They foolishly counseled the sidestepping of domestic issues especially the one of the crazed assassins active on UK streets

 From the MSCNewsWire European Correspondent- Jun 10: Failure to identify priority issues has sunk UK premier Theresa May’s objective of attaining a decisive Parliamentary majority. Chief among them was a startling inability to confront the religious fanatic murders of passers-by in British cities.

This was covered by a wooden de-personalisation spectacular even by English bureaucratic standards.

It was officially delegated to the abstract as “attacks on democracy.”

Unbelievably these assassinations invoked a policy decision by the Conservatives to cut back on the police. No compensating investment for beefing up border or IT surveillance was given. Instead the Conservatives outlined a nebulous campaign to face-down Facebook.

Knowing that its constituency is composed of those of mature years, the Conservatives backed and filled on social spending notably in regard to the housebound infirm thus easily laying themselves open to cries of imposing a dementia tax.

Much the same thing happened to the school age generation where cuts were announced and again without any balancing counter-investments. This cup-half-empty exercise was repeated throughout the campaign, writes our European correspondent.

When these election-losing examples of social spending cuts at the poles of the age spectrum were drawn to the attention of Conservative policy makers, they simply U-turned, leaving their original errors unacknowledged.

It was the most bizarre Conservative Party election campaign in living memory. Mrs May came across as more elite and out of touch than any of the Euro-loving elites so spectacularly swept away in Brexit.

In contrast Labour’s leader Jeremy Corbyn, dismissed just a few weeks before as a looney-lefty, ambled donnishly and amiably around in an everyman manner conveying an impression of informed and sympathetic populism.

Mrs May meanwhile came across as the prissy headmistress of a posh boarding school trying to explain why she felt it necessary to use the cane quite so often.

All might still have been well if most of the votes from the imploding UKIP flowed on their anticipated course which was into the Conservatives.

Instead the UKIP votes flowed into Labour.

Mrs May’s snap general election was designed to give the conservatives a Parliamentary majority of sufficient size to hammer through Brexit without let or hindrance.

Instead quite the opposite happened – a hung Parliament which will be a breeding ground for boondoggling, and compromise.

Mrs May was decisive though over the SNP’s demand for another revolving door referendum on Scotland’s independence She gave a clear cut and unequivocal no with the result that the SNP seats were recovered by the Tories.

Elsewhere the signal was anything but clear.

Whether Mrs May remains or goes as premier now becomes the dangling conversation of Westminster

There is though one certainty.

Pedestrians slaughtered by crazed assassins might be categorised as unit casualties in an “attack on democracy”.

But those who were responsible for the Conservative campaign are due to have their heads displayed on the pikes on the bounds of Westminster.

They will include the obvious and visible candidates.

Also one highly decorated and much fawned over Austro-British back-room eminence who has learned as all showboating gamblers inevitably learn that pride does go before a fall however overdue the fall. .

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

Live and let live communitarism has failed - - so will other naïve and ineffectual containment policies

The last round of London attacks draws attention again to what politicians and top-level law enforcement officials understand to be the only solution to religiously-inspired assassinations. This is that the relatives of perpetrators are returned to their countries of origin.

Britain continues to be the Western nation most confused by this terrorism and this is characterised by a number of symbolic responses such as putting symbolically out into the streets armed police and soldiers when the authorities know that the lethal problem is part of a society woven into the British way of life and submerged there, writes our European correspondent.

The reason that the mass summary deportation of the relatives and families is known to be the only solution is that the attackers themselves welcome their pending status as martyrs. It is also known that their belief in tribalism and therefore family means that they fear their blood relatives especially getting caught up with and paying the price of their own lethal zealotry.

Britain, much more than any other EU zone country has applied what is known as communitarism to its refugee influx. This means that these communities are left substantially to practise their own way of life wherever they happen to settle in the UK.

This contrasts with the breeding grounds for the zealotry in Europe which are much more fractionated and are therefore much more removed from replicating the traditional family-tribal way of life.

There is however a security benefit of communitarism.

It means or should mean that in law enforcement terms that for refugee settlements of any duration relatives are much more likely to become aware of developing zealotry.

Britain has been confused also by a number of stereotypes about this now manifestly accelerating zealotry.

These have seen perpetrators and likely perpetrators given identi-kit personas of which poverty, alienation, and absence of opportunity have been to the fore.

These stereotypes in turn have been reinforced by a mesh of other such semi-comforting mantras such as that all the killers are young, male, and have some kind of justified underpinning grievance for massacring civilians.

In fact the evidence proves that these killers can just as easily by wealthy, privileged by society, well past youth, and female.

At the base of the entire pattern of attacks is the British horror of putting into the public forum anything at all to do with religion and the way in which it is calculated to inspire what is known in Britain as terrorism, but which religious scholars view as a history of ad hoc attacks by the inspired on anyone within killable reach.

So there is little new in all this , a notion that many in Britain in places of authority, and who should know better, rigorously cling to.

Spontaneous murderous attacks with whatever weapon is closest at hand is a familiar theme in the context of this historic religious zealotry.

The issue now is the length of time, and the length of the casualty list, that must pass before the only known and workable response is implemented in the form of sending back to their original countries the relatives of the known perpetrators.

This reprisal is quite simply the only counter-fanaticism strategy that is within the grasp of the British authorities.

Its border statistics have been proved as being wanting. Even if these are in fact performing to specification, the surveillance and apprehension response they are supposed to engender is flawed.

In the nations from which the refugees have poured over three generations law and order is maintained by the secret police.

What was once a touching policy toward religious zealotry has itself become a lethal problem in itself.

The British have always had a kind of reverse pride in failing to understand the East in practical terms.

The critical time line now is the one centred on how long this failure to grasp reality can continue.

| From This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ||  Tuesday 6 June 2017   |||

British Prime Minister Theresa May called for international regulation of the Internet to combat terrorism at a news conference Sunday as reported by the Daily Caller yesterday. “We cannot allow this ideology the safe space it needs to breed,” May said.

“Yet that is precisely what the Internet and the big companies that provide Internet-based services provide,” May continued. “We need to work with allied democratic governments to reach international agreements that regulate cyberspace to prevent the spread of extremist and terrorism planning.”

|  A The DailyCaller release  ||  June 6, 2017   |||  Watch video here

Only age and hemispheres separate the identical twins of Social Democracy

 Slight of build and with their perma-grins they even look alike. The two clever sticks share similar backgrounds, give a zig-zag or two.

Both are outsiders who put themselves on the inside – and both entered party politics at the same age

Mr Macron is from a wealthy professional family and he went into the Socialist Party.

Mr Key is from a working background and he went into the conservative National Party.

Both made their name and fortunes in big name investment banking, Mr Macron with Rothschild. Mr Key with Merrill Lynch.

Both displaced in their upward trajectory seemingly permanent institutional figures.

Mr Macron has swept away France’s underpinning centrist conservative party, and its leader Francois Fillon.

Both seem from a very early to have seen their destiny in politics. Both in their different ways are dedicated family men.

Both established strong institutional careers in finance prior to public life and thus boast that they are not professional politicians

A notable difference here being that Mr Macron did not have to wait for acceptance by an established party, and simply unwrapped his own, En Marche.

Mr Macron entered party politics in the same year that Mr Key handed in his prime minister’s warrant and quit party politics

Both Mr Key and Mr Macron are anything but dreamers. Their ascent is a product of their ability in the sphere of risk assessment: constantly calculating and weighing up the probabilities in the options before them.

Both understood the value in Napoleon’s dictum to the effect that those of high ambition and ability ascending the ranks do well to conceal their field marshal’s baton.

Mr Macron pulled out his baton a year ago when he suddenly resigned as President Hollande’s economics minister and went out on his own with his own party France En Marche which is best translated as France on the Move.

His calculation was that all the existing parties had lost their appeal and he has just been proved right as the Republicans were swept aside and the ruling Socialist Party hardly figured at all.

France’s left of the left, gauche de la gauche, was similarly swept from France’s variegated political board.

Mr Macron’s calculation can now be viewed for what it is. He has cleared away the clutter of parties from the landscape and has left the electorate with two clear options in the form of the National Front or his own En Marche.

En Marche is essentially a Gallic version of Tony Blair or John Key’ middle way, with its accompanying flexible and inclusive policies.

Like his Oceania avatar John Key, Mr Macron keeps his options open, preferring to give the impression that he will deal with the problems as they are encountered instead of sweeping them away with a ruthless doctrinal broom.

In Mr Macron’s inclusiveness will be his biggest operational problem. In sticking to the EU he must also adhere to the Euro currency.

This collective single currency contains 19 different public debts, 19 interest rates, 19 tax rates. All free to speculate in.

The shackling effect of this uniform currency is often considered to be the chain that binds and which explains why the Eurozone is taking so long to recover from the United States-induced bank bust.

Mr Macron might now be putting a probe into Mr Key’s stewardship of his economy which recovered so quickly from the same event that it seems a miracle that the nation did not succumb to a collective bends.

Mr Key personifies an entire anthology of French proverbs to the effect that the cleverest thing a clever person can do is to conceal how clever they in fact are.

He has simply quoted the Economist’s “rock star” economy value judgement on the success of his government.

Mr Macron meanwhile being from a Mediterranean nation does not have this need for public modesty and can let his light shine forth.

|  From the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ||  Friday 27 April 2017   |||

Five questions for ex United Nations Security Council President Terence O’Brien.

Few practitioners from any nation have enjoyed quite such an extended career at the heart of the global firmament as British-born diplomat Terence O’Brien (above). He was president of the Security Council of United Nations during the Balkans conflict. He was one of the principal access negotiators on behalf of New Zealand when Britain originally entered the European Common Market. He has occupied posts in London, Brussels, Bangkok and Geneva. He was the founding director of the Institute of Strategic Studies.

You have been an outspoken opponent of mixing trade with foreign affairs?

This is not strictly accurate. I take issue rather with the jargon that “all New Zealand foreign policy is trade” which is a holdover from earlier times and reflected today in a sense promoted by some New Zealand leaders, that NZ’s success and place in the world is to be judged primarily by the number of Free Trade Agreements that it is able to secure.

NZ’s modern experience especially in respect to emergent Asia proves emphatically that successful trade arrangements depend firstly and vitally upon sound political and diplomatic relationships (China is a prime but by no means solitary example). NZ’s accomplishments in Asia and indeed elsewhere rely in other words, upon earned trust with other governments. Fostering that trust is a political/diplomatic responsibility.

Predictable trade relationships require a great deal more than nimble private sector commercial skills- although those are indispensable of course to overall success and the New Zealand private sector plus NZ primary producer groups have been notably effective in this regard.

To what extent do you view the recent NZ sponsorship of the UN Israel censure as a development of this blend?

There may have been in the minds of some on the NZ side, the thought that sponsorship might earn credits in some Gulf States where NZ seeks to formalise free trade arrangements; but around the UNSC table there is genuine concern about the danger for the future of ‘two state solution’ to the Israel/Palestine conflict ,that has been the long established diplomatic basis for eventual peace. The present Israeli government appears openly to resile from this formula as it continues resolutely to expand Jewish settlements on the West Bank, a practice deplored by the UN Security Council. From the moment it gained a place on the 2015-16 UNSC NZ committed itself to contributing to the search for progress on this key issue. Co-sponsorship of the eventual UNSC resolution which calls as well for Palestinians to desist from provocation and terrorism, was the logical consequence.

Looking back on your days as a dairy sector negotiator during Britain’s entry into the Common Market, how do you view Brexit now in terms of NZ diplomacy and trade?

From the perspective of a small, distant but companionable partner of Europe, Brexit appears to be a mistake. It comes too at a time when conservative populism is on the rise within Europe with the emergence of right wing nationalist political groups in several countries. Twentieth century experiences of European mistakes and miscalculations and their devastating global consequences, not once but twice, are not to be overlooked.

British entry into Europe was a taxing experience for NZ. The deals struck for safeguarding NZ trade interests represented a stay of execution rather than reprieve for this country . Within relatively short periods of negotiated transition the New Zealand farm economy was obliged to diversify production and markets. That process drove foreign policy extending NZ political and diplomatic interests to a wide range of new partners (in the Middle East, Communist Europe, Latin America and, most notably Asia) . It consolidated NZ as a genuine world trader with global interests. Global interests are inextricably bound up with global responsibilities even for small countries, and require contributions to global wellbeing and stability.

The process deepened NZ support for international rules based behaviour particularly in trade but also in directly related areas such as peace and security, freedom for transport and navigation, responsible behaviour in global environmental and resource protection and so forth. Because of the very nature of its own being the European Union (EU) has been a notable champion of an international rules based system. But the fact of BREXIT places a question mark over how influential a collective European voice will now be in the future. At a time when American commitment to global rules is questionable under a new inexperienced President Trump, the need for sustained collective European support for the system has never been greater. The foreseeable future suggests that New Zealand will crucially need the courage of its convictions.

How do you feel about the Helen Clark bid to be the UN Secretary General especially in regard to her role as an officer of the UN at the time?

The selection process for a new UN Secretary General in 2016 sought to break new ground - which is always difficult in the UN. Formal candidatures backed by governments and involving public job interviews were decreed for the first time in 70 years. Hitherto candidatures had been exclusively personal affairs and selection decided behind tightly held UN Security Council doors where the votes of the five permanent Council members (US, UK, France, Russia and China) were decisive. This time a new approach was defined in the interests of greater transparency and democracy in the selection process. It is stretching things somewhat to suggest those goals were achieved.

There was a general sentiment beforehand that the new appointee should be from Eastern Europe (which has never supplied a UN Secretary General ) and also be female (which would be a first). In the event neither aspiration prevailed and the choice, of a Portuguese male, was once again taken behind closed doors at the UNSC.

Helen Clark was a creditable candidate and the NZ government campaigned for her, but her success depended first and foremost upon her own efforts. She came as a candidate from within the ranks of the UN itself, but this is not without precedent (Kofi Annan one the most effective SGs, was a UN Secretariat employee). As head of the UN’s largest aid institution she was well known across a very wide number of UN member countries ( especially developing countries).The reasons for her lack of success will probably never be known in full. Her relatively poor showing in the straw polling of UN member countries before the final appointment, was an undeniable disappointment. The most that can be said is that she was a serious contender; and NZ can take some consolation from that.

What are your views on Russia and NZ’s participation in the US-EU trade embargo?

With Russia and NATO we are reaping what was sown. At the end of the Cold War there was an opportunity for the Americans and Europeans to consolidate a cooperative inclusive (of Russia) security system for a post CW Europe. The Soviet led Warsaw Pact subsided into oblivion which is what military alliances historically do when conflicts end, and/or the reason for their existence disappears. NATO in direct contrast did not. It was enlarged with new members, new bases installed and its boundaries extended into Russia’s borderlands - which for the US anyway potentially included Ukraine. But who was the adversary? An enfeebled Russia could do nothing but (as George Kennan amongst others warned) one could not rule out economic recovery by Russia and new leadership that objected to NATO expansion (which included into the affairs of the Middle East) and would push back. Enter Mr Putin, and so it has come to pass. His preemptive seizure of Crimea (where the Russian fleet has had a base for two centuries or so) is contrary to the international rule of law - but hardly surprising in the wake of western foolhardiness.

NZ should sustain a suitably detached policy position over present NATO-Russia. We do not have a dog in the fight. Russia does not threaten the US although Putin clearly intends that Russia be assertive and taken seriously internationally. Russian interference in the US electoral process may or may not have occurred. If it is proven Russians would presumably point to equivalent American policies in the name of “spreading democracy” in Russia ,its satellites, and including Ukraine. They are, on both sides, ‘pots calling kettles black’

|  From the MSCNewsWire reporters' desk  |  Monay 27 March 2017   |||

Statesman told his family to journey as far away from Germany as possible.

The New Zealand-born grandson of Ludwig Haas leader of the German Democratic Party in the 1920s and often described as the only politician who could have stopped World War 2 is assisting in a major biography of his ancestor.

The biography sponsored by the Commission for the History of Parliament and Political Parties is being published by Droste Verlag of Dusseldorf, a general interest publishing house.

Ludwig Haas (pictured above) died in 1930 while organising a broad based coalition to counter what he perceived would become the burgeoning and overwhelming rise of the National Socialists.

The politician’s early death was ascribed to the ravages of the front during the First World War in which he was decorated with the Iron Cross

With his last breath the dying politician instructed his son Karl “to put as much distance” as the son could “between you and Germany.”

Karl Haas took his father’s instructions literally, eventually arriving in New Zealand shortly before the outbreak of World War 2.

He began his career working in Auckland for wool brokers E. Lichtenstein. After finding his feet in his new country he then acquired a farm near Pahiatua in New Zealand’s North Island.

It was there, in this remote location, that the Haas family remained with Tony Haas, the grandson, being born toward the end of World War 2.

Tony Haas, (pictured, below) Ludwig’s grandson, is widely known in New Zealand for his work with Pacific Island communities and their economies.

In recent years has become acknowledged as one of Oceania’s public intellectuals. Two years ago Mr Haas’ own autobiography was published entitled Being Palangi: My Pacific Journey.

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

BADEN-BADEN, Germany The world's top economic powers have dropped a pledge to fully oppose trade protectionism, amid pushback from the government of U.S. President Donald Trump. Finance ministers at a Group of 20 meeting in Germany issued a statement Saturday that said only that countries "are working to strengthen the contribution of trade" to their economies. By comparison, last year's meeting called on... Full article on World powers drop pledge to fully oppose trade protectionism . . .read full release here

|  A World News release  |  March 18, 2017  ||

Quai D’Orsay and Lambton Quay share a nightmare

The New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade must now begin the difficult and counter-ideological process of accepting that Marine Le Pen’s National Front Party might win the pending Presidential Election in France.

The reason is that Miss Le Pen has pledged to extricate France from both the EU and also the eurocurrency.

Miss Le Pen (pictured) and her party according to the polls is now the front runner to take over the Presidency and thus the government of France.

The former Prime Minister Francois Fillon has dropped in the polls following revelations that the leader of the Republican (i.e. Conservative) Party had while serving President Sarkozy put most of his family on the parliamentary payroll for performing duties that still remain unclear.

The second-line Republican Party candidate Alain Juppe has ruled himself out from succeeding the beleaguered Mr Fillon, partly because Mr Juppe, also a former premier, had also been mixed up in what the French describe as “fictitious employees.”

This leaves Miss Le Pen, followed by Emmanuel Macron the youthful former economics minister under President Francois Hollande.

Mr Macron in exiting the government of President Hollande did not wait to become adopted by an existing party. He simply formed his own France En Marche—France on the Move.

The Socialist Party led by Mr Hollande is simply not in the running, and does not feature in any of the polls as a realistic winner.

All this is bad news of course on Quay D’ Orsay and equally on Lambton Quay. On the quays the fervent hope was that while Miss Le Pen’s National Front might win the first round in the election, the once solid-seeming Mr Fillon would wash her away in the second round.

If the current polls hold water also washed away will be two years worth of negotiations in formal support of the EU-New Zealand trade liberalisation agreement.

Also swept aside will be the European Commission’s mandate to put the trade deal into action.

The reason is that France’s departure from the EU, and it is likely to be abrupt if Miss Le Pen takes charge, will invalidate the central axis of the union which is the German-French one.

France is the link between the Nordic/ Teutonic zone and the Mediterranean member countries.

It is uncertain if New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade has charted a contingency plan in the now likely chance that Miss Le Pen and her party will emerge victorious from the imminent general election in France.

But given last year’s upsets in the US and the UK a suitable such contingency scheme would be to have ready a shrink-wrapped substitute deal with the EU’s northern nations.

The victory of President Donald Trump in the United States indicated that the New Zealand apparatus did not lay any groundwork, notably alternatives, for an event that it most ardently hoped would not in fact happen.

To an only slightly less extent the Brexit development is a similar indicator in an antipodean belief in the status quo.

|  From the MSCMewsWire reporters' desk  |  Thursday 9 March 2017  ||

What Trump gets wrong about manufacturing

President Trump has promised to revitalize American manufacturing by bringing back mass production to the United States. This past Thursday, he convened a “listening session” with his manufacturing council, and a week ago, in front of thousands of Boeing factory workers in North Carolina, the president reaffirmed his mantra to have “products made in America, made by American hands.”

President Trump is right in his call to invest more resources in manufacturing in America. But, he is mistaken to focus solely on mass production. The future of the sector lies not just with mass production but also with low-volume manufacturing and precision machining (a $60 billion industry) where America already offers a strong value proposition for its customers right here in the U.S.

For example, the president missed an opportunity to nurture this large manufacturing base when he filled his manufacturing council with executives mostly from Fortune 500 companies. Small- to mid-size machine shops, that specialize in low- volume manufacturing, also deserve airtime for their contribution to the rising tide of manufacturing in America. Whether through traditional machining or newer 3D printing processes, these manufacturers are often on the cutting edge of product development.

In an interview following the manufacturing council meeting last week, U.S. Steel CEO Mario Longhi said it was “totally realistic to bring [manufacturing] jobs back.” As we put in place policies to bring back these jobs, however, we must be mindful of the realities of the 21st century economy.

Low volume manufacturers in the United States already offer a tremendous value proposition versus our main overseas competitors. These smaller businesses are much more sensitive to the cost of regulation and such regulation often prevents them from expanding, either through the purchase of additional capacity or additional employees.

By embracing new, smarter technologies like 3D printing, low volume manufacturers are both adapting to a more advanced economy and creating jobs in America. Operating 3D printers or CNC machines provides machinists, who now must be a combination of artisan and computer programmer, the requisite skills to adopt quickly the most advanced manufacturing technologies.

The United States has significant advantages in low-volume manufacturing. It demands a high degree of quality control and supply chain management. Sourcing in the U.S., where there are no cross-border issues and every destination is no more than a day away, is safer than offshoring.

While we don’t expect President Trump to spend the next press conference lauding new jobs at Bikle Manufacturing or pressuring Ashby Manufacturing to keep jobs in Pennsylvania, it would be wise for his administration to be more inclusive of the low-volume manufacturing sector.

It would be misguided to think that reshoring jobs from a handful of companies that are household names will be enough to bring back the glory days of manufacturing in this country. The government must also invest in the small machine shops that you probably have never heard of. These shops, many of which are third or fourth generation American have been making America great for decades.

|  An opinion from Randy Atschuler on The Hill Washington  |  March 01, 2017  ||

US president Donald Trump is speeding ahead with his plans to build the controversial wall along the country's border with Mexico, with a deadline for prototype proposals set for early next month.

Last week, the US Department of Homeland Security issued a notice outlining its intent to open calls for the design and construction of the border wall on 6 March 2017.

The statement describes the project as the "design and build of several prototype wall structures in the vicinity of the United States border with Mexico".

Those interested will then have a five-day window to submit their proposals, with the deadline on 10 March 2017. Contracts could be awarded as soon as mid-April.

Read the presolicitation notice from the Federal Business Opportunities website below:The Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) intends on issuing a solicitation in electronic format on or about March 6, 2017 for the design and build of several prototype wall structures in the vicinity of the United States border with Mexico.

The procurement will be conducted in two phases, the first requiring vendors to submit a concept paper of their prototype(s) by March 10, 2017, which will result in the evaluation and down select of offerors by March 20, 2017.

The second phase will require the down select of phase one offerors to submit proposals in response to the full RFP by March 24, 2017, which will include price. Multiple awards are contemplated by mid-April for this effort. An option for additional miles may be included in each contract award.

Issued on 24 February 2017, the notice coincided with a speech that Trump made during the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland.

He told the crowd that construction of the wall would begin very soon. "It's way, way, way ahead of schedule," Trump said.

Plans for the border wall formed a major part of Trump's presidential campaign and have proved controversial from the start.

Architects and designers have reacted in a variety of ways, including suggestions for a Luis Barragán-inspired pink barrier, a series of landscaped features instead of a wall or fence, and a mock-up of an Ikea flat-pack kit as a cheap option.

Earlier this month, the American Institute of Architects called for fair and impartial immigration policies in reaction to Trump's attempts to restrict travel to the US.

The organisation initially pledged support for the president after his election win, but then apologised after a backlash from its members.

|  A deZEEN release  |  February 28, 2017  ||

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