Diplomatic intervention only solution to interminable Dotcom Four process Eight years of intensive court house toing and froing failed to dent the Dotcom extradition process and merely reinforces the only possible resolution to the case, a political one in which it is declared moot. This will end the present public expense in which cohorts of lawyers of varying hourly billing firepower tramp through courtrooms of varying status and show every sign of continuing to do so into the foreseeable future. A moot declaration is straightforward and starts with the incoming United States ambassador who must be apprised of a basic…

Ideology booby trap sank Party pledged to reality and Ordinary People scribe tells influencers Winston Peters and his NZ First Party evaporated in the general election simply because he departed from the teachings of his guiding light, the late National Party prime minister Sir Rob Muldoon. It was Muldoon who inculcated Peters with the principle of avoiding entanglement with any exotic ideology or doctrine and to always put the practical needs of New Zealand first, National Press Club president Peter Isaac told the Wanganui Club. In the event Mr Peters and his party had become inexorably enmeshed in climate doctrine…

Overseas Investment Commission Loophole allows acquisitions by climate credit speculators United Nations success in inducing a lacerating self-guilt among New Zealand activists has relegated the nation’s total dependence on agriculture to a mere side-issue in the pending general election. Farming for United Nations- sponsored financial credit instruments means that immense swathes of productive farm land are under replacement by forestry for the purpose of global emission offset gains. The United Nations sponsorship means that foreign owners under this scheme can acquire land without encountering New Zealand’s once powerful Overseas Investment Commission. In fact, only half of one percent of New…

Western Intelligence believed that mystery mandarin Nation Builder was actually demolition agent. When Keith Ovenden married Helen Sutch only daughter of Bill and Shirley he can be forgiven if he believed that in this alliance he had also become heir to a cultural hegemony. There were though early indications that Keith’s induction chez Sutch would be anything but smooth. Indeed Keith Ovenden newly arrived in New Zealand and supping with his new in-laws found the experience difficult to the point of indigestion. This froideur could not be alleviated by the ingestion of a chardonnay or pinot, local of course. A…

Soldier of Fortune & Scholar was present at the creation of global co-operation shift A soldier of fortune turned humanitarian and increasingly recognised pivotal figure in the last Balkan wars is now thought to have had New Zealand origins. Major Bill Foxton (pictured) who served with the European Commission Monitoring Mission was present at the hinge of history when it became obvious that United Nations by its structure was unable to deal with conflicts such as those in the breakup of Yugoslavia. The fall of Srebrenica and other towns that the Security Council had identified as safe areas, but then…

Jason Connery 2009 film proves that Life does follow Art Graham McTavish might not be everyone’s idea of a travelling companion. A grotesque dwarf in Sir Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy, the grizzled fiery lead in Preacher, the only actor to play opposite to Sly Stallone in both Rambo and Rocky….. Sidekick Sam Heughan presents a milder aspect as the two Outlander stalwarts hit the glens in their Clanlands travel book aided by a strong tailwind in the form of a forward by Outlander creator the American author Diana Gabaldon. All a bit other worldly you might think as the footloose…

Liberal Leader Malcolm Turnbull’s true belief in Opposition policies haunts Australian politics The Turnbull Test is designed to show the degree to which a political party leader has their heart in their own party. Or in the other side’s. It is named after Australian Liberal Party leader and federal prime minister Malcolm Turnbull. He consistently demonstrated that far from being a conservative his leanings were anything but conservative and that in fact that his heart was very much with the Opposition in the form of the Australian Labour Party and the Green Party. Mr Turnbull’s inability to disguise his preference…

NZ Herald takes up eccentric infectious diseases scientist’s trolling retribution Microbiologist Siouxsie Wiles publicly advocated the required national response to Covid-19 and at the same time estimated the effect of this response. Having nudged the nation toward sidestepping the worst of the virus the clinician has taken on the power of making uncomfortable the very people who should be grateful to her. Phillida Perry’s documentary Siouxsie and the Virus www.loadingdocs.net/Siouxsie intriguingly taken up by the New Zealand Herald has taken the scab off this undercurrent and will ensure that the bizarre outcome will remain a suitable case for study. In…

Political Class Activism Eclipsed Quarantine priorities Identity politics submerged climate change as the overriding moral issue in New Zealand, often considered a global weather vane of moral causes. Mass marches switched from the extinction-rebellion climatic catastrophe ones to those vilifying the colonial era and those seen as benefiting from it, then and now. The political-class rendition of this mild-mannered, fair-minded, and considerate nation as being in fact the repository of a bigoted, tyrannical majority, the kindest categorisation being racist, often delivered in the local dialect as “rashe-ist,” writes National Press Club president Peter Isaac. This followed on the heels of…

United States remains first and only nation founded to do good in the world President Trump’s brandishing of a King James Bible in front of a church was a unifying signal which the mainstream media perversely chose to interpret as a divisive gesture, a stab at the soul of the union, even idolatry. In fact the King James Bible ranks with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as an underpinning United States document. It was carried by the original Mayflower pilgrims and became the founding moral handbook of the United States, writes National Press Club president and sometime White…

Family Cluster Lockdowns were Bleaker and Longer In 1956 schoolboy Brian Bourke found himself in an Ashburton hospital ward, a victim of New Zealand’s annual and brutal polio wave. He was one of 897 victims in New Zealand that year of the polio virus. It cost him his left leg, writes National Press Club president Peter Isaac. Nationwide that same year 50 other victims were not so lucky. They lost their lives. Mr Bourke a chartered accountant recalls now that his nurses were completely shrouded in sterile material and he was not to identify any one of his carers until…