Windflow & General Dynamics: The Old Proverbial Hits the Turbine




The announcement Christchurch wind turbine manufacturer Windflow Technology has signed a ten year licensing agreement with General Dynamics’ subsidiary SATCOM is eyebrow-raising in itself. General Dynamics is a gigantic US transnational corporation and a major manufacturer of weapons, military vehicles and military communications systems. General Dynamics SATCOM will use Windflow’s technology to manufacture turbines for use in US military bases worldwide, among other places. General Dynamics has a subsidiary that makes nuclear submarines (which remain banned from NZ under our nuclear free law).
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Having signed up with such an unsavoury partner, Windflow would have been highly advised to simply hold its nose and stay silent.
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But, no, its Chief Executive, Geoff Henderson, felt obliged to defend the deal with some truly outlandish justifications. “We see it as, to the extent that that is the case, we see the move to windpower as being akin to 'swords to ploughshares'. The manufacture of weapons of war being converted into manufacturers' peace-time implements”. 
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That really is an insult to the Ploughshares Aotearoa activists – Adrian Leason, Peter Murnane and Sam Land – who actually did do something about converting swords into ploughshares, namely deflating one of the domes at the top secret Waihopai spybase in 2008 (and for which they were acquitted by a Wellington jury in 2010).
Gumboots needed to wade through this pile of  brown stuff 
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But wait, there’s more. Geoff Henderson went to say: “Asked whether the deal would sit well with green-leaning or pacifist shareholders, Henderson replied there was an argument that a strong United States in the last 60 or 70 years had ensured the longest period of peace the planet had known and helped avoid the outbreak of wars”.
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Yes, there is such an argument, Geoff. It’s about as convincing as the argument that fascism was good for Italy because it made the trains run on time.
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This really is such bullshit that The old ignorance is bliss argument, eh, Your Worship.
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Where to start? Maybe with the Afghan villagers who had 16 of their number, including many women and children, murdered by a US soldier this week? If his US base was windpowered, Geoff, would that be OK then? Indeed the whole people of Afghanistan and Iraq or, going back a few decades, Vietnam, would have a diametrically opposite viewpoint as to whether the US military “had ensured the longest period of peace the planet had known and helped avoid the outbreak of wars”. In actual fact, the US brought war, mass destruction and misery to those countries, among many others, and still is, in the case of the first two.
The old ignorance is bliss argument, eh, Your Worship. 
Similar self-justifying nonsense was uttered by major Windflow shareholder, Wellington’s aptly named Mayor, Celia Wade-Brown (because you do need gumboots to wade through this pile of the brown stuff). “She had never asked where the energy provided by Windflow turbines was used, and her focus was on how the energy was generated, not what it was used for, she said”. The old ignorance is bliss argument, eh, Your Worship.
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Come on, Windflow, if you’re going to sell your soul to the Devil,  make sure that not only do you get a good price but that you can come up with better justifications than these pathetic ones.
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Text: Peace Researcher Media Release 

Roger Award Finalist Transgresses on a Global Scale




The Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA) declares its solidarity with the Canadian members of the United Steelworkers Union who are currently visiting New Zealand (Invercargill today; Wellington tomorrow) to gain support for their struggle against contracting out by their employer, Rio Tinto Alcan. Their struggle bears an uncanny resemblance to that being waged by the Maritime Union against Ports of Auckland Ltd contracting out their jobs. And Rio Tinto Alcan has used the same tactic – namely, the indefinite lockout –as Affco has against its’ meat workers in the North Island.
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Our Canadian visitors need to know that Rio Tinto Alcan is also a recidivist corporate offender in this country, being one of the eight finalists in the annual Roger Award for the Worst Transnational Corporation Operating in Aotearoa/New Zealand in 2011.
www.usw.ca
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New Zealand Aluminium Smelters Ltd/Rio Tinto Alcan NZ Ltd (notorious for decades under its previous name of Comalco) has been a regular finalist and was runner up in both the 2009 and 08 Roger Awards (you will find the Judges’ Reports for those years here). 
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In 2011 the nominator put in a detailed (even footnoted) nomination of the owners of the Bluff aluminium smelter for a new reason – for lobbying two Governments “over several years to secure to secure excessive allocations of free emissions units under the NZ Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS)… NZAS/Rio Tinto has interfered in a democratic process via political lobbying through its industry advocate the Greenhouse Policy Coalition in order to dodge a tax (greenhouse gas pricing under the NZETS), and to profit from the ETS through excessive free allocation of emissions units….there is very little doubt that the NZETS unit allocation rules are so distorted that the smelter would face a higher carbon price if it were exempted from obligations under the NZETS and just paid its electricity bills”. This is the same transnational which, only a few years ago, threatened to quit NZ if the ETS went ahead. If you can't beat them, you might as well make money out of them, eh. 
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A whole book could be written about this company’s misdeeds in New Zealand and a good place to refresh your memory about its outrageous early history here is our 30 year old classic comic booklet “The Amazing Adventures Of NZ’s No.1 Power Junky: The True Story Of Comalco In NZ” It’s an oldie but a goody.
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The winner/s of the 2011 Roger Award will be announced at an event in Christchurch on the night of Friday April 20th.
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The full list of finalists and other details are here.    
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Lockout Resources 



Roger Award Finalists Just Keep On Digging Themselves a Deeper Hole


 Great to see workers fighting back
Old habits die hard. In the news today are two of the finalists for the 2011 Roger Award for the Worst Transnational Corporation Operating in Aotearoa/New Zealand who seem intent on getting themselves nominated again for the 2012 Roger Award.
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These transnational corporate recidivists are Sajo Oyang Corporation and the Oceania Group.
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Sajo Oyang is the poster boy for everything that is wrong with the foreign chartered vessels model used in New Zealand’s joint venture fishing regime. In today’s news, one of its vessels being held off the Canterbury coast by a High Court arrest warrant apparently made a run for it and then changed its mind when it realised it was heading towards a Navy vessel, and returned from whence it came.
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This South Korean fishing company made it to the finalists of the 2011 Roger Award for having achieved the not inconsiderable feat of having the worst record when it comes to treatment of the poor buggers from Third World countries who have to risk their lives and health in working on these joint venture fishing boats. It was nominated for exploitation and harm of its crew members (six of whom died when one of its boats sank in NZ waters; others have walked off Oyang boats in NZ ports in protest at the appalling systematic abuse of crewmen). Oyang is the “star” of the report into abuses in the fishing industry, the report which forced the Government to open an Inquiry
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For its part the Government was nominated for the Roger Award’s Accomplice Award because of its “neglect and active harm caused to the NZ maritime industry, comprising;

  1. the failure to regulate the NZ fishing industry to protect jobs, conditions, the wellbeing of overseas workers, the environment and New Zealand control of its resources, and 
  2.  the open coast policy which is responsible for flag of convenience shipping, the decline of shipping standards and NZ shipping, and the failure to sign the international treaty to maximise liability for clean up costs by charterers”. 

In the case of Oceania, its rest home workers throughout the country went on strike in protest at the criminally low wages that they are paid. It is New Zealand's largest rest home provider and is owned by a foreign equity fund. It made it to the 2011 Roger Award finalists because it is the perfect illustration of what has happened to this sector which used to exist to provide a service for old people no longer able to look after themselves in their own homes. Now it is a profit-driven business, with the residents the “product” and the workers are overwhelmingly female, brown and/or Third World, who are paid very low wages to do the literal shit work – while the owners of Oceania cream it. 
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It is great to see those workers fighting back and CAFCA declares our full support for them (particularly those in Oceania’s Christchurch resthomes. Those lowpaid workers looked after our most vulnerable old people in the chaotic aftermath of the February 2011 killer quake. The thanks they get is a pay rate just above the minimum wage). Likewise we declare our support for the grotesquely exploited and abused foreign fishermen who are unfortunate enough to work for Sajo Oyang and its ilk.
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The winner/s of the 2011 Roger Award winner will be announced at a Christchurch event on April 20th. With contenders like this, the judges have a tough decision and are spoilt for choice. The full list of finalists can be read here.