Tattoos and piercings are emblems of tribal allegiances
The re-emergence of the North-South divide in the United States supplies further evidence of the way in which the English-speaking zone is being overtaken by tribalism.
This fresh evidence of tribal divergence follows on the heels of the determination of the previous United States presidential dynasties to fight their supplanter, President Donald Trump.
The continuing politicking of the Clinton, Bush and Obama families campaigning seamlessly against the victorious candidate is classic tribal activity in that it cuts across constitutional political transitional processes, writes our roving reporter National Press Club president Peter Isaac.
The advent too of the presidency as a presidential family collective is still further evidence of this tribal drift.
The magnetic pull of tribal resurgence though is most evident now in the United Kingdom..
There the continuing Scottish secession agitation seeking to break away from England remains the most obvious example in the English-speaking zone.
The UK tribal factor became more evident now that any remaining economic underpinning of this breakaway movement has evaporated with Scotland’s bankrupt banks now being controlled from London.
The retribalizing of the English-speaking zone is taking place through stealth, and very largely because the institutions that exist to monitor such a development remaining mute about it.
University socio-political faculties deliberately choose to ignore this increasingly manifest development for fear of upsetting politicians and thus their own funding..
Universities refuse to see such every day and human evidence of tribalisation as the tattooing and other examples of self-adornment and self-mutilation of the entire socio-economic spectrum from show-biz types (pictured) to the industrial and administrative middle class.
This practice once confined to practitioners of virile callings, notably sailors, is now exploding into the elites, notably females whose tattoos are now so much bolder than those once displayed by sea farers, and those in other such danger-prone occupations..
Only Australia according to a covert European evaluation of tribally-inspired fractionalisaton possesses the equivalent of the United States 19th century melting pot, and was thus free of the threat of this resurgence.
New Zealand in contrast has deliberately nurtured tribalism through its parliamentary electoral system, a state of affairs now being actively challenged by the New Zealand First Party and also by Dr Don Brash’s Hobson’s Pledge movement
Official action within New Zealand to curb its tribally-based gangs is deliberately muted in order to appease an elitist political class.
This views and even encourages these anti-social collectives replete with their tribal markings and paraphernalia as evidence of repression inflicted on adherents during and after the imperial era, and thus living emblems of a collective guilt.
Canada is another example.
The largest English-speaking nation geographically must appease its French-speaking minority regions, and must do so with increasing emphasis and intensity.
Tribalisation in this English-speaking zone is now taking the form of a pulling away from a concerted national collective direction and instead reverting to an atavistic romantic blend centred on a notion of an oppression-stoked grandeur of times past.
Another element pointing to the institutionalised pandering to tribalism in the English –speaking zone remains the Westminster Green Paper on broadcasting and its stated need for mass access i.e. customisation to cater to these sectorised and evolving tribal patterns.
In other words Whitehall is accommodating and acknowledging this accelerating tribalisation drift and is accordingly setting about installing the policies needed to appease it.
Universities and other publicly-funded institutions indicate a deliberate and harmonised complicity in ignoring in spite of the evidence this gathering tribal momentum
Indeed, academic institutions supposed to measure the growth of the practical expression of the tribal instinct are often filled with individuals themselves emblematically part of it.
These are their operatives consciously or unconsciously succumbing to the resurgent tribal pull in the form of neck and sleeve arm tattoos and expandable ear lobe insertion devices among the other physical adornments associated with traditional tribal allegiances.
| From the MSCNewsWire reporters' desk || Wednesday 13 September 2017 |||
Fonterra’s Maungaturoto manufacturing site in Northland, New Zealand has recently become home to a rare Australasian Bittern.
The Australasian Bittern, or Matuku as they are known, is a large, heron sized bird. They are rarely sighted because of their secretive behaviour and camouflage technique and are usually most active at dawn, dusk and through the night.
Long serving utilities operator at the site Gary Sosich said he had seen the rare bird while doing routine checks on the site’s stormwater diversion system. He then realised that there was two of them, indicating that there may be a breeding pair living in the wetland. Maungaturoto Environmental Manager Steve Gale says, “It’s positive to see our stormwater treatment wetland is supporting biodiversity. It’s a credit to the stormwater management system we have in place.”
“The bittern population in New Zealand used to be abundant, but there is now thought to be less than 1,000 left due to habitat loss. It’s encouraging to see that our constructed wetland is a comfortable home for them and somewhere that they feel safe.” The bird is an indicator of wetland health, due to their dependence on the presence of high quality and ecologically diverse habitats with a rich food supply
| A Fonterra release || September 9, 2017 |||
Massey University industrial design graduate Nicole Austin’s re-modelled lamb docking or tailing iron has won the top prize in the New Zealand section of the James Dyson Award.
In the 17 years the award has been run in New Zealand it is the first time a woman has won the award.
“It’s pretty exciting. Now that women are becoming more engaged in industrial design, it’s nice to be able to represent that,” Ms Austin says.
The global product design competition celebrates, encourages and inspires the next generation of design engineers.
Ms Austin’s design, called Moray, helps eliminate repetitive strain injury for farmers when using traditional tools during the seasonal process of removing lambs’ tails – known as docking. The body of the device, which updates equipment unchanged in design for more than 40 years, is made from reinforced nylon and ergonomically designed with a specialized handle to make the docking process easier on the farmers hands. Effective docking significantly reduces lamb mortality and improves the health and productivity of the animals too, she says.
“I’ve refined the tool to be 35 per cent lighter and to use 60 per cent less hand span than the docking iron currently used by New Zealand farmers,” she says.
Her design was first exhibited last November at the annual end of year design exhibition Exposure run by Massey’s College of Creative Arts and has led to her securing a full-time job as part of Fisher & Paykel Appliances industrial design team in Auckland.
She has also made the device more reliable by using piezoelectric igniting and a specialized double-chamber dampening shaft for reliable weather-proofing and consistent blade temperatures for clean cauterization. Effective docking significantly reduces lamb mortality and improves the health and productivity of the animals too.
Ms Austin, who is originally from Timaru, was also pleased to devise a design for the sheep farming sector which in recent years had operated in the shadow of the dairy industry.
“Little has been done to develop common tools in the sheep farming industry and I saw it as a huge opportunity to channel my expertise as an industrial designer toward something that benefits the agricultural sector.”
James Dyson Award New Zealand head judge and president of the Designers Institute, Mike Jensen, says the judging panel was impressed by Ms Austin’s deep exploration into how the product may provide significant improvements for animal welfare and user comfort.
“Nicole visited a series of farms to interview farmers, ran surveys and undertook rigorous design workshops during the research phase. She also spent time docking to truly understand the process and the current challenges faced by farmers during the highly labour-intensive docking season.
“The result is a prototype design that will save time and definitely effort and is a major advancement on what is currently being used by farmers,” Mr Jensen says.
“It’s exciting to see a functional and rugged design that has been well researched and that holds much commercial potential for domestic and international markets.
Ms Austin’s award earned her $3500 in prize money.
Other finalists included fellow Massey industrial designers who studied at the College of Creative Arts; Glenn Catchpole who made an ecologically designed chair that produced zero waste; Abby Farrow who designed a hand-held device that makes intravenous vein finding easier for medical practitioners and less stressful for patients; and an electronic, tunable and portable log drum for modern musicians designed by Rachel Hall.
Auckland University of Technology industrial designer Haydn Jack was also a finalist with his design of a live streaming system specifically designed for amateur sports broadcasters.
The New Zealand finalists now progress through to the international final where a prize worth about NZ$50,000 will be awarded to the winner to be announced on October 26. The tertiary institution they represent will also be awarded a prize of NZ$8000.
| A Massey University release || September 6, 2017 |||
Five questions on a Middle East perspective
From MSCNewsWire's European Correspondent |Wednesday 6 September 2017 | Beirut-based Meguerditch Bouldoukian is an emeritus figure in banking in the Middle East and the EU. Mr Bouldoukian (pictured with Paul Volcker) now answers our five questions on New Zealand’s Middle East positioning …..
There is evidence of a belief here in a short Middle East memory. We have the defaulting on the old Development Finance obligations. Then we have the U-turn on the undertaking on live sheep exports to Saudi Arabia. Followed by compensation in the form of a covert stock-handling depot there. Then the matter of the New Zealand delegation to the UN Security Council as a further entreaty backing the anti Israel censure?
There will always be mistakes and false starts. Especially with evolving markets. You can take comfort in your wider picture. According to recent OECD reports New Zealand’s one of the robust economies on the globe since 2012 due to tourism, inward migration, construction. It has a sound fiscal position and low public debt and balanced budget. GDP $185 billion, growth rate of 3.9 %, per capita income $39,400 and internet usage 86 %. I am though rather worried by the Development Finance Corporation experience which you cite and which once again demonstrates the danger of a longer term operational involvement by a government in commercial banking. If this intervention is a sustained one, and not just implemented to cope with an emergency then a Pandora’s Box is put in place and which is bound to be opened at some stage down the line.
There is a belief that only very large scale organisations, ideally with government involvement, are the only ones that can trade with the Middle East ---and then get paid...
My advice here is for commercial interests in your country to steer very clear of Middle East states ruled by sultans, emirs, kings, and other despots of that ilk. Elsewhere you will find strong legal statutes to ensure against the kind of default you seem to be describing
All the NZ trading banks are owned in Australia. Do you see this as an advantage/disadvantage?
The major banks must encourage the outside world in coordination with the government to pump in Foreign Direct Investments. Local banks ultimately can only finance SMEs or SMIs. I am pleased that you asked this question because it has given me an opportunity to clear up a misconception, rather touching in its way, to the effect that the Australian trading banks are owned in Australia. They are in fact and to a substantial extent owned by UK and US banks, notably HSBC, J.P Morgan, and Citigroup among others. Is this an advantage? Probably. The reason is that the smaller the bank, the greater will be its reluctance to take on risk.
It is said that the Australian banks along with the Canadian banks are the world's best regulated?
Industry figures tell us that world’s best regulated banks are domiciled in order in:
The significance of this is that you do not have to worry about banks operating in New Zealand soundly regulated as they are by the Reserve Bank.
Do you see any benefit in New Zealand seeking to re-establish its own joint stock/ trading bank?
You have had the problem in your recent and longer term history of your own bank in this category getting into trouble and having to be rescued by the taxpayer, the government in other words. This in turn opens our Pandora’s Box which takes the form of the state, and for a number of reasons, being viewed as being responsible for the bank and even long after the emergency that caused it to be involved in the first place.
Investment in a new learning tool for Automotive Trades students at Ara shows the Institute is anticipating and adapting to new and emerging technology in the field. Students training as Electrical and Mechanical Automotive Engineers in Canterbury now have access to a hybrid car, exposing them to the swift technological developments in the industry.
Partly powered by an internal combustion engine, partly by electric motors, hybrid cars require less petrol than traditional motor vehicles. As such, these environmentally, and economically, friendly cars are becoming an increasingly common sustainable transport alternative.
While the current Automotive courses on offer at Ara focus predominantly on traditional motor vehicles, tutor David McBlain supports the Institute’s move to put students in the drivers’ seat of new, green technology. “As a college we’ve obviously got to adapt and keep up with the latest technology so that the students can actually see what is available and how the technology is actually developing for the future.”
McBlain as the proud owner of a full electric vehicle, has experienced the benefits first hand. His Toyata Prius runs entirely on electric charge so rising petrol prices don’t present a problem. Rather than pay for fuel, he plugs his car into charge each night. “My car is a short range vehicle and will do 120-130km on a single charge. I commute 100kms a day, so it’s enough for me to get in and out to work.”
Many may think that the high tech systems inside hybrid and electric vehicles would result in more complications than traditional petrol powered cars, however he disputes this. “When you look at the technology involved in an electric vehicle and under the bonnet, there is actually far less componentry to go wrong. There’s no gear box, it’s just a final drive. Engine losses are minimal. Acceleration is much superior. For me it’s a win-win. You’re losing less money, you’ve got less things to go wrong with it, and the performance is superseding standard cars already.”
McBlain, stresses the importance of equipping students for the rapidly developing market which they will enter into as graduates. “The technology is here now and it’s only a matter of time over the next couple of years, for the electric vehicles to become more prevalent in New Zealand and Australia. They’re coming now so the future mechanics need to be trained and ready.”
Ara is committed to leading in sustainability across the institute. Guided by the Sustainability Charter, Ara is embedding more sustainable practice and reviewing curriculum to reflect the latest sustainable best practice across all industries.
| An ARA release || September 4, 2017 |||
Three and half years ago, Roman and Andrea Jewell, who was expecting the couples first child at the time, started Fix & Fogg. Previously both lawyers, they made the choice to leave behind the corporate life and dedicate their time and energy to creating something meaningful, sustainable, and delicious.
They decided to make the world’s best peanut butter.
They love that they make every jar of Fix & Fogg peanut butter from start to finish in their factory in Wellington. From designing labels to carefully blended peanut butter, they are completely hands-on throughout the entire process.
They think the award-winning peanut butters are so popular because people can taste the difference in a product that’s handmade by humans who care about quality.
Continue here to read more about the Fix & Fogg journey here
Revivalist opportunity perceived at last moment
An outbreak of middle class idealism based on party immigration policy promises to boost the Green vote at the expense of Labour, and to a rather lesser extent, National, and even New Zealand First.
A sign of this is the 11th hour awakening is decision of the Greens to field a candidate in Ohariu in which the Labour candidate Greg O’Connor had seemed a shoo-in following the resignation of the enduring independent incumbent Peter Dunne MP.
Mr O’Connor (pictured) is one of the very candidates anywhere in the entire Westminster sphere who meets the traditional Labour Party guidelines. A tough street-level cop, deployed into the most troublesome zones, he went on to run the police union for an entire generation.
The Greens understand that Labour will respond with their own counter truce-breaking reprisal of some kind before the general election.
But the electorate move in Wellington’s up-scale suburb of Karori with its horse-riding schools and country club environs by the Greens is one of the party’s several calculated risks in the last few months and a closer examination of this one indicates a strategic positioning which also contains a strong surprise value.
The Green Party is the only party to have an ironclad policy embracing the acceptance in New Zealand of refugees, the ones from nations torn by tribalism and sectarianism.
All the other parties have hedged around the refugee issue, seeking to bury it in their wider immigration policies covering desired skills and economic contributions.
Facebook commentaries whizzing around between greying baby boomer ex- activists also indicate that Labour’s new leader Jacinda Ardern MP is expected to conjure up a reprise, if only partial, of the Labour glory days of the Vietnam-Apartheid-Nuclear era.
Great revivalist expectations such as this were simply not even to be considered under former leader, the pragmatic Andrew Little whose non telegenic façade shrouded a subtle blend in fact of the Trades Hall-varsity nexus and union lawyer.
Winston Peters MP and his New Zealand First Party will remain substantially, but not entirely, inoculated against any late-developing fever centred on the asylum-seeking category of immigrant.
This is just because New Zealand First’s most visible policy plank is the thumbs down to most immigrant categories regardless of whether they come bearing gifts or sectarian blood feuds.
The prospect of the Greens unveiling a high profile moral compass pointing to refugees in the accepted meaning of the word, and thus igniting a last minute bush-fire type of guilt-propelled fervour, is a prospect that Labour appears to be anticipating now.
We look now at the election eve multi-faceted immigration issue in its wider sense ……………………………….
THE GREEN PARTY
Advantage of humanitarian position on refugeesThe children of the baby boomers appalled by middle class material values of their parents, who they often regard as sell-outs anyway, , reach for an ideal, in this instance the refugee one, in order to re-establish the nation as a force for good in the world. The Greens offer the only unequivocal policy in regard to accepting refugees, especially the ones that other nations do not want.
Argument against The children of the baby boomer beset by the need now for dual incomes and the financial demands of the tertiary education required by their own offspring are suspicious of the financial and social impact of the moral crusades of the type embarked upon by their parents in their own university days. These were free of charge and the parental generation in addition was often actually paid to enrol and attend university, incredible as it may seem now.
THE LABOUR PARTY
Advantage in stressing a new and enhanced humanitarian position on refugees
A breath of fresh air into the Helen Clark era doctrine of multiculturalism and diversity offering New Zealand an opportunity to walk tall once more in all the right international convocations, notably United Nations
Argument againstA disquieting medium-term memory of the way in which Auckland schools, houses, and hospitals began to creak at the seams during, and after, the immigration influx inaugurated during this same era.
The National Party
Advantage in suddenly opening the policy gates to refugeesAn indirect reminder that gung-ho immigration policy inherited from Labour ensured that businesses kept at full throttle and that the nation’s lavish, on a population basis, investment in universities of all description became partially shouldered by foreign students. A German-style open door refugee policy could/would sustain and enhance this
Argument againstImmigration was used to fuel the “rock star” economy at the expense of infrastructure which in this context is code for houses, schools, hospitals. Also that the increasing reliance on the private students from foreign lands and their need to collect a degree of some sort and a widespread belief that this every-punter-gets-a prize devalued these qualifications and provided also the now much-quoted “back door” for an extended if not permanent stay here.
NEW ZEALAND FIRST
Advantage in its turn-off- the-taps immigration policy.Immigrants are drawn to metropolitan centres such as Auckland already populated beyond its carrying capacity. Both National and Labour have implemented this state of affairs, the party claims. Universities have become disguised back doors for the “c’mon in” techniques devised by the immigration “consultants,” and until quite recently evident on their web sites. New Zealand First insists that immigrants must be selected on a needed and high skills basis.
Disadvantages in this policyThe drastic tourniquet is in some conflict with New Zealand First’s new role as the true saviour and champion of farmers and cultivators. They cannot find manpower locally and seek to fill this vacuum with workers from Asia especially. Their work is of the repetitive and conscientious type and does not meet the New Zealand First advanced specialist skill criterion.
Background to the all-party immigration dilemma
A very wide spectrum of voters are keen on immigration – in any form.
Big business for a start because it increases the number of consumers and the number of workers available to meet their needs.
The churches are very enthusiastic. Their inclusive view is both spiritual and practical in that people in need are manna from heaven and very much so in an epoch of dismayingly shrinking conventional congregations.
Social service agencies of all types tend to be similarly enthused
Metropolitan politicians are also enthusiasts as they see their electoral roles filling up with supplicants and thus voters.
Immigration Topics that National and Labour prefer you did not Introduce
So why has immigration replaced employment and even health and education as the most sensitive issue in this general election?These issues are widely considered to be interrelated in that many of the so-called occupied urban jobs are in fact part time only. This is considered to be due to the ample availability of people to fill them because of the swelled urban work-force because of the immigration influx which also stands accused of putting the strain on houses, schools etc.
Why is the refugee component of this issue so ultra-sensitive?It is dangerous to Labour and this has been indicated by the Green’s decision to stand its own candidate in Ohariu, which is regarded as a liberal constituency.
A sudden intensity focus on a need by New Zealand to admit many more refugees seeking asylum by the Greens would prick this liberal conscience and force the Labour Party into a defensive corner in which it has no ambition to be. Not in the run up to the election, anyway.
You could have the Greens asking for example why a nation, one of the self-proclaimed international good guys, and which has less than half of one percent of its land mass urbanised is not taking in many more?
It's time New Zealand seriously started to invest in promoting technology, the country’s third largest export industry and fastest growing sector of our economy, a leading New Zealand tech businessman says.
NZTech and FinTechNZ chair and Augen Software Group director Mitchell Pham says when Kiwis are in Asia and ask locals what they know about New Zealand, they generally say tourism, education, dairy, beef and lamb, high quality food products and other primary exports – never technology.
“It is highly unlikely that technology innovation or digital products would be mentioned, even though we have thousands of world class tech companies in this country,” he says.
“I want to see New Zealand technology promoted to the world just as we have made a huge effort over the past 20 years to globally feature tourism in this country.
“As a technology entrepreneur who has travelled extensively throughout Asia, the lack of knowledge of Kiwi tech ingenuity is a constant frustration for me. There's no place in the Asian region where I can use the NZ Inc. brand to help position a tech business as being from a well-known high-tech export nation.
“This is why NZTech is actively working to develop the NZ Tech Story in collaboration with Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, New Zealand Trade and Enterprise and New Zealand Story to add being a high-tech nation as an integral part of the story we tell the world about ourselves. We can all participate and add to the development of the story via the NZ Tech Story Forum on LinkedIn.
“New Zealand has invested heavily in promoting education and tourism for decades, which is why we are so well known in Asia for these industries. It's time we make an on-going investment into promoting our fastest growing sector of our economy. The sooner the better, as it will take time to build the brand association between NZ and high-tech nation.”
Pham says the tech sector is not an island. As most Kiwi tech companies are still relatively new to business development in Asia, it would be smart and important for them to work alongside other New Zealand industry sectors which have been doing so for much longer and are therefore bigger, stronger and better known. Technology businesses are more relevant when promoted as part of the sectors that they serve.
Tourism, education, dairy, beef and lamb, fruit, wine, high quality food products, other primary exports, banking and engineering are just some of the sectors that have been developing in Asia for some time, he says.
“Critical mass is important for branding in Asia. So while we haven't got many large tech brands from New Zealand, such as Orion Health and Xero, we do have a large number of tech firms.
“NZ Techweek next year will be a huge opportunity to promote tech. International tech people will come to attend our events and we want to put NZ on the world tech map. Bringing together hundreds of events into the same week is better than spreading them across the calendar. The sheer number of Kiwis who come out to attend the events will also show critical mass and attract attention.
“We should also work smartly by tapping into relevant networks that are available to us. High-value and high-trust networks are full of influencers and connectors, so they are good channels to push the NZ tech story, such as KEA, New Zealand Asian Leaders (NZAL), ASEAN-NZ Business Council and similar networks connected in New Zealand and Asia.”
| A MakeLemonode release || August 28, 2017 |||
Procedure is killing Party’s election hopes
Eminem’s copyright legal proceedings centred on the rapper’s lawyers claiming that the National Party had heisted riffs of the warbler’s Lose Yourself album for its 2014 general election jingle.
The unlikely proceedings conducted in a Wellington courtroom are remembered for sweetening global network talk shows.
Presenters in the United States especially discovered humour in the rendering of the word Eminem due to the squished vowel sounds of their New Zealand counterparts.
The chuckling involved in the parodies attendant on the New Zealand broadcasting patois along with the bizarre courtroom episode we can see now obscured a much more serious intention and in the view of many, a much more dangerous one.
The National Party was determined, even if rather belatedly, as per the disputed song, to lose its old self, slough off its wrinkled skin, and hop disco-style into the age of hip.
This Eminem-style background “music” to the campaign was the pointer to a much deeper strategy designed to attract the very large slice of the electorate both young and old who identify themselves with the contemporary culture represented by rap.
Former premier John Key’s campaign to change the New Zealand flag can now be seen as part of this trendy re-imaging campaign.
The flag replacement scheme was remarkable in that it failed to obtain any traction at all in the media, usually always on for a dig at the established order, and then it collapsed through the absence of any popular momentum at all.
The appeasing of the fashionable Greens by the U-turn on live sheep shipments has left the government with an obviously festering sore as it seeks to compensate double-crossed Middle East interests by building there for free a processing depot for which there is no budget, simply because the construction was and is unofficial.
External affairs allocations are still being combed to pay for it.
A weight of evidence points to the involvement behind this of foreign image consultants.
This explains why the change-the-flag scheme ran alongside the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli landings and thus of Anzac.
Foreign consultants would not have been aware of the significance of this milestone in the short history of the nation, and especially of the way in which it transcends ideological boundaries.
Similarly with the anti-Israel complicit vote in the dying days of New Zealand’s last tour of duty as a temporary member of the United Nations Security Council.
Foreign advisers would not have been aware of the size of the evangelist-fundamentalist following in New Zealand, traditionally National Party adherents, and the bloc’s sensitivity about anything to do with the holy land.
A further clue to external progressivist influence is the money that the National Government, note government and not the Party, started doling out to the Clinton Foundation at a time when the Clintons were doggedly campaigning in Hillary’s bid for the presidency.
As was seen subsequently the involvement by foreign governments in United States federal and even state elections is prohibited by law. This applies specifically to the financing of individual candidates.
Again a suspicion remains of an external influence, a re-imaging one, behind these donations to the Clinton Foundation, estimated by the Taxpayers Union, to amount to between nine and 10 million dollars, or the equivalent of the annual income tax paid by 899 workers on the average wage.
The unseen advisors had no doubt whatsoever that the Clinton dynasty would resume, and that the hand-outs would be regarded ecstatically here by the very progressives that the National Party now strives so ardently, and so awkwardly, to draw to its side.
| From the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. || Thursday 24 August 2017 |||
This new customised scam gives the old fashioned con artist the full leverage of the electronic funds transfer era.
A new wave of money transfer fraud techniques is on its way to New Zealand. It is the President scam, so called because it is centred on the departure from secure procedures triggered by a very senior official in the targeted organisation intervening and giving the appearance of wanting the fraudulent transfer to take place.
Under the President modus operandi someone poses as the boss of an organisation. They then conjure up an exception of some kind and which requires an instant transfer of money. The controlling officer, the one at the receiving end of the email or telephone call, then instructs the operations person concerned to implement the transfer. Or transfers it personally.
Inherent in this confidence trick is the artificial flap and the urgency it generates, an urgency designed to wash away any remaining security steps, especially any suspicion about the entity on the other end of the money transfer.
The theme of the President scam is that it differs from other transfer frauds in that it is designed to be implemented and completed in minutes rather than hours.
However the preparatory spade-work by the perpetrator will take much longer and involves a close study of the voice and verbal pattern of the senior official, the President, who is being mimicked. It will also require an evaluation of the vulnerability of the authorisation chain and especially of the individual who will press the button on the transfer.
These weak links may include for example a command chain noted for an informal i.e careless approach to established procedures.
Also an organisation in which the boss, the President, is known for making procedural short cuts. A boss who is feared in this context represents a weak link because line staff will want to avoid incurring their ire and so be more willing to take the procedural short cut.
There are of course a number of variants on the President scam.
These include the scam artists impersonating suppliers who claim that if a certain payment is not immediately made, that they will cause, for example, a production line to close down.
A particularly nasty twist is when a known adviser, perhaps the head of an organisation’s firm of accountants appears to be ringing in, urgently advocating the settlement of this or that account before the sky falls in.
In Europe where the President scam was developed and refined there can often be a conspiratorial aspect to the impersonation in which the scam artist seeks to impersonate elements of the forces of law enforcement, and seeks the covert assistance of someone connected with money transfers on the grounds of patriotism.
The money transferred under the President scam moves quickly through the hot money arteries, bouncing around countries with low banking surveillance, before being laundered, and often factored through commodities and other merchandise.
The history of the preceding waves of electronic scamming indicates that the International fraud artists turn their attention to New Zealand when they have picked the eyes out of the low hanging fruit in the northern hemisphere.
This time, as we shall see, is about now. Neither can we claim that the President technique has not already been applied to New Zealand. It may have been intercepted. Or the victim organisation has shut up about it.
Anyone involved in money transfer knows that by its very existence any chain of authorisation is vulnerable just because humans are involved.
So we have to hold onto something solid. In this case documentary credit instruments represent the best banking landmark. This means, in this context, sight documents.
Why? Because seeing is believing. Any departure, any exception, from authorised procedure must be verified by “sighting” the individual, the President, the CEO, or the CFO who is demanding the implementation of the exception to standard practice i.e. the money transfer.
The reason that sight procedures (never in this connection ever to be confused with citing or even “site” procedures)apply now is just because unlike previous waves of point to multi point stacked scams, the President formula relies on a high degree of customisation.
This means for example that an email used in the scam will be customised around the known habits of the President and also around the known personality of the target, the officer of the organisation authorised to make the transfer.
This email may, for example, have a holiday home telephone number. “Ring me for verification.” The person at the other end of the line will be the impersonator, perhaps with a nasty cold in order to cover up any discrepancy in tonality.
It is this customisation that makes the President scam so dangerous to New Zealand organisations.
Organisations should now evaluate the wisdom of displaying and generally publicising the names of their treasury people, especially on their web sites. They are the point of departure for practitioners of the President scam.
As practitioners turn their attention to southern latitudes we find that only in the simplicity of direct sight, the face-to-face encounter, is there an antidote to this curious yet so far extremely successful blend of the old fashioned confidence trickster merged now with the speed of light of a numerical transfer.
How vulnerable are New Zealand medium to large organisations to this new threat?
Until now the publicised victims of electronic scams of all stripes have been individuals, householders.
The first wave was the Nigerian one in the fax era. Then followed a medley centred on phishing or bank impersonation. Dismayingly the banks insist on using emails to send out their promotional material which means that they cannot collectively state that any email from a trading bank is by definition a false one.
It is in this year’s wave, the telephone calls from Microsoft accredited agent impersonators that we find the direction of this new scam.
As this particular Microsoft scam developed it was observed that recipient caller display bars began to show New Zealand telephone numbers.
Though replies indicated that the caller display numbers elicited no response.
Another pointer is the arrival in the Auckland area especially of criminal gangs working over ATMs.
We are entering the era in which organisations will have to start becoming reticent about their financial authorisation chains in terms of who staffs them.
Similarly with IT structures in which any unanticipated request for tests should be flatly ignored.
At least, until the sight verification.
| From the MSCNewsWire reporters' desk - European Correspondent || Tuesday 22 August 2017 |||