Putting things into perspective
Part I : LookingBack
On 5th October 1998 I was guest on a Men’s Hour programme on
Potter asked “Just what are the forces behind the breakdown of traditional marriage and family structure? Here tonight to talk about some of these forces behind the radical, and sometimes overwhelming social change we are experiencing is Barbara Faithfull of the Credo Society. [An organisation seeking integrity and credibility in the news media – now defunct]
“Way back in 1986, when the explosion of fatherless families was just beginning, this remarkable woman caught on to what was happening, and began writing about it in the newsletter Credonews.”
I then began to explain what had led me to this situation - actually earlier than 1986 - , and to the establishing of Credo Society, which was in 1981. I had been at the University of Auckland in the 1970’s, doing a B.A. in Psychology and Anthropology, and found a book called ‘Teenage Marketplace’, by Anne-Louise de Verteuil and Nicola Brooks. (
“We loathe those adults who debauch and degrade our young bodies for profit; those who are mercilessly growing rich on ruining us with drugs. Contraceptive manufacturers who boost their products; the pornography merchants, advertisers who exploit a woman’s body..”
“Can anybody ever write about self-control, self discipline, the joys of pregnancy? All this family planning [for youth] is a hoax. With all the ease of obtaining contraceptives, and all the easy advice, illegitimacy still increases, and so do abortions. How ironic!”
“We’re angry as hell that it’s difficult in
Two particular quotes in the book I found especially thought-provoking:-
- “We read a directive to communists in Florida : ‘Corrupt youth, alienate it from religion, direct its attention to sex; let it become superficial, destroy its idealism, use every means to bring about the collapse of moral virtues – honesty, purity, temperance and trust in the given word’.”
- “Lenin once said if we want to destiny a nation we must first destroy its morals. Then that nation will fall into our lap like ripe fruit”.
Some examples : In the 1970′s N.Z. was rife with Women’s Liberation conferences and conventions. In 1974 the Trotskyist (Cuba-aligned) Socialist Action League (SAL, now Communist League) presented a landmark submission to a Parliamentary Select Committee On Women’s Rights. That submission, along with ‘The New Rules of Feminism’, text of a resolution adopted by the second SAL national conference at
Advent of Radio Pacific and flagrant homosexual political activism
Back then, and with the decriminalising of homosexual acts in NZ still seven years away, Scott, a homosexual, was also a leading activist in the homosexual political movement, being Northern Representative of the National Gay Rights Coalition. (NGRC) As such he used to chair occasional homosexual forums at
Having attended several such forums, it was therefore not surprising to me that homosexual politics, related gender and racial politics, and much other anti-social material was soon flooding the airwaves of the fledgling radio station, and frequently via biased and one-sided programmes.
One such programme occurred on 20th May 1979, when Judith Emms, a
The CPA was particularly concerned about a homosexual speaking in a
With respect to the biased and one-sided Radio Pacific programmes, complaints fell on deaf ears, and particularly outspoken complainants were dealt to on air via ridicule, personal and even defamatory attacks and censorship. I was just one of those so treated, and the censorship of me from Donnelly’s Sunday programmes was still permitted as at the time of that 1998 interview – “If it makes (Donnelly) more comfortable” according to (then) Managing Director Derek Lowe, when I complained back in 1983 – a whole fifteen years earlier!
Further gender politics via rape and domestic violence activism
The July 1979 issue of the extreme Left-Wing Republican (edited by the late Bruce Jesson) featured an article by feminist Christine Dann, “Radical Feminism and the NZ Political Scene”.(By 2005 Dann was to be Green Party Campaign Manager, according to Radio NZ news 7th November that year) In a particularly revealing paragraph in that earlier article she wrote:-
…"Thus anarchists (and latterly their more Marxist ‘libertarian socialist’ and ‘anarcho-communist’ fellow leftists) have preferred forms of organisation which will lead more directly to the situation which is ultimately desired. Thus…they posit small, autonomous, non-hierarchical collectives which provide personal as well as political support and are part of local and national networks which can be co-ordinated to work on important matters. The groups may choose to work autonomously on specific issues e.g. oppression of women, racism, or the environment, to become involved with community struggles, or to be part of the larger national campaigns. They may offer direct political action (e.g. groups such as HART,…..Matakite..) personal assistance (Rape Crisis, TPA – Tenants’ Protection Assn,) information and education (New Perspectives on Race, Women’s Centres) skills and expertise (The Wellington Media Collective) or a combination of all these activities e.g. cultural activities such as guerrilla theatre".
"Halfway House [as Refuge was originally called] was conceived by some Auckland
In June 1978 the NZ Woman’s Weekly published their “Battered Wife Questionnaire”, with the lurid heading “Bashed Wives Reveal Their Lives of Hidden Suffering”.
"An urgent need for alternative, temporary, protective accommodation. A battered wife is the innocent party…. A change in attitude towards sex roles and images is called for…. The survey indicates that barbaric male attitudes are still very much alive…. (The survey) indicates just what a trap the ‘traditional female role’ can spring for some women…. they have also been led to believe it is the woman’s responsibility to keep the marriage together" etc.
Around 1980, as Jackson/Saphira stepped up her domestic violence activism, I telephoned and challenged her on her highly publicised but utterly baseless and nonsensical contention that "the raising of little boys had to change if domestic violence was to be reduced".
As an aside, over time I became aware that the traditionally church-based family refuges and helping agencies, which catered for the whole family – men included – and were dedicated, where possible, to enabling families to stay together, were being marginalised, and systematically excluded from the growing publicity for women seeking help for domestic violence. I accumulated much evidence of this in official publicity brochures, where agencies such as Rape Crisis, Women’s Refuge etc. were prominently displayed, with all available addresses and contact details supplied, while only the odd church-based agency was ever mentioned, and often with little contact information at that.
Indeed, I believe that the aim has clearly been to establish the anti-male, anti-family, pro-women Refuges as the only places to go for help, but with nary a hint of their underlying pernicious belief system - indeed their driving dogma - that a woman never commits domestic violence (only ever a male) and a woman never lies about domestic violence or sex abuse either. Thus we now have massive public support and funding - Government, corporate and private - for Women’s Refuges, as the false impression is continually conveyed in the media that they are the only places to go for families with such problems, and even then, of course, only for the women and children!
Two 1979 quotes from feminist Sandra Coney tie in well here, both occurring during appearances on Felix Donnelly’s Radio Pacific programmes : “Men are going to have to change before women will stay with them!” (31st July) and “Marriage is very destructive for a woman!”(23rd August)
Now back to Jackson/Saphira. When she moved into rape and child sex abuse activism in the early 1980′s, with similarly unscientific surveys and similarly predictable outcomes and political rabble rousing with bogus, inflated ‘statistics’ of supposed incidence of these problems, I again telephoned her to challenge the legitimacy of her activities, and made constant challenges in the media also, but with the latter mainly to no avail. To the media it appeared that Saphira could do no wrong and rarely was any such challenge allowed publication. It was not to be until 1988 that some sanity prevailed in this respect, particularly in the area of child sex abuse, as the public awoke to the massive hoax which had been perpetrated with the use of bogus, inflated sex abuse figures (“1 in 3 girls abused” etc) for the 1988 Telethon promotional publicity.
By that time NZ’s homosexual law had changed and Saphira was less covert regarding her lesbianism, although its political significance for the crusades she was conducting would still not have been evident to the average citizen. Thus it was that in 1986 she made no secret of the fact that she had been appointed a Secretary General of the International Lesbian Gay Association (ILGA), which is, after all, part of the wider international gender politics movement.
Cultural subversion the name of the game
I saw this as fitting in well with the disturbing trends in
Meantime, also in 1980, came two rare and most valuable media items which served to confirm my conclusions about the existence of a systematic and ideologically-driven undermining of culture. In the
Auckland Star of 9th February that year was Warwick Rogers’ highly revealing major article “The Splintered Revolution” including a chart of all the Far Left factions operating in NZ at that time. The Socialist Action League (S.A.L. - mentioned earlier) was shown to promote trade union activism, race and gender issues, abortion etc.
Then on 25th August that year Radio NZ’s Checkpoint discussion on the SAL included the following frank comments from Canterbury University political scientist Dr. Keith Ovenden: "They have bizarre issues: racism, sexism, homosexuality, abortion."
This had been well demonstrated in the SAL Submission to the 1974 Parliamentary Select Committee on Women’s Rights, as mentioned earlier. Following are two quotes from The Strategy for Women’s Liberation, which included that submission:-
"The full demands of the women’s liberation movement cannot be met by the capitalist system, which depends upon the oppressive patriarchal family…. The strategy of the feminist movement must be based on the understanding of how capitalism perpetuates itself, and which forces must be mobilised in the struggle to eliminate it.
Under “Oppressive Role of the Family”: came this highly revealing quote:-
"The family institution is a repressive, conservative structure that reproduces within itself the hierarchical, authoritarian relationships necessary for the maintenance of class society as a whole. It fosters the possessive, competitive and aggressive attitudes necessary for the perpetuation of class divisions. It moulds the behaviour and character structure of children…. disciplining them and teaching submission to established authority. The family represses sexuality, discouraging all sexual activity which is not within marriage. It distorts all human relationships by imposing on them the framework of economic compulsion, social dependence and sexual repression."
"An end to coercive family laws…. De facto marriage ……to have the same status, legally and socially, as marriage by legal contract …. Divorce should be automatically available at the request of either partner. The concept of ‘illegitimacy’ should be abolished…. All forms of discrimination against unmarried mothers or their children must be outlawed…. The rearing, social welfare and education of children should become the responsibility of society, rather than the individual parents … All laws enforcing individual ownership of children should be abolished…..
"
So these were some of the insidious forces that I had been referring to earlier in that interview as being behind the radical social change NZ has experienced in the past several decades. Potter noted : "One thing we of the Men’s Centre have become very aware of is that groups who claim to be standing up for victims of various kinds find it easy to get hold of fairly large amounts of funding, and jobs and careers."
My reply: "That’s the interesting thing. Back in the 1970′s and early 80′s it was all about ‘oppression…..society oppressing us’, and they’ve now turned it around and they’re more subtle, because they knew we could identify them by their ideology when they were talking about oppression, because that was the language of communism…. ‘capitalism is oppressing us’ etc. So they’ve changed it all around and (notwithstanding that there are genuine victims of violence of course) turned many into so-called victims, who are then deserving of sympathy. Quite brilliant… they’ve exploited the whole concept of violence. ‘Victimhood’, ‘violence’, and ‘safety’[and later, bullying] are the current ways of directing their activism. So we just need to read behind a lot of that stuff.
There was an example in the news today: how the Education Review Authority had produced a damning report about Otago Boys’ High School (a very traditional institution) accusing it of “Pursuing an outdated male culture” etc. There has been a long history of radical activism on the part of the Head of the Education Review Office, Dr. Judith Aitkin, so such an attack was not unexpected!"
Potter: "That’s certainly one of the things that concerns us, when we hear educationalists talking about ‘feminising boys…..getting rid of this male culture’."
My reply : "That’s right. The revolutionising of culture to their specifications."
Potter: "When we see the high suicide rate among young men in NZ, we wonder about the effect of these kinds of programmes that try to change boys into something they basically aren’t."
My reply: "And the media is not really bringing out these things; it is protecting certain forces from their views being challenged, so I think for an organisation such as yours, it’s important that your folk understand about some of the influences behind such problems. For example, I have had men express surprise that I am involved speaking out on such matters as those concerning the Men’s Centre, and I tell them that this is not a woman or a man thing, this is a people thing. It’s people who should be concerned about this. It’s not a thing for men only to fight. It’s a people thing."
Potter : "Yes it is. I must admit that in the beginning of my involvement with the Men’s Centre I thought ‘why is there a need for separate men’s organisations? Why shouldn’t women and men work at it together?’."
I replied : "Only because it’s been so one-sided for so long, and the men’s groups that have been set up have, in the main, been feminist aligned, and therefore you of the Men’s Centre are a counter to them."
(The above is based upon a report of that interview in MENZ Issues, May 1999, pp8-11)
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Part II : Secular Humanist influences
Chickens coming home to roost?
On 11th December 2009 came the bizarre news on Radio NZ Checkpoint that New Zealand’s main centres of Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch were to be subjected to an “Atheist Bus Campaign”. Emulating one in the United Kingdom that year there would be advertisements on buses reading “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” According to a spokesman named Simon Fisher it was “To provide an alternative voice to raise awareness of humanism and atheism”, but closer scrutiny suggested to me a far more suspect motive, of which more shortly.
Moreover, New Zealanders were being asked to pay for this highly questionable prank. Initially $10,000 was being sought, but by December 17th TV3 news was reporting that $20,000 had been raised. No mean feat for an entirely unknown outfit, and one of questionable bona fides. {As an aside, the venture thankfully did not materialise}
Nevertheless it would have helped that there appeared to be virtually no media questioning about who was behind the scheme, let alone any skepticism about the stated goal as quoted above.
Also on the campaign website all sounded so rosy and well meaning, with some anonymous person named “Duncan” even assuring readers that “This campaign is about positivity and we need to respect people’s alternative points of view, just as we hope they will respect ours”.
So as the unnamed backers of this campaign at least purported to want to “raise awareness of humanism”, and also purported to “welcome alternative points of view”, I accepted the invitation, writing about it, albeit to a somewhat limited readership.
I said I hoped to demonstrate that all was far from what it seemed with this highly dubious caper. Indeed, that the whole scheme was nothing less than a calculated confidence trick : part of an insidious attack upon Western cultural values. In short, that it was part of what is widely regarded as a pernicious international Culture War.
Firstly then, I saw the campaign as soliciting money under false pretences. This because secrecy surrounded what would appear to be the true goal of the campaign, along with certain unpalatable facts about the people presumably behind it. Therefore if what I presumed to be the case was correct, the N.Z. public was being asked to donate to a highly suspect “cause”, and one about which it was being kept in the dark.
Indeed the so-called N.Z. Atheist Bus Campaign would be simply a cunning front to disguise the real nature of this appeal and the promoters behind it, as I’m sure also will have been the case with the UK campaign : a shadowy mishmash of international, ideologically driven atheistic humanists and rationalists.
One only needed to check the campaign’s website, www.nogod.org.nz. There, on page 2 of the information for December 13th 2009, and listed as “Valuable links”, were Canterbury Atheists, Humanist Society of New Zealand and N.Z. Association of Rationalists and Humanists, as if the latter two, at least, would not, more than likely, have been the core drivers of this crafty escapade. Also this innocuous-sounding bit of information : "The Humanist Society of N.Z. has kindly offered to administrate and oversee the donation collection to ensure it conforms to financial standards." How very magnanimous of them, as if they would not, almost certainly, have been at the very heart of the whole duplicitous affair anyway!
Admittedly on page 3 of one of their December 13th blurbs there was a vague hint of a humanist influence behind it all, but in no way sufficient to raise questions or to cause doubts : "The promotion and expression of a secular humanist world view [but of course not spelt out - see below] and the affirmation that there is no need to believe in a supernatural being to live a full rich life."
A basic tactic of these zealots is to avoid like the plague facts, rational argument and public debate, and instead to appeal to people's emotions. Hence the absence of hesitation of some to respond to the advertisement funding appeal. So certain unpalatable facts about humanism invariably are never allowed to rear their ugly heads. Facts such as the following.
Global population control
For several decades now the International Humanist and Ethical Union, along with its many shadowy friends, has pursued a covert agenda for revolutionary social change by peaceful means. Moreover the major concern propelling this phenomenon appears to relate to global population control, although this is equally covert, because it is also rare to read/hear any acknowledgement of this, let alone debate.
Yet if one probes deeply enough ample evidence is unquestionably there. Such as a ten page closely typed paper headed “Population – An Outline and Overview of the Human Population of the World – its Situation and Future, its Problems, and our Choice and our Responsibility in Facing These” – A Humanist Occasional Paper, dated May 1976, published by the Humanist Information Service, Christchurch NZ.
As the editor, Trevor M. Cobeldick, explained there, that paper was based upon a submission by the Humanist Society of NZ for a NZ Government Commission in May 1974,that having been designated World Population Year. The full submission was printed in the NZ Humanist, No. 25, July 1974.
What I find particularly disquieting however I come to shortly: the actual social issues which comprise that covert Humanist international, radical social change agenda, and how some of them, at least, seem to fit so well with the Humanist concern for world population control: One, suicide, has already been widely decriminalised.
Some others, however, are still on the agenda, such as euthanasia; abortion and homosexuality. This latter also fits very well with those quotes I included in Part II from 1979 and 1980 : “You can choose to be gay!” and “Eight ‘advantages’ of being homosexual”! Moreover, on page 10 of that Humanist Population paper, under “Examples of means of population regulation”, in the “decrease” category, are listed, inter alia, “homosexuality” and “abortion”! So much for the hackneyed sloganeering of being necessarily “Born that way!” More on this under my “Present Day” notes.
Now for a closer look at the Humanist phenomenon. As long ago as October 1980 Pat McCarthy, editor of the N.Z. Catholic newspaper at that time, Humanity, wrote a highly informative article entitled “Humanism : A philosophy for social action” . There he quoted Vince Nesbit, an Australian researcher who had made a study of humanism, and especially its influence in education. Nesbit:-
“I am not going to suggest that humanists are evil people. On the whole they are good people…..They are trying to work to bring about the sort of society they believe to be the best for their fellow men…They have used the Fabian method of gradualism to penetrate into society in all those areas where they can exert influences – in the pulpit, in government, in the school, in the bureaucracy, in the trade unions.
“From about 1963 the British Humanist Association, in a series of resolutions, drew up a plan of political action for law change. Its seven points, some of which were achieved during the 1970’s to become planks in Britain’s permissive society, are:-
Legislation of homosexual acts between consenting adults
Abortion on demand
Easy divorce for marriage “breakdown”
Legalised voluntary euthanasia
Removal of restrictions on “soft drugs”
Abolition of all forms of censorship
Abolition of religious education in schools.”
In that article McCarthy quoted Nesbit as observing that “A humanist organisation often doe not appear in public as itself. It sets up organisations like the Council for Civil Liberties, The Divorce Law Reform Association, the Homosexual Law Reform Association, the Abortion Law Reform Association and various other groups, particularly women’s groups…..It doesn’t operate as itself. It makes the intellectual bullets for other people to fire.” McCarthy then pointed out :-
“In N.Z. Humanism has provided many of the leading activists in the pro-abortion movement.[Such as the massively Government funded Family Planning Association] The Humanist Society has also instigated the founding of a society devoted to legalising euthanasia, and taken a close interest in the introduction of moral education in schools…..” etc.(End of quotes)
As indicated there by McCarthy, over the past several decades N.Z. has also had its various Humanist front groups similar to those quoted above in Britain; and the Atheist Bus Campaign would seem to be but the latest example of this trickery.
Similarly to the British situation, in N.Z. some of these front groups doing Humanist lobbying are, or have been, the Abortion Law Reform Association of N.Z. (ALRANZ); Homosexual Law Reform Association of N.Z. (now defunct); Divorce Law Reform Association of N.Z. (now defunct) and the Voluntary Euthanasia Society etc.
Yet the N.Z. public is being kept utterly in ignorance about such an ongoing covert attack upon its traditional cultural values. Now, in 2012, one of the most obvious such Humanist-based issues is that of euthanasia, via a Parliamentary Private Member’s Bill, and sponsored by, unsurprisingly, a seasoned lesbian teacher-activist from the 1980’s, Maryan Street. So more on euthanasia and other hot potato subjects in the “Present Day” section.
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PRESENT DAY : General Discussion
Chickens coming home to roost?
I was interested to read Jim Hopkins’ column “Soldiers serve countries, Assange only himself” (NZ Herald 24th August 2012). Particularly his reference to a 20 year old man he had just met, who was still angry about a most unsettling experience at primary school ten years earlier.
One day all the ten year old girls had been taken for a “self defense course”, while all the ten year old boys had been subjected to an “anger management” session. Later the girls refused to play with the boys, regarding them as “the enemy, demonised, stigmatised, and judged to be a dark, threatening menace”.
Hopkins reflected upon this troubling situation : “That’s our world; that’s the place we’ve made – or allowed others to make on our behalf.” etc.
Now for the irony I see here. In the early to mid-1980’s Hopkins was, for a time, a talkback host on the (back then) most radical Leftist-oriented station Radio Pacific. As secretary/spokesman for Credo Society, and although unwelcomed by the station, I was a frequent caller to challenge what I saw as perverse socialist-driven programme content, such as the above radical feminist, mind-poisoning drivel which went under the guise of girls’ “self defense”.
For my trouble I was detested by the station and many of its staff. One day Hopkins and another male staffer went to air with a satirical skit, mocking me for my concerns, and even acting out a supposed phone call to Moscow!
So to Hopkins I would just say this : Do not include me among those comments above (“That’s our world”) etc. Back then, when such pernicious thinking was establishing itself in the minds of our people I was one of the very few who stood up to be counted. So in this respect my conscience is clear. How about yours?
KiwiCredo blog 25th August 2012
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