NZ Skeptics Articles

Scam on the New Zealand horizon, a confession, an avatar, and priceless real estate

8th May 2023

If you have a social media account, you may have found your feed clogged with advertisements for the new ecommerce platform TEMU. The company launched in NZ in March but has only ramped up its promotions in the past week. In particular they use influencers to encourage potential customers to send their friends and family referral links. In return, the referrers are able to earn tokens, chances to enter draws, and play casino games in order to win cash. If that wasn’t worrisome enough, the company has already been subject to comparisons to the low-quality products of other ecommerce platforms like WISH and SHEIN. I’m currently on a dogged quest to find out all I can about this company and, while it isn’t a pyramid scheme or MLM, its operations are reminiscent of other businesses I’ve written about. Keep your eye open for an article on TEMU in the near future.

Until then, this issue of the NZ Skeptics Newsletter has a slightly different tone than in the past. We open with a confession from a long time member who finds a connection between secularism and national discontent - and rest assured, despite his confession there’s no need for him to resign from our Society! Mark then takes another look at a particular corner of that discontent, the sovereign citizen corner, and revisits the concept of Allodial Titles and how they are just about as useful as the novelty plots you can buy in Scotland. However, Liz Lambert’s letter prohibiting the practice of satanic rites in Abel Tasman Park is a sober reminder about how vulnerable people who hold extreme fears can be manipulated into bombastic schemes. Personally, I’m still on my alternative spirituality groups of New Zealand track, and bring to you the first part of my series on the Hindu-adjacent group, Adidam, and its late founder Franklin Jones/Avatar Adi Da Samraj.

Until next week, happy reading!

Bronwyn Rideout

Confession

John Simpson - 8 May 2023

Confession

Having been a member for many years, I think it is about time that I made a confession, which I am told is good for the soul even if it is not very good for my continued membership. I am a committed church member, even though the word “committed” makes me think of mental institutions and prisons. I think of the scriptural stories as parabolic and written to guide one's behaviour, definitely not intended as a scientific text. Therefore when a story is physically impossible or extremely unlikely, I simply shrug my shoulders and think that it is a fable and the important part is the message it is portraying. I would never think of using the Bible as a physics or astronomy textbook any more than I would use the physical science texts as a moral guide. Interestingly, I note that many people who have no religious affiliation take great comfort in thinking that when they die they will meet up with old friends who have “gone before”. I think it would be churlish of me to tell them of my doubts in that regard. Also, I have enough humility to recognise that we are still very far from knowing everything about the physical world.

New Freeland, Revisited

Mark Honeychurch - 8 May 2023

New Freeland, Revisited

I wrote an article a couple of years ago about a new group based on the Sovereign Citizen (or SovCit) movement. The group was planning to take ownership of Abel Tasman national park, using the Allodial Title legal “trick” that ex-lawyer Liz Lambert had been telling anyone who would listen, and create a new country called "New Freeland". Liz shared her trick far and wide; she's written in Facebook groups, told Kelvyn Alp of Counterspin Media on his online news channel, Counterspin, and talked on podcasts, etc. Here are some stills from Liz talking with Kelvyn on Counterspin, including a couple of pages detailing her deep understanding of the law.

By many, many other names: The many lives of the late Avatar Adi Da Samraj

Bronwyn Rideout - 8 May 2023

By many, many other names: The many lives of the late Avatar Adi Da Samraj

In the book that keeps on giving (to me at least), Robert Ellwood's Islands of the Dawn: The Story of Alternative Spirituality in New Zealand includes a two paragraph profile on the Johannine Daist Communion. I quickly became fascinated in trying to figure out why this group had a presence in New Zealand and why, as with soooooo many other groups I profile, the New Zealand branch of operations persists with an official centre of operations; a distinction that was as notable in its heyday as it is now. So, join me on yet another multi-part episode, as we explore the many names and lives of Johannine Daist/Adidam founder Franklin Jones, aka Avatar Adi Da Samraj, aka Bubba Free Love, aka…