I like the Greens’ little girl poster. But I knew someone had done it before. My old art director Elwyn Pugsley reminds me it was us! – for the Board of Trustees Election campaign 20 years ago.
1988 – Department of Education
2008 – Green Party
I’m not accusing the Greens of bubonic plagiarism. (A phrase I pinched from Austin Mitchell.) Most creative people are too proud to steal ideas.
More than likely, it’s just a case of two people downloading from the ether the same logical solution to a similar brief.
I remember our little girl was found by director Gaylene Preston for our TV ad. She’d now be old enough to be the Green girl’s mother. It looks like she might be!
PROPOSED UPDATE
While I’m casting nasturtiums at the Greens, excuse me if I amend their ad slightly to clarify the effects of their economic policy…
John Ansell 
Vote for the Greens, so stay poor and do the hard yards in the short run, so New Zealand can climb out of the unsustainable ecological rut that the rest of the world is stuck in.
Funny Guy. Shame your comments are crap.
1 girl, 6 words plus cynical snipe.
(surely ‘to stay poor’ implies that you already are?)
New Zealanders are poor and getting poorer compared to other Western Countries that New Zealanders likes to compare themselves to.
To be fair New Zealanders enjoy being poor, how else do you explain the 2005 election result where people choose Welfare over Tax cuts?
(surely ‘to stay poor’ implies that you already are?)
Yes Greenfly, we certainly are.
If New Zealand was a state of Australia, we’d be the poorest – poorer than Tasmania.
If we were a state of the USA, we’d be the poorest – poorer than Mississippi.
Under National and Labour, we’ve been poorly managed and the opportunity cost of not implementing world class policies much sooner (like Ireland did) have been high.
The Green eco-policies have already had a dire effect on poor Africans, who find their food has been turned into fuel.
Why? Largely because of the Gore film, much of which is false.
The girl is from Devonport (she’s standing on the pontoon at Cheltenham beach) so chances are she’s rather well off, both economicaly and socially
Bravo, John…(clap…..clap….clap….)
Why don’t you and Kevin Roberts form your own political party? Then the taxpayer can pay your expenses while the pair of you two geniuses polish each other Axis Awards and jetset to LoveMarks meetings. .
your puffed up egotism is laughable considering the vacuity of your vocation. Go away and live out your destiny…namely, to think up a pun to shift some shit paper.
I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.
Margaret Thatcher
“The Green eco-policies have already had a dire effect on poor Africans, who find their food has been turned into fuel.”…John Ansell- Political Analyst
Yeah. just when those poor Africans were finally pulling themselves out of the Third World thanks to the helping hand granted to them by the sheer altruism of successive governments from both the Left and the Right, along come those meanie Greenies and literally take the food out of their mouths.
So a pious old fart who once upon a time concept-generated some (now forgotten) banalities for the losing team in an election on an island on the bottom of the world, thus thinks he’s qualified to pontificate on world affairs. Then he quotes Thatcher! Cringe.
Surely John, there’s some limericks for a client that require your urgent attention?
phil mora, what a wankload about being “qualified” to have an opinion! Who’s the real pious old fart?
Mr. Ansell, a bloody tragedy you fell out with ACT – or was it the other way around? 😉
There is nothing original under the sun. How many people have said “vote for me”? How many people have taken cute photos of children? Someone comes along and puts these two together and that is meant to be original? The ideal may be pinched but then again it may not.
Where would Mozart & Beethoven be without German folk music, Dylan or the Beatles without black music, Split Enz without the Beatles. The Beatles without German folk music? It is a convenient and lucrative financial conceit to claim ownership of something that doesn’t belong to anyone.
“Most creative people are too proud to steal ideas”; you actually believe people who work in advertising are creative. Have you not been to a land fill lately? They might be creative in their spare time.
Advertising is essentially about creating feelings of inferiority and loss, making people feel like losers. Iwi- Kiwi is a good example of that. Nice work Herr Doctor.
Same deal with the phony invention called “intellectual property” and “patent law”. Another “creative” croc used to collect money from reassembling other people’s ideas. Did Edison really invent the light bulb? No, he was the Bill Gates of his day he just borrowed other people’s ideas. He did some good work on the electric chair though – that nasty AC electricity is very dangerous.
Likewise with genetic engineering: where would they be without those genetic markers? They couldn’t stand up in court and perjure themselves by saying “we made this tomato”: More bullshit, lies and piracy. Do these people think they are God? Best ask Monsanto? Why are these parasites still in business when they manufactured Agent Orange?
Evil fuckers – may they rot in hell.
Can I suggest we modify our flag? Let’s keep the Union Jack motif only change the stripes to bones and stick a skull in the middle with a big swirly koru. The great British pirate tradition flourishes in the land of the South Sea Poms.
You seem proud of your clever propaganda and pirate mates. I’d rather be shy of a few bucks than being an arse licker to the robber barons and their well paid minions! Iwi Kiwi – very creative. Herr Schicklegruber would have liked that.
Johnny, may I suggest you change your anger management therapist?
If you’d actually read my post, you’d have seen I didn’t claim ownership of anything – quite the reverse.
Hey John, what a smart arse reply to a coherent and logical line of argument. What did Thatcher have to say about that? (see John’s Thatcher quote above)
I took your line of thought and extended it into, music copyright,” intellectual property”, patents and “genetic patents”; all of which amount to legal theft. Your mute response speaks volumes.
Yes I am angry about your nasty piece of work from last election. Your silence on this also speaks volumes. There’s no point in defending the indefensible. Iwi / Kiwi was, and still is, a disgraceful low in NZ political campaigning.
Obviously you don’t want to talk about advertising either. Too much like hard work eh?
You seem happy enough to support the continued plunder and theft of our assets by your white collar criminal mates. Let’s hear how the loonies in ACT and their National Party Poodle are going make us wealthier without resorting to more theft?
I’m happy to debate anything Johnny.
But I’m strangely averse to being abused by people who don’t even do me the courtesy of reading my posts before spitting their poison at me.
If you had read it, you would have seen that I didn’t accuse the Greens of plagiarism.
Have a look – if you can be bothered considering another’s point of view.
As far as I can make out, you seem to be suggesting that no one should be able to profit from their inventions, because nothing is original, because everything is based on something else.
That’s true.
But what about when you put together bits of past inventions that have never been put together before?
Doesn’t that count as original? And shouldn’t it be rewarded?
Without such an incentive, how do imagine we would progress as a society?
Why would people bother to go through the pain and take the risks of inventing new tools if they’re going to be denied any reward?
But then perhaps progress is not your idea of progress?
Venom has its uses. Seems to me you had it coming. Many people would say that the Iwi / Kiwi bill board was poisonous for race relations, the kind of race politics that Pauline Hanson peddled in Australia and could really backfire in this country.
I didn’t say you accused the Greens of plagiarism and I’m happy to hear other points of view.
I have nothing against people making an honest living. What I do have a problem with a system that lets people claim property rights over “the stuff of the ether” and encourages people to assume private ownership of things that rightfully belong to all or none.
How do we progress as a society you ask? I know a little known place on the West Coast called Progress Junction. All that is left of Progress is a few bits of broken glass, some rusty iron and a couple of stumps in the river bed. What is Progress? Progress to what and where? Where is the Utopian vision that we are all meant to be marching in unison to?
I don’t see a vision of Progress in the “self-made” men and women of the ACT party. These people were seemingly never born, never had mothers, pulled themselves up by their own umbilicals and shelfishly said “I, me, mine”.
Most of the really important things in life do not bear scrutiny under a microscope. The materialists of this age don’t really understand the rewards of: Love, Empathy, Family, Community, Sharing, Team work, Generosity. There’s no point in me preaching on this. You either get it, or you don’t.
OK Johnny, let’s make a conversation out of this – to see if your arguments bear scrutiny.
JOHNNY:
Venom has its uses.
JOHN:
Name one.
JOHNNY:
Seems to me you had it coming. Many people would say that the Iwi / Kiwi bill board was poisonous for race relations, the kind of race politics that Pauline Hanson peddled in Australia and could really backfire in this country.
JOHN:
Many do. And a lot more don’t.
JOHNNY:
I didn’t say you accused the Greens of plagiarism and I’m happy to hear other points of view.I have nothing against people making an honest living.
JOHN:
But you have a problem with Edison making a living from inventing the lightbulb. Was that not honest?
Or do you mean that only manual or poorly-paid work is honest?
JOHNNY:
What I do have a problem with a system that lets people claim property rights over “the stuff of the ether” and encourages people to assume private ownership of things that rightfully belong to all or none.
JOHN:
So anyone who puts together two things from nature – including ideas – and makes a third thing, is not making an honest living?
And he or she is not entitled to earn money for that effort, even if it helps millions?
Is that what you’re saying?
JOHNNY:
How do we progress as a society you ask?
JOHN:
By allowing self-interest and society’s interest to intersect. By letting lots of people find ways to help others in a way that also helps them.
Win/win.
JOHNNY:
I know a little known place on the West Coast called Progress Junction. All that is left of Progress is a few bits of broken glass, some rusty iron and a couple of stumps in the river bed.
JOHN:
The downside of progress is change. Two of my old homes have been bulldozed to make way for a motorway. That’s sad. But sometimes in life the choice is between bad and worse. That, too, is progress.
After all, why should the council preserve my old stamping grounds in perpetuity when thousands more can benefit from the road?
I’d have to be very selfish to argue that they should.
But back to Progress Junction.
Presumably people went there to mine gold, get rich and drink hard. Then presumably when the gold ran out, they went somewhere else.
What are you suggesting should have happened?
In fact, I thought you’d be happy that man has withdrawn from that small corner of paradise and allowed nature to reign supreme once more.
Sometimes man just can’t win with you guys!
JOHNNY:
What is Progress?
JOHN:
Man growing up.
JOHNNY:
Progress to what and where?
JOHN:
To a better standard of living. Better tools. More enlightened ideas.
JOHNNY:
Where is the Utopian vision that we are all meant to be marching in unison to?
JOHN:
It’s in your imagination Johnny. Nowhere else.
And who said we’re meant to be marching in unison? Oh yes, it was Mao. And Hitler. And Stalin.
There is no Utopia, Johnny. There’s just life. Life’s what you make it.
You see, you may like to be forced to march to some arrogant bastard’s tune. That’s the communist way. It failed everyone, everywhere it’s been tried.
It especially failed the poor.
But most of us would rather make our own way forward, with those we love, at our own pace.
To see progress, Johnny, look behind you.
Look back 100 years. Look back 200 years.
Or even 50 years – to the times of the golden weather, which some speak of reverently as “the good old days”.
Now tell me honestly: would you like to go back there?
(If so, you’ll need to wait for a bit more progress, and we’ll arrange for a time machine to take you.)
In 1908, New Zealand had the highest standard of living in the world. We were number one. The USA was second.
Yet despite that, the standards of everything from health to transport were primitive by today’s standards.
Women were pretty much second-class citizens. Chinese were officially so. Gays were criminals.
What’s the difference, Johnny?
Progress.
Progress is man getting older and wiser.
Oh sure, some progress is bad. But most progress – social and technological – is, on balance, positive. Life gets easier, more exciting, and longer. Because of progress.
Because man is one smart animal.
JOHNNY:
I don’t see a vision of Progress in the “self-made” men and women of the ACT party.
JOHN:
I very much doubt whether you’ve ever looked, Johnny.
Have you, for example, read ACT’s 20 Point Plan? With an open mind?
Go on, have a look. It’s on their website.
Tell me the bits you think will be bad for New Zealand, and why.
JOHNNY:
These people were seemingly never born, never had mothers,…
JOHN:
Nice try, Johnny. You’re preaching a stereotype that doesn’t exist: the heartless, uncaring North Shore millionaires. Never has.
Most of the ACT people I know have lived very interesting lives, and done a lot for people.
The leaders are very close to their families. Rodney Hide is living with his parents right now. Some mock him for that.
Roger Douglas’s mum is 94. Together with his father, she formed the Princess Street branch of the Labour Party.
Roger grew up one of a long line of socialists. For half his life, he swallowed the party line that the state could truly help the poorest in society.
(As did Richard Prebble, and Don Brash, and Alan Gibbs, and Ken Shirley, and Stephen Franks, and many others.)
But through trial and error (including the many errors of the Kirk/Rowling government in which he was a minister, which he thought at the time was the worst government since the war), Roger saw that his precious socialism hurt those it sought to help.
So he changed his mind, and his policies.
You see, Johnny, Roger’s mother also told him: “Dare to be a Daniel.” I translated that into their 2008 slogan: “The guts to do what’s right.”
What’s right, Johnny. Not what’s easy.
Not what’s popular with people who expect the state to be their mother and father.
What’s right. Not what sounds good. What actually works.
JOHNNY:
…pulled themselves up by their own umbilicals and shelfishly said “I, me, mine”.
JOHN:
Everyone’s a bit selfish, Johnny, even you.
My cute name for human beings is ‘self-improvement tubes’. I’ll leave the tubes part to your imagination.
As to self-improvement, we all want to better our positions in life, whether through relationships or comfort or possessions.
Most successful business people become successful by making or doing things others want. By helping others, in other words.
People who study hard and work hard and take risks and earn rewards if those risks pay off are condemned by you as selfish.
Yet what about those who’ve always got their hands out? Those who shamelessly demand that the hard workers give them money when they make poor choices and fall upon hard times?
Is that not selfish?
Do they even say thank you?
JOHNNY:
Most of the really important things in life do not bear scrutiny under a microscope.
JOHN:
Now why would that be Johnny? Could it be that they’re structurally flawed?
Your arguments seem like a good example of this. Communism/socialism would be another. Man-made global warming is probably another.
If, on the other hand, you’re talking about esoteric or spiritual matters rather than the concrete, then I agree that the microscope is probably the wrong tool with which to measure them.
But they should be able to bear the closest scrutiny, nonetheless.
JOHNNY:
The materialists of this age don’t really understand the rewards of: Love, Empathy, Family, Community, Sharing, Team work, Generosity.
There’s no point in me preaching on this. You either get it, or you don’t.
JOHN:
There’s every point, Johnny. This really gets to the heart of the problem.
You’re saying that those who work hard doing things for others, and are richly rewarded for it, do not understand the feelings of love, of caring about others’ feelings, of being part of a loving family, of sharing time with others, of working in a team, and of giving to others.
That’s quite an accusation.
What knowledge do you have of such people?
You see, I know people who run big companies, and for their efforts have to endure the most crushing pressure.
In return, they get some pretty nice toys, sure. Mercedes-Benzes and nice homes in Khandallah and Remuera.
But as far as I can see, the flash cars and houses don’t come close to making up for the constant demands on their time and energy, and the responsibility they have to their shareholders.
So it’s not all beer and skittles being rich.
I also know some very rich people who are far from being materialistic, and live quite simply.
But don’t forget how rich people get to be rich.
It’s usually by understanding how other people tick. And by working harder than the rest of us are willing to work.
And by taking more risks than the rest of us are willing to take.
Do you accept that?
Sure, there are some ratbags among the rich. Just as there are also some highly unethical beggars and kitchen hands.
But to generalise as you have done is to ignore the very real desire of high achieving human beings to give back.
I think we should give the rich in this country some credit for the generosity they very often show, but for which they are rarely thanked.
The shabby treatment dished out by Clark and Peters to Owen Glenn is but the latest example. Glenn of Monaco is certainly a materialist, but he’s also a nationalist.
Isn’t that an example of the win/win benefit of capitalism?
Hi John
Your defence of the WASP gift to the world: free market economics and laissez-faire government, seems to centre on your rich but nice friends. You say that they should be amply rewarded for their hard work and enterprise.
It would be nice if we were all amply rewarded for our hard work and enterprise. But alas the world is not perfect and it is not so.
Given the choice of supporting the rich or the poor, you choose to support the rich. OK, fair enough.
Some people tell us that by supporting the rich we are doing everyone a favour. But that’s not how the world works.
The ‘trickle down theory’ is just a theory. I have yet to see trickling gold or trickling paper or trickling coins.
I have seen cash trickling down into Old McScrooge’s swimming pool. But that was in a Disney comic. That doesn’t happen in the real world: or does it?
Before the planet had cash currencies, wealthy folk could only gather riches in the form of food, live-stock and maybe some precious metals, stones and artifacts.
Today a very small number of people can amass an unbelievably large amount of money. A lot of it just a bunch of zeros on a computer mass storage system. If you translated it into goods, it would make King Solomon look like a pauper.
So these days we can talk about the rich, the very rich, the super rich and the Unbelievably Rich.
The Unbelievably Rich are like the Kings or Emperors of old who won their riches through power and conquest.
But the Kings of old had to have a mandate to rule from God and the People. So they were, in a way, legitimate rulers who had responsibilities to defend the people and dispense justice.
Over time, many Kings abused their powers. And so we have moved away from monarchies to try other forms of government.
The Unbelievably Rich use power and conquest, but they have no mandate to rule. That is why we call these unbelievably rich people Robber Barons and not Kings.
Now that God has lost his capital G, people have turned towards the little gods and unconsciously venerate these smaller powers. You will know this because advertising is all about paying homage to the pantheon of little gods.
There’s lot of them: the god of cars, god of vanity, god of envy, god of lust, god of sport, god of science, god of white-ware, gods of house and garden, and so on.
Vocatus atque non vocatus deus aderit – called or not called god is still present (some wise old bugger)
Unlike the Kings of old, the Robber Barons have no responsibility to the people. They are accountable to no one except perhaps the tax collectors.
Everyone wants to be their own boss. We all want that freedom. We all are like little kingdoms. We have our own sovereignty. We like to be in control of our lives.
When we give up some of our freedom we always try to do so by consent. When we work for others we do it by a mutual agreement. We all value our freedom to enter into and leave these arrangements without pain or loss.
We all have political ideas no matter how basic. But it seems that the more money someone has, the greater the feeling of entitlement and the greater the involvement in politics.
Just because someone has material wealth doesn’t mean their political ideas are any better than someone who has little material wealth. The merit of ideas does not rely on the income of their exponents.
Yet it seems that very wealthy people feel very entitled to political power. This however does not make their ideas any better than anyone else’s ideas.
But it does give them some obvious advantages: more resources that they can direct towards a political campaign: the ability to make time for political work, or to pay others to help.
A feeling of entitlement is OK up to a point. So long as they are operating their own businesses or households. But when they make really big political decisions for the community, they should rightly seek consensus and follow the will of the populace. That’s what democracy asks.
The rich politician is used to being boss. But we all have our personal kingdoms and we want to be ruled by consent.
The business model of command is the hierarchy. But this is not how democracy works. Democracy relies on a free flow of information, consensus making and popular agreement.
It must be difficult for people not used to that process to have to work in committees and get consensus all the time. That’s why business leaders do not necessarily have better skills, aptitude or patience for political life.
But let’s be clear. I am not saying that wealthy people cannot be good leaders or good team players in government.
All those seeking power, rich or poor, must seek a mandate to govern. While in office, they must also get a mandate if they want to make major changes to their stated policies.
It is one thing to be ruled by a rich person and another thing to be ruled by a super rich person, but to be ruled by an unbelievably rich Robber Baron is to be a slave.
The world’s financial and trading system is now a hugely complicated global network: lots of sophisticated pipes, but where do they all go?
In global terms our homegrown gentry are largely irrelevant. Sure they are more ethical than most, but that is partly because we have had a relatively healthy domestic culture of small scale free enterprise and grass roots social democracy.
In 2008 we now live in a global economy which is fundamentally different from the past. A lack of international law means trans-nationals can go and do what ever they want, where ever there’s cheap labour and resources. The bodies that are meant to protect the world’s poor are used to further exploit and oppress.
What I’m on about is the excesses of global capitalism and its corrupt agencies like: the World Bank, the international Monetary Fund and the US Federal Reserve.
They all have a huge negative effect upon the world’s little people and little nations.
That is why I said “I’d rather be shy a few bucks than be an arse licker to the Robber Barons and their well paid minions”.
They don’t need my support. Why would I want to make them richer? Why support someone who has the power to rule without a mandate. Why support Pirates with a capital P? Why support the Robber Barons?
Here in New Zealand we have our cosy little democracy. It is built on the twin pillars of the older British tradition: domestic democracy and international piracy.
We follow the Brits and the Americans around from war to war. We are in fact the Pommy Pirates of the South Seas.
We spy for them in the Pacific. We applaud them when they bring democcracy and ‘Free Trade’ to those dusky-hued heathens. We give them refuge in our peaceful land. We still think they talk proper.
The Pirates on board the “SS Capital Idea Chum” believe that “winning is everything”. It doesn’t matter how you win. Once you are outside the territorial limits you will hear: “avast ye scurvy dogs there’s rootin’, tootin’ and treasure for the lootin’ ”.
ACT PARTY
Last Sunday I went to see a political debate. Roger Douglas looked like a grizzled old rugby coach who had worn out his vocal chords pounding home his mantra, stabbing his pointed finger in the air.
The mood of the audience left no doubt that he was the most unpopular figure on the rostrum- next to Bill English. No one there would contradict this claim.
Douglas came across like yesterdays man and was laughed at and heckled a lot. I almost felt sorry for the old bugger. Yeah he’s probably got heaps of cash but he aint rich.
The ACT party do not have a vision. They are a chip off the old Labour Block but they took none of their idealism, just its right wing’s financial policy.
ACT are the money party.
ACT has no vision.
ACT is nice for the big money people as it feeds their lust for more power and money. That’s why they donate so generously.
THE DREAM IS OVER:
For the USA the dream is over. The victims of one of the biggest frauds in history are waking up. My God they’re going to be angry, talk about venom.
The empire the globalists have built is pure and simple economic slavery for billions. That’s the ugly face of global capitalism. It cannot be sustained. That is why it will change or die.
Our only fully fledged trans-national just got blooded in the brutal reality of global economics.
Wait till their customers start to learn about their nasty little trade in colostrum milk. Stealing this precious gift of nutrition and protection from a calf that will spend its life on antibiotics.
Never mind Fonterra’s completely unsustainable vision for a huge expansion in dairying. Factory scale dairying is New Zealand’s least sustainable kind of farming.
Global scale factory dairying equals huge inputs of: clean water, electricity, diesel, antibiotics, fertilizers.
The outputs are massive amounts of: highly processed milk products, dirty nutrient-laden water, waste plastic, CO2, methane and obesity.
It is very difficult to find fresh whole-milk in New Zealand any more. But you can get every kind of stale processed by-product.
IWI / KIWI
Oh well, I’ve made my feelings on this pretty clear. I biked past one of your billboards every day, and I had time to consider its intention. Your poison was in my face long before I found your blog.
I will give you credit for giving the client value for money. But old Mr. Burns was a lost cause anyway, despite your devilish work.
WINNING IS EVERTHING?
Is it OK when Tana Umaga does a spear-dive tackle and leads the team to victory? I’d rather we lose the game than cheat. The idea that the All Blacks must win at all costs is poisonous.
They don’t understand how to lose gracefully? There is no style or dignity in being a cheat.
Winning at all costs puts winning above sportsmanship and honesty. The ABs are a business, but rugby is a sport.
Winning is not everything in sport or life. It’s really bad for our kids to see that amoral attitude; this lack of moral fibre.
We should expect honesty, ethical behavior and dignity from our business community.
But some say they just can’t afford that namby pamby, bleeding- heart routine.
So a small but aggressive minority, the ratbags as you call them, are content to live the life of piracy, preying on their customers.
Soon everyone is forced to sink to their level because they can’t afford to compete. Others go out of business and take up waged employment.
So this amoral evil creeps into the main street. The nice people get out and the ratbag pirates grow stronger and more numerous.
Competition gives way to buy-outs and before long the biggest ratbag gobbles up all the competition and a monopoly is born.
I believe that success is measured in how you get there. It’s not how fast, it’s not how slow, it’s how you get to where you go.
EDISON AND HIS CROOKED FINACIER:
JOHN: But you have a problem with Edison making a living from inventing the light bulb. Was that not honest?
I don’t have a problem with anyone making an honest living.
From what I have read, Thomas Edison was prepared to rip people off. He ripped off the Serbian genius Nicola Tesla who did a lot of work for Edison.
Edison used the electric chair to scare the public and financiers away from Tesla’s superior AC power system. The first execution was appalling with the unfortunate victim still alive after 20 minutes of attempted electrocution.
The sight and smell of burning flesh was too much for the witnesses. Many fainted and vomited during the horrible ordeal.
And incidentally the bloke Edison sent into the Amazon jungle, in search for new fibres for light filaments, was never seen again.
Yeah, I suppose you could say Edison took plenty of risks with other people’s work and lives.
I’m not saying that Edison didn’t deserve some rewards from his more honest toil and his Herculean efforts, but some of his actions are plain nasty and he definitely has no moral right to own the patents. That’s just Wall Street Piracy at work.
It may well be proved at some point that his estate does not have legal rights either.
Edison worked for a crook. The big monopolist, wheeler dealer, J.P. Morgan whose tentacles extended across the USA and beyond.
Pirate Captain Morgan, in cahoots with Westinghouse and Edison, through a lot of kniving and double dealing, out-flanked Tesla, stole his patents and effectively wrote him out of history for near on 100 years.
His more original contribution was the gramophone. He is still considered to be the first person to playback an audio recording.
There are too many names to mention in the evolution of the light bulb. Edison was there at a point in history where his own work, and that of his corrupt Wall Street financier, allowed them to claim the booty. And it was all perfectly legal, but totally unethical.
The big boys of capitalism don’t do ethics. In the American system, the scum rises to the top and the sediment settles to the bottom.
The super wealthy scum AKA Robber Barons rule. They reap the financial rewards of legal theft, wars and chaos.
Look what they’ve done to the USA lately. Talk about rootin’ tootin’ and lootin’.
They use the sediment of society as their enforcers to herd the middle classes and help make them finance their businesses.
It’s rightly called a two party dictatorship. Fascism is something they had picked up well before their Robber Barons started financing the Third Reich in the 1930s.
LEGAL THEFT:
As I said before ”Intellectual Property is essentially a legal form of piracy”. The most recent instance of this is the theft of genetic material.
They bombard some DNA to add a marker, and then someone makes the outrageous claim that they own it and that they created it. Yes, they may have modified it, but they did not create it and they cannot rightfully own it; more piracy.
IS PIRACY OK?
Large chunks of our property laws have been set up to sanction piracy.
Most people are too busy to get involved in the complex issues of government. The people who get the upper hand are the ones who fund the think tanks, the lobby groups, the visiting speakers and the big political parties. They also run the mass media and they have a great success in making laws.
Big businesses spend big money lobbying and expect to get results. That is unfair. That’s not democracy: that’s demockcracy.
The Business Roundtable is the classic NZ example of this. A club for galvanizing chief executives in the doctrines of the free market and legal theft. Basically they are capitalist extremists, who don’t give a toss about me or my family, or the social consequences of their policies.
They believe in the power of the individual and that all collectives, except their own, are to be crushed. This very lopsided view is pure and simple extremism.
That’s why they and others want to scrap our MMP system, because it curtails their power. It is too democratic for them. They always prefer hierarchy.
Given the choice between power and influence, their inner corruption always leads them to seek power.
They would rather tell me what to do than ask or persuade me.
That’s what makes them so like the communists, the fundamentalists and the fascists. They’re zealots and ideologues. Like those God botherers who want to shove their Bibles or Korans down everyone’s throats.
Look how their ideas took hold of successive Labour and National governments. Their simplistic ideology stuffed up Telecom (still a basket case), Mad Max’s power grid (which Cayman Island bank is holding onto the South Island grid just now? the Health Service. (What the hell did Alan Gibbs know about the health service? Nothing. But he was a chum of Roger Douglas). Our Rail has been trashed.
I’m not the only one spitting venom over these stuff ups.
And where does the New Zealand business Roundtable get such extreme ideas? From even richer overseas think tanks like the Mont Perelin Society, whose networks reach inside major government and financial institutions around the globe.
Who funds these groups?
Meanwhile back at the ranch: people in Auckland want to take my money for their LA style, out of date, Motorway Maze to Hades, their Highway to Hell? And toll roads for the rich?
These people are so out of date! Have we not just had a huge oil shock? Have we not just had a major credit crunch?
Why not just burn the cash?
New Right Looney Tunes fundamentalist sold Christchurch’s nice big, well located railway station and Warren & Mahoney did us a smallish tin shed in Addington. You still can’t even get a bus there or back!
Fortunately, people are beginning to open their eyes to the hypocrisy and stupidity of it all.
Like the collapse of Soviet Communism, we are seeing another lopsided and violent beast, laissez faire free market capitalism, fall on a spectacular scale.
People are people: big, small, rich and poor. But I don’t for a moment believe that “dole bludgers, solo mums and Maoris” deserve to be harassed for the failures of our flawed system, anymore than you or me.
No, the real vampires work nearer the top. Nearer the apex of their glorious financial pyramid: the Rulers without a mandate, the Robber Barons. We can’t lay all the blame on the sub-prime market greed, hedge funds and the great unwashed.
WHO MADE ALL THIS CREDIT? DID THEY REALLY LOSE COUNT?
The corruption comes form the top down. The big people in New York who head the World Bank, the World Monetary Fund, The Federal Reserve, the secretive banking and oil cartels: these are the Robber Barons.
They don’t care about small people or small nations.
Look up their bland biographies on Wikipedia and tell me these people are not loonies?
Follow the links to the weird and wonderful world of ultra-conservative think tanks. Many are members of the “Project for The New American Century” who want more imperialism, pre-emptive strikes and space supremacy.
The appointees are extremely powerful, corrupt and deluded. No-one voted for hawks like Bush appointee Paul Wolfowitz.
From the “Project for The New American Century” wikipedia entry: (anyone interested might try and identify the members who are heads of organisation like the World Bank and the International Monetary fund and the corrupt US Federal Reserve.)
In its “Preface”Rebuilding America’s Defenses states that it aims to:
• defend the American homeland;
• fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars;
• perform the “constabulary” duties associated with shaping the security environment in critical regions;
• transform U.S. forces to exploit the “revolution in military affairs”.
1, 2, 3, & “The Lunatics have taken over the asylum”
Their apocalyptic fantasies are now coming true.
There’s blood on the floor of the free market and the Robber Barons are “cleaning up”.
WHAT IS PROGRESS?
JOHN: It’s in your imagination Johnny. Nowhere else. and who said we’re meant to be marching in unison? Oh yes, it was Mao. And Hitler. And Stalin………Because man is one smart animal.
You can’t be serious. The share market melt down shows us just how far people are from being rational.
The notions of Progress and Utopia are the stale leftovers from the earlier heady days of capitalism.
Thomas More’s Utopia was a critique of the social and political life of his day. He dared not directly criticize the powers of the King and his agents. Utopia was never meant as a fully formed blueprint for a perfect world.
The word utopia has taken a new meaning: a futuristic perfect world or a sort of return to the fabled garden; a world where everything is perfect.
History’s motley collection of isms has given Utopia a newer meaning. Dreams and delusions of ideology; the blinkered fallacies of communism, fundamentalist religion and capitalism.
The new meaning of Utopia has caused a lot of harm, though we still need ideals and a vision to work towards. A vsion for a better world is not just in my mind, because I share my life with others. Humans compete and work together. That’s why we need some common goals.
Stuff that up your jumper Mr Hayek!
Free market economics and laissez-faire government is only concerned with the pyramid-like power relationships and competition.
Progress should be a journey that we choose to take, to a destination we know about before we leave. It is not some meandering through a high-tech maze with experiments gone wrong and accidental losses thrown on the scrap heap.
Progress is not something thrust on us like a Nazi jack boot. The Government has given a private company, Central Plains Water Ltd “requiring authority” status. That means they can seize private land here in Canterbury. That aint progress. That’s fascism.
ACT and National want to scap the Resource management act: the only defence those people have left.
THE DESERVING RICH:
JOHN: So it’s not all beer and skittles being rich. …It’s usually by understanding how other people tick. And by working harder than the rest of us are willing to work. ……And by taking more risks than the rest of us are willing to take. Do you accept that?
No. I don’t accept all of that, because so many businesses are not prepared to take responsibility for their financial, social and environmental losses. They lump that on everyone else. And the poor always pay more than their fair share.
Private Profits- Public losses (PPPs): that’s the new Corporate Welfare State we live in.
It is perilous to generalize but rich materialists are the biggest losers in the end and we all suffer as a consequence. Greed has disasterous consequences for people and the planet.
JOHN: Sure, there are some ratbags among the rich. Just as there are also some highly unethical beggars and kitchen hands.
Kitchen hands and beggars have no power. They don’t make the laws or print the money or run the country.
JOHN: I think we should give the rich in this country some credit for the generosity they very often show, but for which they are rarely thanked. The shabby treatment dished out by Clark and Peters to Owen Glenn is but the latest example. Glenn of Monaco is certainly a materialist, but he’s also a nationalist.
JOHN: Isn’t that an example of the win/win benefit of capitalism?
Win/Win capitalism is an oxymoron. History has just hurled that quaint little ideological pearl out of orbit.
Win/Win capitalism: the Anglo-American Alliance’s gift to the world. Tell that to the Iraqis.
They already know about the invisible hand of the free market. Yes the American liberators have been busy “Privatising” large chunks of Iraqi infrastructure.
Win?Win Capitalism: Yes here is a system so amoral that it’s perfect for arms dealers, war financiers, security contractors, oil companies and weapons manufacturers and Robber Barons.
Win Win capitalism?: You can certainly make good money selling uranium tipped missiles and cluster bombs to one side while dealing more weapons with the other. Earn some spare cash training a death squad. For recreation knock out a pesky journalist or a few trade unionists. After lunch swap some heroin for AK47s, teach a class in tortue at the Institute for the Americas and be home in time for Sale of the Century.
JOHNNY: Venom has its uses. JOHN: Name one?
Venom sure has its uses: self defense against evangelists with their black and white ideas.
Banging on a Motorist’s roof as he slowly veers into my bike lane without looking. That’s good self defence.
Venom in the face of isms
Getting a lively discussion underway. Like a bee sting, there is no mistaking venom. Poison on the other hand might not be so obvious.
Venom can be like an inoculation against expensive ads that try to manipulate. Give me an honest ad for a panel beater any day. They don’t lie to me.
Scoffing at the telly. Venom can be fun.
A flash of anger is a healthy sign of life. It’s a part of being human. It doesn’t have to escalate into anything else.
THE FEDEDERAL RESERVE SCAM
Who actually runs the US Federal Reserve? Answer: Not the American Congress and that’s a fact.
Are the secretive Central Market Committee run by the banking cartel that hatched out the original plan with Senate Republican leader Nelson Aldrich? And in 1910?- not long before he married into the Rockefeller family?
It’s strange to see the “invisible hand” of the market has just been caught with its fingers in the till.
Of course you could brush that off as idle speculation. I would love an investigative journalist to dig deeper.
Oh, I forgot. We don’t have any investigative journalists. They’ve all gone to work in PR. Old McScrooge doesn’t pay so well.
JOHNNY TRYS OUT SOME ANSELL STYLE VERSE
Win/win Capitalism
Win capitalism win
Capital idea chum
Win win at all costs capitalism
Win winning is everything
Win win winston w..
Win ……..win we must win capitalism
capitalism ism ism ism
Win win windy capitalism
Windows 😦
Win Winz
Win win Wisconsin Welfare
Winism ism ism ism
Win win wall street winners
Win Wall Street window
Wall Street Widow
Isms win ism win
Isms win at any costs
Iam ism ism ism ism ims ism isms isms isms ………..
THE ROBBER BARONS and their well paid minions
This ideology you support
Capitalism and it’s greedy children
Free- market economics and laissez-faire government
As epoused by the money party: ACT
And quietly endorsed by the old money party with no philosphy: National
Is the same dark Business Round Table propaganda
and Mont Perelin Society extremism
and the Project New American Century lunacy
Do you really support the Robber Barons and their minions?
WHODUNNIT?
Free market economics and laissez- faire government greedily enslaves billions.
It’s the end of the world as we know it … and I feel fine (REM)
Oh for the cosy pirate days of the free market!
Oh for the golden years of free credit
But now the Robber Barons are pulling in their big credit net and what a monster haul !
You make some fair points Johnny, and some others I don’t agree with.
I want to make a considered reply, but I need to find the time.
Soon I hope.
I find the Green’s to be a conflicted bunch with high ideals but the inability to bring them to fruition. Why they thought they could legislate child abuse out of existence I can’t understand. Especially when they support the recreational use of marijuana, which is a key contributor to poor parenting. I think the Green vote appeals to a section of society who want everything to be right with the world (as do we all) but about the only effort they’ll make is voting Green. Then they’ll go back to their attitude of let someone else fix it.
The Robber Barons, banks, judges, lawyers and politicians always seem successful because they differentiate between the Law of the Land (Common Law) and the Law of the High Seas (maritime/Commercial Law) – in other words they understand the difference between a human being and a legal fiction (strawman).
All commercial transactions (court cases) are under maritime law used in all courts. It is not you the human being that is on trial but your legal fiction, aka strawman, created when you were registered at birth/berth (as in registering a vessel).
If you want to make a difference I suggest you all do some furious googling forthwith. A good start is http://www.thinkfree.ca and check out the video section