Codified Cartel Collusion Featuring '13' in the Christchurch Construction Bonanza
How Earthquake Rebuild Data Reveals the 'Hidden Hand’ of an Old Boys’ Network
Snapshot: The Christchurch Rebuild data reveals the ‘hand’ of the Old Boys’ Network, who codified their communications to signify solidarity, cue caution and telegraph a building bonanza with the prime number — thirteen.A previous version of this dispatch was published on 24 May 2020 on Snoopman News.
Recidivist Thirteen: The Shock Doctrine in Action
In the aftermath of the devastating 6.3M earthquake on 22.02.2011, Prime Minister John Key’s Government cunningly managed a Christchurch Construction Cartel.
Indeed, a Christchurch Earthquake Rebuild Nexus was operating as a cartel with the complicity of central and local government — as John McCrone found reporting for the Christchurch Press in September 2012), with his article “The Business of NZ Inc,” — although he didn’t use the C-word, while he cited Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine.
And, Sarah Miles in “Christchurch Fiasco” found the insurance industry exploit disasters to maximise profits. Yet, the data of the Christchurch Rebuild data revealed more. Big corporate interests — foreign and domestic — worked hand-in-glove with central and local government as a hidden ‘brotherhood’, signalling their cooperation to collude by embedding the number 13 and its multiples in the rebuild meta-data.
The Christchurch Construction Cartel codified their communications to signify unity, caution and cues for scape-goating to resolve the inevitable scandals with a prime number — 13 — as weird as that sounds. By encoding ‘Thirteen’ and its multiples and variants into the key figures of rebuild projects, associated dates and economic data, New Zealand’s Neo-Feudal Old Boys’ Network were able to locate one another across public and private sector institutions, communicate the advancement of ‘the game’ and inflict a Shock Doctrine cartel business model — with impunity, as my “Codified Collusion by Christchurch Construction Cartel” (13 July 2019) revealed.
This case study – “Codified Collusion by Christchurch Construction Cartel” – smashes the default position, or the null hypothesis, of coincidence theorists who would have it that the arbitrary appearances of the number 13 in the Christchurch rebuild metadata is mere chance. Key meta-data in the Rebuild Bonanza was encoded with the Thirteen, its multiples and variants to telegraph collusion, caution and cover-up. Such key data, which was sometimes provisional, included:
(1) 13 key Anchor Projects for Ōtākaro Limited’s 13 Precincts in the Christchurch CBD, with as many as 13 insurance assessors to process a commercial building claim;
(2) the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA) signalling 1300 commercial buildings might be demolished; and issuing a notice that 13,000 commercial and industrial buildings in the greater Christchurch area would be surveyed;
(3) EarthQuake Commission paying out $13 billion for commercial construction, and Christchurch businesses consented for 1.3 million square metres of floor space;
(4) Fletcher Building estimated a $13 billion bill to repair houses, 13,000 homes had undergone emergency repairs because they had no utility services, but were needing proper repair and subsequently were repaired, and 13,000 new homes were required and 13,000 residential building consents were issued;
(5) 13,000 contractors were inducted, which doubled the construction industry workforce to 26,000, ahead of 1300 buildings that would be partially or fully demolished within the Garden City’s ‘four avenues’ encompassing the central city;
(6) the EarthQuake Commission expected to process 130,000 claims in 2011, and payed out $1.3bn in the first six months following the M6.3 Christchurch Aftershock, and AMI doubling down on its insurance cover of $1.3 billion, spending $13m for its first package prior to the September 2010 7.1M Darfield quake and costing AMI another $33m to boost reinsurance to June 30 2011;
(7) 1.3 million square metres of roads that took up to 13 weeks per kilometre to lay, and the equivalent of 13 rugby fields of road pavement was laid; while $130 million was earmarked for public transport; while the NZ Transport Agency claimed the quake recovery spend on transport would be a minimum of $130 million per year;
(8) 1300 kilometres of ultra fast broadband cable reported yet to be laid;
(9) planning 13 major cycleways, followed by a budget blow-out extending the costs to $252million — that rendered down to 13 by dividing this full deck of cards number — 52 in 2 to yield 26, which is a multiple of 13.
(10) Education Minister Hekia Parata proposing — on September 13th 2012 — the closure and merger of 13 schools into one Year 1-13 mega-school;
(11) Dr Peter Crampton of Otago University found the population of Christchurch’s wealthiest suburbs had grown by nearly 13,000, while the poorest suburbs had declined by about 13,000 people, supposedly, in his 2013 NZ Deprivation Index, despite the government allocating $13 million to fund Christchurch social services;
(12) the Christchurch Integrated Government Accommodation Project included a goal to return 13 government departments and agencies to the CBD — and four state entities approving a $13 million fit-out of the Grand Central building;
(13) 130 projects overseen by CERA during its lifespan, amid the widespread and prolonged regurgitation of GeoNet’s 13,000 Earthquakes figure.
Ergo, I’m not citing a receipt from a builder who purchased 13 hammers at Mitre 10.
Applied Game Theory with the Recidivst Character: Thirteen
The key Christchurch rebuild data reveals the ‘hand’ of the Old Boys’ Network whom codified their communications to signify solidarity, to cue caution and to telegraph a rebuild bonanza with the prime number — 13 — as game theory could predict.
The deployment of Thirteen and its Accomplices acted as a carrier for the Brotherhood’s codified communications, and were embedded with threats and promises, and also signposted where colluding members of the Old Boy’s Network could be found. In other words, some of the published project meta-data were interim quanta deployed for the purposes of posting hostages to fortify the shifting power structures amid a crisis. ‘Hostage exchanges’ stabilize relations to forge a syndicate.
Once projects served their purpose of signaling solidarity by institutional players’ posting themselves as hostages to advance the game of collusion, the prime number 13 often dropped off the meta-data. This ‘drop-off’ was not a sign of defections, but rather was indicative of the Brotherhood getting on with the business of project completion with the real numbers, since the Network were bonded as ‘hostages’.
Like possessed synchronized swimmers, élite criminal groups act in unison with the modus operandi of speed, suddenness and scope, while traumatized populations are overwhelmed — as Canadian journalist, Naomi Klein identified in her 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine. As such, these recurrences meant that the prime number 13 took on a life of its own, so to speak. Essentially, ‘Thirteen’ became a marauding character, who behaved like a recidivist white collar criminal ‘ripping the faces’ off the good people of Christchurch, Canterbury and other New Zealanders who are cast as tax-monkeys.
Game theory was developed during the Cold War to stabilize the power structures of the Russian Empire and the American Empire. In their paper, “Resolving social conflicts through hostage posting: theoretical and empirical considerations”, Gideon Keren and Werner Raub noted that “tacit communications of threats and promises are two major message strategies used to influence the behaviours of others”.
Since game theory requires colluding players to issue and respond to threats and rewards to maintain the motivation, discipline and purposes of the cartel (or cartels), their simultaneous actions are political and also betray economic evidence of an unfolding plot. The data of such parallel moves made prior, during and after a crisis, can be arranged as clustered events to reveal the anatomy of a criminogenic environment, since élite criminals exploit the speed of the unfolding events as power crimes, by controlling the crisis rituals. They perform like synchronized swimmers.
By the years’ end, the earthquakes’ economic costs were estimated at 13% of New Zealand’s GDP in 2011. During the peak of the clean-up phase, even a volunteer group that became known as the ‘Student Volunteer Army’ — recruited 13,000 students.
And the Bus Interchange required 13,000 bathtubs worth of concrete slabbing.
Not to be outdone, the tectonic plates clocked up 13,000 earthquakes and aftershocks between September 4 2010 and September 2012, as the EarthQuake Commission’s GeoNet/GNS Science reported. This figure was widely reported — for years like it was a talisman meme occupying neural networks to process the ‘nation’ as a group mind.
Analysis of Cohesive Christchurch Construction Cartel
Intriguingly, the prime number 13 is embedded in ‘news worthy’ events by ruling élites to procure political marriages, to display unity, encode caution and to signal who to scapegoat to de-escalate scandals — lest they snowball into crises. The meta-data reveals an élite state-corporate criminal group operated a cartel to exploit the Christchurch Earthquake Rebuild. In the aftermath of the Canterbury earthquakes and aftershocks, New Zealand’s Old Boys’ Network took graft to the next level. The Neo-Feudal Oligarchy encoded their communications to signify unity, caution and to telegraph a rebuild bonanza using the number 13. The mostly-Pākehā Patriarchy and their Foreign Fraternal Friends used 13, its multiples and variants to locate one another across public and private sector institutions, communicate the advancement of ‘the game’ and buy-in to inflict a Shock Doctrine cartel business model, as the case study — “Codified Collusion by Christchurch Construction Cartel” — found.
The deployment of ‘Thirteen’ and its ‘Accomplices’ advanced the cartel game by staging Brotherhood Bonding Rituals to signal promises and threats, telegraph caution and control the inevitable scandals while exploiting the disaster. The codified communications in government, corporate and media reports — as well as at public and private events – worked as hostage posting mechanisms to stabilize the shifting power structures for those seeking to capitalize on the crisis. If other players were not seen to be posting themselves as ‘hostages’ — defections could be expected on the next moves, as game theory predicts. The Christchurch Construction Cartel exploited speed, suddenness and scope to overwhelm, wear down and outrun opposition. The true nature of the key perpetrators’ occult hostage-posting rituals remained obscure to the good people of Christchurch, Canterbury and the rest of New Zealand.
It is, therefore, intriguing to recall a pre-election ‘cup of tea’ meet-up that occurred on 11 November 2011 between then-Prime Minister, John Key, with then-ACT Party Epsom candidate, John Banks, that took place at Urban Café in the Aurecon building in Newmarket. Because Aurecon was involved in the search, rescue and recovery in Christchurch, the symbolic communication in this publicized cuppa signified that not only was Aurecon ‘in the camp’ for the rebuild projects of Christchurch City. By posting himself as a ‘hostage’, Key was also communicating both a promise that his incumbent National Coalition Government would deliver on the rebuild blueprints, and a threat that any alternative would de-stabilize a disaster zone and the economy.
The idea of this cuppa meet-up was to boost support for the ACT Party, whose party would not otherwise get enough party votes to reach the 5% mixed member proportional (MMP) voting system threshold. This way, ACT would help Key’s National Party form a government. Ergo, the cuppa meet-up’s location at Aurecon’s HQ telegraphed a rebuild bonanza would occur with the ‘Two Johnnies’ in power.
To deal with the liquifaction, Aurecon had 13 of its staff on the Christchurch City Council’s post-earthquake Mayoral Flood Taskforce. Aurecon was also involved in the Christchurch Bus Interchange, the Deans Head Remediation Project at Christchurch’s Port Hills, and a telecom building deconstruction project at 91 Heresford Street. It seems the New Zealand Electoral Commission and Commerce Commission don’t meet over coffee to compare notes on corruption, or collusion.
And, Aurecon was also advisory consultant on a project to build 13 major cycle-ways.
Ironically, another engineering company called Beca, would design this 13 major cycleways project, connecting routes around Christchurch. Curiously, Beca was also selected by the New Zealand Police to investigate any possible criminal liability following the Royal Commission of Inquiry into deaths due to building collapses. In their report for NZ Police, Beca concluded that a six-story building — where 115 people perished — was not built to code. To their credit, Beca stated that had the Canterbury Television (CTV) building been built to code — it would have been strong enough not to collapse like a pancake. However, New Zealand’s Police backed away from prosecuting. The Solicitor General warned of high indemnity costs against the Police if they lost the case. Finding out who was culpable seemed secondary.
The Deputy Solicitor-General, Brendan Horsley advised Police that the Crown Law Office in Wellington, did not “consider the evidential test [was] satisfied” by Police.
Yet, no one asked if the Crown Law Office was conflicted in its interests, since in publicly claiming the evidential test was marginal, the Deputy Solicitor-General had inserted into the record a discoverable ‘weakness’ to weigh upon the Police. The defence could point out that the Christchurch City Council should never have approved the design, nor should it have approved the construction.
Thus, Detective Sup. Int. Peter Read and Canterbury District Commander Sup. Int. John Price were placed in a position to read between the lines: there was a price to pay for failure to build a criminal case to code. Horsley ‘rode’ his trusty steed like a white knight. He saved the City Council from courtroom scrutiny over who exactly was responsible for potential criminal culpability. And, yet another ‘disaster’ for the Old Boys’ Network was averted, and with no prosecutions, the Rebuild Bonanza continued.
This leads to a fair question: were the Police top brass merely entertaining the rank and file, who could be played while they diligently carried out a criminal investigation?
For its part, Beca was deep in the ‘Christchurch Rebuild’, and was also contracted for its expertise to SCIRT, the Stronger Christchurch Infrastructure Rebuild Team, which was the perfect fusion of big government, big business and big money to reconstruct Canterbury. Ergo, there was a clear conflict of interest. While Beca called out the poor building design and construction, Beca was hardly going to say, “Old Boys’ Network”.
Since much of the Canterbury Earthquake Royal Commission’s focus was on the structural failure of buildings — which caused 175 of the 185 deaths — it is also noteworthy that a picture of a circular beam in the Canterbury Television Building. featured as “Figure 13” in Volume 6. The image appeared to codify caution to avoid criminal liability, but equally who to scape-goat if the scandal snowballed into a full blown crisis. After all, the CTV building was the site of 115 of the 185 deaths.
The Royal Commission pointed to serious errors by engineers, structural designers and the Christchurch City Council, stating the building design should never have been consented by the Christchurch Council in 1986. Moreover, there were deficiencies in the buiding’s construction. The building was assessed following the September 4 Darfield Earthquake, and given a green pass finding no damage, but recommended an inspection by a structural engineer. This was subsequently done.
The number of references for this section in Vol. 6, section 2, were thirteen.
The inquest revealed there had been 13 of the Fire Service’s top brass senior managers in Christchurch late in the evening, and several talked to rescuers at the CTV site. But they left. The Coroner found a command post at the site may have saved some lives.
Fire Service National Operations Manager, Jim Stewart Black, decided to send New Zealand’s Central Urban Search and RescueTeam’s 16 tonnes of equipment from Palmerston North to Christchurch by road, ferry and road. This 12-hour journey meant the rescue gear did not arrive at the disaster zone until 6am February 23rd.
Yet, the Air Force had flown the emergency responders who were attending a Civil Defence Conference in Wellington to Christchurch the same afternoon. Ergo, many of the nation’s key emergency response leaders were airlifted into the quake-shaking city straight after the Air Force had rehearsed disaster relief operations the previous week.
The Southern Team’s HQ was a mess, and amid blocked roads and with only half the team of 60 able to deploy, they needed help, as Stuff reported in episode 2 of Collapse, a podcast about the rescue and tragedy at the CTV Building. The Central Urban Search and Rescue Team were in the midst of a rescue training exercise when they received a call from their Southern Team counterpart leader, Paul Burns, about the earthquake.
The coincidence of training exercises occurring at the time of a catalytic event, or in the very recent past, is a key sign of a potential looming black operation. Exercises can program monkeys with a scenario to accept a cover-story, once under-cover operatives take a false flag attack ‘live’ and signal a looming season of skullduggery.
In part 1 of my “Terror Archipelago Down Under?” series, I presented the case that the Christchurch and Kaikōura earthquakes may have been inflicted as part of a lengthy low-grade war to re-integrate New Zealand into the American Empire after the ANZUS alliance rift became a chasm following the Rainbow Warrior Bombing.
The pile-up of errors seemed to have been beyond reasonable negligence.
The next most serious building failure was the Pyne Gould Building, which also collapsed in seconds. A map showing the Pyne Gould Building in relation to the seismic measuring stations in the Christchurch CBD on the day of the quake, was labelled ‘Figure 13’. The map showed the east-west shaking was considerable. The Pyne Gould Building, built in 1963, was designed to better withstand a north-south shaking. The commissioners found “failure of the eastern wall initiated the collapse”. Inspections in 1997 by Holmes Consulting Group noted the “potential failure of the columns is a life-safety issue as it could result in the loss of support and consequential collapse of all or part of the building”. The perimeter columns were a structural weakness. When the shear wall failed in the quake, the columns on the east side bore the brunt of the pressure. They collapsed and the building crushed 18 workers.
The Royal Commission seemed to signal to scapegoat the engineering, standards and inspections regime, rather than also conduct a wider investigation. Forgone, was whether Christchurch had been targetted as a battleground in a geophysical war.
In its final volume, no. 7, the Royal Commission recommended that buildings joined together with un-reinforced masonry be re-evaluated as one building. As an example, the Royal Commission showed before and after photos of the Austral Buildings. The first floor facades collapsed, killing some occupants in Red Bus #702 and pedestrians.
By designating the photo of the horrific scene as ‘Figure 13’, the Royal Commission seemed to signal to go lite on scape-goating Councils, since previous warnings had been ignored. The Royal Commission appeared to codify caution to avoid criminal liability, as well as who to scape-goat to de-risk the scandal from snowballing.
In this way, the Royal Commission appeared to act as staged theater for a cover-up.
Given that GNS would go on to announce there had been 13,000 aftershocks in the two year period following the 7.1 Mw Darfield Earthquake of September 4 2010, it is noteworthy that GNS’s seismic graphics were transmitted in a letter dated the 13th of March 2012 to the Canterbury Earthquakes Royal Commission. Moreover, the GNS graphic showing the aftershocks following the Darfield Earthquake and up to the February 22nd 2022 Christchurch Earthquake, was tabled as “Figure 13” in volume 1 of the Royal Commission’s June 2012 report. This placement appeared to codify that the Royal Commission had received the signal in the GNS’s letter dated March 13th.
Apparently, there was no fault to be found in how the earthquakes occurred, since the seismic activities were assumed to be natural. Ergo, caution about causality would be directed elsewhere, since hard science seemed to accept a sanitized political science.
In two lengthy dispatches, “Ghoulish Grandstanding Amid Genuine Grief” and “Disaster Militarization Down Under?”, I explored the possible technologies that might be used to inflict earthquakes, by leveraging the solar, lunar and tidal forces.
The cohesion of this New Zealand Old Boys’ Network was robust enough to withstand even well reasoned critiques that tabled examples of cronyism, collusion and corruption. This was due — in no small part — to the fact that the cartel crossed the government and corporate apparatus and was, in effect, a Deep State network operating like a parallel Shadow Government to the visible Public State. Absent a tectonic exposure of the Pākehā-dominated Brotherhood, the recidivist character ‘Thirteen’ and its Accomplices will likely remain at-large, free to continue their serial re-offending in the future to exploit crises in accordance with the ‘Shock Doctrine’.
Key Finding: Amid the tectonic shakes, an over-arching meta-message was communicated in the Christchurch Rebuild Bonanza meta-data: Don’t mention the Neo-Feudal Old Boys’ Network and their recidivist occult character — Thirteen.
Fact Verifying Note: If you’d like to check, for instance, the Christchurch Rebuild meta-data to see where Snoopman obtained the ‘13 in the numbers’, copy the specific data descriptor in the text, say, “130 projects overseen by CERA during its lifespan”, click the link, and in the webpage or PDF, search to find by control-F (or command-F) and paste the copied text “130 projects” into the search box, and then hit enter.
SEE Full Story: Codified Collusion by Christchurch Construction Cartel [Snoopman 13 July 2019] << https://snoopman.net.nz/2019/07/13/codified-collusion-by-christchurch-construction-cartel/ >>
Steve Snoopman worked at indigenous broadcaster, Māori Television, for 14 years as an editor of news and current affairs. He forged his superpower to ‘Thunk Evil Without Being Evil’ while writing a thesis on the Global Financial Crisis. Upon quipping that Batman had failed to bust any Gotham banker balls — since his ass is owned by DC Comics — he consequently realised New Zealand needed a Snoopman.
Editor’s Note: If we have made any errors, please contact Steve ‘Snoopman’ Edwards with your counter-evidence. e: steveedwards108[at]protonmail.com
Steve Snoopman also posts on Snoopman News [at] https://snoopman.net.nz/
You might be interested to look at the share trading that went on in Fletchers before the earthquake too.