WHAT A HYPOCRITE: PM AT UN

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At the hairdresser's yesterday a reader of this blog was indulging herself in a rant against New Zealand's Prime Minister for publicly (does Ardern ever do anything privately?) backing the Labour candidate for Auckland's mayoralty. Said reader's husband, personally well-acquainted with local body affairs, had declared that such a thing was unprecedented in the annals of local councils in New Zealand

"She knows she can get away with it!" our reader declared, probably more loudly than is polite at the hairdresser's. "She can get away with anything!" The hairdresser waved her scissors in assent. She gave the impression of willingness to stab the PM forthwith, in the jugular. 

Then our reader noticed the client in the next chair, rolling her eyes in apoplexy. She was obviously one of those mentioned below by Graham Adams as Ardern's "substantial global fan base". Yes, such muppets still exist, even in New Zealand. Our reader changed the subject and the JA fan returned to her Woman's Weekly.

 

In the eyes of Jacinda Ardern’s substantial global fan base, she remains a beacon of hope in a dark and chaotic world — a source of inspiration and a humble force for good amongst often tawdry, self-serving politicians.

For them, her address to the United Nations late last month will undoubtedly have reinforced her appeal. There she was at the podium in New York, imploring the sprinkling of diplomats seated before her to act against “mis- and disinformation online”, which she rated as dangerous as bullets and bombs.

She implied that misguided views legitimising the Russian invasion of Ukraine were hampering efforts to end it and that climate change denialism was a problem that world leaders needed to confront head on.

As she put her case, she had the fetching air of a doleful Madonna — doing her best as Our Lady of Sorrows to lead a benighted world to a better place through her prescription for protecting the vulnerable from “hateful and dangerous rhetoric and ideology”.

What critics around the globe saw in Ardern’s speech, however, was something quite different.

They saw a self-righteous and self-regarding politician who was hypocritically claiming to be in favour of free speech even while advocating a system of global censorship.

It was noted that Ardern even cast criticism of moves to restrict free speech as representing wrongthink:

“As leaders, we are rightly concerned that even those most light-touch approaches to disinformation could be misinterpreted as being hostile to the values of free speech we value so highly.”

Brendan O’Neill, editor of UK website Spiked, tweeted to his 138.5k followers: “Ms Ardern’s UN speech exposed the iron fist of authoritarianism that lurks within the velvet glove of wokeness… Words wound, ideas kill — that’s the hot take of this globe-trotting luvvie against liberty.”

Addressing his 2.9 million Twitter followers, US political commentator Ben Shapiro focused on Ardern’s desire for censorship of contentious issues around climate change: “On the back of bad policy always comes the call to shut down free speech.”

Ardern’s desire to save the world from “chaos” and to impose “order” by increasing regulation of the world’s social media platforms is a drum she has beaten regularly to overseas audiences this year, including to Harvard students and at a technology conference in Madrid.

The fact she has failed to persuade her fellow New Zealanders to accept further restrictions on free speech has obviously not dimmed her ambitions to repeat a similar exercise on the world stage.

 

Presumably by promoting her censorship campaign overseas through public speeches and granting interviews only to sympathetic foreign journalists she can avoid being exposed as completely out of her depth intellectually, as she was in New Zealand.

What revealed her inadequacies most clearly was her extraordinary response in 2019 to TV journalist Duncan Garner’s request to identify the “threshold” between reasonable criticism and hate speech: “When you see it you know it.” As free-speech advocates pointed out, that is a woefully shaky definition to base a law on.
And when she was asked to give examples of speech that might render someone liable for up to three years’ jail or a fine of $50,000, she preposterously claimed it would be a matter for the courts — not politicians — to decide.

Overseas, of course, she can still pretend she is a thoughtful and far-sighted politician with a firm command of the topic — as long as no one challenges her on who exactly will decide what constitutes misinformation and disinformation, and how and where that line might be drawn.

Or how restrictions on “hateful and dangerous rhetoric and ideology” can accommodate those parts of religious teaching that some say are prime examples of exactly that.

Grandstanding at venues such as the UN means she can ignore the devil in the details in favour of stirring words. Unsurprisingly, her UN speech was framed in terms of compassion for suffering humanity and keeping them safe — which has been a repeated theme in her overseas speeches, alongside a wish to control the free flow of information.

In fact, the Beehive press release that provided the text of her speech to an audience of 30,000 at Harvard University in May was headed: “Democracy, disinformation and kindness”.

 

Coincidentally or otherwise, after Ardern had warned the UN of the threat misinformation posed to mankind, psychologist Dr Jordan Peterson told Piers Morgan on his television talk show last week that the biggest threat to humanity was “narcissistic compassion”. Morgan was pointedly disparaging of those using “Be Kind” as a slogan, and described the assault on free speech in democracies — with people expressing honestly held opinions being sacked from jobs or even imprisoned — as a form of fascism.

Peterson replied: “It’s worse than that… The fascists are more straightforward about it… They say something like, ‘Shut up or we’ll beat you’… whereas the narcissistic compassionate types say, ‘Well, we’re really trying to save the world and we’re acting in everyone’s best interests. Maybe you should regulate what you say because if you don’t you’re not a good person.’”

He said he would “take the fascist bully over the compassionate narcissist any time” — on the grounds that at least fascists don’t pretend they are telling you to keep quiet because it’s for your own good. Ardern’s use of war imagery to depict the dangers of free speech leaves no doubt how deeply she believes controlling information is vital for everyone’s safety and well-being — and the moral responsibility falls to the world’s elites to exert that control.

After all, how can they be expected to tackle problems like climate change and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine if people are allowed to share dissenting views online?

Little wonder then that her speech has created alarm around the world.

But not in New Zealand’s mainstream media.

As David Farrar noted on Kiwiblog: “The New Zealand media often report breathlessly that the PM got some minor plaudit in a US newspaper, yet seem oblivious to the fact that millions of people are reacting with horror to her UN speech.”

As is so frequently the case on contentious topics, New Zealanders will have to look to overseas media to get an accurate gauge of the world’s reactions to the Prime Minister’s disquieting speech from the UN’s podium of truth.

https://www.bassettbrashandhide.com/post/graham-adams-ardern-s-authoritarian-streak-on-full-show-at-un

Graham Adams is an Auckland-based freelance editor, journalist and columnist.

Adams pulls his punches somewhat, probably because journalism is how he earns a living. Thank God he's as critical of Ardern as he is. Long may he continue to get away with it. 

 

St Bruno, Founder of the ultra-silent monastic Carthusians 

 "By your work you show what you love and what you know".

St Bruno, on your feastday, please pray for Jacinda Ardern.

UNCATHOLIC BISHOPS: LGBTQIA+ FOR SCHOOLS

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When bishops were bishops and Catholics were glad of it

 

Better that New Zealand's Catholic Bishops have millstones hanged about their necks and that they should be drowned in the depth of the sea (Mt 18:6).

Some might argue that in writing their latest public statement, giving "new diversity guidelines for Catholic schools", the bishops' motives were pure as the driven snow. Perhaps. Only God knows.

But on the face of it, NZ's Catholic Bishops are no longer Catholic. The very title of their press release yesterday directly contradicts the first chapter of Holy Scripture, the rock on which Catholic Church doctrine is established - for ever, no matter what Antipope Francis may say. "Male and female He made them" (Gen 1:27). 

And please spare us any sophistries of modernist, heretical theory which attempt to explain how there is now any number of genders to which "our rangatahi" as the bishops with all woke, undue regard for Te Reo, may claim to belong. The bishops are wedded to the world now, rather than to Christ and His Mystical Body, the Church.

And look at them now, with the Jesuit Bergoglio. 

The bishops have publicly repudiated Church and Scripture on the issue of 'gender diversity'. They do not believe what the Church has taught for millenia; they proclaim heresy, so they have incurred the penalty of latae sententiae. According to the 1983 Code of Canon Law, <latae sententiae> excommunication is incurred for these seven offenses: apostasy, heresy or schism (c. 1364, §1).

Let's not be squeamish about this. The Church as our Holy Mother defers to God our Father who as the model for earthly fathers (especially priests and bishops) must and will inflict just punishment on those who do evil, especially to His little ones - even unto millstones. Latae sententiae is just such a metaphorical millstone. 

The offender is barred (c. 1331, §1) from: having any ministerial participation in the Mass or, indeed, any ceremonies whatsoever of public worship; celebrating the sacraments or sacramentals and receiving the sacraments; and the discharge of any ecclesiastical ministries or functions whatever. 

While the Church is indeed a graced community empowered by the Spirit, its members are sinners reflecting the weaknesses and limitations of the human condition. Occasionally, their attitudes are contrary to the faith or their behavior is contrary to the Christian way of life...The community simply cannot afford to take no notice of those who reject sharing in the Church's mission or refuse the call to Christian witness in a significant way>. (Thomas J. Green in <The Code of Canon Law: A Text and Commentary>, James A. Coriden, Thomas J. Green, Donald E. Heintschel, eds., New York/ Mahwah, Paulist Press, 1985, p. 893.)https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/finally-someone-does-something-1239

Can. 1369: A person who in a public show or speech, in published writing, or in other uses of the instruments of social communication utters blasphemy, gravely injures good morals, expresses insults, or excites hatred or contempt against religion or the Church is to be punished with a just penalty.  NZ's Bishops would seem to fill the bill.

 

There you have it. The bishops having incurred latae sententiae are barred from celebrating or receiving any sacraments of the Church. Of course, in the 'Francis Church' such trivia as excommunication are a bagatelle, a pre-Vat 2 hangover to be ignored with impunity by Antipope Francis and his disgraceful and disgraced hierarchy. But God will not ignore it and neither can faithful Catholics.  We and New Zealand as a nation will suffer His just chastisement for this. 

Faithful Catholics throughout New Zealand should be outraged by the NZ Bishops' denial of Church and Scripture teaching, that a homosexual lifestyle is intrinsically disordered. Not the homosexual, note, but the practice of homosexuality. 

This document undoubtedly serve to hasten the demise of our non-Catholic Catholic schools where, the bishops blithely assert, "Many are in a traditional nuclear family, many share living with mum or dad in different homes, some have two dads or two mums." How can a 'Catholic' school countenance children living in such an overtly sinful and harmful environment? BISHOPS, PLEASE EXPLAIN.

CATHOLICS, HOME-SCHOOL YOUR CHILDREN! Over 11 per cent of families in the United States are already disillusioned and disgusted enough to have withdrawn their children from the state system and teach them themselves. But that's another story.

We confess we haven't read the Bishops' statement in its entirety. We doubt whether we have the stomach for it.

Faithful Catholics should demand that these bishops resign. Let them start their own Church, like Luther - or join some Protestant sect. The trouble with that scenario is, none of the Protestants we know would want them. The Protestants we know teach their children to live by the Bible. Some Protestants we know are appalled by Antipope Francis and the treatment meted out in some New Zealand Catholic parishes to those faithful to Christ's teaching who refused the jab peddled by the 'pope' and the NZ Conference of Catholic Bishops, which is causing such untold heartbreak and misery throughout this country.

Stand up, Catholics! Speak to your Bishop and be counted for Christ! 

 Counted for Christ: Fr Miguel Agustín Pro SJ, executed in the Cristero War, Mexico, for the crime of being Catholic

"May God have mercy on you. May God bless you! Lord, thou knowest I am innocent! With all my heart I forgive my enemies"

- Fr Pro's last words.  

 

 

CATHOLIC RESISTANCE: CALLING FRANCIS OUT

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Would anyone still take this man seriously, if he were not generally regarded as the head of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church? 

Any more than one would pay attention to poor Charles III, if he were not King of England etc etc? And incidentally, quite incontestably head of the Anglican Church? Incontestably probably because Satan doesn't bother his ugly head much about Anglican affairs.

Because Anglicans don't possess Jesus Christ, Son of God, Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, in the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist. It is He whom Satan hates and opposes implacably. So it is Francis who, because of his incomparable status, is so much more in need of our fervent prayer for his repentance, healing and conversion.

LifeSiteNews and The Remnant have been engaged in this controversial yet necessary fight for truth and true religion for years, even more so as the errors and dangers of Pope Francis’ pontificate have become increasingly more evident.

For the very latest in the fight, from The Remnant, view this epic RTV documentary which explores the history, the present, and the future of the Pilgrimage from Paris to Chartres, the premier event uniting faithful Catholics from countries all over the world. Michael Matt reports a growing concern in France that the French bishops may prohibit use of the Chartres Cathedral for the 2023 pilgrimage. In light of the motu proprio of Pope Francis, Traditionis Custodes, restricting the Latin Mass worldwide, the Pilgrimage emerges as a powerful counteroffensive in support of the Mass of history.

Paris-Chartres Pilgrimage

 

From the very first moment of this pontificate in 2013, there was scandal.

 

newly-elected Francis with pope-maker Danneels (r), still then concealing an icky past

 

On the balcony at his proclamation, Francis was accompanied by none other than the dissident cardinal, Godfried Danneels. The same Danneels who reportedly encouraged the Belgian King to legalize abortion, and has openly admitted to being part of the clerical “mafia” that plotted Francis’ election.

We love him enough to call him out, and it is because of this love that we must call him out frankly and encourage his brothers in the episcopate to do the same. For our sake, for the sake of our children, and for Pope Francis’ own soul – we must resist.

In 2016, Cardinal Burke remarked in the wake of Francis’ controversial exhortation Amoris Laetitia that he was particularly concerned that “there are those who refer to the objective reality of the grace of marriage as merely an ideal to which we more or less seek to conform ourselves.”

This statement was of course in response to the doctrinal bomb found in the footnotes of the pope’s document which seemed to change unchangeable Church teaching on divorce and remarriage.

But Burke called on us to “resist” the temptation to accept novelties that contradict tradition, no matter the source.

That is why we can say here with full confidence and no fear, that we, as faithful Catholics, have a duty before God to resist the attempts to undermine defined dogma on moral questions which are being relentlessly attacked by faithless globalists, Vatican bureaucrats and even by Francis himself.

In 2021, Pope Francis addressed the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund at their spring meeting, calling for “global governance” in light of COVID-19, pushing strongly for “universal vaccines.” 

In a book-length interview in the same year titled, “God and the world to come,” Francis called for the creation of “a new world order,” echoing the sentiments of the World Economic Forum’s Klaus Schwab who pines for a global technocratic “Great Reset” as capitalism.

To this end, Pope Francis has launched his own “Global education pact” with the United Nations and with various globalist corporations, in order to promote a new “economic system” of capitalism and to ensure the achievement of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 

The partnerships promote “sustainable lifestyles,” “gender equality,” and “global citizenship,” while the SDGs themselves promote “sexual and reproductive health services,” which as we know, is euphemistic language for abortion and contraception.

While happily inviting “transgendered” individuals to speak with him in Rome, Francis has denied to meet with or intervene on behalf of Cardinal Joseph Zen, who is endlessly persecuted by the communist Chinese authorities.

Even when this 90 year-old prince of the Church travelled recently to Rome to speak with him. 

He has cozied up with depopulation fanatics like Jeffrey Sachs, and has seemingly endorsed the use of contraception to prevent pregnancy in regions with the Zika virus, causing both confusion and scandal to those trying to defend the orthodoxy of the magisterial tradition of the Church.

Of course, there too is the pachamama debacle that took place in 2019 at the Amazonian Synod, when a demonic idol was processed into the heart of the Vatican.

Francis was also at the forefront of the COVID agenda, supporting the criminal lockdowns and mass vaccination campaigns that have led to untold consequences that far outweigh the harm caused by the virus itself.

Finally, and most recently, bishops – the successors of the Apostles – of the Catholic Church, including Bishop Joseph Strickland and Bishop Athanasius Schneider, have issued a formal correction relating to heresy found in Francis’ June letter, Desiderio Desideravi.

We, the faithful, must continue to pray fervently for Francis. We love him enough to call him out, and it is because of this love that we must call him out frankly and encourage his brothers in the episcopate to do the same. For our sake, for the sake of our children, and for Pope Francis’ own soul – we must resist.

 

St Francis at Prayer
Esteban Murillo
 
St Francis, on your feastday we implore you to intercede for your namesake in Rome 

TE REO PROPAGANDA: WE'VE HAD IT UP TO HERE

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self-explanatory

 During the 2020 election campaign no one from the Labour Party told us that if Jacinda was re-elected we would be flooded with Maori names, place names, new departmental names eg “The Ministry for Women Manatu Wahine.

Former Labour Cabinet Minister and historian Michael Bassett sounds hopping mad, and who can blame him? We know the feeling ...  

(And) "a bulls-wool version of the Treaty they call “Te Tiriti”, assertions that Matauranga Maori is superior to western science, that lots of advertisements on TV would henceforth be in Maori, and that MSM journalists who could speak a little Maori would have their pay accelerated and their work-loads reduced.

Bassett has lots more to say: 

Are you, like me, getting sick and tired of being told that everything about our culture is inferior to Maori, and that we should learn to live with a constant diet of Te Reo? 

Turn on Radio New Zealand in the morning and Susie Fergusson, Guyon Espiner and even Corin Dann do the news introductions in Maori.

It's simply BAD MANNERS. It's also bad reporting. Reporting - journalism - is communication. If you want to communicate with people, you have to speak their language. Their lingo. About 16-17% of Kiwis are Maori and only a small proportion of them speak Te Reo. ALL of them speak English. 

Try Midday Report and you get Mani Dunlop showering us with untranslated Maori phrases. 

“Aotearoa”, we keep being told, wrongly, is “the original name for New Zealand” when it wasn’t. As a historian who spent a decade on the Waitangi Tribunal, I abhor such crass ignorance. As Michael King pointed out, our country had no name in 1840 except a Dutch version of the words “New Zealand“ that had been bestowed internationally on our islands by Abel Tasman when he returned to Europe after his visit in 1642. At the time the Treaty of Waitangi was signed in 1840 both signatories occasionally referred to “islands” or used “Nu Tirani”.

 It was Sir George Grey, much derided by today’s more belligerent Maori crusaders, who first popularized the word Aotearoa in the 1850s. The Main Stream Media (MSM),

however, now use it all the time, telling us it was the first name for our lands: the New Zealand Herald, TV ONE, TV3, Radio New Zealand, Stuff, you name it: belligerent ignorance keeps being forced upon us at Jacinda Ardern’s behest and partly funded by the Public Interest Journalism Fund.

They're all in the business of concealing the truth - of prevaricating and telling bare-faced lies, disseminated by 'the single source of truth' owned and operated by a pathological tyrant and her minions.  

Let’s reflect for a moment. During the 2020 election campaign no one from the Labour Party told us that if Jacinda was re-elected we would be flooded with Maori names, place names, new departmental names eg “The Ministry for Women Manatu Wahine”, a bulls-wool version of the Treaty they call “Te Tiriti”, assertions that Matauranga Maori is superior to western science, that lots of advertisements on TV would henceforth be in Maori, and that MSM journalists who could speak a little Maori would have their pay accelerated and their work-loads reduced.

Nobody told us that henceforth European culture would be down-graded, false historical narratives would be taught to our children and called “history”, or that more and more hours of the school day would be given over to Te Reo and the peddling of demonstrable falsehoods about aspects of cultural relations.

Or that no one in the Ministry of Education would lift a finger to ensure that children were told the facts, rather than codswallop. It is ridiculous to pretend that a language can be taught by sprinkling individual words into sentences. At that level, I could claim fluency in French!

Speaking of codswallop, take a look at the 'sex education' peddled by this government, which is even more pernicious. But yes, these kids will likely grow up speaking pidgin. In another generation or two we could all be speaking pidgin.

Let me be clear. All my life I have argued for Maori to have a fair shake. I marched in the streets in 1960 against an all-white All Black team going to South Africa. Same in 1981 when the South Africans chose to send an all-white team to New Zealand. When as Minister of Internal Affairs I chaired the 1990 Commission it funded many initiatives such as building a dozen new waka to give Maori pride of place at Waitangi in the Queen’s presence on 6 February.

As Minister of Local Government I supported local councils consulting Maori when issues important to them arose. I’m the first to acknowledge that Maori haven’t always been treated fairly. But I abhor the ignorance demonstrated daily by Jacinda Ardern’s government, her acolytes, ministers like Nanaia Mahuta and Willie Jackson, and their bureaucracies in the name of “equity”.

 

self-explanatory

In between all his other commitments, what efforts has Education Minister Hipkins, or his CEO Iona Holsted made to ensure that our school children are taught factually accurate information about Maori and Pakeha history? I’d award them a fail mark on what I’ve seen of the school curriculum. Same for what the Minister of

Let me be clear. All my life I have argued for Maori to have a fair shake. I marched in the streets in 1960 against an all-white All Black team going to South Africa. Same in 1981 when the South Africans chose to send an all-white team to New Zealand. When as

Minister of Internal Affairs I chaired the 1990 Commission it funded many initiatives such as building a dozen new waka to give Maori pride of place at Waitangi in the Queen’s presence on 6 February.

As Minister of Local Government I supported local councils consulting Maori when issues important to them arose. I’m the first to acknowledge that Maori haven’t always been treated fairly. But I abhor the ignorance demonstrated daily by Jacinda Ardern’s government, her acolytes, ministers like Nanaia Mahuta and Willie Jackson, and their bureaucracies in the name of “equity”.

In between all his other commitments, what efforts has Education Minister Hipkins, or his CEO Iona Holsted made to ensure that our school children are taught factually accurate information about Maori and Pakeha history? I’d award them a fail mark on what I’ve seen of the school curriculum. Same for what the Minister of Broadcasting – yes, Willie Jackson – prescribes for RNZ and TV. If those ministers and bureaucrats had to pay fines for the inaccuracies appearing on things under their control they’d be bankrupt.

If only Jacinda, her cabinet and her caucus had been better educated, or read more, they might be embarrassed by what is being done in the name of promoting Maori.Why didn’t they tell us at election time what they intended doing? Why the sudden surge of misleading pro-Maori propaganda the moment the election writs were returned? Is it now the sliding poll support for the Labour government that has led them to step up their preoccupation with Three Waters and a costly re-structuring of the health services in the name of greater control by Maori before they lose office?

The worst aspect of all this is that the government’s relentless pro-Maori push is seriously damaging race relations in New Zealand. The 83 per cent of our population who aren’t Maori – people like Chinese and Indians who have come here to work hard and to get ahead, not to mention the many generations of Europeans – have to watch rewards going to people on the basis of ethnicity rather than work ethic. 

It's called RACISM. Of the first water.

Hard-working, talented Kiwi without a drop of Maori blood – and that’s all that most self-designated Maori possess – are passed over for promotion and a place in the sun under this government. The hermit kingdom they call “Aotearoa”, with its tightly controlled borders, has become a social laboratory aimed at facilitating a takeover of authority by a small racial minority backed up by a false narrative.

 Vive la révolution! This government is determined on, and dedicated to, the overthrow of democracy. It's a pity a man of Michael Bassett's calibre couldn't see that's the way all socialist governments - like his was - are headed.

 

Liberty leading the People
Eugene Delacroix

St Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, Doctor of the Church, on your feastday please pray for us.

St Therese of Lisieux before she entered Carmel