Zillionaire USians Build End-Times Boltholes in NZ

A property near Queenstown, New Zealand, designed by Mason & Wales Architects.

‘How New Zealand became an apocalypse escape destination for Americans’, July 16, 2020, cnn.com

“In Queenstown — a picturesque ski spot that often attracts comparisons to Aspen, Colorado — rumors about foreigners investing in apocalypse-proof bunkers have been swirling for years.

Queenstown residents are skeptical about whether the secret, underground hideaways are actually as prevalent as such allusions would suggest. Unlike in the United States or Europe, where bunkers are frequently photographed and written about, there’s scant evidence to prove that any bunkers have actually been installed.

A floor plan of one Rising S bunker

 “For years, Queenstown has been an attractive destination for elite foreigners who may have reason to seek out a metaphorical bunker, safe from major political turmoil thousands of miles away. Notable US-based homebuyers include Silicon Valley billionaire and political firebrand Peter Thiel and disgraced former NBC News anchor Matt Lauer.

Now that the coronavirus pandemic has wreaked havoc worldwide, Queenstown is once again sparking interest as the perfect place to escape catastrophe — with or without a secret bunker.”

From forbes.com, July 3, 2008: ‘Southern Sanctuary; Want to be far from terrorism threats and have Bill Gates as a neighbor? Then New Zealand may be the place for you’

A lengthy list of elite buyers, locations, prices, and so on, but how cool is this  for the toffs?

“Unlike Australia, New Zealand does not levy transfer taxes on residential properties. New Zealand abolished death taxes in 1992. There are also no property taxes, and land sales other than by people in the real estate business are exempt from capital gains taxes.”

‘Microsoft seeks new datacenter region in New Zealand; Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says she welcomes Microsoft’s announcement to establish a datacentre region for cloud services in New Zealand’, May 6, 2020, rnz.co.nz


“With the development of this new datacenter region, Microsoft aims to fuel new growth that will accelerate digital transformation opportunities [cashless society? contact tracing?] across New Zealand,” the statement said.

“This means job opportunities in the near term for our construction industry and, in the longer term, for our ICT industry and local innovators. This also serves as a signal to the world that New Zealand is open for business and quality investment,” he said.

“Today’s decision by Microsoft means that the government, and New Zealand businesses and people, will be able to access the scale and security of Cloud services offered by a major global provider in ways we haven’t been able to before.”

Where will the wage slaves live?  And on  the right sidebar, a few Gates and Microsoft ads:

‘Bill Gates steps down from Microsoft to focus on philanthropy’, 14 March 2020

Microsoft has pledged to remove “all of the carbon” from the environment that it has emitted since the company was founded in 1975’, Jan. 17, 2020

And Microsoft goes full amerikan kinte-cloth:

Microsoft announces it will “double the number of Black and African American people managers, senior individual contributors, and senior leaders in the United States by 2025’, June 23, 2020

Heard on the street in Aotearoa: a disgusted, but unnamed Maori male said to his friend:

‘There goes the neighborhood!’

Speaking of NZ long-beleaguered indigenous Maori’s, I thought I’d poke about a bit to see how they’re faring under Jacinda Ardern’s adminstration, and  found: er…not so well.

‘Jacinda Ardern faces Māori wrath over ‘inhumane’ treatment of families; A damning report into child removals by Oranga Tamariki sets the stage for tough Waitangi visit for New Zealand PM’, theguardian.com, Feb. 2, 2020

“There’s been unprecedented breaches of human rights,” said Naida Glavish, the head of a Māori-led inquiry into the practices of New Zealand’s child services agency, Oranga Tamariki.

The investigation, which began six months ago, is one of five being conducted into the organisation, sparked by a documentary in 2019 that depicted social workers’ repeated attempts to seize a Māori baby from its mother shortly after birth.

The report details what families describe as racial profiling, widespread fear among Māori families that their children will be taken away, and abuses of power by social workers. It details incidents in which armed police, with dogs, were sent to seize babies from their families.

It also accused the agency of not allowing extended Māori families to care for children – an established cultural practice – when relatives thought that was the best option.

That meant challenging Ardern on her pledge to do better by Māori, and her urging of Māori leaders to keep track of her progress, that she made in a 2018 speech at Waitangi marae.”

On the left sidebar:We must dismantle our colonial system and rebuild it with Māori at the heart; Waitangi 2020 is the year for us to prepare for a national discussion on power in Aotearoa, and rights for Māori on Māori land’, Feb. 2, 2020

Now it’s hard not to imagine that these new draconian measures are related to the Elites moving in, including the WHO-owning Most Famous Doctor in the World: Bill Gates and his Nasty Microsoft, nor does it take much imagination to think that it’s again the poor and indigenous who will be first to go to the camps…

‘Coronavirus: All New Zealand’s confirmed COVID-19 cases to be put in quarantine facilities from now on’, 13/08/2020, newshub.co.nz

“Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield announced the change at a press conference on Thursday, moments after revealing there are 13 new cases of coronavirus linked to an outbreak in south Auckland.

The use of quarantine facilities marks a major departure from how positive cases were managed by health officials when New Zealand was last at level 3, as cases earlier in the year were told to simply self-isolate in their homes.

Dr Bloomfield says the mandatory quarantine will apply to both new cases and, if necessary, close family members who might be at risk.

“[It] shows how serious we are about limiting any risk of ongoing transmission – even in self-isolation and including to others in the household,” he added.

“A reminder, these facilities have been set up specifically and have excellent processes and resources in place to look after people with COVID-19, including health staff on site at all times.”

Jacinda says that polling shows that 80% of the public agrees with this decision.

(cross-posted from Café Babylon)

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John Wyndham wrote a post-apocalypse sf novel in the 1950s, The Chrysalids (different title in UK) - which provided lyrics for Jeff A's Crown Of Creation, with his permission. In that book, NZ was the last stronghold of civilization, such as it was. As a white Brit, he didn't think to mention Maori, iirc. I've been fascinated with NZ since reading that book. Looked into immigration a few years back: need to invest $1 million. Buying citizenship.

I've been hearing about US richies hooking into NZ for decades now. I can't say I blame NZ for not wanting a flood of Westerners, but selecting for richies? There will be disadvantages as well as the obvious economic boost.

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wendy davis's picture

@pindar's revenge

in NZ (Aotearoa) the maori are the are lower class blacks, not even close to equal by any metrics available even though they hold a lot of seats in kiwi parliament; go figure.

sir vaccine bill gates retweet:

@trevormundel
This commitment is critical. “Additional manufacturing capacity to begin producing doses for every country, not just the wealthy few.” - @GaviSeth

Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance
@gavi Aug 7

We are pleased to announce that we are collaborating with the @SerumInstIndia and the @GatesFoundation to accelerate manufacturing and delivery of up to 100 million doses of future #COVID19 vaccines for low- and middle-income countries in 2021: https://bit.ly/3a2CNGY

he'd bribed 'officials' in one african nation to be vaccinated, and has imagined 'health passports, not to mention his ID 2021 project. so he'll be at it again: his sort of 'entrepeneurialism'. his and mellie's foundation is also full-blown eugenecist. 'fewer africans means a better world...for women!' never mind his history in India...

but yes, at the Café, there's a category: 'verified conspiracy theories' i'd used, reflecting the long history of the same.

fascinating on the lyrics to crown of creation, though. let's listen; i love it; thank you.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOrb0G0tw08]

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@wendy davis
dialogue, talking about N Am future fundamentalist culture, that was the source for the lyrics.
The NZer was pretty brutal, herself; her rescuees had to wonder about her.

"Soon you'll attain the stability you strive for,
In the only way that it's granted: In a place among the fossils of our time"

Brian Aldiss dissed Wyndham for writing what Aldiss called "cozy catastrophes". I dunno; they didn't seem very cozy to me.

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wendy davis's picture

@pindar's revenge

i'm at a bit of a loss, but this overview seems to indicate that he was writing about post-nuclear armageddon fundies in labrador, unless i haven't read far enough.

the 'blocking of the telepaths' seems to be a fascinating angle, though.

and yesterday's news says that the kiwi govt. has issued orders that no-knock warrants of suspected carriers can be executed, and that anyone refusing a test will be arrested. the election's been postponed as well... same as in bolvia under janine anez's coup government.

i do wish i knew some maori websites and bloggers, though; none of leads i'd explored panned out. but they do seem to grasp that they're second-class citizens, much like the australian aboriginals. first americans? i'm trying to puzzle that parallel through, but given so many tribes, such a huge land mass Turtle Island is...i'm lost.

i will offer that keri hulme's The Bone People was my first experience with the Maori, and what a fine and sensitive story she'd written.

anyhoo, thanks for the comments, and for reading, pindar's revenge.

the massive forest fires in northern CA and to the north of us on the west slope of C0 have created a rather apocalyptic dead and dark air, sun rising blood red the past couple days. the silence is eerie, save for coyotes who've been coming close to the house and making very different sounds than they ordinarily do.

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TheOtherMaven's picture

@wendy davis

I encountered it, anthologized, under that title. The location, actually, was Newfoundland (Newfies get touchy about the distinction, but hardly anyone else cares). New Zealand is mentioned but there are no scenes set there, so we don't learn much about it.

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

wendy davis's picture

@TheOtherMaven

hadn't been mentioned? thank you, the other maven.

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@wendy davis
Was that NZ was the last bastion of techno-civ, due to their isolation. Of course they wouldn't have mentioned original peoples, but like TOM said, very little was given about NZ itself. I probly shouldn't have brought up Maori in that context.

Climate change seemed to be involved as well; Newfoundland was a mild, temperate climate (ag community), while the eastern seaboard was uninhabitable, mostly due to radiation. Haven't read it in a few decades.

btw, I once saw a Maori troupe doing trad dances. The master's patter included a bit about Euro "adventurers" going missing; he concluded by saying "You might say we have a little British blood in us". The Maori seem to have put up a pretty good fight.

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wendy davis's picture

@pindar's revenge

double entendre? i.e.: they raped our women and/or we killed few?

the only traditional dance i know is the Haka. and by the by, have you ever seen the whale rider? young female pikaea is drawn to become a warrior chief, her grandfather has shit fits. it's altogether sublime, certainly one of my favorites. it was shot on location in in Whangara, NZ.

gotta scoot; a friend is here to pick up Tithing for Terror Tuesdays food. bit late i yam...

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@wendy davis

IIRC, and perhaps some had to do with navigation. It was a while ago.

My impression was he was referencing eating the "adventurers", thus the blood. Ambiguous. Deniable. He grinned.

I'll have to look for that movie, thanks.

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wendy davis's picture

@pindar's revenge

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI851yJUQQw]

in this one, the choreographer says much what Turtle Island indigenous say: (we do not own the earth, we will disappear), we're here as guardians of the land for future generations.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5oidQAyLQw]

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wendy davis's picture

20000 words, impossible to even hit the most worthy highlights (at least for now), although it may be a bit of an update of jacob levitch's 'the real agenda of the gates foundation' (his dissertation (?) i'd brought some time ago.

even their bolded headings contain far more than the imply.

'Why the Bill Gates global health empire promises more empire and less public health, Behind a veil of corporate media PR, the Gates Foundation has served as a vehicle for Western capital while exploiting the Global South as a human laboratory. The coronavirus pandemic is likely to intensify this disturbing agenda’, Jeremy Loffredo and Michele Greenstein, the grayzone, July 2, 2020

jacob levitch had called him and his foundation: 'philanthrocapitalists', which is a very apt term. what a schmuck the man is, esp given the many deaths nd paralyzations his 'gifts' have brought to the global south, including live polio vaccines, and versions of drugs even the US had long since abandoned.

but any gates-lovers and admires (they are legion) should read this.

it opens:

'The US abandonment of the WHO means that the organization’s second-largest financial contributor, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is soon to become its top donor, giving the non-governmental international empire unparalleled influence over one the world’s most important multilateral organizations.

Bill Gates has achieved a hero-like status during the pandemic. The Washington Post has called him a “champion of science-backed solutions,” while the New York Times recently hailed him as “the most interesting man in the world.” Gates is also the star of a hit Netflix docu-series, “Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak,” which was released just weeks before coronavirus hit the U.S., and was produced by a New York Times correspondent, Sheri Fink, who previously worked at three Gates-funded organizations (Pro Publica, the New America Foundation, and the International Medical Corps).

The tidal wave of mainstream media praise for Gates during the Covid-19 era has meant that scrutiny of the billionaire and his machinations is increasingly prevalent on the far–right of the political spectrum, where it can be dismissed by progressives as the conspiratorial ravings of Trumpists and Q-Anon quacks.

But beyond the public relations bonanza about Gates lies a disturbing history that should raise concerns about whether his foundation’s plans for resolving the pandemic will benefit the global public as much as it expands and entrenches its power over international institutions.

The Gates Foundation has already effectively privatized the international body charged with creating health policy, transforming it into a vehicle for corporate dominance. It has facilitated the dumping of toxic products onto the people of the Global South, and even used the world’s poor as guinea pigs for drug experiments.

The Gates Foundation’s influence over public health policy is practically contingent on ensuring that safety regulations and other government functions are weak enough to be circumvented. It therefore operates against the independence of nation states and as a vehicle for Western capital.

“Because of the Gates Foundation, I have watched government after government fall in its sovereignty,” Dr. Vandana Shiva, a scholar and founder of the India-based Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, told The Grayzone."

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wendy davis's picture

What's the difference between god and bill gates?

God doesn't believe she's bill gates.

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I still it's a good idea, regardless of what elite .. people .. move there.

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wendy davis's picture

@tle

spot on the planet. sure you could likely avoid the uber-wealthy, but i dunno bout ardern and her administration, and my final bill gates/mastercard tweet.

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