"Though some, in darkness of heart, seeing their land ravished, might wish to take arms and kill the aggressors, I say it must not be. Let not the Pakehas think to succeed by reason of their guns ... I want not war, but they do. The flashes of their guns have singed our eyelashes, and yet they say they do not want war ... The government come not hither to reason, but go to out-of-the-way places. They work secretly, but I speak in public so that all may hear, " Te Whiti-o-Rongomai III told his people in March 1880.
Regarding the music clip at the end of this post, Mark Bell asks the question of Little Bushman, regarding the 2009 collaboration between Little Bushman, composer/arranger Psathas and the NZ Symphony Orchestra – did he actually manage to enjoy the experience given the enormity and pressure of such an undertaking?
Is there nothing at all who can appease your greed,
Could you please leave the air we breath Why is it something we've done You all seem to forget About nuclear fallout and the long term effects
... Let me be more specific, get out of the pacific Ki te la pacific, get out of the pacific Ki te la pacific
French Letter lyrics, by the Herbs. A protest song telling the French government to take their nuclear testing out of the Pacific back in 1982.
I have embedded a link to their song, a memory of a time when New Zealanders and the government came together to fight for a nuclear-free Pacific. At the time the French government was testing nuclear bombs in the Pacific and wouldn't stop. |The French government decided to get very serious with the kiwis and sent some of their crack troops to Auckland where they blew up a Greenpeace vessel in our second-largest city, killing one person.
These days evolution seems to be spinning backwards and the New Zealand goverment, in a moment of insanity has given a Texan oil giant, with a poor safety record, the right to carry out deep-sea drilling just off the coast of New Zealand. The risk of an accident is small, they say ... the consequences of just one accident, are huge in a place like New Zealand.
Anadarko started drilling in the wee hours last night, surrounded by a small flotilla of protests boats ... it's truly a David versus Goliath battle. Of course, with our very 'special' prime minister at the helm we see the New Zealand government threatening to send the NZ navy out to stop the protestors. New Zealand has changed and not for the better.
In the last few hours the New Zealand protestors were warned by the Texans that being closer than 500m to their oil drilling rig in New Zealand waters is ... illegal, because the NZ government also changed some rules for them, making it illegal to protest out there.
So not only has the NZ government broken trust with the people who hired them, as in the public who voted them in, they have lied and changed laws so that the NZ navy can now be used againt the NZ protestors in order to protect the big oil giant.
And they'll probably give Anadarko ships safe passage too, should the unthinkable oil spill happen.
It makes me heartsick because if and when the oil accident happens ... well, what do you with the worst-case scenario? The documents shows that up to 90 per cent of the wells have a worst-case discharge rate of 100,000 barrels, about 16,000 tonnes a day, but some could discharge up to 350,000 barrels.
"And a couple of months' worth of major spill - unlikely though that may be - would be a significant disaster for wildlife, for the health of our oceans, for our fisheries and for our tourism brand at a cost of billions of dollars to New Zealand.''
Congratulations to Mr Keys and a very shortsighted New Zealand government. I'm just going to be praying that your greed for immediate returns and thirst for oil doesn't leave New Zealanders with a mess that takes decades to clean up.
