are sociopathic in their pursuit of profit. Institutionally, they show the same characteristic behaviours as individuals with sociopathic tendencies: callous unconcern for the safety of others, incapacity to experience guilt, repeated lying and conning others for profit.” (emphasis added)
Left largely unsaid was the implication that, in acting as Big Pharma’s enforcers, many leading politicians reveal themselves to be sociopaths.
To those who still trust those whom we elect to rule, this may be hard to swallow, but as Harvard clinical psychologist Martha Stout showed in her book The Sociopath Next Door, sociopaths are surprisingly common.
As one reviewer put it (emphasis added):
We are accustomed to think of sociopaths as violent criminals, but in The Sociopath Next Door, Harvard psychologist Martha Stout reveals that a shocking 4 percent of ordinary people—one in twenty-five—has an often undetected mental disorder, the chief symptom of which is that that person possesses no conscience. He or she has no ability whatsoever to feel shame, guilt, or remorse. One in twenty-five everyday Americans, therefore, is secretly a sociopath. They could be your colleague, your neighbor, even family. And they can do literally anything at all and feel absolutely no guilt.
How do we recognize the remorseless? One of their chief characteristics is a kind of glow or charisma that makes sociopaths more charming or interesting than the other people around them. They’re more spontaneous, more intense, more complex, or even sexier than everyone else, making them tricky to identify and leaving us easily seduced. Fundamentally, sociopaths are different because they cannot love. Sociopaths learn early on to show sham emotion, but underneath they are indifferent to others’ suffering.
To normal people there is an unspoken understanding that to receive, one must be prepared to give. This ‘golden rule’ is learned unconsciously in childhood as an essential part of socialisation, but sociopaths have no capacity for such learning, or have lost that capacity.
There is no reciprocity. It’s all take.
Sociopathy is not a mental illness but a personality disorder. Whilst sociopaths cognitively distinguish between right and wrong, they don’t feel the difference emotionally.
What makes sociopaths so dangerous is that they are often skilled at acting as if they feel the difference, which is why they are so adept at deception. This enables them to take decisions without the need to take into account complicating moral considerations of conscience that put such inconvenient constraints on the rest of us.
Unsurprisingly, sociopaths are over-represented in business, finance, and politics, in which power plays a dominant role. It is most especially in politics that the greatest destruction is wreaked.
Politicians like to present themselves as being ‘of the people’. But they are not.
The most quintessentially human characteristic is the capacity for empathy. Lacking this, they are not truly human. A writer in the Corbett Report, described sociopaths as “para-Homo sapiens”.
They don’t care about us but, by their ability to act as if they do, we fail to see through the mask, and give them our votes.
An illustrative case study is Jacinda Ardern, who became Prime Minister of New Zealand in 2017.
Her concern for others evidently began early, according to David Hill’s children’s book ‘Taking the Lead’:
When Jacinda was little, she wanted to be a clown. But when she saw schoolmates who didn’t have lunch, or even shoes, she knew she had to do something. Some kids laughed at her for wanting to help people so much, or said she couldn’t do it. But that didn’t stop Jacinda.
Having realised her passion was for helping others, at 17 she joined the Labour Party. She went on to study for a degree in Communication Studies in politics and public relations at the University of Waikato.
Following university, she worked as a researcher for Phil Goff and Helen Clark. She later spent some time in New York where, ever mindful of the needs of others, particularly those less fortunate than herself, she did volunteer work in a soup kitchen. Ardern moved to London, England, in 2006, where she became a senior policy adviser in a policy unit of the UK Cabinet Office in the government of Tony Blair.
Her first significant step up the socialist ladder came at age 27 when, in January 2008, she was elected president of the International Union of Socialist Youth (IUSY) for a two-year term.
Half way through her IUSY term of office, Ardern became a list MP for the Labour Party, while continuing as President of the IUSY.
Then, after the 2011 election she entered Parliament as a list MP, and after the 2014 election, still as List MP, she became shadow spokesperson for Justice, Children, Small Business, and Arts & Culture under the new leader, Andrew Little.
Also in 2014, and significant in light of later events, she became one of the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders at the young age of 33, while still a list MP.
In the February 2017 General Election, Ardern became an MP, winning the Mount Albert constituency in a landslide. And after the resignation of Annette King in March, she was elected deputy leader of the Labour Party.
Five months later, only weeks before the 2017 general election, Andrew Little resigned as leader, following disastrously low polling. The same day, August 1, Ardern was unanimously elected leader at a caucus meeting, becoming the youngest ever leader of the Labour Party at 37.
In the general election held on 23 September 2017, Ardern retained her seat by a solid majority, but though Labour increased its number of seats to 46, the best result since it lost power in 2008, National had 56 seats. The leader of New Zealand First, Winston Peters held the balance of power, and would have been expected to form a coalition with National.
Surprisingly, and for reasons best known to himself, Peters went with Labour, forming a minority coalition. As a result, Jacinda Ardern became New Zealand’s third female prime minister.
The first eighteen months of her premiership were relatively uneventful. Then came a series of events that catapulted her into the international spotlight as the ‘world leader in empathy’.
On 15 March, 2019, an Australian terrorist shot and killed 51 worshippers at a Christchurch mosque. The victims of New Zealand’s ‘darkest day’ were comforted by Jacinda Ardern whose skilfully chosen words “they are us” expressed the national outpouring of sympathy, and her wearing of a hijab symbolised her sense of unity with the victims.
Then, on Dec 10, Whakaari White Island erupted, killing 22 people. Again, Ardern was offering comforting words, this time in parliament:
“Our hearts go out to the families of those who are injured, missing, or deceased. Among those injured or missing are people from Australia, the United States, the UK, China, Germany, Malaysia, as well as New Zealand. To those who have lost or are missing family and friends, we share in your grief and sorrow, and we are devastated.”
Then came the Covid ‘pandemic’. On 14 March 2020, Ardern said that anyone entering the country from midnight 15 March would have to self-isolate for 14 days. And on 19 March she stated that New Zealand’s borders would be closed to all non-citizens and non-permanent residents from 20 March. Ardern announced that New Zealand would be under a nationwide lockdown from 25 March.
Ardern’s handling of Covid-19 garnered international praise for her ‘strong leadership’. Her address to the nation on 23 March, 2020 was described by Dr Suze Wilson of Massey Business School as a “masterclass in crisis communication”.
On October 17 Ardern won a landslide victory in the general election, in which Labour achieved an overall majority of 65 seats out of 120, enough to govern alone, and the first time a political party had won an overall majority since the beginning of the MMP proportional representation.
In May 2021, while still at the height of her popularity, “Jacinda Ardern: Leading with Empathy” by Carl Harte and Supriya Vani was published. It was described by the publisher as “a major biography of one of the most important and inspirational leaders of the twenty-first century”.
But it was not to last. By 2022 Ardern’s popularity had plummeted from an approval rating of 70% in early 2021 to 30% by the end of 2022.
Perhaps she took this as an omen, for on 19 January 2023, at a press conference in Napier, she announced her resignation, giving her reason:
“. . . . .I believe that leading a country is the most privileged job anyone could ever have, but also one of the more challenging. You cannot, and should not do it unless you have a full tank, plus, a bit in reserve for those unexpected challenges. . . . . “
Ardern had been the darling of the media, especially overseas. After her shock resignation there was an outpouring of eulogies, some verging on the sycophantic:
As one reviewer put it (emphasis added):
We are accustomed to think of sociopaths as violent criminals, but in The Sociopath Next Door, Harvard psychologist Martha Stout reveals that a shocking 4 percent of ordinary people—one in twenty-five—has an often undetected mental disorder, the chief symptom of which is that that person possesses no conscience. He or she has no ability whatsoever to feel shame, guilt, or remorse. One in twenty-five everyday Americans, therefore, is secretly a sociopath. They could be your colleague, your neighbor, even family. And they can do literally anything at all and feel absolutely no guilt.
How do we recognize the remorseless? One of their chief characteristics is a kind of glow or charisma that makes sociopaths more charming or interesting than the other people around them. They’re more spontaneous, more intense, more complex, or even sexier than everyone else, making them tricky to identify and leaving us easily seduced. Fundamentally, sociopaths are different because they cannot love. Sociopaths learn early on to show sham emotion, but underneath they are indifferent to others’ suffering.
To normal people there is an unspoken understanding that to receive, one must be prepared to give. This ‘golden rule’ is learned unconsciously in childhood as an essential part of socialisation, but sociopaths have no capacity for such learning, or have lost that capacity.
There is no reciprocity. It’s all take.
Sociopathy is not a mental illness but a personality disorder. Whilst sociopaths cognitively distinguish between right and wrong, they don’t feel the difference emotionally.
What makes sociopaths so dangerous is that they are often skilled at acting as if they feel the difference, which is why they are so adept at deception. This enables them to take decisions without the need to take into account complicating moral considerations of conscience that put such inconvenient constraints on the rest of us.
Unsurprisingly, sociopaths are over-represented in business, finance, and politics, in which power plays a dominant role. It is most especially in politics that the greatest destruction is wreaked.
Politicians like to present themselves as being ‘of the people’. But they are not.
The most quintessentially human characteristic is the capacity for empathy. Lacking this, they are not truly human. A writer in the Corbett Report, described sociopaths as “para-Homo sapiens”.
They don’t care about us but, by their ability to act as if they do, we fail to see through the mask, and give them our votes.
* * *
An illustrative case study is Jacinda Ardern, who became Prime Minister of New Zealand in 2017.
Her concern for others evidently began early, according to David Hill’s children’s book ‘Taking the Lead’:
When Jacinda was little, she wanted to be a clown. But when she saw schoolmates who didn’t have lunch, or even shoes, she knew she had to do something. Some kids laughed at her for wanting to help people so much, or said she couldn’t do it. But that didn’t stop Jacinda.
Having realised her passion was for helping others, at 17 she joined the Labour Party. She went on to study for a degree in Communication Studies in politics and public relations at the University of Waikato.
Following university, she worked as a researcher for Phil Goff and Helen Clark. She later spent some time in New York where, ever mindful of the needs of others, particularly those less fortunate than herself, she did volunteer work in a soup kitchen. Ardern moved to London, England, in 2006, where she became a senior policy adviser in a policy unit of the UK Cabinet Office in the government of Tony Blair.
Her first significant step up the socialist ladder came at age 27 when, in January 2008, she was elected president of the International Union of Socialist Youth (IUSY) for a two-year term.
Half way through her IUSY term of office, Ardern became a list MP for the Labour Party, while continuing as President of the IUSY.
Then, after the 2011 election she entered Parliament as a list MP, and after the 2014 election, still as List MP, she became shadow spokesperson for Justice, Children, Small Business, and Arts & Culture under the new leader, Andrew Little.
Also in 2014, and significant in light of later events, she became one of the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders at the young age of 33, while still a list MP.
In the February 2017 General Election, Ardern became an MP, winning the Mount Albert constituency in a landslide. And after the resignation of Annette King in March, she was elected deputy leader of the Labour Party.
Five months later, only weeks before the 2017 general election, Andrew Little resigned as leader, following disastrously low polling. The same day, August 1, Ardern was unanimously elected leader at a caucus meeting, becoming the youngest ever leader of the Labour Party at 37.
In the general election held on 23 September 2017, Ardern retained her seat by a solid majority, but though Labour increased its number of seats to 46, the best result since it lost power in 2008, National had 56 seats. The leader of New Zealand First, Winston Peters held the balance of power, and would have been expected to form a coalition with National.
Surprisingly, and for reasons best known to himself, Peters went with Labour, forming a minority coalition. As a result, Jacinda Ardern became New Zealand’s third female prime minister.
* * *
The first eighteen months of her premiership were relatively uneventful. Then came a series of events that catapulted her into the international spotlight as the ‘world leader in empathy’.
On 15 March, 2019, an Australian terrorist shot and killed 51 worshippers at a Christchurch mosque. The victims of New Zealand’s ‘darkest day’ were comforted by Jacinda Ardern whose skilfully chosen words “they are us” expressed the national outpouring of sympathy, and her wearing of a hijab symbolised her sense of unity with the victims.
Then, on Dec 10, Whakaari White Island erupted, killing 22 people. Again, Ardern was offering comforting words, this time in parliament:
“Our hearts go out to the families of those who are injured, missing, or deceased. Among those injured or missing are people from Australia, the United States, the UK, China, Germany, Malaysia, as well as New Zealand. To those who have lost or are missing family and friends, we share in your grief and sorrow, and we are devastated.”
Then came the Covid ‘pandemic’. On 14 March 2020, Ardern said that anyone entering the country from midnight 15 March would have to self-isolate for 14 days. And on 19 March she stated that New Zealand’s borders would be closed to all non-citizens and non-permanent residents from 20 March. Ardern announced that New Zealand would be under a nationwide lockdown from 25 March.
Ardern’s handling of Covid-19 garnered international praise for her ‘strong leadership’. Her address to the nation on 23 March, 2020 was described by Dr Suze Wilson of Massey Business School as a “masterclass in crisis communication”.
On October 17 Ardern won a landslide victory in the general election, in which Labour achieved an overall majority of 65 seats out of 120, enough to govern alone, and the first time a political party had won an overall majority since the beginning of the MMP proportional representation.
In May 2021, while still at the height of her popularity, “Jacinda Ardern: Leading with Empathy” by Carl Harte and Supriya Vani was published. It was described by the publisher as “a major biography of one of the most important and inspirational leaders of the twenty-first century”.
But it was not to last. By 2022 Ardern’s popularity had plummeted from an approval rating of 70% in early 2021 to 30% by the end of 2022.
Perhaps she took this as an omen, for on 19 January 2023, at a press conference in Napier, she announced her resignation, giving her reason:
“. . . . .I believe that leading a country is the most privileged job anyone could ever have, but also one of the more challenging. You cannot, and should not do it unless you have a full tank, plus, a bit in reserve for those unexpected challenges. . . . . “
Ardern had been the darling of the media, especially overseas. After her shock resignation there was an outpouring of eulogies, some verging on the sycophantic:
- The UK Daily Mail reported that Ardern had said that she “wanted to be remembered for her kindness”.
- “Thank you for your partnership and your friendship – and for your empathetic, compassionate, strong, and steady leadership over these past several years.” –Justin Trudeau, Canadian premier.
- “Her leadership was shaped and defined by a series of national and international crises – and her responses in those pressured moments, which repeatedly emphasised the values of empathy, humanity and kindness, will likely form the standout legacy of her political career. – Tess McClure, The Guardian
- New Zealand’s Ardern leaves legacy of kindness, disappointments – Praveen Menon, Reuters
- “Empathetic, humane” – Toby Manhire NZ journalist.
- Jacinda Ardern brought ‘compassion and kindness as well as strength’ to her leadership – Sky News
- “Jacinda Ardern reminds us that kindness and strength are not mutually exclusive” –Anthony Albanese, Australian Prime Minister
Among the voters, not all the sentiments were as obsequious. Many were abusive; “Ding Dong the witch is gone” was one of the milder ones. The most extreme compared her to Hitler. Part of a poster read:
WANTED
FOR THE OFFENCES OF
Treason – Genocide – Fraud – Murder – Terrorism – War Crimes – Violations of the Conventions of Human Rights – Violations of the Nuremberg Code – Malfeasance & Misconduct in Public Office
The near-universal response of New Zealand media was to accuse Ardern’s detractors of an unrelenting campaign of vicious, often crude, misogyny.
The only journalist to deal objectively with the issue of such ‘misogyny’ was Graham Adams in an op-ed piece “The martyrdom of Jacinda Ardern”, in which he puts media bias in the spotlight:
The glaring double standard in what abuse is tolerated for men and women is perhaps best exemplified by the reaction in 2017 to a five-metre-high statue of then Environment Minister Nick Smith showing him defecating as he crouched over a glass with his genitals exposed.
Artist Sam Mahon made the statue [out of horse dung] as a protest over Smith allegedly allowing the pollution of our waterways. Not only did Mahon parade the statue outside Environment Canterbury’s offices in central Christchurch, it received widespread coverage both locally and overseas, including by the BBC.
One can imagine the media explosion that would have resulted had Nick Smith been a woman, but New Zealand Herald journalist Kurt Meyer merely described it as “cheeky”.
What the media journalists don’t seem to realise, or more likely conveniently forget, is that such double standards imply that women are held to be psychologically more fragile than men, needing correspondingly greater protection.
So, what can be the explanation for this orgy of misogynous accusations? Either media journalists are stupid (most are not) or it is a means of distracting attention from the very real public anger that has driven Ardern from office.
With the sole exception of ‘war crimes’ (silly), all the points on the aforementioned poster can arguably be pinned on our ex-Prime Minister (some would argue ‘manslaughter’ would be more accurate than ‘murder’, since the latter would imply intent rather than criminal insouciance).
But for the moment I shall devote much of what follows to giving some reasons why the anger against Ardern and her then government is more than justified. Her transgressions can be characterised as
- broken promises
- malfeasance
- cruelty
- malice
- divisiveness
On 22 Sept, 2020, Jacinda Ardern was interviewed by Duncan Garner on the AM Show, in which (13:24) she was asked:
“Will people who refuse to take the Covid-19 vaccine be banned from travelling internationally or be at the end of tax penalties?”
In her reply, Ardern implied that her government would not force people to take the vaccine. It’s possible she thought that she had left herself some wiggle room by not stating unequivocally that kiwis wouldn’t be forced to have the injection. She might have forgotten that two weeks earlier, Rachel Sadler of NewsHub had reported that at a press conference, Health Minister Chris Hipkins (13:35) had slammed the ‘deliberate misinformation’ that the Government was reportedly going to make COVID-19 vaccinations compulsory.
“Chris Hipkins said on Thursday that these false reports have been circulating on social media and have caused many concerned members of the public to contact him.”
Sadler continued to quote Hipkins:
“This morning, I spent some time signing out correspondence, as we do as ministers, and I have to say I was alarmed at the number of letters I’ve received from people concerned that the Government would be making COVID-19 vaccinations compulsory,’ he said during a press conference […] This is a direct result of deliberate misinformation that’s being spread through social media. The Government is not making COVID-19 or any other vaccinations compulsory”
He added while the Government will encourage New Zealanders to get vaccinated once one is available, “it won’t make it compulsory.”
In case it’s thought that Hipkins was talking out of turn, a couple of weeks later, Dan Satherley of Newshub reported that:
“Conspiracy theorists have claimed a COVID-19 vaccine, when available, will be “forced” on everyone – including Kiwis.”
The Government rubbished those claims, made most notably by Jami-Lee Ross and Billy Te Kahika’s Advance NZ.
The New Zealand Public Party (NZPP) had issued a video titled “Say no to Labour’s Forced Vaccinations Agenda”. In a Newshub article titled “Dangerous and misleading” Vita Molyneux reported that the video had stated that:
“Labour passed a law change… They gave themselves the power… To force citizens to be vaccinated.”
I haven’t been able to see the video, so it’s possible the NZPP had been mistaken in the bit about ‘a law change’. But its take-home message, that New Zealanders would be compelled to be vaccinated, was absolutely correct. So much for the ‘conspiracy theorists’.
These promises to the New Zealand public were broken as, one-by-one, vaccine mandates were introduced. First the border workers, then the armed services and police, then health workers and teachers and finally, all members of the public who want to enter public enclosed spaces such as bars and restaurants. Thus workers had to choose between the injection or loss of livelihood.
Significantly, this ‘choice’ was not portrayed for what it actually was. In a verbal sleight of hand, Michael Neilson of The New Zealand Herald (12 Nov 2021) said [emphasis added]:
Millions of New Zealand workers will soon be covered by mandates to be vaccinated against Covid-19, or potentially be forced to leave their jobs.
A health professional I know chose not to be jabbed, but he assures me that he did not ‘leave’ his job – his employer prevented him from working.
The mandates were a fundamental breach of Section 11 of the 1990 Bill of Rights Act, Section 11:
Everyone has the right to refuse to undergo any medical treatment.
This step-by-step breach of fundamental democratic rights brings to mind German Pastor Martin Niemöller’s famous poem, written after his release from concentration camp in 1945. He had been arrested by the Gestapo in 1937 for his criticism of Nazi totalitarianism:
First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.
Small wonder, then, that the vaccine mandates generated considerable anger and for some who had lost their livelihood, real hatred. In clear breach of its promise, the government was forcing people to submit to the injection of an experimental product – or lose their jobs.
And on February 8, a convoy of protesters began to set up camp out in Parliament’s grounds. The camp grew into a mini-village, with portaloos, child care with on-the-hoof schooling.
The protesters demanded that Prime Minister Ardern meet them to discuss concerns, but were met by blanket refusal, though the latter could not have been ignorant of the validity of their case.
Though a deliberately broken promise is not exactly a lie, it doesn’t sit well with her statement in a leaders’ debate in 2017 that she’d “never told a lie in politics.”
When asked by Paddy Gower in one of the leaders’ debates in 2017, “Is it possible to survive in politics without lying?”, she not only said it was but claimed she’d “never told a lie in politics”, as journalist Graham Adams reminds us.
Malfeasance
Myocarditis is a normally rare condition in which the heart muscle (myocardium) becomes inflamed, which in severe cases can result in cardiac arrest and death. In 2021, soon after the worldwide programme of Covid-19 mass injections was initiated, reports of deaths from myocarditis began to surface. Such reports became so numerous that they became difficult for medical authorities to ignore.
Yet at a press conference on 19 August, 2021, Prime Minister Ardern said [at 22:15, emphasis added]:
As you know, it’s imperative that we get as many people as possible vaccinated. When we make a decision on who is eligible, though, our No. 1 priority is the medical advice of our experts. You will remember that in June, our regulator, Medsafe, granted provisional approval for the Pfizer vaccine to be given to 12 to 15 year olds in New Zealand. Similar decisions have been made by other regulators in Europe, the US, Canada and Japan. The advice was then considered by an additional group of experts, who also supported an extension of eligibility to young people. On that basis, Cabinet has agreed to make the Pfizer vaccine available for 12 to 15 year olds. This is not a decision we have taken lightly.
Many of us are parents ourselves and take this duty of making decisions about other people’s children extremely seriously, but it is safe, and it’s the right thing to do. So 12 to 15 year olds can become eligible and book, along with everyone else that we are opening up to from the 1st of September.
This was the take-home message for the assembled journalists: based on expert advice, the vaccine was “safe, and the right thing to do”.
Except that it wasn’t safe, according to their own expert medical advisers – advice that the government had knowingly and deliberately ignored, following a report by the CV TAG (COVID-19 Vaccine Technical Advisory Group), chaired by the Chief Science Adviser, Dr. Ian Town.
Had it not been for a certain investigative blogger working under the name ‘Thomas Cranmer’, it’s likely that the public would have continued to be deceived.
On June 24 CV TAG issued a memo headed “Decision to use the Pfizer mRNA COVID-19 vaccine for children aged 12 -15 years. Among the group’s recommendations were the following:
“there is a potential safety signal for myocarditis in people under 30 years who receive mRNA vaccines (e.g., Pfizer/BioNtech and Moderna), which requires ongoing consideration”
“overall, there is not an urgent need to progress with vaccination of this group, but consideration should be given to equity and whānau-based approaches and ensuring that other childhood immunisation programmes are not compromised, e.g., measles and HPV vaccination.”
So, what happened to the ‘safety signal for myocarditis’? The government knew about it, yet ignored the advice from their experts.
And there’s more. The Cabinet paper dated Sept 27, 2021, prepared by Chris Hipkins, the Covid Minister, stated in point 17 of the Executive summary that:
“subsequent advice from CV TAG in August, supported the inclusion of all children aged 12 to 15 years in the Immunisation Programme.”
The paper continued [emphasis added]:
“based on the advice received from the Director-General of Health, I recommend that Cabinet agree to proceed with using the Pfizer vaccine for children aged 12 to 15 years.”
And what about the ‘advice from CV TAG in August’? A memo CG TAG to Joanne Gibbs, Director of National Operations, COVID Vaccination Immunisation Programme and Dr Ashley Bloomfield, dated August 4. Among its 13 recommendations, 12d was as follows:
The COVID-19 vaccine should not be routinely administered to children and young people aged 12 to 15 years of age, at this time. Children and young people have a low risk of severe disease or death due to COVID-19 compared to adults, and, given the low prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in Aotearoa New Zealand, there is currently a low risk of exposure”
This, and much more on Cranmer here and here.
Divisiveness
Following her landslide victory in the general election in October 2020, Jacinda Ardern told her adoring crowd in Auckland Town Hall that Labour will be “a party for all New Zealanders”. She received a standing ovation.
Fast forward to 23 November 2021, when she announced a ‘traffic light’ system, or “Covid-19 protection system”. She said:
“for the most part, if you’re vaccinated, you can go about doing all the kinds of things you’d usually expect … what varies is just how large those gatherings are at different levels”.
Each area would be designated one of three settings – green, orange or red. A key factor determining each region’s ‘colour’ on Dec 3 would be its level of vaccination, Ardern said.
“If you want to be guaranteed that no matter the setting that we are in, that you can go to bars, restaurants and close-proximity businesses like a hairdresser, then you will need to be vaccinated,” Ardern told a press conference on October 22.
Under the ‘traffic light’ policy, in ‘red’ zones, people who are jabbed will be able to move around and use services relatively freely, while those who are unjabbed will not.
In an interview with the New Zealand Herald on October 24, the reporter asked Ardern if her policies are intended to create a two-tier society in New Zealand society where unvaccinated citizens do not enjoy the same rights as those vaccinated against COVID-19.
“That is what it is,” Ardern responded as she smiled. She added that it’s about giving “confidence” to those vaccinated (needless to say, she did not explain how such ‘confidence’ resulted from keeping ‘unvaccinated’ people away from ‘vaccinated’ who, we were led to believe, were purportedly protected anyway).
Ardern’s restrictions on liberties generated headlines overseas:
- “Jacinda Ardern admits New Zealand will become a two-tier society between vaccinated and unvaccinated.” UK Independent
- “New Zealand is moving to a two-tier society, but the unvaccinated are already a global underclass” UK Telegraph, Oct 25
Following her resignation, Jacinda Ardern was asked how she would like New Zealanders to remember her leadership, she said “as someone who always tried to be kind.” (emphasis added)
It’s doubtful if many of the 50,000 New Zealanders who were locked out of their own country would agree. Cameron Carpenter, writing for the Daily Mail Australia, tells how he was prevented from returning from Sydney to visit his seriously concussed mother, a mental health nurse, in Wellington. Like the great majority of ex-pats, he was prevented from returning home for two years. As Carpenter put it:
“In a staggering human rights violation, New Zealand citizens overseas had to apply to enter their own country, with a small number of places only available via an online lottery system.”
Even worse was the predicament of pregnant New Zealand women who were stranded overseas during lockdowns. Although people with medical conditions overseas were able to return to New Zealand, pregnancy and childbirth were excluded.
This was brought into sharp focus by the case of Charlotte Bellis, an Al Jazeera journalist in Afghanistan, who was prevented from returning to New Zealand where her baby could be born safely. But after submitting 59 documents in attempting to return to New Zealand, her application was rejected. In a speech attacking the Government’s Covid-19 response, ACT leader David Seymour said;
“…that great feminist organisation the Taliban has now been given the outsourcing of New Zealand’s maternity care.”
In response to the international publicity, the government finally caved in and allowed her back in her home country.
But for pregnant ex-pat kiwis forced to give birth overseas, there was another problem – citizenship for the child. Under New Zealand law, babies that are born overseas can’t automatically pass on New Zealand citizenship to their own children.
Unconscionable
Sophia Malthus is a 25 year-old woman who became tetraplegic after a riding accident. Her full time carer is her mother who is unvaccinated for medical reasons. Despite her GP’s letter explaining her situation, the Ministry of Health (MOH) is yet to give her exemption from the mandate.
For people with spinal cord injuries, respiratory infections can be particularly serious, as they may have additional breathing difficulties. Accordingly, Malthus has been particularly careful to minimise her risk by keeping her social contacts during lockdown to the absolute minimum.
But now the MOH has ruled that since her mother is unvaccinated, she cannot be allowed to care for her, and the healthcare agency will have to replace her mother with vaccinated carers, even though she will continue to live with her daughter. And with her mother doing 60-hour weeks, she would have to be replaced by more than one carer.
“This mandate that’s intended to protect me, pretty much doubles my exposure to Covid,” she said. “I’ll have two or three new carers coming into the house and they all have their own families that they live with, and everybody wants to go back to work – so my bubble would be bigger than everybody else’s bubble.”
As a result of the mandate she cannot get ACC funding for her mother to act as her carer because of the alleged risk she poses by being near her daughter, with whom she lives anyway, whether or not she is acting as carer. Sophia’s risk of infection has thus been actually increased by the mandate.
Whether or not you accept that “Covid” exists, this clearly makes no sense even on their own terms.
That was in November 2021. One would have thought that the authorities might have learned something from the debacle, but it seems not.
A not altogether different case was detailed by RNZ on 19 September, 2022. A group who care for family members with whom they are living, is seeking a judicial review of the health workers’ mandate, having lost thousands of dollars in funding. Despite the fact that the workers care for family members with whom they are living, their payments have been cut because they are not Covid-vaccinated. And although the mandates were due to be removed, they believe that the loss of payments was unlawful.
One member of the group cares for her brain-injured son, but is unvaccinated, for personal reasons. Jennie had been receiving over $1000 a week as an in-home carer, but when she became included in the health workers’ vaccine mandate, funding was cut.
“It was quite a huge financial stress, and we’ve had to carry out the care regardless of whether we’re paid to do it or not, so it did seem a little bit silly that we are living in the same house, carrying out the care anyway, but we are having the funding cut,” Jennie said.
After initially leaving family carers out of the mandate, MOH officials then ruled that in-home carers should be treated the same as other workers.
“To me that seems completely ridiculous because we’re not the same as the other employees in the sector,” Jennie said. “It’s not a public health approach, which is what the vaccine order is meant to be all about.”
Wellington lawyer Matthew Hague has been acting for the group of home-based care workers. Via the High Court, he argued that their inclusion lacked reason, given they mostly lived with the person they cared for.
Despite requests, the group had not been given any health reason for the mandate applying to them.
“We asked the government exactly that. We said, first of all, ‘Can you please review this? There’s some concerning parts about it. Secondly, if there is a reason can you let us know so we can tell the people it affects’…There was zero response to that.”
Hague said one of the people involved in the court action had received an Official Information Act reply from the Covid-19 response minister, which spelled out the officials’ position.
“She says (and this is from Ayesha Verrall) ‘The distinction between family and non-family carers was not considered to be relevant to public health and so was removed to ensure that all vulnerable people received the same protection, whether cared for by a family carer or not’. It’s very clear from that that the purpose of the change is to protect the people being cared for, but it doesn’t because they’re already living with them.”
I used the heading ‘unconscionable’ to describe the MOH’s treatment of full-time family carers, because I could not find words that were adequate. ‘malice’, ‘spite’, vindictiveness come to mind. I suppose it’s just conceivable that it’s bureaucratic blockheadedness, but to me, there has to be an element of motive. ‘Callous’ might come nearer, but you be the judge.
* * *
So, how does all this stack up with Ardern’s trade mark brand of ‘kindness’?
The first thing to strike one is that genuinely kind people don’t feel the need to advertise their kindness – they just get on with being kind, because that’s the sort of people they are.
I think I’ve gathered more than enough evidence to show that rather than being the “queen of empathy”, Ms Ardern is a sociopath.
So perhaps we should not be surprised that Jacinda Ardern has managed to deceive so many. It’s interesting that she spent two and a half years working in the Cabinet Office of UK Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Many who have read Geoffrey Wheatcroft’s Yo, Blair!, a blow-torch biography of the political life of the man, will see parallels between Ardern and Blair.
Indeed, in his review in the UK Sunday Telegraph, Anthony Howard describes the book as
“The best account I’ve seen of what can happen when a political leader chooses to clothe himself simply in the armour of self-righteousness.”
– witness the ‘Jacindamania’ stoked by the servile, fawning, media.
Martin Hanson is a retired high school science teacher, born and educated in the United Kingdom, but spent most of his teaching career in New Zealand. This article was sourced HERE
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