by Jeffrey Tucker for Epoch Times 

‘The Valorization of the Tyrants’

This is surely one of the strangest twists in official narratives in perhaps hundreds of years. The bad guys have been christened as the good guys, and the good guys have been purged, deplatformed, canceled, and demonized. It’s a turn of events none of us could have imagined back in 2020. It cries out for an explanation. I truly fear knowing the answer as to why.

Just consider the fate of former New Zealand Prime Jacinda Ardern. She locked down her country, trampling all rights of the people under the guise of controlling the spread of a virus. You could not go to church. You could not be unmasked. You could not leave the country and return. No one could travel there without official permission.

As bad as the United States and Europe were during this period, New Zealand was worse, and it was backed up by speech controls. Anyone protesting the policies was risking everything. And when the vaccine came along, Ardern outright said it: the people who get it will have rights but those who do not will not. It was a new biomedical caste system.

Eventually, the country did open. Now speakers decrying the whole period are attracting audiences in the thousands, and Ardern is widely unpopular. Her successor who continues to defend all this despotism is under a cloud and also deeply unpopular. The tables have completely turned. Of course the virus came anyway, as it must, so the junta that did this has turned their attention to climate change, the defense of censorship, and the escalation of the Russia/Ukraine war.

Five years ago, anyone would have supposed that a leader that acted this way would live in shame. I certainly assumed so. My supposition is that Ardern had made horrific misjudgments and would be widely decried as a confused tyrant. She would live out her days in disrepute, surely.

The opposite has happened. She is now the subject of celebratory biographies. She is lauded by mainstream media. She addressed the United Nations last year in a speech that was an open call for a new global censorship regime. True, the fact-checkers disagree with this interpretation. Instead she was merely calling out “the weaponization of free speech societies and platforms by misinformation agents.”

Oh.

In any case, in my imagination, I could not have dreamed up a specimen of error and tyranny more deserving of devaluing than Jacinda Ardern. Everything she did during the COVID era flies in the face of values that the West has held for almost a thousand years since the Magna Carta.

But I was wrong. Completely. I underestimated just how broken the world is. Instead of being disgraced, she is enjoying not one but two fellowships at Harvard University where she enjoys massive prestige and adoration by faculty, staff, and students. To me, this seems like the Twilight Zone—an ending to the story that I could not have imagined. Are we supposed to be against segregation, house arrest, forced medical treatments, locking people in nations, and censorship? I thought at least we would agree on that much. Apparently not. Apparently, it is the opposite. Everything that I believed was deprecated is exalted and all the public virtues I believed we extolled are now denounced.

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Ukrainian victims of NATO’s forever wars: the only beneficiaries are the armaments manufacturers who are big funders of NATO bloc politicians under the table.

• Wednesday September 27
• Southwards Car Museum
• 7pm

Labour have been turning up with lots of very noisy supporters who cheer Labour and interrupt and ‘boo’ National [as is standard Leftist practice now; they don’t believe in Freedom of Speech for others].

Come along and bring some vocal support for National/Act and take the opportunity to ask questions, otherwise Labour supporters try and hog all the questions. National/Act want to talk about the key issues this election. The most common questions they get on the doorstep are

• “why has it the cost of living got so expensive,”
• “how do we stop the endless expensive bureaucracy in Wellington,”
• “how do you fix our broken health system,”
• “why did Labour cancel the expressway to Levin and oppose new ones like Transmission Gully,” and
• “how do we stop all this crime in our community.”

TPM would love it…

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer created an uproar recently when he announced senators could wear whatever they liked while on the Senate floor.

Many balked at the idea and derided it. Senator Susan Collins jokingly threatened to show up in the Senate wearing a bikini. Senator Rand Paul actually appeared wearing a red bathrobe to protest Schumer’s shabby announcement. We presume Senator Elizabeth Warren will show up in some sort of Pocahontas garb, since she has claimed many times to be a Native American, DNA tests be damned….

—Ben Garrison

How long after 14 October will it take before he joins Comrade Jacinda working for the Globalists in America?

Marc Ellis on how Labour and the Greens fucked NZ so badly he's moving to Italy permanently.

Grifters like the maori party and the Greens and their militant faction like Shane Lal have ruined NZ. pic.twitter.com/xo9cvQa6Le

— The Salty One (@the_salty_one_) July 13, 2023

Comments by Geoffrey Churchman

An e-mail received yesterday from Chris Luxon said in part:

I’ve been on the campaign trail for three weeks and one thing is clear – Kiwis feel we’re heading in the wrong direction. I’ve lost count of the number of people who say to me – “if you don’t win, I’m leaving.”  

The polls are reassuring that Chippy and Labour are going to be turfed out of office and while some of their 2020 voters are deserting his party for the lunatic extremists — Green and TPM — it wont be enough to give the Leftists any more than about 45% of the seats.

During the worst period of Comrade Jacinda’s tyranny, from about August 2021 to the beginning of this year, I often discussed with people, if they decided to leave NZ, where would they go?

The basic consideration is that you don’t get your cake and eat it — there will always be upsides and downsides to living somewhere else. It’s a standard thing for 20-something Kiwis to seek the big OE (overseas experience) and that’s good. They need to experience how the rest of the world live, or some of it anyway. Most head to Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane, some to London and a few to Dublin.

At 23 in 1980 I went instead to Los Angeles which was something of a culture shock, with smog, car-centricity and high crime rates (homicides were 34 times those of NZ) but it was a good place to make money and in those days rents were low. Some things have changed — the air is a lot cleaner and crime rates are lower, but it’s not cheap anymore and there are tent villages of homeless, not helped by all the illegal migrants Biden and the Democrats have let flood in.

Unless you can get a job paying over $US 120,000 ($NZ 200,000) it’s not a city I’d recommend now. In New York it’s even more.

The other option is Europe. The only problem is that even where nearly everybody speaks English like Holland, Germany and Scandinavia, it’s hard to get a good job without a basic knowledge of the local language. Despite that, the country that appeals to me the most is Czechia — a picturesque country that has developed surprising quickly economically after throwing out Communism in 1989 and is fairly First World standard, but still with Second World prices, so money goes further. However, there is still the language barrier; a knowledge of German or Polish will help sometimes. As I say, don’t count on getting your cake and eating it.

Some readers may have their own recommendations.

Wounded but not sunk. Show must go on. Can’t wait to return to the squad. –French star half back Antoine Dupont after his facial fracture

By Roger Childs

The four best in two groups

In a policy that defies belief the rankings for the current Rugby World Cup are based on performances in the last tournament contested in 2019. There are 20 teams playing this year in four groups of five. They are presently playing round-robin rugby and two from each group will qualify for the quarter-finals.

Based on four years ago, the current top teams are in two groups – Ireland, South Africa, France and the All Blacks.  The latter two played at the Parc de Princes in Paris in the first match with the home team winning comfortably, and then Ireland and South Africa met last Saturday.

Number one plays number two

This was a match that should have been the final. Nevertheless, both teams will qualify for the quarters-finals. It was a thriller played at the Parc de Princes in front of 80,000 fans which included huge contingents of Irish and South African fans. The Irish won the game 13-8 but the result was in doubt until the very end when the Springboks just failed to score from a lineout drive starting ten metres out from the goal-line. 

Both teams defended solidly and this was reflected in the number of tries – just one each. In the set pieces South Africa had the better of the scrums often shunting the Irish back. The latter also had problems with their early lineouts and bungled three of their first four. but after that didn’t lose one. The Irish probably won more turnovers but generally the battle in the loose was an even contest.

In the backs both sides had some good attacking moves and only fierce tackling prevented more tries bring scored. Ireland’s second five Bundee Aki was the most dangerous player in the first half and Springbok fullback Damien Williamse was the dominant back in the second.

In the end the difference was in the goal kicking; Ireland scored from a conversion and two penalties while South Africa missed four shots at goal – a conversion and three penalties.

Controversial ending

New Zealand and Kapiti rugby referee, Ben O’Keefe, performed well almost to the end. With time up South Africa had a lineout 10 metres out and predictably took the ball and drove for the line. They were held up short and it looked suspiciously like the Irish collapsed the maul. 

Such as offence would normally warrant a penalty try, but O’Keefe wasn’t interested. Instead, as the ball was just coming out on the Springbok side he gave the advantage to  Ireland and blew full-time. Not a good look for the Kiwi referee.

Where to now?

South Africa and Ireland will advance to the quarters and probably meet France and New Zealand respectively. So the four currently ranked top teams will be reduced to two for the semis. 

Host team France has lost their star half back and captain Antoine Dupont, who sustained a facial fracture in the team’s 96-0 romp over Namibia. He had surgery in Toulouse on Friday but there has been no announcement on when he will be able to play again. The quarter finals are in three weeks’ time. Could the brilliant Dupont be ready to take the field? Time will tell.

Some commentators are now writing France off as potential World Cup winners, but although Dupont would be a great loss, a team is more than one player.

Meanwhile, the All Blacks face Kiwi coach Kieran Crowley’s capable Italians on Friday, a game New Zealand must win to stay in the tournament.