Bruce Bisset
Sometimes disasters happen that throw up conspiracy theories by the dozen as people search for answers; and sometimes conspiracies happen and the result is a disaster, but some think it the answer all the same.
A prime example of each this week: the Kaikoura earthquake series, and National's enshrinement of a dead-duck TPPA.
Let's deal with the big shake-up first.
According to the religious right, aka "Bishop" Brian Tamaki, we're being punished for the gays, murderers and sinners amongst us.
An equally wild theory has it we're unfortunate victims of God's annoyance at being Trumped in the USA; this may be no crazier than Vice-President-elect Mike Pence's creationist views, but I can relate to a god having a bad-hair day over The Donald.
Then there's the seismic testing vessel, Amazon Warrior, the largest of its kind in the world and busy doing testing - which involves setting off shaped charges on the seafloor and then translating the various "echoes" that result - plumb on the main plate fault off the South Island's east coast.
Almost certainly coincidence; but, as for fracking, such disturbances have been linked to quakes in several places around the world.
Favourite is of course the supermoon. Closer to Earth than at any time since 1948, the moon exerting a stronger gravitational pull on us is, most scientists claim, still too weak to cause more than minor quakes. But who really knows, cosmologically, all the ways one planetary body influences another.
Bear in mind lesser supermoons occurred in February and March 2011 - within days of the Christchurch quake and Japanese tsunami, respectively - while the devastating Sumatran quake and tsunami of 2004 was two weeks prior to one.
Spooky? One local seismologist, Dr John Ristau of GNS Science, concedes it's "plausible" a supermoon could be a factor in setting off a major quake - if the faultline is "ready to go".
New Zealand is certainly ready to go as far as so-called "free" trade is concerned.
Despite the TPPA being proclaimed dead in the US, National has now passed enabling legislation to ratify the deal, opening us up to rule by big corporates who would, under "restraint of trade" compensation clauses, effectively be able to write our laws for us to suit themselves.
National is playing a form of "tradesmanship": saying to the US and fellow parties, "we're open to whoever wants us". If not the US, then one guess who's next: China, which is driving a competing Pacific Rim package.
Prime Minister John Key may have close ties with the American banking and political systems, but many of his ministers and party bigwigs are soundly in bed with the Chinese, so it doesn't matter to them who wins us.
The only guarantee is that New Zealand's sovereignty and self-respect will lose.
This is also a background reason why proposed wholesale laissez faire changes to the Resource Management Act, bolstered by Maori Party support, have been allowed to go forward from select committee without alteration.
The TPPA demands a compliant local as well as national governance regime, and how better to deliver that than to take all real power away from councils and put it, at the drop of a complaint, in the hands of Cabinet instead?
That these unfit-for-purpose changes will run roughshod over councils' ability to declare our region GM-Free, for example, neatly fits within the corporatist agenda.
So as big a disaster as the earthquakes may be, they pale into insignificance when our entire environmental health and our sovereign rights are being given away to satisfy foreign greed.
That's a sin worth being damned for, eh Brian?