Matua Kahurangi: The propaganda playbook

How the Ardern government funded online propaganda during COVID

During the Covid pandemic, it was nearly impossible to question the government narrative without being piled on by an army of self-proclaimed experts, keyboard warriors, and smug “trust the science” types. It felt strangely coordinated at the time, as if there was an unspoken campaign to shut down any conversation that strayed from the government’s script. Many suspected that certain voices were being backed and funded to discredit dissent. Now we know that suspicion was not only justified, it was completely accurate.

Eliora: Never Too Late to Say, ‘Thank You’

Simon Bridges was right over the target, but the majority preferred Ardern’s tyrannical reign.

Bridges’ post on social media garnered 18,000 reactions online: 3,000 likes, and almost 15,000 reacting with either laughter or anger emoticons as of the morning of 22 April 2020. They weren’t just Labour supporters. Surprisingly, some indicated they were National Party supporters and praised Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s kind leadership during a period of uncertainty.

Hang on a minute. Surely National people would have stuck up for their leader. He had a responsibility in a democracy to hold the Ardern Government to account when she began to make extreme decisions that had huge ramifications for everybody. Ardern’s heavy-handed rules had never before been imposed on Kiwis living in the country or abroad.

Murray Sherwin: Re-evaluating Sweden's Covid policy "experiment"

In early 2020, as the world was becoming alarmed about the spread of Covid-19, the response in one country stood out as an internationally newsworthy departure from the norm. Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s State Epidemiologist, was regularly in front of TV cameras, arguing that widespread mandated lockdowns were not likely to prove beneficial in the longer term and might, in fact, prove damaging in important respects. He advocated an approach relying more on individual responsibility and a clear focus on risk and effective risk mitigation in an environment in which Covid was expected to eventually become endemic.

Clive Bibby: An apology would be nice - but unlikely.

Ground breaking reversals of government policies in two North American states (one in Alberta, Canada and the other in New York) appear to be the beginning of the end for one of the most notorious methods used by leaders (including our own Saint Jacinda) to control the population during the pandemic. 

I am talking about the mandated enforcement of vaccination against the virus.
And it is not hard to see why this form of dictatorial management is being held to account by those who are in a position to do so. 

Matt Ridley: A WHO pandemic pact would leave us at China’s mercy

Lessons have still not been learned, so why should we trust the WHO in a future pandemic?

My article for Telegraph - first published May 14, 2022:

On 22 May, the World Health Organisation meets for the World Health Assembly, an annual summit to which all the world’s countries are invited – except Taiwan, which is excluded at China’s behest. On the agenda is a “pandemic accord” that would greatly expand the WHO’s powers to intervene in a country in the event of a future outbreak.

The European Union, true to form, pushed for a legally binding pandemic “treaty” instead, but that won’t happen for two reasons: the American Senate would need a two-thirds majority to ratify it; and the Chinese government would not allow even its pet international agency to tell it what to do. But the accord would still have substantial force of international law behind it, to make governments impose domestic lockdowns, for example – despite the WHO’s own figures showing little correlation between lockdown severity and death rates.