Two videos & a documentary

Written By: - Date published: 12:09 pm, April 25th, 2013 - 6 comments
Categories: accountability, brand key, capitalism, Conservation, energy, Mining, same old national, sustainability, tourism - Tags: , , , ,

So, as reported today on Stuff, Peter Jackson has released a video; probably part of John Key’s deal to undermine NZ workers in exchange for using The Hobbit to promote tourism in NZ.

The scenery is breath-taking, and shows what we are losing as a result of Key’s government’s prioritising foreign corporates over sustainable living and affordable lifestyles for all Kiwis.  The Stuff article highlights how contrived the whole 100% (Pure) Middle-earth PR actually is:

Graham McTavish, who played dwarf Dwalin, said that on one shoot, the scenery looked like something out of Jurassic Park.

“I took a photo that I sent to some friends, [captioned] “dwarves on vacation”, and they refused to believe that this was an actual photograph, that I hadn’t photoshopped it,” he said.

Martin Freeman, who played Bilbo Baggins said: “Meanwhile the backdrop is so beautiful it looks CGI”.

“It looks too perfect.

In contrast, last night Campbell Live showed how much the environment of Aotearoa, and the lifestyle of the least powerful of Kiwis are being eroded and destroyed by Key’s government: a government that aims to sell the country and it’s assets to foreign resource-extracting Big Business. Residents in the Tararua town of Dannevirke took to the streets to protest against TAG Oil (Canada), in a “Rally of resistance”.

The company began exploring for oil in the area on Monday, promising possible finds as big as the oil fields of Texas.  Locals are angry they weren’t consulted.  It’s beyond belief that the oil company is conducting Big Brother style surveillance of anyone going near their exploration site: filming and taking registration numbers.

Meanwhile, a Canadian team is filming TAG’s operations in NZ:

We came here to follow the main subject of our film, a young First Nations man from the heart of the Canadian (and one could argue global) fracking industry. …

Maori and concerned citizens in New Zealand have been dealing with the oil and gas industry for a long time; but Caleb’s timing couldn’t have been more appropriate, as it is just in the past several years – and particularly the past few months – that fracking operations have really been ramping up. And the parallels between the two countries, as we have been learning quickly, are positively striking. …

Just in the past several months, TAG Oil has been pursuing “aggressive” (their own words) expansion plans, with seismic testing and exploratory drilling in the Hawkes Bay region where the forum was being held. The community gathering heard from a farmer named Sarah Roberts – who has been referred to us by a number of people as the “Erin Brockovich of New Zealand” (a title she wears reluctantly), for her wealth of knowledge on the emerging industry and her principled stand against it. Sarah made the journey across the island from Taranaki, where her farm has been under siege from TAG Oil’s operations. She described to us how the company is flaring fumes over her and her neighbours’ dairy farms (milk is New Zealand’s biggest export and, along with tourism, the cornerstone of its economy). She also told us how some local farmers have been convinced to take “produced” (the industry’s term for contaminated) water from them and dispose of it on their fields a s “fertilizer”…

Good to see Green MP Gareth Hughes get a mention there as well, in relation to him travelling up and down NZ as part of his campaign to get a moratorium on fracking.

100% Pure?  Yeah right.

100% Middle-earth?  Tell that to those struggling in the cities, suburbs and countryside on low incomes, with or without jobs.

What about:

100% Aotearoa,

100% for the people of the country?

 

6 comments on “Two videos & a documentary ”

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  1. Murray Olsen 1
    25 April 2013 at 1:31 pm

    I hold Peter Jackson in the same esteem that I hold Rupert Murdoch, or that my Norwegian ancestors would have held Vidkun Quisling. He makes this video in the full knowledge that his mate John intends to wreck most of the scenery shown in the quest for a quick buck. Key’s view of high end tourists are businessmen who stay in the cities in 5 star hotels, divide up our assets in flash convention centres, abuse staff in expensive restaurants, and look for cheap hookers. They don’t walk the Heaphy Track. They will never see a weka running off with their keys, nor watch a fantail flit around them. For them, it’s a flight by helicopter or a sterile trip by monorail along a few green belts which the Tories might deign to leave between the open cast mines. How can Key be Minstaf Toorizzm when he’s busy wrecking anything special that tourists might want to experience?

  2. ghostrider888 2
    25 April 2013 at 2:09 pm

    a main issue with this fracking appears to be where the water is coming from (some being trucked in) and where it is being disposed of.(there just seems to be proliferation of Weapons of Mass Desperation to extract hydro-carbons and metals now). Thanks for the post karol.

  3. Andre 3
    25 April 2013 at 5:37 pm

    We as a country should stand together with the people of Dannevirke. Sitting on our chairs frowning at the screen will not stop what we know is wrong for our NZ.

  4. tc 4
    25 April 2013 at 7:47 pm

    Yup boootiful framing, scenery, messaging from Shonkey and his pet hobbit PJ….if only the sheeple would wake up to the sell off in personal, mineral and sovereign rights going on in tandem with the erosion of services and institutions.

    Key and his backers dealers room see NZ as an easy market ripe for exploitation, the state housed boy made good story got the foot in the door but where to from here eh.

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