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BEAR PAWS AND DRAGON CLAWS:
BEN C VIDGEN.
How we let humanity get murdered by our addiction to fast food, fast cars, and cheap running shoes.
"Well I'm all ready for my trip to Iran next week" were the words which greeted me when I walked into the small rural New Zealand pub of Portobello pub last week.
It seemed unusual conversation for the earthy Portobello pub and I turned to examine where the remark had come from. Around the table sat four unremarkable looking southern blokes wearing replica All Black T-shirts and rugby shorts. The sort of clothing which is mass produced and bears the legend: "Made in China". As you watched them nursing their beers it was hard to imagine any of these three country lads in down-town Tehran. My curiosity aroused, with nothing left to fall back on, I tried one last trick; I examined their shoes. Unlike the rest of their wardrobe, their shoes were a far cry from The Warehouse, hardy and sophisticated, these were the kind of footwear common in the small boutiques of rural towns that have boomed under dairy dollars.
The shoes make sense if you remembered that not long ago New Zealanders would once a year wake up to find a full page ad, paid for by the NZ Dairy Board, congratulating the Islamic fundamentalist (spiritual leader, depending on your view) the Ayatollah Khomeini for overthrowing the US backed Shah of Iran. And what did the NZ Dairy Board have against the Shah? Well nothing; but unlike the Ayatollah the Shah wasn't buying four hundred million dollars worth of NZ meat and dairy products every year. Hell, as long as the Ayatollah kept eating TipTop ice-cream, his feared death squads the SAVAK could murder who they liked, safe in the knowledge that the NZ government would not interfere, or cause a scene.
Today this attitude continues; and while our government makes platitudes about talking to China about its human rights record, what they fail to tell the public is that our relationship with China goes way beyond Chinese gardens. Take for example the University of Otago's decision to build a DNA data base for China's political police. This data base will be used to track the DNA footprints of so called political "criminals".
In relation to what constitutes a political criminal, let us consider how many of the photos taken in Tibet, which have appeared in western papers, lack clarity or, like the units' designation numbers on Chinese tanks that appear in such photos, show signs of having been tampered with, making it impossible to confirm categorically who the real rioters are. Yet clues do exist. For example, in the initial days of the uprising, western tourists talked of armed protesters "not being fired upon" by Chinese security forces; or of "Tibetan" protesters attacking civilians while Chinese army units sat back and did not interfere.
Brit spies confirm Dalai Lama's report of staged violence
by Gordon Thomas: Canada Free Press [Friday, March 21, 2008 10:20]
London, March 20 - Britain's GCHQ, the government communications agency that electronically monitors half the world from space, has confirmed the claim by the Dalai Lama that agents of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, the PLA, posing as monks, triggered the riots that have left hundreds of Tibetans dead or injured.
GCHQ analysts believe the decision was deliberately calculated by the Beijing leadership to provide an excuse to stamp out the simmering unrest in the region, which is already attracting unwelcome world attention in the run-up to the Olympic Games this summer.
Then came the coinciding news that China was closing Mt. Everest to non-Chinese climbers, a decision made on the basis of Chinese intelligence reports, from unnamed sources, which claimed that 'Islamic' terrorists from the north western provinces were preparing a massive attack during the Olympics (which China is to host this year).
For the fifth time in three years, I find myself citing what I now consider to be the most important news article I have read this century. The article in question is titled 'Masked Games Played on Islam's Borders' and appeared in the UK based "The Observer", on June 12th 2000, just over twelve months before 9/11. The article makes two vital points which it would pay to remember in the run up of the Olympics:
The article warned, in advance of 9/11, that Moscow and Beijing were acutely aware of the West's paranoia concerning Islam and that we should be extremely wary when dealt news of any terrorist incidents blamed on Islam, or Chinese separatist movements.
The article warns specifically how terrorism will be used as the means by which Russia and China will control the oil fields of Central Asia. An area which America's Vice President Dick Cheney, former President of Halliburton Oil, forecast as early as 1998, would become the most "strategically important" region in the world this century.
"Masked Games" focused solely on Russia's and China's willingness to exploit terrorism to engineer a political coup. Yet a third, silent partner, could be found in the room when the Shanghai Conference on Terrorism (its itinerary the article notes was extended to include the subject of Oil exploration and "territorial expansion") was being held; but to find that partner you have to go back to 1998 when oil conglomerates proposed an 890-mile oil pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan into Pakistan, and then on into India.
Three years later in July 2001 (again pre 9/11) Cheney's colleague, then Secretary of State Colin Powell, would be quoted in the public newspapers of both Pakistan and India as saying that the US planned to invade Afghanistan in or around October 2001. The western public would only find out much later when news broke of a private meeting held in Germany, in which US official's told the Taliban that if they would not accept "a carpet of gold" in return for granting an oil concession, then they should be prepared to be "buried under a carpet of bombs".
It is often, but wrongly, believed by those who know this sordid history of the War on Terror, that the aim of the US invasion of Afghanistan was to secure oil for American consumption.
Yet since the US invasion of Afghanistan there have been at les two attempts by China to buy UNACOL the US Saudi consortium behind the proposed 890 oil pipe line. The pipeline has been an 'on again off again' proposal since at least 1998 when the magazine American Spectator; reported it purpose was to provide China's with the resources it needed for to match its growing taste for consumerist goods. If the pipeline ever does get built the end result will be Chinese Oil guarded by western soldiers.
2008 HILLARY CLINTON CALLS FOR AN OLYMPIC BOYCOTT 1999 APEC AUCKLAND NEW ZEALAND BILL CLINTON SHAKES HAND WITH INDONESIA AMBASSDOR TO NZ AND AUSTRALIA JAMES RIADY [ AT THE TIME OF THE PHOTO JAMES RIADY WHO HAD BEEN IDENTIFIED BY US CONGRESS AS AN "ASSET" OF CHINESE INTELLIGENCE IS WANTED IN THE US FOR MORE THAN 123 ILLEGAL CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS].
LEGISLATION WHICH MAKES THE PROFESSION ILLEGAL - ALL IN THE INTERESTS OF FREE TRADE.
Don't think Afghanistan is unique, for in Kazakhstan the same political police, buying technology off Otago University, can be literally sharing offices with America's law enforcement agency the FBI, while throughout Central Asia's oil-rich states, you will find US soldiers standing guard in US uniforms on borders shared by UN soldiers. Oddly the majority of these UN soldier's just happen to be Chinese. Consider all of this when you look at the Olympic rings found on the Coca Cola being drunk in Beijing.
Again consider the explicit warnings of "Masked Games on Islam's Borders" and then consider, from a strategic view, just how superbly the divisions of Chinese troops currently in Tibet and the Western provinces that border the Central Asian states, would be placed in the event of a major Islamic 'terrorist' uprising occurring in this area. An uprising which China's officials allege is now currently been planned by an unspecified 'terrorist' organization. In fact it would be fair to say that under this scenario the divisions currently stationed in this area would be as superbly placed as the 70,000 western soldiers (from America, the Commonwealth and NATO), who just happen to have been exercising on Iraq and Afghanistan's borders, as part of Operation Bright Star and Operation Quick Harvest, on September 10th the day before terrorist attacks in the USA shocked a generation, brought up on TV, around the world.*
* Largely assisted by China's completion of high altitude train system into Tibet last year.
ANZAC hired guns can also be found working as strike breakers in the United Arab Emirates, insuring that the Free Trade ports of Dubai, the very model of a Free Trade World, run on an unlimited supply of cheap third world labour willing to work under appalling conditions. Could never happen here? Well consider this; America's trade demands are responsible for an increase of security found at NZ airports and NZ wharfs; yet the same fences and barbed wire can just as easily be used to lock out NZ airline and wharf workers disgruntled at being replaced by cheap labour (consider Air New Zealand's recent decision to use contract staff hired from China - at half the wages they currently pay their NZ staff.) One wonders whether, in this environment, would the striking workers be up against our own countrymen or perhaps some of the former senior Singaporean officers "of mainly Chinese descent" that the NZ government last week announced it was in the process of hiring.
Such is the grip of our addiction to cheap consumerist goods that even knowing this will stop few kiwis from buying Made in China ('All Black' shirts, or cheap running shoes) from "The Warehouse" and other outlets.
Our politicians continue to say silent, hoping for a trade deal, and we the public also demonstrate our naked greed for cheap goods, made from cheap labour, forgetting that while the saying "sleep with dog prepare to wake with fleas" might be a cliché it is also a truism.
Take for example, the proposed plan to float Fonterra on the stock market; in the short term NZ farmers may well get record dividends; but in the long term China is expected to end up buying most of the stocks when the new firm (the one containing the firm's actual assets) gets listed. At which point domestic milk prices will no doubt continue their march ever upwards and beyond the affordability of an increasing number of New Zealand families.
Welcome to "Globalism" folks, an economic steam-roller which, as Prime Minister Helen Clark forecast in her second parliamentary maiden speech, could not be stopped and should not be. Though Clark, one of more than 40 senior NZ politicians affiliated with the UN affiliated Parliamentarians for Global Action (an international movement advocating a central world economy) seems unwilling to comprehend that globalism is a murderous ponzi scheme [scam] that sucks people into forgetting their moral obligation to their fellow man.
And that's the Bottom Line.
FAT CAT GETS DOUBLE HEAPING OF STADIUM PIE.
Caulder Stuart are said to have sold land to the DCC for the construction of the stadium for 2.9 million dollars. The same land our sources inform us was originally purchased less than five years ago for around $600,000. It is understood that Caulder Stuart well also has a "gentleman's" agreement to be involved in construction of the Stadium.
It can not be confirmed at this stage but Caulder Stuart are also said to have brought up land in wharf area in the same location as the proposed Regional Otago Council wharf.
Caulder Stuart was one of several firm associated with construction who took out adds promoting the Stadium issue. The colour add were reported as been sold for $30.00 "donation" and were run in the Otago Daily Times whose owners include Julian Smith a member of the Our Stadium lobby group.
FREE TRADE IT'S GOOD FOR NZ - YEAH RIGHT!
SHED FIVE DINNER WELLINGTON 2000: TEN OF CHINA'S TOP GENERALS VISIT NZ WITH PHIL GOFF MINSTER OF TRADE - ONE OF SEVERAL MEETING WITH CHINESE DEFENCE OFFICALS WHICH TOOK PLACE FROM 1990'S TO DAY AS CHINA USED NZ TO GAIN ENTRY INTO THE WORLD TRADE ORGANISASTION BUT HICH HAVE RECEIVED SCANT LOCAL MEDIA ATTENTION.
Just 10 days after the signing of the Preferential Trade Agreement with China, New Zealand workers are already facing layoffs, with Fisher and Paykel announcing the closure of its Dunedin factory - at a cost of 430 jobs.
Fisher and Paykel Managing Director John Bongard admitted that the free trade agreements with China and Thailand had made it impossible for the company to remain
Fisher and Paykel is one of the biggest employers in Dunedin. These workers are - understandably - in shock, and the layoffs will have far-reaching effects on the local community and the regional economy.
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