forwards dominated their opponents in set pieces and in the loose, with lock Sam Whitelock and hooker Codie Taylor standing out. The latter got yet another try. Loose forwards Cullen Grace and Ethan Blackadder also impressed in getting turnovers and running strongly with ball in hand.

This was a much improved performance from the Canterbury franchise and will have given them plenty of confidence.

Blues much too strong for the Waratahs

The Auckland franchise thrashed the Sydney based team 48-21 scoring seven tries to three.  This was the Waratahs seventh successive loss this year. At Eden Park they had their moments and captain Jake Gordon played well at half back making a number of sniping darts around the scrum and scoring one try. 

Prop Angus Bell was the pick of the forwards toiling in the tight and making a number of bullocking runs including one that resulted in a try. But there were too many poor passes and missed tackles from the visitors, and too often they kicked good ball away. 

Overall the Blues were too strong in the forwards and their drives from the lineout always made ground, two resulting in tries. The backs were often dangerous and Reiki Iaone made a number of breaks in mid field and scored an excellent late try. On the right wing Bryce Heem was very impressive and scored three tries.

The Chiefs at their best

This match was picked as the Australians best chance of a win in the second round of the Trans-Tasman Super Rugby. Last week the Brumbies almost drew with the champion Crusaders, and the Chiefs in Perth were nearly beaten. However now at home, the Chiefs played consistently well and never let the visitors into the game. They dominated the forward battle and number eight Luke Jacobson who had been sent off last week in Perth, was back to his best securing a number of turnovers and scoring two tries. Flanker Lachlan Boshier was also impressive, while in the tight hooker Samisoni Taukei’aho and Sione Mafileo starting at tighthead prop were impressive. The latter were key figures in the scrum dominance.

Brad Weber set the Chiefs alight with quick passing from half back and Alex Nankivell and Anton Lienert –Brown were always dangerous in mid field. Both scored tries. Lienert-Brown was also outstanding in defence and overall the Chiefs tackling was very impressive. 

The decision to  play Damian McKenzie at first –five was a master-stroke as it got him more into the game which he relished making a number of telling breaks and setting up his outsides well. He also converted five tries in the 40-18 victory.

What lies ahead?

It seem certain that the finalists in the Trans-Tasman Super Rugby/will be New Zealand teams. For an Australian team to make the final it would have to win the next three games and Kiwi sides would need to falter. Both propositions are highly unlikely. 

What the two rounds have shown so far, is that there is a major gap in the standard of rugby between the two countries at this level and this augurs well for the All Blacks’ Bledisloe Cup chances.

by John Robinson

We should be one people, voting together for central and local government.  There should be no place for separate Maori wards.

The situation here in Kapiti is far worse.  Maori wards would give Maori those separate places, but with each vote being of approximately equal value.  Then there might be 12 council places for non-Maori and 2 council places for Maori, who make up 14 percent of the Kapiti population – according to information provided in the recent Long Term Plan.

The Kapiti Coast District Council has decided, in negotiations with the mana whenua – the people of three iwi, Ngati Toa, Te Atiawa and Ngati Raukawa – to not introduce Maori wards, but to keep the current system, which is a ‘partnership’ between the two parties, council (we vote for) and mana whenua (a select few). 

Currently, those of the mana whenua have a double power.  Each has a vote in selecting the mayor and councillors, equal to that of the rest of us.  In addition, this small minority of around 4% of the electorate (less than 30% of the 14% who are Maori) act in partnership with council – and so have a considerably greater power than all others.  It is no wonder that these three iwi, this highly privileged 4%, prefer to stick to the status quo.

What is the basis of this privilege?  That their ancestors came in the 1820s to attack, kill and drive off the then inhabitants from their lands, before continuing to murderous raids on the South Island and fighting bloody battles among themselves in 1834 and 1839. 

This is wrong.  It is a sad day when we must consider ourselves as Maori or non-Maori, mana whenua or the other, instead of all together as citizens and as ratepayers living in Kapiti.

Lee Williams was until a couple of days ago an employee of dairy company Synlait in Christchurch. He also has a YouTube channel called Cross The Rubicon on which he has been a trenchant critic of PM Jacinda, and what can best be described as the Treaty Industry. His rhetoric is ‘out there’, but as long as he criticizes those running the show for their methods / intentions and does not make derogatory comments about people’s ancestry and/or skin colour, which he says he has not — he opposes the government’s goal of separatism and apartheid — then he should be entitled to do so.

Maori Party MP Debbie Ngawera-Packer thinks otherwise and went after him, alleging (as is usual) that Lee Williams is a ‘white supremacist,’ ‘racist’ etc. — this article appeared in the legacy media last Friday.

A friend of his, Michael Allen, organized an online fundraiser as Lee Williams has now been fired from Synlait and has engaged a lawyer to start a wrongful dismissal case. He has also decided to relocate back to England, but vows to keep fighting against separatism and racism from there.

Update

A ‘cancel culturist’ got the GoFundMe account closed (see below) — those wanting to donate should send it to– Mr L M Williams Westpac Everyday 03-1553-0025915-000