Te Ao with MOANA – The Covid19 backlash

1. Kia ora Moana:

   FYI a copy of a letter sent out to our kahui (Hahi Mihinare) this evening:

   Thank you again for sharing the gospel on Monday evening. …There is however a serious matter which I want to bring up for discussion. That is our right to hold religious services. I expect that everyone knows the government, in its wisdom, has allowed up to 100 people to crowd into a casino but a maximum of 10 are allowed in church or home church meetings.

   So what is going on here? Dr Paul Buchanan, a member of the New Zealand intelligence community who has close links to the New Zealand intelligence services (GCSB and SIS) justifies the government’s discriminatory response as follows:

   “Stage (sic) 2 is based on opening up commerce, with some social restrictions still in place. Education is critical for commerce in several ways. Services are critical to economic well-being. Religion is a social construct based on belief that is not economically essential. Big diff.
   In medicine, the environment, engineering, economics, threat assessment, even political forecasting, among so many other material things, science must and will trump belief. With CV-19 science must prevail over belief. …
   A secular democratic regime can, should and most often does value families and society, and its social policies demonstrate this. The level 2 re-opening is business driven because NZ is a capitalist country, and everyone’s welfare depends on capitalist survival, not churches.
   So long as the economic imperatives of a capitalist society remain a paramount concern of govt, then commercial concerns will supersede (much variegated) spiritual ones. Hence the pro-business incrementalism of the govt approach. They respond to structural necessity, not values.
   And that is the bottom line. NZ is a capitalist society.”

   What I had surmised to be the logic behind the government’s decision is now confirmed by an insider of the “regime”.

   Christians should not demand special treatment, but neither should they allow a hostile regime to prohibit them from practicing their religion.

   I hear that Brian Tamaki has gone ahead with his Destiny Church services in defiance of the government. I believe all Christians and people of all faiths should follow his example.

   I have supported the government’s efforts to stamp out Covid-19, but I will not submit to its efforts to carry on further and attempt to stamp out religion.

   Among the other disturbing comments coming from supporters of the Ardern government, this one from Dr Liz Gordon a barrister and former Green Party Member of Parliament, justifying illegal abuse of power by the New Zealand government in its efforts to eliminate what Dr Gordon calls “the freedom virus”:

   “The point is, that there was such a strong support for a rationally argued programme of action that the legal base did not matter. Politics, not the law, reigned supreme…. New Zealand was remarkably free of the ‘freedom’ virus that has attacked other countries and jurisdictions. ”

   In Dr Gordon’s opinion the rule of law is an unnecessary distraction from “a rationally argued programme of action”. Many other supporters of the Ardern government are now making the case for fascism (although they prefer to use the phrase “the dictatorship of the people”) in New Zealand, and faith based groups have become their primary target.

   Is it not time for our minita and pihopa to take a stand in defence of the faith?

2. Thank you Te Moana.
   One has to wonder what influence the five eyes consortium of governments has on the realistic implementation of the Treaty; what are the real, on the ground effects of five seemingly disparate nations sharing information and technologies etc which Joe Public is unaware of and maybe not allowed to ask about.
   I have been following some facebook posts about regional checkpoints and cannot understand the indignation expressed regarding their vigilance. If iwi seek to protect their whenua, good on them.

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