Oil and Gas Lawyer practised at peak of exploration and production era

The death at 91 of Francis Joshua Handy brings to end one of the most geographically diverse legal careers in the oil and gas sector

He worked directly with the New Zealand Shell BP Todd consortium on its contracting for leases and then for the exploration and production hardware in the form of rigs, supply boats and platforms notably with such suppliers as Sedco and J Ray McDermott.

Frank Handy was determined to be part of the productive economy.

The excitement and sense of industrious purpose that accompanied the Maui exploration and production implementation more than half a century ago has largely evaporated from public consciousness.

The zest of this now forgotten productivity era of New Zealand having under development the resources to balance agricultural dependence has become instead submerged under a contrived aura of guilt and shame sponsored by a quite recently evolved new patrician class.

But when Frank Handy moved to New Plymouth the city had about it an atmosphere compared at the time to Houston.

His was the patient calming legal mind to smooth over administrative and operational differences and unite in their common purpose the head office and operatives in the field.

His always elegantly attired lanky frame presented an aristocratic aspect and there was indeed a dynastic tilt to his career.

From the South Island of New Zealand Frank Handy was the son of a clergyman and throughout his life constantly displayed the seriousness of his upbringing, which as he grew older became tempered by an infectious laugh and deliberate irreverence.

In the event he exchanged a career in the church for a more worldly one in the New Zealand government Treasury.

In a surprise career curve he suddenly quit the public sector for the private one, starting off as a law clerk for Scott Morrison.

A quick study Frank Handy had graduated in 1957 MA from Victoria University and then in 1968 LLB

His marriage in 1965 to Lyndsey Watts, daughter of Jack Watts, a decisive National Government Minister of Finance, accelerated the young Handy’s progress in his new legal career.

After several years with Scott Morrison he now became a partner in his father-in-law’s firm, Watts & Patterson.

Jack Watts, after leaving Parliament, had begun his own legal partnership with Colin Patterson.

Perhaps to please his new father-in-law Frank Handy stood for the National (i.e. conservative) Party in 1969 to contest the Labour Party working class bastion of the Petone electorate and predictably he lost.

Watts & Patterson as a partnership had organised itself around high-end legal contractual assignments, notably in the auto trade.

When Frank Handy originally joined the partnership its association with the motor trade had led to a global resources orientation which positioned the firm for the Taranaki-based era of oil and gas exploration, symbolised by the Maui offshore drilling.

The conclusion of the Maui era saw him reluctant to return to Wellington and to its inevitably more routine emphasis on commercial work.

Instead he repositioned himself and his family in Aberdeen, then as now the hub of North Sea oil.

Frank Handy eventually ended his tour of duty in Scotland and re-established himself in Auckland with his by now much expanded old partnership.

Rather later he returned to Wellington to fill the gap left by his brother-in- law the late Julian Watts who had departed for London to become the head office company secretary for BP.

An enthusiastic sportsman Frank Handy played the Heretaunga Golf Club. He never lost his taste for ecclesiastical music

As his corporate career drew to a close he insisted on retaining his practising certificate and now established himself as a sole practitioner, a kind of store front attorney, in the distinctive Hibernian Society building on Wellington’s Bond Street.

In contrast to the earlier part of his legal career Frank Handy now deployed his institutional commercial experience for the benefit of hard-pressed individuals, small businesses, and start-ups.

He consistently put himself out for those who found themselves struggling in one capacity or another.

He finally quit practising in 2022.

He is survived by his wife Lyndsey and their three children.

Australia Door Closes as NZ Opens to Offset Renewables Electrochemical Schemes

Under full pre-Trump Restoration momentum the Australasian branch of the Anglosphere displays a no-problems-here attitude to the return of the president.

The region keeps its official foot on the zero throttle in spite of the incoming president repeatedly promising to eliminate on his first day in office all and any restrictions to underground energy sources.

In New Zealand there is a latter day gold rush as foreign investors seek to implement leases on low lying pasture in order to construct solar generating schemes.

In one such valley alone these schemes are already encroaching on premium vineyards.

Forty percent of New Zealand wine exports go to the United States invoking the possibility of retaliation centred on chemical processes designed for arid regions being positioned inches above water tables.

A reason that New Zealand has become a focus for foreign investors trading renewables rights is that Australia surprisingly is actively pushing back on the schemes at district local government administrative level.

In Australasia any indication that restrictions on things like gas, oil, and coal are responsible for inflation are poo-poohed at once by the vast army of public servants in both countries charged with suppressing such fuels.

In a sinister suppression of information any research is instantly choked that might show that public policy against traditional fuels is responsible for a big chunk of the cost of living.

A blanket of verbiage centred on the dawning era of renewables is the response.

Slickly ignored are such facts as every piece of equipment having to be imported, installation costs, and relatively short life span blended with unstated disposal obligations and costs and who exactly is responsible for them.

Australia and New Zealand remain in COP thrall similar to the one that existed in the United States prior to the Trump restoration.

New Zealand’s alleged conservative coalition is an example.

Its right-ish wing component the ACT Party treads around the issue like broken glass by lamely claiming that it has to conform in order that New Zealand can trade internationally with it partners.

In only a few months’ time the biggest partner will quit this demonstrably inflationary dance when president Trump issues his “drill baby drill” proclamation.

Half of New Zealand’s contribution to the state of catastrophe claimed for C02 is said to be caused by ruminants in the course of their grazing.

Such is the fear and trembling wrought by the upscale electorally shifty metropolitan suburbs that the obedient politico media industrial complex dare not even point out the following.

It is that food production is exempt from the C02 agreements and always has been.

The New Zealand open-door policy to these pastoral electrochemical generator projects known as agrivoltaics encourages foreign investors to site generators close to rural existing substations serving agricultural communities.

More worrying is that the government’s clinging to placating the metropolitan privileged is actually leading to international obstacles.

These are not necessarily tariff ones.

They are likely to be centred on the pollution vulnerability of a primary base of foodstuffs now being posed by the environmental effects of this new pasture located industrial variant .

The migration now of these pasture-based solar schemes to New Zealand demonstrates the force of the push back in Australia.

Elsewhere the Canberra government determinedly seeks to quash underground fuels wherever it quite literally finds them.

The Canberra Labour government especially in regard to the incoming president Trump is in a position that can be compared to an organisation that believed that it had seen off a hated boss.

Only to discover a few years later the same tyrant reinstated and more powerful than ever.

Two Australian federal prime ministers openly expressed doltish opinions about Donald Trump.

One of these is the sitting federal prime minister.

The other is a former Labour prime minister who is now Australia’s ambassador in Washington.

Meanwhile in New Zealand the bureaucracy organised zero campaign has successfully steered any debate away from the composition of these schemes.

To an alarming extent the componentry includes long term contaminants such as polyfluoroalkyl substances.

Do Not be Distracted Warns Renowned Arabist

Meguerditch Bouldoukian served as deputy governor of the central Bank of Lebanon 1985-1990 and for more than half a century he has been pivotal in balancing Middle East banking imperatives with those of New York, London, and Paris. The Nobel-nominated Armenian banker is a renowned Arabist and acknowledged as a world authority on correspondent banking. In the eye of the storm he talked exclusively to us.....…

Internationally what will be the ripple effects of a Trump victory?

There are two immediate Trump objectives the repercussions of which will be found everywhere.

There is the determination to make the United States the world’s permanent major energy producer. Freedom of production and distribution of oil, gas, and coal will end inflation in the United States and this will “ripple-out” to Europe and also Australasia. This is because the general populace realises how doctrinal, artificial, barriers to production have caused all prices to spiral well beyond just the obvious and immediate ones of transport and energy.

There is also the pledge to restore the $USD as the world’s unchallenged and indeed, unchallengeable reserve currency.

This will be achieved in harmony with the determination to end outsourcing and restore the United States as the global manufacturing nation i.e. making it Great Again.

So in short you will see a future Trump administration stripping away the ideological impediments, obstacles, to this pre-eminence such as access to oil and gas along with what Trump views as the way United States industrial power has been whittled away by an ideological pursuit of globalism.

He sees all these factors as artificial and self-imposed obstacles to restoring this greatness. I urge anyone in banking, trade, politics not to undervalue the importance of this single objective and thus the perils to any entity standing in the way of its accomplishment

The multilaterals, notably United Nations, are hell-bent on globalization. Your view?

I have discerned a reluctance by the politico-media elites to discuss this. But I want to take the opportunity you have provided me to sound one particular warning to a pending and alarming development.

The UN plans globalization of the World Health Organization ’s Pandemic Treaty. In this globalization, the elite will decide the Vaccines for our kids, will decide where you can travel, and where you can congregate. The UN and its WHO subsidiary which is still under critical review after its initial response to Covid is acting as a totalitarian power and wants to impose WHO’s Pandemic Treaty.

This will be a form of enslavement. This treaty threatens to strip you, of your ability to make personal health decisions, placing immense power in the hands of global elites to control your life. It can cripple our economies, and curtail our fundamental freedom. We must act to stop the passing of this treaty.

How do you rate the chances of the Harris-Walz ticket and if elected what will be the global repercussions?

The US is likely finished as an empire unless its public wakes up in the coming elections. Over 1.2 million Covid 19 deaths, over $40 trillion national debt, and corporate/personal debts. The Democrat party has become corrupt in its single objective of attaining power. Over 1.2 million Covid 19 deaths, over $40 trillion national debt, and corporate/personal debts, as well as 2 million citizens behind bars.

This ticket must enunciate and so clearly defined policies such as for example cancelling the electric vehicle mandate and cutting costly and burdensome regulations and so many elitist dictats which so demonstrably and damagingly play out on its vaunted blue collar base..

Similarly this ticket must at least pay lip service to cutting federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory, radical gender ideology, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on children.

While we are on the Democrat/Democracy topic there is this other matter that the politico-media elites decline to discuss which is the validity of the process, the procedure, of the federal presidential election process itself.

The election must be seen to be beyond criticism, beyond tampering, and thus must enforce same-day voting, voter identification, paper ballots, and proof of citizenship. This is routinely skated over by the very sectors that should via their declared mission be scrutinising it.

The degree to which the Democrat de facto open border policy ties into this is similarly remarkable for the way in which it is not discussed by these elites.

Do you fear a world recession?

It may surprise you. But here I am optimistic. The world economy has become multipolar in the 21stcentury. The economy of each nation-state in the liberal free enterprise system has created trade zones around the world which has transformed into “recession-less” economies. Technological changes have made countries adapt rapidly to challenging opportunities. Economic cycles exist as explained by such sages as Kondratiev due to permanent evolution of science, research, innovation, and, of course technology.

As long as the international financial system is dominantly sound, in the West and the East, we do not have to fear a world recession. Even if the domination of the US Dollar has competitors such as the Euro and the Chinese Yuan still each country has its industrial production, the capacity utilization and its macroeconomic structures which evolve according to the forces of demand and supply.

What was the real reason in your view for Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine?

Any former Soviet Republic that is changing its foreign policy against Russia and getting closer to the West and NATO, such as Georgia and Armenia have been punished by the Kremlin. Putin resists expansion of NATO eastward while post-cold war security of Russia is expanding westward. He considers Ukraine is an integral part of Russian national patrimony.

Of course, Kremlin’s ruling elite resent the hostile West through a lens of suspicion and insecurity. The chaotic withdrawal of the US army from Afghanistan gave a sign to Putin to invade Ukraine. I may add here that Trump attributes this debacle to a Biden-encouraged emphasis on a virtuous in-vogue societal priority at the expense of one with accepted military plans and objectives.

The annexation of Crimea in 2014 received a weak reaction from the West. Putin is a calculated risk taker.

You are known to follow gold closely. What do you see now and in the medium term?

The gold price per ounce has gone up from the last century’s $35 per ounce and fluctuates always moving upwards. Since 9/11/2001, my forecast on Nov. 9 2001 that the price per ounce of $277.30 will move upward to around $1,000 per ounce was successful.

In the medium term, the tendency is upwards. There is speculation; however, there is a real demand in this uncertain and unstable world. On December 6, 2023, my forecast for the next 6 months was $2,500 per ounce. It attained that mark and over... today it is $2,627.

Your conclusion?

Should there be a Trump restoration we will witness the advent of hegemony not too dissimilar from the era when monarchs had much more power than they do now. I do accept that there will be a reckoning notably about the causes and effects that led to the Kabul fiasco and also the continuing and current one on the US southern border.

The reverence accorded over the last four years to the global institutions will evaporate, and quickly I am inclined to think also.

In general and in school room scientific terms all policy will be subject to a litmus test: is it going to Make America Great Again?

Lord Scarman direction on critiquing courts is still ignored

Cases centred on pedigree dogs and which ended up in the High Court underline an uncertain focus within the judicial system.

The first case involved dog judging and etiquette at a dog show.

The second and more recent case devolved around the pedigree registration of certain show dogs.

Both these episodes involved the official dog breeder community and its defined rules and regulations.

In both instances the dispute went beyond the established breeder hierarchy and instead wound up in the High Court.

In both separate cases the High Court found itself grappling with the human frailties, rights, wrongs, in addition to the characteristics of exotic pet dog breeds and the required etiquette displayed at show time and also the sale and purchase value of the highly-bred creatures .

How did these two meritless cases which should have been settled at the level of the authorised pet breeder society wind up at the taxpayer expense at the High Court? Note that we are talking here about pet dogs and not the working dog category.

A reason is that there is no screening within the judiciary to eliminate the passage to the court system of such cases involving as they do pastimes which have no bearing on the welfare of the public.

This compares with the judicial system in Scotland in which the procurator fiscal would have intervened and dismissed both cases as trivial and outside any further crown consideration.

With judicial intervention at so many levels now permeating every aspect of daily life many are baffled why relevant authorities as a whole remain paralysed in explaining with any clarity the whys and wherefores of the merit of cases and their subsequent outcomes.

An underpinning reason is a widespread belief at all levels of society that there is a blanket ban on any commentary or conflicting argument to do with anything associated with a judge.

Lord Scarman impatient to the point of being visibly angry was confronted with this issue when the Law Lord toured New Zealand.

“You may criticise the judgement,” he explained.

“But you may not criticise the judge.”

Correctly perceiving that his audience had still not grasped this simple point, Lord Scarman now illustrated it with words to this following effect.

*You may criticise the judgement…

*But you cannot criticise the judge who made it by claiming for example that the judge did so under the influence of drink.

Now much later many who are in a position to comment on judicial activity are struck dumb when requested to do so.

At the time the pet dog trials wended their way through the High Court nobody in any position of authority at all said that the disputes in the public domain were trivial and that they should have been resolved by the individuals involved and the society regulating their hobby.

But everyone held back for fear of offending the bench.

Much of the judiciary is now occupied in delivering verdicts on historical disputes and ancient grievances.

There is the fear of challenging contemporary judgements on these issues and it is exhibited especially by most politicians.

They indicate that having come from the bench the judgement is holy writ.

Two topics now require more than cursory examination.

One is what goes into the court system, especially the High Court.

The other is what comes out in the way of judgements.

For too long those who should ask the questions have become poodles of an expansionary and unchallenged judiciary.

Former Prime Minister Foresaw and Implemented Co-Governance DEI Era Stuck to United Nations Agenda 30

Quite some time before the advent of the internet era and under the auspices of the United Nations a review was undertaken on the future of Australia and New Zealand in regard to race governance. The verdict on Australia was that it was likely to continue on its Westminster path. The forecast on New Zealand was more uncertain and that there was a likelihood that its governance would devolve into separatism.

This official uncertainty about New Zealand at the highest levels has been withheld from the public at large though it has been monitored for many years at this multilateral level.

For example, as far back as the 1970s United Nations questioned the existence of New Zealand’s electoral seats reserved for only those of Maori provenance.

More tellingly still there was questioning about such institutions as Maori wardens.

The United Nations focus on these matters has remained steadfast though it has mutated over the decades from mild censure to what is often viewed as approval.

The United Nations early selection of New Zealand as a suitable case for study in co-governance is an evolving reason why a candidacy for the role of United Nations secretary general by former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern is being looked on with encouragement.

A win in the United States federal election by the Kamala Harris – Tim Walz ultra progressive ticket could even have the effect of making Miss Ardern a shoo-in.

.Britain’s freshly-elected Labour government will enthusiastically support her candidacy.

As will the rulers of China and Russia.

France, the fifth permanent member of the Security Council will fall into line.

The other key requirement is the support of the candidate’s own government. There may be some grumbling among New Zealand’s always appeasing conservative governing coalition. But it will give a green light.

Under a Trump administration Ardern’s name would never be even mooted.

Ardern’s steadfast, unwavering, unquestioning positioning of a climatic threat as the overwhelming one to civilisation guarantees her the support of the United Nations bureaucracy.

Her first decree on becoming prime minister of New Zealand was to cut off oil and gas developments.

In spite of the New Zealand government having so recently created an emergency Gas Security Committee, that is its name, her climatic fixation remains unchallenged politically where it matters.

Under a Harris-Walz administration Miss Ardern’s arrival in the secretary general’s suite would be timed for the end of 2026 giving her the unbroken four year term to bring to fruit United Nation’s well incubated Agenda 30.

It is exactly this kind of laser-intensity focus that answers the yearnings for moral excellence of a knee-bending and highly if abstractedly educated class that simply did not exist when United Nations originally cast a jaundiced eye over the DEI situation in New Zealand.

The convergence of this class with the bureaucracy notably the judicial branch and then its linkage with a status-hungry media by inference insists that those outside it should bear any burden, pay any price to share the craving to be on the movement’s oft-proclaimed “right side of history.”

The whole moral movement is elevated, accelerated and enhanced by liberal use of the word “crisis” regardless of other crises however imminently cataclysmic.

One such crisis is the result of the collapse of the backbone United States foreign policy to keep apart China and Russia.

This in turn was brought about by the exhibition of US bungling in the evacuation of Kabul.

It was now that Russia and China jointly perceived the weakness inherent in the Biden administration and invaded Ukraine.

This position compares with that in the last decades of the 1800s in southern Africa when the Germans from their own colonial outposts witnessed Britain’s army being defeated by the Zulus.

Thus emboldened Germany began arming for World War 1.

Now we go full circle.

For many years the German government of Angela Merkel (pictured between Ardern and Guterres) kept in office by accommodating green parties.

This was accomplished by closing Germany’s coal mines and gas plants.

The resulting shortage was made up by filling the energy gap by importing Russian oil and gas. It was this immense infusion of the strong German currency which allowed Russia to finance its invasion of Ukraine

Which caused the current global food insecurity crisis………………………………….

Anxiety factories keep New Zealand on World Stage at any cost

The previous Labour government and current National (i.e. conservative) led government have both kept secret a singular global triumph which is that New Zealand in recent times has achieved 93 percent of its energy from renewables notably from hydro-electric and geothermal sources.

The reason for secrecy on the nation’s ability to keep pace with Iceland as a global renewables leader is bizarre by any standard, especially as it has nothing to do with the welfare or prosperity of the South Seas nation.

It is that the National-led government believes that any such disclosure will be seen as the agricultural nation easing up on its zero policies.

The fear is that this will lead to the remote member of the Anglosphere being perceived in Europe’s great capitals as “dragging the chain” on its international commitments in regard to zero.

Prior to the general election last year National Party candidates insisted that they would abandon the previous Labour government’s priority of pursuing and at any cost a high-minded determination to be the global leader in anything to do with emissions.

Specifically National Party candidates representing agricultural electorates pointedly claimed that they would end the era of strutting political intentions on the “world stage.”

Now a year into the National Party-led coalition there is no sign of it letting up on the forced march to be seen internationally in the forefront of leadership of the net zero movement.

It is true that the New Zealand First component of the New Zealand tripartite governing coalition via its minister Shane Jones seeks for example to overturn doctrinal strictures on using its abundant natural gas.

It is true also that the ACT party the third member of the tripartite coalition is constrained from anything but the most glancing observation about New Zealand’s determination to parade its zero virtue on the world stage.

This is because the ACT party under New Zealand’s German-derived proportion representation scheme owes its parliamentary presence to holding a single electorate, Epsom, an upscale enclave populated by exactly the voter demographic craving to strut its virtue on the world stage.

True also that New Zealand which even in the most optimistic of estimates contributes a barely calculable fraction of one percent to the global greenhouse effect tally.

True also that the various state-funded commissions, think tanks, and embedded climate units now employ thousands and who have slickly made themselves inviolate, sacrosanct, and generally untouchable.

They know that they are a permanent structure in the taxpayer funded vote harvesting spoils system.

The mainstream media remains important in curating and aggregating received opinion.

It refuses for example to reveal or even hint at the contribution of the official doctrine zero in accelerating consumer inflation.

The failure of the government’s timber planting auctions and the corresponding collapse of the once-vaunted international offsets marketing scheme, not to mention the demonstrable disastrous impact on the environment of all the required clear-felling needed to accomplish the El-Dorado are submerged by a compliant media.

The state subsidised mainstream is a propaganda component of a synchronised all-government chorus. Its cover-up on the world stage commitments includes complicity in the immense and hidden government undertakings to this same world stage if there is a failure to meet its vainglorious targets.

The chorus is all the more powerful in that there is no perceived choir master.

It has a faux spontaneity designed in order that the South Seas nation can be seen to have its politicians parading their modern virtue on the world stage in order to secure back home those leafy upscale suburban professional class votes

All the operative politicians from all parties know that if they are seen to be “dragging the chain” on all this high profile cultural virtue then the consequences will become instantly evident.

Their votes in these planetary entitled cultivated suburbs will shrivel and die like the leaves in autumn on the trees of those same sought after settled and secure avenues.

It is exactly in this climate of contorted showcased priorities that we find an international success kept a secret, buried, in order that the political class can continue to strut on the world stage its earnest, foolish and ruinous zeal for cultural prestige.

Baby Azaria Case Earlier Institutional Example

Accelerated intensity fuelling metropolitan causes in Australia adds fuel to the notion that the late Cardinal George Pell fell victim to a public sector excitability stemming from a volatile blend of superstition and moral superiority.

Cardinal Pell became the embodiment of climate denial and vigorously dismissed its proponents as hysterical and in the grip of a “pseudo-religion.”

It was this last critique which ignited a thirst for vengeance which found its epicentre within the Australian non-productive public sector which in Australia is composed of a substantial proportion of those born into the late Cardinals own faith.

This became evident notably in the Australian federal government’s own broadcasting apparatus which blankets the nation in terms of television and radio.

This broadcasting system unreservedly supports the climate beliefs that Cardinal Pell condemned as a contemporary religious manifestation.

It was now that the public sector in Australia acted in chorus to discredit Cardinal Pell who was acknowledged at the time as the second most powerful official in the Vatican after the Pope.

Historical and unsupported charges were brought against Cardinal Pell who returned to Australia to answer them. He ended up in gaol there. All these charges were later dismissed.

The damage to his reputation was though accomplished in the form of televised wild courtroom steps scenes, constant repetition of the unsupported charges which were solemnised in book form.

Cardinal Pell’s own observation of the “pagan” aspect to the climate cause itself took on a curious manifestation when it became obvious that the campaign against Cardinal Pell echoed elements of these earlier times.

As Cardinal Penn underwent his trial by ordeal there was a signal reluctance to balance the hysteria with commentary from the societal forces in place to restore balance.

The Australian government broadcaster signally failed to explain any connection between Cardinal Pell’s persecution and his in their eyes heresy on the matter of climate which until Gaza was the glue that held together Australasian progressives.

Australasia is prone to nationwide hysteria and which is in stark contrast to the stoic matter-of-fact character which is often ascribed to this region of the new world.

A relatively recent example centred on the death in the shadow of Ayers Rock of baby Azaria.

No matter that baby Azaria’s parents who subsequently endured gaol time said that baby Azaria was the victim of a wild dog of the dingo breed known to populate the area around the monolithic rock formation.

Neither was it a coincidence that the rock shortly afterward became imbued with a concentrated religious aura and was rebranded, sanctified, as Uluru.

Neither was it a coincidence that the parents of baby Azaria were demonstrably proven to be utterly innocent of their daughter’s death. It was a dingo it was proved without doubt..

An element stoking the flames of the subsequent national hysteria centred on Cardinal Pell was that the cleric refused to back down on firmly stating his belief that climate had become a substitute for established religion.

“In the past, pagans sacrificed animals and even humans in vain attempts to placate capricious and cruel gods. Today, they demand a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.”

Cardinal Pell’s subsequent medieval treatment characterises how prone Australia is to retributive mass fervour evidenced by the public sector pile on in the hue and cry.

The episode becomes all the more sinister just because the elements in society that should be talking about it give the impression of not even thinking about it.

There is a reason for this. Having ridden itself of its turbulent priest institutional Australia knows too that it must rid itself of an even less acceptable truism. The one about the Lucky Country’s susceptibility to institutional moral mass fervour.

Ecclesiastics meanwhile cross the road then and now rather than be seen to concede that Cardinal Pell who died last year might have discovered the cause and effect of the evaporation in Australasia of the faith as a meaningful social force.

October 7 Introduced Psychological Warfare to Middle East

The extent and effect of the DEI industry campaign against Israel will be viewed as a contributory element in the October 7 attack because of increasing evidence that Israel’s false sense of security stemmed from a reluctance to detonate resentment in the West’s politico media class.

The nation’s determination to sidestep a pre-emptive incursion was in the face of demonstrable evidence that the attack was being war gamed within Gaza.

Israel in the lead up to the invasion displayed unparalleled levels of a willingness to be duped in the form of an applied reluctance to confront the evidence that a breakout was imminent.

Even when it appeared clear that Hamas which means Islamic Resistance Movement and which is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood had aggressive intentions, Israeli analysts refused to believe that the insurgents would actually follow through with them

The build up to the commando category of invasion occurred during an extraordinary intensification of anti Israel sentiment within the multilaterals as well as Israel’s own allies such as Five Eyes where it found voice within the DEI sector.

This sector had now extended beyond identity and coupled itself with gender-climate and most sensitively of all with a colonialism syndrome specifically encoded for Israel.

While this was going on Hamas in a refinement of its nothing-to-worry-about campaign of complacency inducement launched a particularly subtle ploy.

It was to encourage other terror outfits to criticise Hamas for being itself complacent in peaceably winding down its own anti Israel stance.

Hamas followed through on this double cross by giving a firm impression to the Israel defence establishment that now it indeed intended to focus on the welfare of the population it was supposed to be governing in Gaza.

Then there were some mixed signals coming from Israel itself

One of these was the curious case of a book The Human Machine Team authored from the very top level of Israel’s signals intelligence and seemingly approved by the Israel Defence Force.

The book published only several years ago gave the impression of a priority high tech signals interception strategy.

In the covert world what is not being said shares equal value with what is actually being said.

Was the book a decoy, designed to draw attention away from specifically a human assets build up within Gaza?

A build up made possible by the daily arrival into Israel of thousands of Gaza citizens on a generous Israeli work scheme?

In the event post October 7 all the indications remain that there were no effective covert human assets within Gaza.

The book hymning the new reliance on signals listening technology was not a plant at all.

It was the real thing. Human intelligence had gone on the back burner.

Neither does Israel in practical terms appear to have made use of its standard electronics such as observation satellites.

Why was the build-up of hardware in the form of earthmovers not detected? Why were the practice sessions for the aerial assault systems not detected?

These in the event probably were in fact observed.

They were probably dismissed for two reasons. War gaming was interpreted as Hamas trying to impress its own allies of its basic bellicosity. Then there was the deep Israeli conviction that Hamas was on a peaceful path.

The October 7 insurgency combined Islamic tactics such as the taking of hostages mixed in with focused concentration methods employed by Special Forces in the West.

The application of psychological warfare techniques in the form of the false trails laid before Israel will similarly be perceived as a transfer from Occidental battle planning.

The mobilisation of the allied DEI intelligentsia can be viewed in this context as the contemporary version of air dropping propaganda leaflets sowing fear, uncertainty, and doubt far behind the enemy’s lines.

The history of the Abrahamic religions, the book religions, demonstrates a clockwork effect every half millennium in which one of them goes on the boil

Dating from the return by the Jewish people from Babylonian captivity BC there was half a millennium later the birth of Christ. Half a millennium later came the advent of Islam. Then the Crusades. Then the Reformation.

Now exactly half a millennium, precisely 500 years, after the Reformation there is a resurgent Islam culturally symbolised by the reverential precedence it is accorded in any English speaking centre of learning.

Foreign owner accelerated evaporation of Point of Difference between Television rivals

The mystery of why Television Three’s Newshub operation converged in content with the content of the South Seas nation’s competing government controlled media is another example of the perils of New Zealand’s infrastructure falling into foreign ownership.

The nation’s only independent free-to-air television broadcaster is in fact owned in the United States by Warner Brothers Discovery.

This meant a Hollywood-grade infusion of active progressivism added to the channel’s existing tendency to anyway embrace unquestioningly and unbidden such causes.

The result was that instead of establishing a clear point of difference between it and the government channel the TV3-Newshub operation simply converged in content with its opposition.

Why didn’t management see what was happening? Then do something about it by introducing and enforcing a clear point of editorial difference?

The answer is that the channel had now become boxed in by editorial policies stemming from the United States parent Warner Bros which also owns CNN.

Cable Network News is determinedly activist and it was now that TV3-Newshub’s already demonstrable alignment became supercharged.

At first the by now two mirror-image channels failed to see the effect that they had created.

So did the National Party and ACT which stood by as, for example, any weather report from either channel about rain, storm, sun or hail was always capped with the word crisis.

Even after the New Zealand general election toward the end of 2023 in which a coalition of three conservative-orientated parties was victorious both so-called rival channels continued their practice of screening Labour party types face-to-face while only indirectly reporting what anyone in the National Party-led coalition was saying.

Not long after the announcement that the TV 3 channel would abandon active current affairs coverage leaving it commercially merely as an outlet for its parent US programme feeds there was another announcement.

This time the announcement was from the government-owned rival broadcasting operation that it was cutting back drastically on its own current affairs programming and personnel.

Management of the state broadcaster instead of taking advantage of its rival’s publicly-announced decision to quit the current affairs sector, instead deliberately revealed that it was on the ropes too and intended to fire many of its staff in the same television sector.

The conclusion remains that both channels the independent one and the government one operated in its own world, far removed from anything to do with things such as competing for audiences.

Exactly why do both channels share similar no-go areas notably in climate politics in which immense international commitments given by the Labour government are studiously ignored?

Similarly both channels leap avidly and simultaneously on voguish trends designed to annoy their audiences which they must know from their own advertising is comprised of those of mature years, and for whom the world did not start just this morning?

There are questions too why the US parent through its subsidiary CNN failed to use its muscle and help out its New Zealand stablemate and fill out its Newshub operation with sympathetic news syndication economies of scale? Some helpful down-the-line feeds from global trouble-spot correspondents? A quick authoritative cut in from Anderson Cooper or Christiane Amanpour (pictured)?

It couldn’t because CNN is readily available packaged into the Sky subscriber service.

This means that in sharing content CNN owner Warner would be competing in with its local already paying customer for CNN which is Sky Television which is a main board NZSE company.

On the government side in state broadcasting the inertia favouring this same progressivist tilt is immovable because it is guaranteed through selective employment.

The view that TV3 and its Newshub operation are victims of fractionating audience is not entirely true. It and its radio subsidiaries remained buoyant well into the internet era

It failed though to understand how its audience was changing and growing older and then compounded this by its warm embrace of activism.

This meant that instead of distancing itself from the government broadcasting operation, the independent broadcaster progressively blended with its opposition.

An organisation that by definition exists to identify trends failed to realise how in eliminating the point of difference between what it was doing and what its state-controlled opposition was doing was in fact deliberately and successfully putting itself out of business.

The forces that led such a highly educated collective to wilfully ignore market teachings on the danger of merging your brand with that of your opposition’s will be a suitable case for study at any business school.

As will be its competing channel’s response to the dislocation which instead of taking advantage of it was to announce its own weakness in the form of mass lay-offs.

New Third Sex Identity Classification Obfuscates Enforcer Duties

Transgenderism has emerged as the flagship politico-media outrage flashpoint in a nation which barely a generation ago exulted in a culture of exaggerated masculinity.

Not long ago the nation revelled in the exploits of its sporting, military and property tycoon heroes.

No longer.

The pinnacle of achievement postulated in the more activist wings of politics and throughout the legacy media is now embodied by those of a very different category.

It is comprised of those who have switched their genders, or who are in the process of doing so.

The transition is a movement in the true sense of the word and it has become a defining consideration judicially.

This is illustrated by the way in which it has influenced the outcome of the case involving the Morrison family. The family was burned out of their rural dwelling.

The suspect undergoing gender transition and who is in a women’s prison has to date sidestepped appearing in court and continues to protract while parting company with a string of lawyers.

This state of affairs (see previous story) came to light when the family sought redress from their fire insurer which is under the banner of the Automobile Association.

The fervour ignited by transgenderism is illustrated by the riotous turn taken in Auckland’s Albert Park (a Speakers Corner equivalent) when British gender transition foe Posie Parker was the centre of a public meeting furore.

Much more recently it was demonstrated during the book tour of Irish comedian and playwright (Father Ted) Graham Linehan, a lugubrious if hardly incendiary character. Linehan (pictured) was greeted on arrival not by chortling fans at the airport but by two anxious police officers.

Binary until quite recently referred exclusively to information technology. The penetration of the binary fixation into public life is officially codified now by the mandatory application of selective defining pronouns to anyone in any occupation at all in any sector of government service.

Transgender has overtaken even ethno-climatism as preferred positioning visibility with public figures and educators echoing their solidarity, and willingness to devote their energies to implementing it for those who seek it.

The entire topic owes its institutionalisation to its dovetailing into all three of the operational moral pillars of diversity, equity and inclusion. These were the three horsemen of the social justice apocalypse of the Jacinda Ardern government. This feelings-based policy troika was mounted rather less ardently by her prime ministerial successor Chris Hipkins.

Its appeal is to the inner city suburbs where the non-productive intelligentsia tend to dwell.

This electorally sensitive location means that the current face-value conservative tripartite ruling parliamentary coalition, smarting from absorbing continuing dismissive coverage from free-to-air broadcasters, handles it gingerly, especially in terms of its medicalisation.

Curiously the entire issue everywhere might reasonably be said to have started in the New Zealand North Island township of Morrinsville, hometown of Jacinda Ardern and Dr John Money.

Dr Money?

He was the scientific figure who dissolved the gender binary boundary and ignited the new non-patriarchal orthodoxy of social equity that became the hallmark of the multilateralists.

Equipped with his Phd (from Harvard) and now at Johns Hopkins, Baltimore, he was the first clinician to describe himself as a sexologist and to be officially described as such. He was the pioneering exponent in child rearing of the "nurture versus nature" concept in gender assignment.

Dr Money contended that it was behavioural characteristics and not its physical ones (nature) that would decide whether it was male or female.

His fame came as director of the Psychohormonal Research Unit at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, and he authored some 40 books on sexology.

He established the Johns Hopkins Gender Identity Clinic in 1965. The hospital began performing sexual reassignment surgery in 1966.

He retired only two years before his death at 85 in 2006.

His collection of primitive art was bequeathed to the gallery in Gore, after metropolitan museums and galleries declined it.

New Zealand’s coalition government edging around transgenderism and its treatment might appease its intractable urban arts constituency with its public broadcasting cheer leadership by touring the Dr Money’s art collection, the authenticity of which has never been challenged.

Such a tour in today’s mood will not be cancelled. Unlike Graham Linehans’s or Posie Parker’s.