James Cameron

ᔥ NZ Herald

NBR Rich Lister James Cameron is showing his confidence in the New Zealand film industry even if Helen Kelly,  Robyn Malcolm and their union mates best efforts to try and kill it off:

Hollywood director James Cameron says the Avatar sequels will almost certainly be shot in New Zealand where film crews have a freshness and flexibility that he no longer finds in the US.

But he’s told the New York Timeshe’s not moving to New Zealand to compete with Wellington-based Sir Peter Jackson.

ᔥ NZ Herald

The NBR Rich List has been released and it has proven that Labour has been incredibly misguided in attacking the rich in New Zealand. It seems there are so few that NBR has deemed it necessary to include foreigners.

The inclusion of four international billionaires in this year’s NBR Rich List has helped bump up the total list’s value by more than $12 billion.

For the first time in its history, the National Business Review has included foreign investors in its rich list to reflect the globalisation of wealth, bringing the number of billionaires on the list to nine.

Graham Hart, who is worth $6 billion, is still the wealthiest New Zealander on the list but he was beaten to the top spot by industrial technologist Alexander Abramov ($7 billion).

Other internationals in the top ten are investor Julian Robertson ($3 billion), winemaker William (Bill) Foley ($1.5 billion) and horse breederDowager Duchess Henrietta Bedford ($1 billion).

The total value of the Rich List has risen this year from $45.2 billion to $57.7 billion.

Although placed just outside the top ten, Canadian filmmaker James Cameron also entered the list with his $900 million fortune.

ᔥ NZ Herald

Fran O’Sullivan makes a good point about the claims of Fay’s legal case and the agitators of Federated F-Wits insistence that people buying farms come here and handle the teats and get their gumboots muddy…as if Michael Fay would ever deign to touch a cow’s udder:

Crown Law (which is arguing on behalf of the Cabinet ministers who approved the deal) maintains that Shanghai Pengxin had the business acumen to acquire the relevant dairy expertise by forming a joint venture with Landcorp and that the Chinese firm’s broader business skills will bring something more to the mix.

Many recently approved foreign investors in New Zealand dairy farms – like film-maker James Cameron – are hardly going to be “putting on their gumboots” to run their farms here. Neither will the directors of the Harvard University funds, which owns a sway of farms here.

Nor the many German and Swiss investors who have shares in various dairy partnerships.

If the court finds in the challengers’ favour this will effectively circumscribe the ability of farm owners to sell farms on the external market. It should be noted farm owners do have to advertise their land within New Zealand first.

James Cameron just bought another farm and there wasn’t a single outraged email or press release from Labour, the Greens, Michael Fay, any Maori group or the stupidly named Save our Farms crowd. Perhaps they like the colour of Cameron’s skin and his round eyes? Michael Fay certainly hasn’t initiated any legal action to take James Cameron’s farms off him.

ᔥ NZ Herald

I pointed out with a video yesterday that James Cameron is a climate hypocrite.

And now he is set to mine asteroids in a new venture:

A US company, backed by film director James Cameron and Google’s top executives, has unveiled bold plans to mine asteroids for precious minerals and water.

Heralding a new frontier in space exploitation, Planetary Resources announced plans to send a swarm of robot miners into space to prospect resource-rich chunks of rock not far from Earth.

The firm’s co-founder Peter Diamandis said he wanted to “make the resources of space available to humanity”, and add trillions of dollars to global wealth in the process.

Among the goodies to be found on near-Earth asteroids are much-sought-after platinum, iron, nickel and sulfur as well as more obscure minerals that make excellent semi-conductors.

The equipment could also harvest water, which scientists believe holds the key to building propellants that will allow deep space exploration.

The first step will be to send a telescope into space within the next 18 to 24 months that can spot which asteroids may be useful.

Admitting the project was “difficult”, Diamandis and his colleagues tried to silence claims that it was a flight of fantasy, assembling a veritable fantasy team of investors.

They include Google executives Larry Page and Eric Schmidt andTitanic filmmaker Cameron, as well as the son of one-time presidential candidate Ross Perot.

Quite how they are going to get all that stuff into space with out burning tonnes of noxious chemicals in fueling rockets is beyond me.

Perhaps James Cameron might like to tell us what the carbon footprint of this new venture will be?

↬ Not PC

James Cameron was welcomed as a land investor by Labour because he was not Chinese. But he is also a climate hypocrite, openly opposing Proposition 23 in California, all the while expecting “other people” to sacrifice, hoping no one will find out about his extravagance.

Prop 23 would suspend California’s AB32, Global Warming legislation which would require energy companies reduce their carbon output to 1990 levels.

James Cameron has donated $1m to oppose Prop 23, even though he hypocritically lives a carbon intensive lifestyle.

If Labour ever became the government then it is likely that James Cameron would have his land confiscated under David Shearer’s new rules for foreign owners. Then again he might not even be alive to see Labour confiscate his farm, especially if he insists on doing silly things:

Meet the Deepsea Challenger, a one-man submersible craft capable of withstanding pressures at the deepest point in the ocean—Challenger Deep in the Pacific’s Mariana Trench. Sometime in the next few weeks, this sub will carry filmmaker James Cameron into the Challenger Deep. He’ll become the third human to visit that place, and the first since a two-man Navy sub made the dive in 1960.

As you see it in this photo, Deepsea Challenger is actually sideways. The sub will fall into and rise out of Challenger Deep in a vertical configuration, with Cameron at the bottom in a spherical steel pod. You can’t see the spherical part in this image, but the pod is attached. It’s in the end of the craft that’s still slightly out of the water—the left-hand side of the photo.

Cameron’s descent will be very different from the 1960 expedition, which wasn’t able to see much because their craft stirred up so much debris in the bottom of the trench. Deepsea Challenger is designed to avoid this problem and Cameron will also spend a much longer amount of time at the bottom—several hours instead of just 20 minutes. He’ll also film 3D footage of the trench, and collect animal and rock specimens.

During the debate over whether or not we should allow Chinese companies to invest in New Zealand there was another case of selling land to foreigners. that of James Cameron, a Canadian. According to the racists in this country is ok for a white Canadian to buy a farm because he is going to live here and Shanghai Pengxin shouldn’t be allowed to buy a farm because they are Chinee rapists of land.

The Labour party, in order to cover up their racism against Chinese, claimed that James Cameron’s purchase was ok because he was going to live here. they have repeated this ad nauseum.

Well that myth has been well and truly busted with the requirement being that he only has to live here for a paltry 44 days.

He says he wants to make New Zealand home, but the maker of history’s two biggest films will have to spend just 44 days here a year – and he doesn’t have to live here at all in the first year.

Newly released documents show James Cameron – a self-styled “film-maker, explorer and technology entrepreneur” – will need to spend only 88 days over two years to fulfil his residency requirements.

Hell, to maintain residency for your tax status you have to stay longer than that…I think 183 days.

Labour’s argument is in tatters and now with the Court ruling and this sham of a residency claim James Cameron might have to abandon his purchase.

If the Shanghai Pengxin bid for the Westpac farms formerly owned by the Crafar family doesn’t meet OIO requirements because it doesn’t add any value to New Zealand then presumably James Cameron’s purchase of a farm doesn’t either?

Shanghai Pengxin was going to spend $100 million upgrading the farms, it wouldn’t have been leveraged money wither like Fay’s bid…they were also going to open up markets in China and spend millions developing that as well for products other than milk powder.

Whereas Jame Cameron in his favour was going to live on the farm….looks like his little sale is rooted too now by this new interpretation of the law by an activist judge.

One suspects if James Cameron looked like this the Labour party might not be so happy about his purchase of prime rural land.

Today’s Face of the Day is Kim Jim Tim Camwon, who in the spiwit of coopewation is buying some valuable rural land.

Labour has been surprisingly silent on the latest farm sales to a foreign investor:

Hollywood movie mogul James Cameron is coming to live in Wairarapa – and he is bringing his family with him.

The director of blockbuster films Titanic and Avatar has purchased two large plots of land along Western Lake Rd in south Wairarapa, where he is expected to arrive and live later this year.

Records released today from the Overseas Investment Office show that James F Cameron, of Canada, was given consent in December to purchase two separate properties, one 817 hectares and the other nearly 250 hectares.

Why the silence from Labour on the sale of valuable and profitable farm land to foreign investors. Surely they must be consistent and decry this purchase too?

Or is Labour’s threshold for outrage being a Chinee?