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EU members swapped personalities
Nov 21, 2017 - In the years since Britain and France teamed up together in the Common Market both these unlikely partners appear to have undergone a national character transfer switch, a transposition, writes our travel editor Peter Isaac.
The British have become pushy, brittle and quick tempered while the French have absorbed those once British values of tolerance, stoicism, and good humour.
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20 Nov 2017 | MSCNewsWire | Truth never changes and neither does effective benefit selling. Only the techniques of transferring this information from the seller to the buyer change.
Drayton Bird (pictured) regarded as the Westminster sphere’s greatest and most seasoned expert on direct selling is to tour New Zealand with this message.
Arabian oil reserves originally identified by New Zealander Major Frank Holmes
17 Nov 2017 - Canada’s indifference to a new Pacific rim customs union scheme can be ascribed in part to more tempting opportunities in the Middle East such as the possibility of the Toronto Stock Exchange becoming the keystone secondary exchange for the flotation of Aramco. The Toronto exchange is viewed as being the halfway house between the London Stock Exchange and the New York exchange.
Series said to outstrip Game of Thrones
Amazon’s acquisition of the television rights of the Tolkien fantasies promises to wash up profitably on New Zealand’s shores.
The objective is to create another television hit to rival Game of Thrones.
Amazon Studios in cooperation with the Tolkien Estate trustees has involved New Line Cinema, a division of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which was involved in Sir Peter Jackson’s Tolkien series.
Having acquired the rights, Amazon is under no pressure to start production. So there is no indication yet the degree to which, if at all, Sir Peter’s various special effects enterprises in the Wellington suburb of Miramar will be involved in the Amazon re-pressing of the Tolkien saga.
The Murdoch family controlled publisher Harper Collins is involved with the deal indicating that there will be massive publishing collateral to the television deal.
This will be reinforced in the legacy media because Amazon also controls the point of view newspaper the Washington Post.
Not entirely good news for the Miramar artisan fantasy factories is the strong indication that Amazon intends making the new Tolkien television series at its own studios.
The extent to which consortium member New Line will go into bat for subcontracting at Miramar may be influenced by issues that arose subsequent to their film version of LOTR.
Whatever the fine print the big benefit for New Zealand will be in the value to the Pacific nation of the refresh button being pushed on the LOTR syndrome.
This includes the intricate tourist destination map built around the original wide screen series, and the reflective value on the nation’s national carrier Air New Zealand which in terms of livery has quite literally draped itself in LOTR symbolism.
The Amazon deal has come as a surprise to LOTR fans, and indeed to many of those inside the industry itself who had assumed that television rights were wrapped up in the original New Zealand production.
| This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. || Thursday 16 November 2017 |||
Newly morphed Progressive association replacement will become issues forum
13 Nov 2017 - Canada from which New Zealand imports vast amounts of pork also saved the much smaller Commonwealth nation’s bacon over the failed Trans Pacific Partnership customs and trade union.
Most of the office holders in New Zealand’s ruling Labour Party, including trade minister David Parker, had actively campaigned against it when it was the pet project of the former National government.
Deputy prime minister Winston Peters whose New Zealand First Party is the minority coalition member had consistently let it be known that he favoured instead a restoration of the UK-led preference era.
Canada’s withdrawal from the original TPP allows the New Zealand Labour-led coalition government to have the best of all worlds.
New Zealand has long been engaged in what amounts to free trade negotiations with Canada on carefully selected sectors in aerospace and marine advanced technology.
The collapse of the TPP means that New Zealand now can sidestep the ill-will stemming from even the merest hint of suspicion that its milk exporters might be treading on the gumbooted feet of Canada’s Quebecois dairy industry which is more protected than the crown jewels.
Canada was never keen on the TPP and from the outset saw it as a defensive move to preserve cohesion with the Washington Concensus, the string of post World War 2 alliances centred on the United States.
When President Trump ordered the United States out of the TPP, Canada’s enthusiasm for the scheme began to evaporate even more rapidly.
Premier Justin Trudeau did not become the international poster-boy for presidents and prime ministers everywhere without understanding that the most effective way of avoiding a disagreement is simply to absent yourself from the forum at which the disagreement will occur.
His slick piece of gamesmanship sidestepped the unwanted TPP participation confrontation and allowed the assembled the time they needed to digest the fact that there would be no Canada and thus no TPP.
To drive home the blunt message from this display of legerdemain he then caused his trade minister to drive home the message via a tweat stating that “despite reports, there is no agreement in principle on TPP.”
The result swiftly followed with the slimmed down, sans United States, and now Canada, version of the TPP being re-named the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement.
In the event, New Zealand premier Jacinda Ardern gave the appearance of anticipating all this when she emphasised from the rostrum at the conference the importance to it of climatic cooperation.
Miss Ardern thus also appears to have foreseen the future of this freshly hatched Progressive association which will be as a forum and meeting point on exactly such ethical moral issues as the climate one.
If Miss Ardern felt any relief at the outcome of the gathering, then she skilfully hid it.
The protest outside the original Auckland TPP signing ceremony stage-managed by the previous National government was an ugly affair.
Most of the participating protestors if in fact they were voters were face-value Labour voters.
The abandonment of the original TPP, the one that was the subject of the preliminary Auckland ceremony, means that Miss Ardern now sidesteps exactly the type of internal doctrinal party schism that in the past has proved so damaging to the Labour Party.
In the meantime New Zealand can enjoy its favourable trade balance with Canada and keep sending out the beef and the wine and receiving in return electronics, machinery, and of course the pork.
| This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. || Monday 13 November 2017 |||
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:-
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 |||
Palace of the Alhambra, Spain
By: Charles Nathaniel Worsley (1862-1923)
From the collection of Sir Heaton Rhodes
Oil on canvas - 118cm x 162cm
Valued $12,000 - $18,000
Offers invited over $9,000
Contact: Henry Newrick – (+64 ) 27 471 2242
Mount Egmont with Lake
By: John Philemon Backhouse (1845-1908)
Oil on Sea Shell - 13cm x 14cm
Valued $2,000-$3,000
Offers invited over $1,500
Contact: Henry Newrick – (+64 ) 27 471 2242
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