Saturday, April 30, 2011

Warner Bros Entertainment won award as worst transnational corporation in NZ...

Kantoor van Warner BrosImage via WikipediaAn industrial dispute over The Hobbit films which bitterly divided public opinion in New Zealand last year, resulted in Warner Bros Entertainment being awarded a few weeks ago, the title of worst transnational corporation operating  in New Zealand for 2011.

The "Saurons of Cinema" - Warner Bros Entertainment  wielded such power as to influence the New Zealand National Government to rewrite legislation in their favour after threatening to take film making away from New Zealand to other countries, something that would have costed scores of jobs in NZ.

They gained about $100 million dollars in tax write offs.

But the bottom line here is that such interference in New Zealand politics sets a precedence for all future negotiations between the NZ government and other transnational companies.


Film-maker Peter Jackson has  also had his reputation badly dented as well. A brilliant film-maker he may
well be, but a rat-bag businessman who  is prepared to use any tactic to get his own way is the way many saw him during the dispute..


Friday, April 22, 2011

The Anzac Day ceremony...

The Anzac Day ceremony...




The Anzac Day ceremony of 25 April is rich in tradition and ritual. It is a form of military funeral and follows a particular pattern. The day's ceremonies have two major parts: one at dawn and another, more public event, later in the morning.



The dawn service





Sound: Anzac Day dawn service

A typical commemoration begins with a march by returned service personnel before dawn to the local war memorial. Military personnel and returned servicemen and women form up about the memorial, joined by other members of the community. Pride of place goes to war veterans.



A short service follows with a prayer, hymns (including Kipling's 'Recessional' or 'Lest we forget') and a dedication that concludes with the fourth verse of Laurence Binyon's For the Fallen:



They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.



The last post is then played, and this is followed by a minute's silence and the reveille. A brief address follows, after which the hymn 'Recessional' is sung. The service concludes with a prayer and the singing of the national anthem.



The Anzac parade

Another ceremony takes place later on the morning of 25 April. Returned service personnel wear their medals and march behind banners and standards. The veterans are joined by other community groups, including members of the armed forces, the Red Cross, cadets, and veterans of other countries' forces.







Patea war memorial on Anzac Day

The march proceeds to the local war memorial. Another service takes place there, and various organisations and members of the public lay wreaths. This service is a more public commemoration than the dawn service. It is less intimate and less emotional. The speech, usually by a dignitary, serviceman or returned serviceman or woman, can stress nationhood and remembrance.



After these services many of the veterans retire to the local Returned and Services' Association (RSA) club or hotel, where they enjoy coffee and rum (in the case of the dawn service) and unwind after an emotionally and, for elderly veterans, physically exhausting event. At the end of the day, the ceremony of the retreat is performed.

http://www.nzhistory.net/war/anzac-day/overview

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

A real alien or an elaborate hoax...

The discovery of an alien's dead body in Siberia is probably just an elaborate hoax, but footage of it has captured the imagination of millions online.


Video posted on YouTube by All News Web, a site billing itself as The World's Only Inter-Galactic Daily News Service, shows two Russian men approaching and filming the apparent corpse of a small alien.



PHOTOS: World's most famous extraterrestrial hoaxes?





The shrivelled and decomposing body was reportedly found near the city of Irkutsk, just north of the Mongolian border.



"We found him around two hours ago," the cameraman said.



"It must have been lying here for days."



The body was apparently sniffed out by a dog, who led the pair to the extraterrestrial find.





'Alien corpse' found in Siberia





All News Web's Michael Cohen writes that residents of Irkutsk witnessed a UFO crashing into a forest, though the event was "deliberately kept from public view" in the West.



"An enormous team of government officials, including military personal, secret service agents and science ministry officials made their way to the UFO crash site within hours of the event occurring," Mr Cohen wrote.



"Is the alien seen in this video a survivor of that crash who managed to leave the area only to die as a result of Russia's harsh conditions?"



While the corpse itself does appear somewhat realistic, a close-up reveals the snow has been consciously moved to make it appear half-buried.

View video:

Alien or hoax

http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2011/14/18/dead-alien-found-in-russia-video/


Links to stories that have been withdrawn. Lets use our imagination?

Friday, April 1, 2011

US cleric claims Islamists are elated by revolts

Imam Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen October 2008, ta...Image via Wikipedia

U.S Cleric says; Islamists are elated by revolts,



WASHINGTON U.S.A, So called cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, the Yemeni-“American” cleric who is a top propagandist for Al Qaeda, broke his silence on the uprisings in the Arab world, claiming that Islamist extremists had gleefully watched the success of protest movements against governments they had long despised (London Times, One dictatorship for another repression out-dated extreme Muslim one? is it better the devil you know? than you don’t no?)

“The mujahedeen around the world are going through a moment of elation,” Awlaki wrote in a new issue of the “English-language” Qaeda magazine Inspire, “and I wonder whether the West is aware of the upsurge of mujahedeen activity in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Arabia, Algeria and Morocco?”

Sir Michael Black-Feather the English first minister said; Awlaki’s four-page essay, titled “The Tsunami of Change,” is among a handful of statements by Al Qaeda’s leaders countering the common view among Western analysts that the terrorist network looks irrelevant at a time of change unprecedented in the modern Middle East. In ousting the rulers of Tunisia and Egypt and threatening other Arab leaders, a core of secular-leaning, demonstrators have called for democracy and generally avoided violence, and are all at odds with Al Qaeda’s creed as it tries to install rigid Islamist rule across the world which just won’t ever happen, a few nut-cases poking sticks in wasp’s nest’s won’t change this world, the AL Qaeda creed live in the dark ages in a time that won’t ever be seen again, and is only seen by those delusional to see it within their own minds, and impose their derision’s (Dictatorship) on others .

In an audio statement this month, the Egyptian deputy to Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahri, pleaded with the Egyptians who toppled President Hosni Mubarak to shun the United States, reject democracy and embrace Islam as the answer to their problems. Arguing that Al Qaeda deserved some indirect credit for the uprisings, he said the United States’ willingness to drop its support for Mr. Mubarak and other authoritarian leaders was a “direct result” of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Mr. Awlaki’s essay is more colloquial and confident, asserting that the momentous change in Arab countries left Western leaders “confused, worried, and unhappy for the departure of some of its closest and most reliable friends.”

He quotes American commentators who describe the uprisings as a refutation of Al Qaeda, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s assertion last month that “the success of peaceful protests has discredited the extremists.”

Mr. Awlaki, who is thought to be hiding in Yemen, argues that such conclusions are premature. “The outcome doesn’t have to be an Islamic government for us to consider what is occurring to be a step in the right direction,” he writes.

By “breaking the barriers of fear” and toppling leaders who protected “American imperial interests,” he asserts, the uprisings should play to the long-term advantage of Al Qaeda’s philosophy. He points to Yemen and Libya, where embattled leaders are clinging to power, as places where turmoil could open possibilities for jihadists to organize.

Awlaki’s statement comes as some American officials have expressed anxiety about just that possibility. In Libya, an American military official said this week that there were “flickers” of intelligence suggesting that Qaeda or Hezbollah operatives were among the rebels fighting Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. And in Yemen, President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s weakening grip on power could take pressure off Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Expressing hope that revolution will spread from Yemen to Saudi Arabia, Mr. Awlaki asks, “Doesn’t the West realize how the jihadi work would just take off as soon as the regimes of the Gulf start crumbling?”

Sir Michael” said the likes of Qaeda propagandists are “consummate opportunists no matter what happens, these half-wits will try to spin it to their benefit.” But he said several influential Qaeda theorists appear to believe that the departure of authoritarian leaders will prove advantageous.
“Al Qaeda recognizes how marginal they are on this,” Sir Michael said. “But it could open the kind of operating space they’ve wanted for a long time when people lose hope and leeches like Qaeda move in and offer hope which is not as it seems because people are lost the grab at it, only when it sinks in dose one realise it’s not what one really wanted, but the infection is already there and needs the skills of a good surgeon to remove it not a tank driver?.”

Inspire magazine, five issues of which have been posted on militant Web sites, is believed to be the work primarily of Samir Khan, a Saudi-born American who grew up in Queens and North Carolina before moving to Yemen in 2009.

It is a slick, graphics-heavy, irreverent publication aimed at young Muslims attracted to the extremist cause; the latest issue includes an invitation to readers to e-mail questions to Awlaki and a two-page primer on how to use an AK automatic rifle.

Khan himself contributed to inspire an appeal to Egyptians not to stop after overthrowing Mr. Mubarak but to impose religious rule.
“The question now comes: what do you do if your government decides not to rule by Shariah?” he asks, referring to Islamic law. “Who does your loyalty go to? The state or Allah?

Sir Michael said; God/Allah gave all of mankind free will, which all these extremist Muslims seem to have forgotten, or just don’t understand the true worlds of God, having their minds infected by false so called clerics.
God does not inflict his rules/laws on to any man, because you all have free will, either to follow his words or not to follow them, “But it’s not up to any of mankind to thrust Gods/Allah words on to any men in his name, only God himself has this right? Extremist in their own rule of law, which are not Gods laws, are truly blasphemous and their laws are full of blasphemy and hate.

Acknowledgements: London Times

Enhanced by Zemanta