Will serve as a wake-up call to naïve New Zealand media.

10 Nov 2017  -  The Washington Post piece claiming that the Jacinda Ardern – led coalition is a rightwing conspiracy will have the positive effect of persuading at last the legacy media in New Zealand to cease accepting anything in the Washington Post or in its attitudinal sister the New York Times as if their observations were holy-writ.

The unquestioning devotion to these two dailies by the old media and by the New Zealand foreign service apparatus has only recently been demonstrated as a perilous path simply because it is so misleading.

It was these two dailies that persuaded, for example, and beyond any shadow of doubt the New Zealand diplomatic arm, that Hillary Clinton would win the presidential election. Several damaging and indeed foolish foreign policy thrusts were based on the prognostications of these two newspapers.

The two newspapers’ single-minded determination to signal virtue has a commercial underpinning that is quite simply not understood in New Zealand.

The Washington Post is controlled by the same people who control Amazon, the digital publishing and distribution outfit.

It’s market is in a bracket defined by well-to-do individuals in the Category A marketing sector and this requires targeting those in youth and earlier middle age---and who have what is known as “discretionary spending” capability which means they are well-to-do.

The New York Times which is shedding circulation has a similar imperative in order to attract subscribers in this category and the advertiser who need to reach them.

The New York Times was once a newspaper of record, but the controlling Sulzberger family in recent years has twisted and turned to find a circulation-building approach to this Category A bracket.

The smearing of deputy coalition leader Winston Peters, especially in term of his supposed racism, is designed so that the more Mr Peters seeks to deny it, the more in fact he becomes enmeshed in the smear.

No longer under the guidance of its long time controlling family, the Graham dynasty, the Washington Post has lost any restraint in its mercantilist move for market share.

The branding of any government or the individuals which represent it as extremists is a carefully calibrated piece of virtue signalling.

It is all the more powerful in the case of New Zealand.

This is because the Washington Post marketing directorate believe that it will be taken seriously here and thus they will achieve pick-up and bounce-back into other markets.

Contrary to a naïve yet widespread belief in New Zealand, and one especially held by the legacy media here, their counterparts in the United States have little operational understanding of who governs here, and what they represent.

The extremist smear is like the racism one in that the more the targets of the smear seek to explain themselves, the more they get caught up in the original smear.

The piece is a wake-up call to the New Zealand media and the nation’s diplomatic service.

Neither are able to comprehend the zero-sum nature of the United States media and its intense mercantilist focus which transcends the kind of fair-and-balanced reporting that remains the touchstone here.

The result is that an attention-seeking and virtue-signalling piece such as the one claiming that the new coalition is an extremist and racist one in the past anyway has succeeded in obtaining extensive and unquestioning pick up here.

| From the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ||  Friday 10 November 2017   |||

Fading of established church ushers in new druidic epoch believes Mediaeval era authority.

Antiquity authority Gordon Strong points out that the current surge of accelerated ethical mass hysteria centred now on an extended Hollywood – Westminster axis amounts to nothing more than an electronic replication of such collective expressions of righteousness in ancient times.

The main difference between such outbreaks in the pre-media age and the current version is that now it is an underclass seeking to diabolise a superior or over-class.

In the current and resurgent trans-Atlantic outbreak this targeted superior strata is represented by those in power in two cooperative and linked categories –the electronic entertainment class and the political class.

In the current outbreak this represents those who control the capital, and thus the jobs in the visual mass media, and to an only lesser extent those in politics deemed to be exercising a similar style of economic power upon those beneath them.

Mr Strong is considered Britain’s leading specialist in ancient superstitions and their outcomes and has authored many books on the subject.

The current Hollywood- Westminster axis outbreak, contrary to a widespread notion in academia, had more in common with mob behaviour than with the witch hunt manifestation, he said.

Witch hunts , he said were levied by a superior class on members of an under class deemed to be the source of a community problem such as still-born children, plagues, and famines.

The contemporary version in contrast he pointed out is reversed in that it is being levied by an underclass on a dominating overclass.

The purpose is to excoriate those considered to have failed to deliver on an undertaking made to their accusers.

These accusers also believe themselves to have been humiliated in the course of achieving that same undertaking from those in power over them..

In all instances the accused had been considered to have been operating from a consented and superior position of trust, and one confirmed and promoted by the same electronic media now being applied to their condemnation.

One similarity between the current outbreak and those of ancient times was the accelerator in the shape of the same core mob, drawing in more participants and more strength as it rolled along.

The presence of the mob in ancient times and now currently supplied the key to understanding the syndrome, said Mr Strong.

Regardless of the epoch the mob transcended the constituted authority of the era in defining its own targets, its own malefactors, and challenged the authorities of the era to do something about them.-

Otherwise the mob would take the law into its own hands, and in doing so make the authorities look weak and thus vulnerable.

The mob effect was clearly visible in its current incarnation as those on the sidelines and observing the snowball effect now joined it for fear of themselves incurring its wrath.

Marching on its fingertips now rather than on its clogs the individual power vested in the population by electronics meant that this virtual mob can criss-cross frontiers and oceans in seconds.

The “virtual mob” would become increasingly powerful and increasingly prevalent, assured Mr Strong.

The reason was the collapse over the past 50 years in the respect for, and thus the fear of, institutions – notably the established church.

Filling this vacuum noted Mr Strong was the re-appearance in the English-speaking world of the Druid, an official whose role it was in ancient times to intercede and generally mediate between the people and their unseen deities.

.He cited show-business exemplars such as George Clooney and Benedict Cumberbatch (pictured) as two such revenants who from their position of recognition and trust had sought to arbitrate during the current resurgence and generally to “exercise a calming influence.”

| From the MSCNewsWire repporters' desk  ||  Sunday 5 November 2017   |||  

Foes become best of enemies sharing the applied Utu of the United States entertainment industry.

Question. What do the National Party and Kim Dotcom have in common apart from both being domiciled in New Zealand, and both being each other’s nemesis?

Answer. They are both targets of the entertainment industry’s determination to demonstrate the power and the long reach of its copyright enforcement.

Kim Dotcom was arraigned in New Zealand at the behest of the United States entertainment industry on the grounds that his gigantic computerised transit warehouse was being used to handle US entertainment products.

The National Party was similarly constrained to appear in court over the similarity of its 2014 campaign jingle with that of the output of a United States performing artist.

Now we encounter the divergence between the two unlikely parties in that Kim Dotcom’s enforced presence in the United States remains on hold, while the National Party must wear a fine of $600,000 for lifting a snarling, tattooed US warbler’s rhythm.

These two entities, the National Party and the Dotcom one also share the distinction in that in the same 2014 election they both fielded competing political parties –the Dotcom Party known as the Internet Party and the National one

Similarly these two rather disparate entities share several mysteries. Among them:-

• Why did the National government deem it necessary to be party to an SAS-style raid on Kim Dotcom’s Auckland residential headquarters when the subsequent evidence indicated that Mr Dotcom would have come quietly?
• Why did Mr Dotcom, if he believed himself guilty of anything, have had his digital storage company’s servers – the virtual warehouse-located in the United States which he must have known has an extradition agreement with New Zealand?

The degree to which the courtroom proceedings in Wellington leading up to the National Party copyright decision will be a presence in the continuation of the proceedings against Mr Dotcom will of course be an element for the jurists involved to conjure with.

The two defendants resemble two bruised and bloodied martial arts combatants, tag wrestlers, obliged to lean on each other to remain standing up.

The Kim Dotcom corner murmuring to the effect that it was encouraged to settle in New Zealand by a National government viewing the burly digital genius as an avatar who would encourage others of that stripe to set up shop here

The National Party corner meanwhile rumbling away how their various professional imaging advisers had let them down and after all, they only wanted to get the younger vote in their corner anyway---the same people who were supposed to pick up the Dotcom digital entrepreneurship follow-me message

The fact that these two, the hunters and the hunted, now find themselves in the same copyright corner again underlines the bizarre nature of the general election of 2017.

| From the MSCNewsWire reporters' desk  ||  Friday October 27,  2017   |||

Now the fun begins on US late night talk shows.

For the National Party, trouble does not travel alone.

The Eminem verdict against the National Party gives United States late-night talk show hosts still another opportunity to immerse themselves in the New Zealand broadcasting argot in which for example there is the fush und chups cuisine the Puntucth camera along with the rapper himself described here as Im’n’im.

The use of the track in the 2014 campaign was though no joke for the copyright holders of the riff who lawyered up the moment they heard the National Party election version of it.

The fine against the National Party cited as $600,000 may of course be subject to an appeal.

The problem for the party though is that the fine will represent only a proportion of the money spent on the defence of the case

There is also the degree to which the National Party can lay off the fine against the political marketing consultants instrumental in the selection of the track.

It is not known for example if the National Party had imposed fee retentions against the outcome of the copyright case.

This involvement of third parties in the case is a delicate one.

It is not known if the National Party or its consultants carry insurance against this kind of contingency.

Unlike standard text or prose anything in the musical sphere is subject to the most rigorous copyright enforcement and this is one reason why in any outtake from anything musical the copyright holders must be cited.

Given the complexity of musical copyright, and the extremely unlikely possibility of it being contravened by a political party, there are strong grounds for believing that the National Party remains substantially exposed to this judicial action.

In the meantime and in the knowledge of their own liability to the United States late nighters such as John Oliver, broadcasting editors might themselves become cautious about the now standard New Zealand broadcasting patois in which sentences such as this routinely emerge…..

“Walkeen eenter the sceenema the group of woman were gunner see Im’n’im.”

Translation:

Walking into the cinema the group of women were going to see Eminem

DIY defeat in which Blindness to symbols blended with analysis-induced paralysis.

Political buffs everywhere will refer to the fall in 2017 of the National Government as an example of how flourishing terms of trade and other positive economic indicators are insufficient to compensate for a failure to quickly get on top of emotive domestic issues.

The National Government fell through becoming paralysed by its own over-analysis.

It could never get a clear vision of its overriding objective which was to stop its older adherents bolting to Winston Peters and his New Zealand First alternative party.

Similarly, National had to lock in its farmers.

Yet with its inability to put out clear policies, notably on water, National allowed Winston Peters to insert himself in the policy vacuum and declare himself the champion of farmers

Again, in taxation, National was unable to put across the obvious dual message to the effect that yes, capital gains tax was a good idea, but oh dear! It simply had had the opposite effect of the one intended in countries that had it. They might have quoted Spain, for example

In a curious example of reverse laws in physics, the more advisers and “consultants” the Nationals recruited to its cause from at home and abroad, the less the grasp it gave the impression of having on the issues

Neither was it able to recognise its own strengths in order to de-fuse the anticipated accusations of absence of much caring-sharing in regard to minority groups. It’s allegiance with the now extinct Maori Party was one of these hidden symbolic advantages.

It was in its absence of comprehension of political symbols that from the outset of its third term that the governing-alone National Party was most manifestly out of its depth.

The caucus, the Parliamentary party in toto, did not know how to handle a celebrity prime minister, and especially one who would not be taking them into the next election

Without anyone to counter his own exuberance, the caucus allowed Mr Key to launch his personal flag-changing campaign which was to alienate the growing proportion of its elderly supporters, and to near universal surprise, a sizeable chunk of the younger ones as well.

A pride of the National government was that under the tutelage of old Wall Street hand prime minister John Key, it understood pretty much what was going on in United States politics.

In the event it gave the impression of having little comprehension at all.

It seemed as surprised as its contacts in United States media and politics that Donald Trump became the new president.

It was revealed for example that the National government had signed off on a large donation to the Clinton Foundation.

Worse was to follow.

The National government now followed through on its pledge as a temporary member of the United Nations Security Council to back a measure against Israel.

This had the effect of alienating its support among New Zealand’s accelerating congregations in evangelical churches in which anything to do with the holy land is regarded with extreme sensitivity

As the election drew near and grappling now with the excesses of house prices and unable to explain how this was due in part to regulatory constraints, many introduced by Labour, the National Government now stood mutely by as it found itself on the receiving end of the biggest own goal in New Zealand political history.

Former prime minister, by now Sir, John Key now sold his Auckland property.

New Zealand is quite different from the United States and Australia in that great wealth is not necessarily admired.

Attitudes to large scale individual capital formation can quickly change from sneaking regard, furtive envy, to outright resentment

Which is what happened now as the general election drew near .

Neither can the National Party point to Fifth Column-style enemies of the type that are supposed to be neutral.

Certainly not the mainstream media.

The old legacy media nowadays is neither to the right nor to the left.

It is though intensely pc, something which National finds it hard to grasp, and thus accommodate itself to.

In the end it was a DIY defeat.

National fell into all the bear traps dug for it by Winston Peters.

Then added its own.

| From the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ||  Monday 23 October 2017   |||

Victim of Zavos Syndrome

New Zealand’s National Party slipped into reverse gear after winning its third mandate, one in which it did not require even any coalitions such was the scope of its victory.

The hand on this reverse gear was none other than prime minister John Key whose touch until then had been considered so sure that nobody questioned his judgment.

The first sign of this new and uncertain touch was Mr Key’s personal campaign to install a revised version of the New Zealand flag.

This had the effect off peeling off National Party adherents of the type that had fought under this same flag in foreign engagements

Mr Key was not finished though in dusting off the National Party’s thin blue line of older followers ..........

An impression was given that Mr Key’s knighthood was tied into his departure when he handed over the premiership to his successor Bill English MP.

Mr Key’s acceptance of the knighthood was far too soon, and should have been held off until after the election.

Older voters who still take these things seriously know that the allocations of the knighthoods are under a zero sum formula. This means that the one given to Mr Key meant that someone else couldn’t have one

Mr Key was still not done.

His sale of his high end Auckland properties for many, many millions of dollars prior to the general election was well publicised and considered again by this older category to be an example of the self- seeking, submerged, underside of the National Party

This demonstration of extravagance became compounded when it was bruited around that the only interests capable of funding the purchase were Chinese.

All this was cement also to the post-election coalition talks between Winston Peters’ New Zealand First and the Labour Party which dwelled on the perceived evils of unrestrained “capitalism.”

The syndrome in which the National Party in its third consecutive term starts to dismantle its hard core following was identified a generation ago by Australasian commentator Spiro Zavos (pictured.)

He codified the symptoms such as over-liberal distribution of knighthoods, and a tendency to override their loyalists in the hunt for more fashionable adherents.

In this last outbreak of the syndrome, there are signs that the National Party unquestioningly absorbed the counsel of overseas political consultants.

| From the MSCNewsWire reporters' desk  ||  Friday 20 October 2017   |||

Locals had been led to believe Baywa AG was expanding

Hawkes Bay apple juice company T&G Foods faces an uncertain future as the owner the gigantic Munich trading house Baywa AG tries to sell it into an unreceptive market

Local fabricators had tooled up anticipating the expansion of the old Turners & Growers business and now they find themselves contemplating the possibility that the business, big by New Zealand standards, but tiny by Baywa’s might simply shut its doors.

Several years ago that The Munich-based company BayWa AG acquired over 100 per cent of the third largest apple producer in New Zealand, Apollo Apples Ltd., through its New Zealand subsidiary Turners & Growers Ltd.:

The on-season/off-season growing cycle made sense at the time.

But now the German firm cites a decline in fruit volumes and a slide in apple juice concentrate prices.

T&G Foods has the capacity to process up to 200,000 metric tonnes of apples and other fruit at its two manufacturing sites, one in Hastings and the other in Nelson.

The company processes apples into apple juice and has also diversified into the production of higher margin fruit ingredient products including diced apple for the food services industry, apple sauce in bulk and small format pouches for retail consumers.

The company was founded in Germany nearly 100 years ago, operates in 34 countries and has nearly 20,000 staff

The uncertainty about the company’s New Zealand apple business is a surprise just because the main problems were well-known at the outset of the acquisition.

These included supply problems due to the widespread pulling up of orchards, and the labour problems involved in the picking of the fruit in the remaining orchards.

Baywa is a conglomerate in that it is involved in energy, notably solar, as well as in building materials, and farm equipment.

The uncertainty over the company’s processing future here comes at a time of intense political sensitivity over the acquisition of New Zealand’s primary resources by foreign firms.

This has been compounded by the worry of local constructors who had been led to believe that the company was on an expansionary path.

| From the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.  ||  Wednesday 18 October 2017   |||

Further reading:

14 June 2014 - The BayWa Group takes over New Zealand's third largest apple producer

16 october 2017 - T&G Global looks to sell food processing T&G Foods unit

Labour Party Grandees Considered to have a Matchmaking role

The long duration of the New Zealand government’s post general election coalition negotiations indicate that the New Zealand First Party minority but tie-breaking faction will coalesce with the Labour Party.

The main reason is that New Zealand First Leader Winston Peters MP, the one who unilaterally calls the shots, has two key policies that blend with Labour’s. They are:-

• New Zealand First’s immigration policy which amounts to cutting back intakes only to those with essential skills.
• The re-entry to the abandoned Pike River mine which entombs the bodies of the brave miners who perished in the explosion there.

New Zealand First’s policy to cut immigration back to the bone chimes with the historic doctrinal Labour ambition of raising wages.

This requires that demand for labour outstrips supply.

Something which is hard to do with a liberal immigration regime in place.

It runs though counter to the operational policy of the installed National government to stimulate growth through immigration.

So there would have to be an awkward National back down, and a personal one, by caretaker prime minister Bill English

Meanwhile, Mr English has repeatedly and personally set his face on a re-entry to the doomed Pike River mine. A comedown here will mean considerable loss of face.

A re-entry, however symbolic, will be welcome on the West Coast which always votes Labour.

There are signs too that the Labour Party’s grandees, who tend to have more influence than their National Party counterparts, are weighing in behind a coalition with Winston Peters.

Bryan Gould, a New Zealand-born member of the British Parliament, and once tipped as a likely leader of the UK Labour Party, has issued a communique warning of the dangers of getting in too deeply with the Chinese.

This indicates a clear tilt toward Winston Peters who has been issuing the same type of warning, and who favours a re-balance with the North Atlantic.

A further dowry that Mr Peters can bring to Labour is his campaign positioning as champion of farmers.

The inability of the National government to boil down the nation’s agricultural water problem into digestible policies allowed Mr Peters to successfully insert himself into the confusion.

Mr Peters has worked with Labour before.

It was Mr Peters also who produced the recognisable ace welfare card in recent times, his Super Gold Card giving pensioners substantial discounts on essentials, notably public transport .

The option for the caretaker National government is to know that their time is up. Temporarily. Sit out the next three years and hope for the worst.

Then, having lost no face, having been seen to have stood behind its principals (something it often finds hard to do) and then to resume its normal course as it sees it, as the natural party of government.

| From the MSCNewsWire reporters' desk  ||  Monday 16 October 2017   |||

Cloture regime must be imposed to stop endless coalition “negotiations”

Several weeks after its general election New Zealand remains rudderless under what is now officially described as a “caretaker” government.

A minority party, New Zealand First, will dictate the makeup of the government that will eventually take power.

The impression internationally is of an unstable nation, more of a Latin one than a Westminster one.

There is in existence no statute defining for example the limit of the post-election coalition deliberation duration.

There is for example no statute which promulgates an incentive to an early conclusion of negotiations such as that another general election must be held if agreement cannot be reached after perhaps 10 days.

Politico-jurists such as Sir Geoffrey Palmer (pictured) dedicate themselves to the propounding of a New Zealand constitution similar to the one that underpins the United States.

It is now obvious though that this crusade needs to be approached from a tactical point of view, rather than the all-encompassing one of the omnibus constitution.

Proportional representation was imposed by the Allies after World War 2 on the Axis nations of Germany and Italy.

The purpose was to prevent any one party from having overwhelming power of the type that might see ushered in another fascist regime.

In New Zealand the reason given was for minority interests, specifically Maori ones, to be guaranteed of having their own nominal representation.

In the event, this last MMP election saw Maori parties washed out of Parliament.

New Zealand’s proportional representation electoral system was the result of a referendum in 1993

| From This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ||  Thursday 12 October 2017,   |||

Many believe that New Zealand’s Hollywood suburb Miramar, is in fact Miramax

Beleaguered show business mogul Harvey Weinstein remains the foreigner whose influence detonated the most extraordinary and unexpected New Zealand commercial development of the last century.

The film industry

Lugubrious, ponderous, quick tempered, and impulsive, it was Mr Weinstein who backed the film that launched the third, and ultimately successful wave of New Zealand film making.

This was The Piano with its all -star global cast and subsequent global take up.

So successful was it that Mr Weinstein was to use the piano theme again, in Beautiful Girls.

Then Mr Weinstein went on back New Zealand’s Heavenly Creatures.

Then he gave the initial show of support to the most spectacular product series of New Zealand cinematography in the form of the Tolkien saga.

The one man hit-factory’s New Zealand touch was so accurate in the entertainment industry here that many believed that that the locational hub of the New Zealand industry was actually Miramax instead of being in fact Miramar.

Mr Weinstein’s (pictured) touch is often considered to be behind the comet-like careers of others with New Zealand backgrounds, notably that of Russell Crowe of Master and Commander fame.

New Zealand and Mr Weinstein were lucky enough to collide at the very height of the Miramax golden touch at the cusp of the last century and this one.

Subsequently Miramax went through a series of corporate revolving doors that began to sap the company’s blend of intuitive show-picking along with the personalised business side of the equation needed to sustain it.

Like a protagonist in one of his own films Mr Weinstein failed to foresee the imminence of his own demise.

Sycophants encouraged him in his foolish belief that he was bigger than the game.

Then he got himself on the wrong side of history.

He was oblivious for example to the screamingly obvious fact that as a highly visible, even ghoulish , personification of the big-donor Democratic- Clintonesque epoch, his once acquiescent protectors were melting away.

It was now that the East Coast media, stung by accusation after accusation to the effect that they believed that only Republicans were capable of doing bad things, sought to correct the impression that it had given.

It went looking for a counterbalancing Democratic scalp to put up on its masthead spear.

In terms of notoriety, vulgarity, and sheer name recognition there were none bigger than Harvey Weinstein’s.

| From the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.  ||  Tuesday 10 October 2017   |||