The European Union and Australia overnight announced they would start negotiating a “Security and Defence Partnership” and noted their commitment to “advancing free trade negotiations.”
In a statement announcing the planned defense partnership, the European Commission said it “will provide a framework for current and future cooperation including in areas such as defence industry, cyber and counter-terrorism.” But Brussels stressed the future pact “does not have military deployment obligations.”
This is a very good idea, and one NZ may want to emulate (or join). It is apparent the US is no longer a reliable security partner. NATO is effectively defunct (as Trump has said he will not unconditionally help NATO allies who are attacked), so we need new security alliances. These shouldn’t be obligations to defend, but advancing mutual interests, sharing technology and ensuring forces can deploy together.
GDP grew at 0.8% in the first quarter of 2025 – stronger than even the most optimistic of economists’ forecasts.
Activity increased in the March 2025 quarter across all three high-level industry groups: primary industries, goods-producing industries, and services industries.
The Reserve Bank had forecast 0.4% for the quarter, but more recently, the consensus of economists moved to 0.7%.
That’s a pretty good result. It is only one quarter and with great international uncertainty, no one should think we’re guaranteed to keep growth at these levels. But regardless it is good news.
But there are also hints that she’s still living with some trauma from her time as Prime Minister.
She pre-signed all her books and only takes questions at the event that were submitted in advance. She’s ushered in and out of the room in record time by several large security guards.
I’m sure this is normal for book authors to require questions in advance!
At my Patreon (paywalled) I cover the tactical and strategic issues at play in the Israel-Iran war, and why they lead me to a conclusion that President Trump will authorise US forces to take out the Fordrow nuclear site in Iran.
Ngāti Hine leader Pita Tipene is ruling out a settlement under this Government after remarks made by Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith.
Goldsmith said on Tuesday the Government would not agree to Treaty settlements that disputed whether the Crown is now sovereign.
Under the previous Labour Government, an initial deed of settlement with Te Whānau-ā-Apanui was drawn up which included the first case of a clause agreeing to disagree on who holds sovereignty.
Goldsmith said the coalition Government was uncomfortable with the clause and was not prepared to progress the settlement without it being removed.
Absolutely correct. There can be only one sovereign government in an area. You can have a form of sovereignty within tribal lands such as in the US. But that does not apply in NZ. Maori do not live on reservations. They live in rural areas, suburbs, towns and cities.
Tipene said although his hapū was “dead keen” on progressing a settlement, they would also want a clause like that in the Apanui deed.
“If the Government is going to progress on that basis (of not allowing such clauses), I will be the first one to say it is impossible to progress anything on those grounds.
“Our people have been very, very clear that we want to be proactive and we want to move forward but that is a bottom line that accepting the Crown is sovereign is totally unacceptable.”
This is a line the Government can’t compromise on. If Ngati Hine refuse to settle, then that is their decision.
If Labour want to go into an election promising that sovereignty is negotiable, then good luck to them.
There has been a lot written about Cook Strait ferries lately but far off in the distance, a new ship that will sail between the North and South Islands is slowly making its way here.
Called Livia, the ship has had a fresh coat of paint to transform it from the Stena Line colours into the livery of StraitNZ Bluebridge.
Built in 2008, the ship’s original name was Norman Voyager and it made its maiden voyage that same year between Rosslare, Ireland and the French port of Le Havre.
A number of ferry lines operated the ship until it was bought in 2021 by Stena Line to sail the Baltic Sea. Bluebridge then purchased the ship in March, 2025.
Bluebridge manages to find and purchase suitable ferries without any fuss or costing taxpayers a cent. Why can’t Kiwirail do the same?
The derelict and unsafe Gordon Wilson Flats in Wellington will lose its protected heritage status and become eligible for demolition through an amendment to the Resource Management Act (RMA) in the coming weeks, RMA Reform and Housing Minister Chris Bishop says.
“The Gordon Wilson Flats were used as social housing until 2012, when an engineer’s report showed the building was so unsafe that large slabs of the concrete exterior could come off in an earthquake or even a strong wind. The building has sat vacant since then, becoming more dangerous and more of an eyesore every year,” Mr Bishop says.
99% of Wellingtonians will cheer this news. The flats are horrific.
But amazingly Heritage New Zealand is upset. The Herald reports:
Heritage New Zealand has condemned the Government’s decision to remove protection for a derelict housing block, saying the building is “part of Wellington’s social and architectural landscape”.
They are part of the landscape, but in the same way a giant turd would be.
A week ago Radio NZ ran a tragic story about a teenager who starved to death alone despite the involvement of multiple agencies in their life. They developed anorexia at age 12 (and were sexually abused at age 5) and ended up hospitalised ten times. They died age 17 weighing 30 kgs. The heart break of the parents is wrenching, and their years of battling to try and prevent this end leaves you with despair.
One aspect of the story is that some years after being diagnosed with anorexia and autism, their daughter said she was non-binary and then later she identified as a male. Her parents were not supportive of her proclaimed gender identity on the advice of her long-term psychiatrist:
“The psychiatrist advised us that Vanessa was using the transgender identity as a mask for her continuing anorexia – that Vanessa was saying the reason she didn’t want a curvy, female body was not because she was suffering from anorexia, but because she was really a boy.
“The psychiatrist recommended not affirming Vanessa’s transgender identity.”
The non recognition of Vanessa’s gender identity led to estrangement from her parents, and various government agencies shunned them, and seemingly focused on everything except her anorexia which killed her.
Ani O’Brien and Liam Hehir have both written about the failings of the state in this issue.
Some have been outraged that Radio NZ dared to run a story from the parent’s point of view. They seem more upset by misgendering the dead 17 year old, than the fact they are, well, dead.
To my mind the gender identity part of the story is not the most important. It is the fact a 17 year old under the care of multiple state agencies was allowed to starve to death, and the removal of the compulsory treatment orders that had been in place.
No one can know for sure whether the teenager did truly have gender dysphoria, or whether it was linked to the anorexia. The fact the parents were acting on the advice of the actual psychiatrist who had been involved with their child for half a decade seemed a reasonable thing to do.
It is a position found in standard clinical literature, including journal articles in Transgender Health and the Journal of Eating Disorders. It is true some clinicians and guidelines recommend early affirmation as a form of harm reduction in some complex cases. But there’s just no reason to assume that this wasn’t considered and carefully rejected by the treating professional.
To reduce this kind of judgment to conversion therapy or bigotry is to misunderstand what psychiatry is for. The job of a psychiatrist is not to affirm whatever a patient believes about themselves. It is to assess those beliefs carefully, especially when they may be part of a harmful pattern. This is not cruelty. It is care.
None of the people now attacking the parents or the journalist treated this young person clinically. They weren’t there across the five years of hospitalisations. They weren’t involved in the long-term psychiatric management of the case. Yet many feel entitled to accuse the family of emotional abuse and the reporter of transphobic malpractice.
We acknowledge that there was tension and conflict between Vanessa* and us. We discussed this in detail with Ruth Hill from Radio New Zealand. The challenges in our relationships were painful and it is appalling that the details of the most devastating aspects of our family life is being used by activists to paint us as bad parents.
Children often become very angry with their parents when we have to assert our authority and make decisions we consider to be best for them. We made Vanessa* eat when she did not want to, we took away her access to the internet when she was using it to take part in pro-anorexia forums, we took her to doctors and psychiatrists when she wanted to be left alone with her eating disorder, and yes, we had her hospitalised when she was dangerously ill due to that disorder. She was very angry with us. Doing the right thing by our child was often the very hardest thing.
We object to the portrayal of Vanessa’s* struggles with anorexia, autism, and gender as though they were simply the result of our lack of understanding or ignorance. To be clear, Vanessa* was not “lost” due to her ‘gender identity’. Her anorexia, a long-standing and deeply painful struggle, was the cause of her death. She was 30 kilograms when she died. That is what killed her.
Parenting is never easy, but when your child is autistic, has anorexia, and is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, the challenges can feel overwhelming. As parents, we have always done our best, but the complexity of Vanessa’s* needs and the trauma she carried meant we often had to be the ‘bad guys’ advocating for her best interests when her mental illness was telling her to harm herself.
I can’t even imagine what life must have been like for these parents. I hope those attacking the parents, and Radio NZ for giving them a voice, desist.
Waititi said the removal of the homeless people was “callous attacks” on “vulnerable whānau”.
He said they were woken by police, trespassed like criminals and had their belongings “tipped out, broken, or hauled away like trash”, with some also arrested “for being distressed at the violent way they were being treated under cold, heartless council bylaws”.
He described it as “state-sanctioned cruelty”.
“These whānau are being pushed from footpath to footpath, not into homes. In the harsh winter weather, this kind of treatment is not just unacceptable, it is dangerous.”
He said homelessness was not a lifestyle choice but a failure of successive governments.
That’s wrong for a start. In most cities there are organisations that will take in rough sleepers no questions asked.
Tapsell responded to Waititi’s statement on his Facebook page, saying in her view his comments were “overdramatic”, “radical” and “lies”.
“If you bothered to be present in Rotorua, which you barely are, you’d know these people have been intimidating and threatening others, s***ting, taking and selling drugs, and having sexual intercourse all in the public’s view and causing significant distress to the innocent families (including very young tamariki), workers and tourists walking by.”
She told the Rotorua Daily Post the council had taken action to solve an issue “causing massive concern for our community”.
The behaviour of some in the homeless group was “crossing a line”.
I love Tania. Such a great Mayor who takes no crap.
Whakatāne Mayor Victor Luca has made an appeal to the Government for support to keep Air Chathams flying out of Whakatāne.
A response from Associate Transport Minister James Meager has provided hope, though no firm promises.
Earlier this year, Air Chathams requested additional support from Whakatāne District Council, saying it would otherwise have to discontinue its route between Whakatāne and Auckland.
The council refused the majority of Air Chathams’ requests, taking the stance that it should not be up to ratepayers to fund a commercial operation that a large portion of the district’s population did not use.
This is the right call by the Council. The Government should make the same call.
Neither taxpayers nor ratepayers should subsidise airlines.
He pointed out that, in the 2023 financial year, Air NZ made a $412 million net profit.
“A subsidy of $1m to Air Chathams from Air NZ profits would represent only 0.2% of that.”
This would be subsidising mainly wealthy people.
Let’s say for the $1 million subsidy wanted you get one flight a day to and from Whakatane. Probably a Saab340 with 34 passenger capacity. On average 75% of seats filled so say 26 passengers a day.
That works out to a subsidy of around $105 per passenger. And many of this epassengers might be repeat travellers who have work in Auckland so wealthy Whakatane business persons might get $2,000 a year or so to subsidise their flying.
Astonishing the UK Government regards concerns over a lack of integration by certain cultural groups as a sign of extreme right wing terrorist ideology.
I would estimate around 70% of the UK has concerns over a lack of integration by certain ethnic and cultural groups. It is the inability to rationally discuss these concerns that leads to extremism.
In the event my statement “Our tough on guy on crime got convicted” has been interpreted as a reference to former Act MP David Garrett, I wish to make it clear that Mr Garrett was not convicted of a crime while a Member of Parliament. I apologise to Mr Garrett for any embarrassment or distress my statement may have caused.”
The PSA would have you think that the Government has culled a huge proportion of the public service, as they hysterically oppose even the most minor reductions in staff numbers. Of course they have a self interest – fewer public servants means fewer PSA membership fees.
The media have not helped. Radio NZ and others breathlessly report every minor restructuring with coverage that no private sector employer gets. The result is that the average member of the public thinks that the public service has been shrunk by a quarter. Curia asked in a May poll how many public servants are there today, telling them there were 65,000 at the change of government. The average answer was 50,000.
The correct answer is 63,000. If you want examples of misinformation, this is it.
This chart tells such a story. Labour Governments love increasing public servant numbers. Not good at increasing outcomes in health or education, but great at hiring more public servants. The Clark Government increased the number of FTEs by 15,650 or 54%.
The Key/English Government did remarkably well in terms of restraint. A modest increase of 2,500 or 16% – less than population growth.
Then just six years of Ardern and Hipkins saw a huge 18,500 extra FTEs, which was a 39% increase.
Now give the Luxon Government credit. It is the only Government to have ever decreased the size of the public service. The Key/English Government flatlined it for a bit, but this Government has seen a decrease of around 2,500. That’s not nothing, but it is very modest being a 4% reduction. All that outcry and fuss that the world is ending, over a 4% reduction.
So basically the size of the public service in March 2025 is the same as June 2023, three months before the election.
I wrote recently how the PM dislikes taking a stand on issues, until he sees how the land lies. That may have be a better approach before he came out guns blazing reprimanding the Israel Defence Force, who stopped activist Greta’s passage to Gaza to deliver her Aid, as he appears to have got his facts muddled.
He was probably reliant on reports from our activist media or our left wing public servants who, weirdly, appear to support Hamas and keep him in the dark as to the truth.. Bad decision.
I can put the PM’s mind at rest that Greta’s Aid will in fact get to its destination, more likely than if she and her activist friends were left to their own devices (as he desired) and Hamas got hold of it and reverted to their old ways of stealing much of it and SELLING the rest to their citizens.
This is what they were doing when UNRWA were running it and the PM and Mr Peters (misguidely) decided last year to continue to send Kiwi’s hard earned tax dollars to the UN agency, UNRWA, who for years have worked in tandem with the terrorists.
This could have been discovered if they had strayed outside the public service and the left wing media’s biased beliefs and coverage of Gaza, (like me and many other New Zealanders) and read some conservative reporting which is not consumed with hatred for Israel and concentrates more on the facts.
For example (more recently) it is highly unlikely that shootings are happening around the new food distribution areas, as people are arriving in their thousands, with IDF protection, to collect food, but CNN et al, continue to print Hamas reports that the IDF are killing its citizens.
Hamas and UNRWA have lost control of food distribution so in desperation, Hamas keep their propoganda going. The new GHF could be a master stroke by Trump’s administration as it may contribute to faster elimination of (under seige) Hamas by the IDF as they have lost a food source and importantly, an improved, reliable food supply for hungry Gazans.
Apparently the most common comment from Gazans collecting food is: Is it free? (see link below)
Greta was not kidnapped as our media suggested. (more likely she was saved from herself!) The whole thing was filmed and reported by the IDF no doubt to cover themselves when the activists and their propaganda arm, the media, came out with their own version:
“The “selfie yacht” of the “celebrities” is safely making its way to the shores of Israel. The passengers are expected to return to their home countries. While Greta and others attempted to stage a media provocation whose sole purpose was to gain publicity — and which included less than a single truckload of aid — more than 1,200 aid trucks have entered Gaza from Israel within the past two weeks, and in addition, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has distributed close to 11 million meals directly to civilians in Gaza. There are ways to deliver aid to the Gaza Strip — they do not involve Instagram selfies. The tiny amount of aid that was on the yacht and not consumed by the “celebrities” will be transferred to Gaza through real humanitarian channels.”
The 119 individuals and families profiled are now collectively worth $102.1 billion – up from $95.55 billion last year. To put this in perspective, that’s more than 40% of the nation’s GDP concentrated in the hands of fewer than 120 families.
The column starts badly with this economically illiterate comparison. This is comparing wealth or assets to income. They are totally different things. The 119 families do not control 40% of the nation’s GDP (the Government almost does though!). GDP measures basically national income, not assets.
The estimated net worth of NZ households is $2.44 trillion so the rich list represent around 4.2% of household net worth.
Atop the pyramid sit the Mowbray brothers with an eye-watering $20 billion fortune from their Zuru toys empire – a single family’s net worth greater than the entire annual budget of the Ministry of Health.
This socialistic way of looking at things puzzles me. It seems to see wealth as a zero sum game. That somehow if the Mowbray brothers had not been successful, then that $20 billion would magically be elsewhere, say with the government, and available for health funding.
I understand why socialism and Marxism appealed to people around the 1900s. Wealth came very much from land (which was a zero sum game) and inheritance. Your family may have worked on the land for generations earning a pittance while the family who owned it for generations raked in the money. But that is not the economy today.
Let us look at the Mowbrays as an example. Did they earn their money through inheritance. No as an 18 year old Nick and his brother set up a toy factory that became a global giant. They now employ over 8,500 staff and sell throughout the world. They make their money because they are globally successful. Would NZ be better off if the Mowbrays and Drurys of the world didn’t live in New Zealand? No we would be poorer.
One family. Twenty billion dollars. It’s a scale of wealth almost impossible to fathom in a country of 5 million.
So should they move to a larger country? That would be a great win. Or should they be less successful?
One powerful indicator of the government’s true intent with reigning in the way they spend taxpayer’s income is the size of the Public Sector workforce.
“Government personnel spending in [the March quarter] has also increased by 3.1%.
He says that the big change in the fiscal stance, the tightening of the reins, have not been seen yet, and the question is if it will really be delivered.”
In my main area of interest, the incredibly ineffective Ministry of Education remains hugely bloated at nearly 3,900 FTEs and heading nowhere near the promised reduction to 2,700. Programmes for students get cut but not bureaucrat numbers.
Public sector incomes are well above those in the private sector.
In terms of the effects of the economy – this is a case of the horse riding the jockey (into the ground) – and it shows the coalition government has little real intent to reign in the size of the public sector & deficits.
While Māori business success is worth celebrating, the Crown’s quiet offloading of Treaty obligations onto non-Māori citizens is tilting the market—and it’s time we talked about it.
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There is much to celebrate in the Māori business renaissance. The recent announcement of the Investment Summit on Māori Business Success, hosted with fanfare and optimism by the New Zealand Government, marks yet another milestone in the growing visibility and sophistication of Māori enterprise. The summit’s purpose—to connect Māori businesses with investors and unlock future capital—was noble. Its language was hopeful. Its ambition clear.
Māori businesses are blossoming across sectors. From land-based industries to tech startups, from iwi-owned agribusinesses to boutique cultural exporters, the Māori economy is carving out a strong identity built on heritage, resilience, and innovation. Such strength deserves applause. No rational observer would wish failure upon any business community—let alone one that is shaking off the shackles of historic dispossession.
But economic growth does not happen in a vacuum. When investment is drawn disproportionately into one sector or group because of legislative scaffolding rather than merit alone, we must ask whether the playing field remains fair. The current policy architecture in New Zealand increasingly suggests that success for Māori businesses is being primed not just by effort, strategy, and creativity, but also by a regulatory and fiscal environment that shifts risk, cost, and treaty responsibility onto others. And this comes with consequences.
This is not a complaint about Māori. Nor is it a hidden racial critique. Let that be stated clearly and early. Māori success in business is something to be admired and emulated. Rather, this is a critique of how the Crown, in its anxiety to atone for historical wrongs, has created a market environment in which non-Māori businesses may find themselves subsidising their own competitive disadvantage.
Consider the practical mechanics of treaty implementation. As the Crown broadens its application of Te Tiriti o Waitangi across law, policy, and procurement processes, we see increasing examples of obligations being imposed not on the Crown itself, but on individual citizens, councils, contractors, and service providers. Whether it’s local government consultation practices, education curricula, or regulatory frameworks that demand “alignment with iwi aspirations,” a notable trend emerges: the cost of Treaty compliance is being offloaded.
When these obligations are written into legislation or funding criteria, Māori businesses—by virtue of their identity—are naturally positioned to meet them with ease. Non-Māori businesses must then retrofit themselves with external consultants, cultural advisors, and compliance officers simply to keep pace. What began as a moral commitment by the Crown risks transforming into a bureaucratic and financial burden borne disproportionately by others.
This divergence is already observable in public procurement. Many government tenders now include language requiring demonstrated commitment to Te Tiriti principles, co-design with iwi, or track records of engaging Māori stakeholders. For Māori-owned enterprises, such criteria are either inherent or administratively straightforward. For others, it becomes a costly box-ticking exercise, one often characterised by performative consultation and superficial alignment.
Over time, this has a gravitational effect on capital. Investors—who are rational, bottom-line-driven actors—are drawn toward businesses that can move seamlessly through regulatory and funding gates. Māori enterprises, under this configuration, become attractive not just for their performance or potential, but for the compliance discount they enjoy. This is not a consequence of Māori manipulation, but of Crown abdication.
One might argue that this imbalance is simply a form of redress. That after decades—or centuries—of economic exclusion, it is right and just that Māori businesses be given a tailwind. That argument holds some moral appeal. But if the cost of redress is passed not to the Crown that caused the harm, but to fellow citizens who did not, then the policy ceases to be reparative and becomes redistributive in a dangerous way. It risks breeding resentment, and—more gravely—undermining the legitimacy of the redress itself.
Already we hear murmurs across New Zealand’s SME sector. Business owners are frustrated not because Māori are succeeding, but because they are succeeding under different rules. Not because Māori are advantaged, but because others are increasingly disadvantaged by policy tools that favour cultural alignment over commercial merit. This is not an appeal for sameness, but for fairness. Not for the flattening of difference, but for the recognition that fairness requires shared responsibility, not selective imposition.
The Government’s framing of the Māori Investment Summit was itself revealing. Minister Willie Jackson spoke of Māori as “natural entrepreneurs” and “guardians of economic potential,” invoking an identity-infused rationale for why Māori businesses deserve not only attention but preferential treatment. But where does this leave the dairy farmer in Southland? The toolmaker in Hamilton? The immigrant-owned café in New Plymouth? They are not invited to investment summits. They are not beneficiaries of treaty-driven procurement policy. They are citizens too—but find themselves slowly edged out of the national narrative about economic aspiration.
What then is the solution?
It begins by recognising that two wrongs do not make a right. Correcting past injustices should not create new injustices—however subtle—in the present. The Treaty obligations must be upheld by the Crown through its own mechanisms, not by exporting its obligations to private actors. Where Māori success requires investment, let that investment come through principled, transparent Crown channels—grants, equity instruments, capability-building—without distorting the commercial field on which all others must operate.
Secondly, we need courage to separate cultural recognition from economic policy. Cultural identity is vital. But when policy frameworks begin to reward identity over competence, the market begins to warp. We must not allow the principle of equity to become a proxy for preferentialism. If we do, we do not elevate Māori—we reduce the dignity of their achievements by framing them as state-dependent.
Thirdly, there must be compensation mechanisms where legislation imposes treaty duties onto non-Crown entities. If a council is compelled to fund cultural engagement plans to fulfil a duty the Crown has towards Māori, that cost must be reimbursed. If a contractor must hire an iwi liaison to qualify for a government tender, that is a treaty cost, not a commercial cost, and should be treated as such. Only in this way can we restore a sense of economic balance.
Finally, we must re-centre the idea of a shared future. Māori prosperity is essential to New Zealand’s wellbeing. But so is the prosperity of every other community. If the state gives the impression—however unintentionally—that one group’s success must be purchased by another’s restraint, we poison the well of social cohesion. The economy is not a zero-sum game, but legislation and procurement rules can make it feel that way.
We are all walking forward together. There is no virtue in resentment, but neither is there virtue in silence when imbalance emerges. New Zealand cannot afford a business environment where cultural taxonomy determines access to capital, or where Treaty compliance becomes a barrier for non-Māori innovation.
If Māori enterprise is to lead, let it lead by example, by excellence, and by ingenuity—not by the crutch of Crown overcompensation. And if the Crown is sincere in its obligations, let it bear the costs itself, not defer them onto the shoulders of private citizens and businesses merely trying to build, compete, and contribute.
For when one part of the market is lifted by genuine success, we all win. But when one part is lifted by the state while another is weighed down by regulatory obligation, the market becomes not a forum for exchange but a theatre of inequality.
We can do better than that. And Māori business, if left to shine on its own terms, surely will.
On February 13, 2025, Hamit Coskun set fire to his copy of the Quran outside the Turkish embassy in London. Coskun—an atheist who fled persecution from the Turkish authorities in 2022—was there to protest Islamic extremism in his home country. For this act, he was assaulted and knocked to the ground by a bystander, kicked by another passerby, and charged with a “religiously aggravated public order offense” by the Crown Prosecution Service.
At his sentencing, a UK district judge told Coskun that his protest was “provocative,” concluding that he had been driven by “a deep-seated hatred of Islam and its followers.” But in the account below, Coskun insists that he was attacking ideas, not people. He warns that the same religious authoritarianism he fled in his home country is now infecting his adoptive country, too.
So he got assaulted and beaten up for what should be a lawful act, but for good measure he was prosecuted also.
Although the man who assaulted me is being prosecuted separately, the Crown says his action helped to prove my guilt. It argued that because I was attacked, my behavior must not have been peaceful. Under this logic, “disorderly” no longer depends on conduct, but on how offended or aggressive someone else chooses to be in response.
This is like the logic that saw Lucy Rogers arrested for her peaceful counter-protest. The more violent someone may be against you, then you should be arrested as a consequence!
If every protest against Islam is presumed to be a protest against Muslims, if criticism of doctrine is redefined as hatred of believers, then space for lawful criticism of that religion—or any religion—collapses. My case turned on that blurring of categories.
I think the Church of Latter Day Saints was stated by a fraudster and is basically a big con. However I also think individual Mormons are some of the best people around. You can have a negative view of a religion, and not at all have a negative view of individuals in that religion.
To be fair, somewhat harder with Scientology!
The Free Speech Union funded my defense and stands ready to provide any assistance needed to get this judgment overturned. Because this is no longer just about me. It is about whether Britain still believes that no religion is beyond criticism, especially when it shapes public life and political power. That was the principle I was imprisoned for defending in Turkey, and it was the principle I was defending outside the Turkish consulate. I have no intention of abandoning that fight.
A research proposal on cosmic inflation from an acclaimed German quantum physicist is rejected because she did not address the relevance of her findings to “sex, gender, and diversity.” Could it be because… there is none?
A respected peer-reviewed physics journal publishes a paper on introductory physics courses that identifies whiteboards as complicit “with white organizational cultures, where ideas and experiences gain value (become more central) when written down.” No mention of blackboards.
A collection of 67 papers published in the Journal of Chemical Education includes “Decolonizing the Undergraduate Chemistry Curriculum” and “Integrating Antiracism, Social Justice and Equity Themes in a Biochemistry Class.” What’s next—the Periodic Table of Intersectional Elements?
And we wonder why faith in institutions is falling.
We have made so much moral progress since the Enlightenment—particularly since the civil rights and women’s rights movements that launched the modern campus protest movement in the first place—that our standards of what is intolerable have been ratcheted ever upward to the point where many people are hypersensitive to things that, by comparison, didn’t even appear on the cultural radar half a century ago. Thus it is that modern moral crusaders have forgotten how far we’ve come since the abolition of slavery, the elimination of the death penalty in most countries, the franchise for all adult citizens, children’s rights, women’s rights, gay rights, animal rights, and even the rights of future generations to inhabit a livable planet. In other words, most of the big moral movements have been fought and won, leaving today’s moral crusaders with comparatively smaller causes to promote and evils to protest, resulting in demands for safe spaces and trigger warnings, and paroxysms thrown over microaggressions and misgendering trans people.
The fight for mandatory trigger warnings!
In his magisterial overview of this movement, The End of Woke, Andrew Doyle documents that most of the claims made by far-left progressives are endorsed by a slim margin of people—only around 8% of the population of both the UK and the United States, according to a poll conducted by the organization More in Common.
But they get backed by a complaint or scared media, and kowtowing corporates.
The liberal tradition that evolved out of the Enlightenment is grounded in individual autonomy. It is the individual who is the primary moral agent because it is the individual who survives and flourishes, or who suffers and dies. It is individual sentient beings who perceive, emote, respond, love, feel, and suffer—not populations, races, genders, groups, or nations. Historically, immoral abuses have been most rampant, and body counts have run the highest, when the individual is sacrificed for the good of the group. Rights protect individuals, not groups; in fact, most rights (such as those enumerated in the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution) protect individuals from being discriminated against as members of a group, such as by race, creed, color, gender, and sexual orientation.
Contrary to this liberal tradition, collectivism holds that individuals are expendable parts of a larger whole: the band, tribe, state, nation, religion, class, race, ethnicity, gender, and countless intersectional variations on these collective cohorts. As such, individual identity is lost to what Andrew Doyle calls identitarian collectivism, for which “the illiberal left and the authoritarian right both share this habitual inclination towards collective thinking.”
