Government Minister David Seymour has been accused of ignoring the plight of Indian Muslims and mainstreaming Hindu extremism, as Modi inaugurates Ram Temple.
I was at first sceptical of the suggestion that David Seymour acted as he did out of ignorance. However when explaining why he didn't attend the Ratana Pa celebrations this week he is reported to have said ""My understanding is a guy came out as a prophet of his own religious movement in the 1870s. And politicians feel a strange obligation to be there every year. I've never felt that." (Tahupotiki Wiremu Ratana was born in 1873 but did not "come out" as a spiritual leader until 1918, leading to the subsequent establishment of the Ratana church). So it would appear that Seymour has little knowledge of Ratana, and his contemptuous dismissal of T W Ratana and the Ratana church is in stark contrast with his gushing praise of Narendra Modi and Hindu extremism. At the end of the day Seymour is both ignorant and contemptuous of our history and our people. His main interest seems to be in finding ways to support the global hegemony of the United States, regardless of the cost in human suffering. That is all rather strange and it is hard to see what future there can be for a politician who scorns his own people.
New Zealand politicians were not slow to recognise that the combination of the new MMP electoral system and increased ethnic diversity - a "super diverse" society as Mai Chen calls it - could be used to create a personal power base. The first to put the idea fully into practice was Peter Dunne MP whose United Future party featured candidates from a range of ethnic minorities which were not well represented in the ranks of the major parties, and for a time Dunne's United Future Party achieved what it set out to do, making Dunne a key figure in parliamentary politics. Dunne's courtship of ethnic minorities was benign, but clearly there is a capacity to work political mischief in an ethnically diverse society with an MMP political system, and David Seymour seems to be doing just that. His proposed Treaty Principles Bill looks like a cynical attempt to capitalize on anti-Maori sentiment among a certain small section of the New Zealand population and his entry into the fray between Hindu extremists and Indian Muslims is another example of what a responsible politician would never do. As the article makes clear, this conflict has international ramifications, with the Five Eyes states and the State of Israel establishing connections with Hindu extremism in an effort to draw India away from the BRICS grouping and into a closer alliance with the Five Eyes which will be anti-Muslim, anti-China and, more problematically for the Indian side, anti-Russian. David Seymour will have no illusions about that. He is a loyal Five Eyes defender and staunchly pro-Israel. That is bad enough in itself, but what makes it worse is his apparent willingness to aggravate divisions within New Zealand's religious and ethnic minorities in pursuit of a neo-colonialist geo-political programme and the electoral vote tally of his own party.
I was at first sceptical of the suggestion that David Seymour acted as he did out of ignorance. However when explaining why he didn't attend the Ratana Pa celebrations this week he is reported to have said ""My understanding is a guy came out as a prophet of his own religious movement in the 1870s. And politicians feel a strange obligation to be there every year. I've never felt that." (Tahupotiki Wiremu Ratana was born in 1873 but did not "come out" as a spiritual leader until 1918, leading to the subsequent establishment of the Ratana church). So it would appear that Seymour has little knowledge of Ratana, and his contemptuous dismissal of T W Ratana and the Ratana church is in stark contrast with his gushing praise of Narendra Modi and Hindu extremism. At the end of the day Seymour is both ignorant and contemptuous of our history and our people. His main interest seems to be in finding ways to support the global hegemony of the United States, regardless of the cost in human suffering. That is all rather strange and it is hard to see what future there can be for a politician who scorns his own people.
New Zealand politicians were not slow to recognise that the combination of the new MMP electoral system and increased ethnic diversity - a "super diverse" society as Mai Chen calls it - could be used to create a personal power base. The first to put the idea fully into practice was Peter Dunne MP whose United Future party featured candidates from a range of ethnic minorities which were not well represented in the ranks of the major parties, and for a time Dunne's United Future Party achieved what it set out to do, making Dunne a key figure in parliamentary politics. Dunne's courtship of ethnic minorities was benign, but clearly there is a capacity to work political mischief in an ethnically diverse society with an MMP political system, and David Seymour seems to be doing just that. His proposed Treaty Principles Bill looks like a cynical attempt to capitalize on anti-Maori sentiment among a certain small section of the New Zealand population and his entry into the fray between Hindu extremists and Indian Muslims is another example of what a responsible politician would never do. As the article makes clear, this conflict has international ramifications, with the Five Eyes states and the State of Israel establishing connections with Hindu extremism in an effort to draw India away from the BRICS grouping and into a closer alliance with the Five Eyes which will be anti-Muslim, anti-China and, more problematically for the Indian side, anti-Russian. David Seymour will have no illusions about that. He is a loyal Five Eyes defender and staunchly pro-Israel. That is bad enough in itself, but what makes it worse is his apparent willingness to aggravate divisions within New Zealand's religious and ethnic minorities in pursuit of a neo-colonialist geo-political programme and the electoral vote tally of his own party.