“It’s time to boycott “Made in China’ Products”

July 28, 2024
, , , , China, Democracy

China, ruled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since 1949, is New Zealand’s only potential enemy. Its authoritarian leader, Xi Jinping, is not only threatening other Pacific nations such as Taiwan and the Philippines with war but is also at war by other means with all Western democracies, including New Zealand.

Shortly after he came to power in 2013 Xi (now Fuhrer for life) launched a war against what he called the West’s “Seven Deadly Sins” in Document No. 9. These “sins” are, in fact, the very foundations on which our democracy and freedoms rest and for which our servicemen gave their lives in two world wars. According to Xi these “Deadly Sins” include: constitutional democracy (including the rule of law), universal values (freedom, democracy, human rights, etc.), a civil society, neo liberal economics (free enterprise), a free media, and teaching any history that is outside the CCP’s narrative.

The Chinese embassy in Wellington – and its various agents – spy on both students from China at New Zealand universities as well as New Zealanders, e.g. businessmen doing business with China and indeed anyone who expresses any criticism of its brutal government. In 2021 state-sponsored Chinese hackers made a cyber attack on the New Zealand parliamentary network just as they had done to the Australian parliament in 2019. These are not the actions of a friendly country.

China is seeking economic dominance of New Zealand in order to prise us away from our traditional friends and allies (Australia, Britain, U.S.A., Canada), these being the only countries that could protect our sovereignty and our rights from an aggressive bully – be it the Japanese Empire in the 1940s or China in the 2020s.

To build up its power so that it can intimidate other (and smaller) Pacific nations China is engaged in a programme of great military expansion, spending more on weaponry than all the other Asian countries combined. Why?

It is able to finance this massive military expenditure by its growing economy which is largely funded by trade with other countries, including New Zealand which so foolishly put its head in the jaws of this dragon in 2008 by means of the notorious China-New Zealand Free Trade deal. Every time that you buy a China made shirt at the Warehouse or a China made electric heater at Briscoes you are contributing to the strengthening of the economy – and the military – of the only country that can arguably be classified as a potential enemy of New Zealand’s.

Furthermore, you are also contributing to one of the worst slave labour systems on the planet. An important reason for China’s economic success is that millions of its people in detention (prison and labour camps) are forced to work like slaves in factories producing consumer goods for the West.

Take Dongguan prison for example in the booming factory area of Guangdong province. The reason why this area contains so many prisons is its proximity to the great export hubs of Shenzen and Guangzhou on the lower reaches of the Pearl River delta, reputedly the world’s largest export manufacturing centre. All the prisoners are required to work like unpaid slaves all day in the factories in which, in many cases, the senior prison officers have a financial interest.

The 15 factories in which the 5,400 inmates of Dongguan prison are forced to work are built around the prison complex – so interwoven is the prison system with the manufacturing sector. It certainly beats having to pay wages which, of course, is why so many China made products are so cheap. The prisoners have to march to work each morning, kicking their legs high and singing “We are happy to go to work to-day” – a song that dates back to the Mao era and which countless millions of prisoners have been forced to chant over the years. “A missed step or a false note will see the guards bring out their tasers and pepper spray,” wrote Angus Grigg and Lisa Murray in the Australian Financial Review.

If one does not produce the required daily quota with one’s over-worked hands, ritual beatings, torture and solitary confinement are meted out by the sadistic guards. “The [prison] boss is not just the director of a prison but the manager of a business”, explained the former “justice” minister, Zhang Fusen. Both guards and managers have their salaries tied directly to the output of the prisoners, hence the brutality towards anyone who might not reach the daily quota. 

This prison system, with more than two million victims, is worse than slavery, and those politicians who promote trade with China and those businessmen who import all these things to New Zealand are contributing to one of the greatest crimes in history.

Westerners who buy Chinese goods are also collaborators in the crime of propping up the most murderous and oppressive regime on the planet. The bigwigs at Briscoes, the Warehouse, Walmart and other Chinese dependent retailers and importers would declare that their goods are not made by prison labour but, as the Sunday Star-Times reported on 30th June, 2013, “Such is the opacity and diversity of global supply chains to-day that establishing a clear link can be difficult”. Most of the companies importing Chinese goods don’t know where or how their products are made and they make no effort to find out for fear of learning the truth. So, those who buy Chinese made goods are not only aiding the rearmament of New Zealand’s only potential enemy but are also supporting a system of brutal slave labour.

Even when it is not prison labour the conditions of workers inside China’s factories are deplorable. In those factories that make iPads for Apple the workers toil for 15 hours a day, week in and week out, with no holidays apart from about five days over Chinese New Year. After each day’s long shift is completed they are taken to dormitories near their workplace to sleep. These dormitories, segregated for men and women, have no privacy. Children as young as twelve are employed on the work chains. The workers on the chain have to insert a particular electronic component, having only one to two seconds to do so. The repetitive nature of the work causes permanent injuries. Some have to use a dangerous chemical to clean the screen of each product. Wages are about $2 an hour, preventing them from affording accommodation outside the dormitories. 

In May, 2010, seven workers committed suicide and so they put “anti-suicide” netting around the dormitory windows. But Apple made a profit of US$6 billion in the first quarter of 2011 and that was all that mattered.

A further reason not to support China by buying its goods or services is the murderous and oppressive nature of its gangster regime. Since 1949 the CCP have murdered more people than any other regime in history. It suppresses all the basic freedoms that Westerners take for granted such as freedom of speech, of association and of religion. Christian bishops and ministers are imprisoned, churches demolished and Christmas and Easter worshippers beaten up. The regime, based on the power of the gun, uses torture as a routine part of police investigation and oversees a system of child labour and environmental destruction without precedent in history. 

It has brutally killed and suppressed the Tibetans and the Uighurs and is now threatening the peaceful democracy of Taiwan with invasion. One would have to be a morally debauched person even to contemplate buying anything that is made in that toxic country. Since no National or Labour government would ever have the courage, that patriotism or the human decency even to suggest that there is something wrong with making ourselves economically dependent on China it is up to each and every New Zealander – all five million of us – to do the deed ourselves by refusing to buy anything that is China made or has a China made component in it.

For further information on China’s increasing economic dominance of New Zealand, see In the Jaws of the Dragon: How China is Taking over New Zealand and Australia” by Ron Asher. Available from Tross Publishing.

Book Review – The British Empire; A Force for Good

June 8, 2024
, , , , , Book Review, The British Empire

By Crispin Caldicot

Reblogged with the kind permission of The BFD

This tome represents not just a labour of love, but at nearly 600 pages a massive piece of scholarship. 101 of the territories that made up the British Empire are investigated for their fortunes, before, during and after they became British.

What makes this book stand out is that it asks questions that have not been asked, or have simply been avoided, and draws conclusions that should be uncomfortable for many. What was the American Revolutionary War really about? Could it be that the colonists were motivated by a perceived threat from Britain that slavery was going to be abolished? If so, they were correct, and successful. Their victory left them free to chase the former Indian inhabitants as far west as they desired, and maintain slavery in the name of Freedom and Democracy. As the author points out, of the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence, 41 including Washington and Jefferson were slave owners. As Doctor Johnson said at the time: “How is it that the loudest yelps for liberty come from the drivers of Negroes?”

Britain did of course abolish slavery and the cost to the nation in both lives and money of policing this policy through the Royal Navy was enormous. By mid-century, the squadrons dedicated to capturing the slave-traders accounted for half of all naval spending. Yet the Americans persisted – one US Congressman stated the persistence of British cruisers of the anti-slavery patrol was unwarranted and destructive to private interests. Britain however maintained the moral path and by 1890 the trade in slaves had been all but eliminated on both coasts of the African continent – though there was an incident as late as 1922 involving HMS Cornflower and 29 slaves in the Red Sea.

Britain began a ruthless disposal of its colonies, whether they wanted it or not, after World War II. There was pressure from many sources, but the case of Southern Rhodesia is illuminating in context. The nation had become highly successful, and a bread-basket for Africa. Ironically its economy boomed under sanctions, but why did the British Government insist this thriving nation be handed to a tyrannical African who rapidly turned it into a basket case? It is not wholly clear but the experience of empire building certainly did not prevent Britain from proving equally adept at chicanery and dishonour when pulling it all apart later. Rhodesia was not an atypical case.

Diligently researched, there is much to surprise and enlighten those who have any interest in history. McLean has cast a refreshing lens over the contemporary popular views that all empires are evil and Britain’s doubly so. His conclusion is that the British Empire was indeed a very positive force that enhanced the lives of millions. His book proves there is always another side – frequently hidden and/or shocking – to every story. Highly readable.

A SERIOUS DISCONNECT

October 23, 2023
, , , , Democracy, The Voice, Treaty of Waitangi

The tests of opinion on 14th October – the General Election in New Zealand and the “Voice” referendum in Australia – showed a serious disconnect between the political/media establishment and the bulk of the people.

Right across New Zealand there was a movement to “Blue” by which I mean National, ACT and NZ First. But not in Wellington where the Bureaucracy resides. There the trend went the other way. Labour retained all its seats in the Wellington area except Hutt South, which went to National, and Wellington Central and Rongotai which went to the even more extreme Left Wing Greens.

Compare this with Auckland where there was an almost complete wipeout of Labour, with only four seats Red and sixteen seats Blue. This, of course, was largely the result of Jacinda Ardern’s totally unnecessary, economically disastrous and emotionally draining lockdown of New Zealand’s biggest city for 107 days in 2021 on the basis of one – yes, a single one – case of Covid. Not that the mainstream media, beholden to Ardern and Labour for so much of their funding, would ever admit that it was the lockdown that was largely responsible for driving Auckland “Blue”.

The result of all this is that Wellington, headquarters of bureaucratic control of New Zealand, has become completely out of step with the rest of the country. The danger here is that, despite the Election result, these power crazy civil servants will continue to expand their power over the lives of the citizens. This would undo the result of the Election unless the incoming Blue government takes a very serious stand with its civil servants, sacking those who are seen to be impeding the clearly expressed democratic will of the people. A good start in any wholesale dismissals would be all the neo-Marxists at the top of the Education Department who are more interested in indoctrinating school students than educating them – as has been documented by Roger Childs in his book, The New Zealand History Curriculum; Education or Indoctrination, available from Tross Publishing.

In Australia the political/media establishment tried to pull a fast one over the people by initiating a referendum to give those Australians with any Aborigine blood in them (about 3% of the population) a special “Voice” in government that would have been unavailable to others. Like all Australians, Aborigines already have a voice which can be expressed by such things as voting at election time, approaching their M.P. at Saturday morning “surgeries”, and making submissions to Select Committees of Parliament – all part and parcel of accountable democracy.

The essence of the “Voice”  was to establish an Australian version of New Zealand’s Waitangi Tribunal, which would make endless recommendations to government so as to skew legislation the way of advancing this tiny group which, by definition, means disadvantaging all other Australians. It appealed to Canberra’s political elite as a way of moving away from open and accountable democracy towards the secret meetings behind closed doors which have become so much a feature of Treaty settlements in New Zealand, especially on the watch of National’s Treaty Minister, Christopher Finlayson, who seemed to prefer this method of governing rather than traditional democracy for which this List M.P. seemed to have an unnatural contempt – apparently because every time that he stood for Parliament in either Mana or Rongotai he was heavily defeated by voters even though in Rongotai they gave their party vote to National but couldn’t stomach the candidate.

The Voice referendum cost the Australian taxpayer A$400 million at a time when many people are having difficulty paying their bills and taxes. The “Yes” campaign to give Aborigines a special “voice” was directed by the political/media elite in Canberra and was supported by all sorts of virtue signallers from the Catholic Church to Woke corporates. It spent five times as much money on promoting its cause than the “No” campaign, which had a  broader leadership that included Aborigines such as Senator Jacinta Price and Warren Mundine. These and other Aborigine supporters of the No campaign knew that the Voice was all about enriching and empowering the current Aborigine tribal elite rather than giving genuine help to Aborigines who might need it.

Sports stars and big companies used their profiles and power to urge Australians to vote “Yes” with Qantas, under the palsied leadership of Alan Joyce, being in the lead – even wasting its shareholders’ money in painting planes with “Yes” in big lettering. Local authorities draped “Yes” flags in their main streets and in a new variety of child abuse schoolchildren were given “Yes” badges to wear to school. In other words the whole Establishment was on side to tell Australians to vote “Yes” to this radical new undermining of both democracy and the principle of One Law For All.

So, what happened? Well, in all six states there was a majority of “No” votes, the average across the continent being 60% No and 40% Yes. The “little people” showed that they would make up their own minds rather than be told what to do by the Establishment. This was the first plebiscite on the new phenomenon of identity politics and the people of Australia showed that they didn’t want a bar of it. Better to keep Australia the way it is than to break it up on racial lines.

However, in Canberra the vote went the other way: 65% “Yes”. Since the Australian Capital Territory of Canberra is not a state this does not negate the earlier statement that all six states voted “No”. What it does show is that – as with Wellington going Red/Green when the rest of New Zealand went “Blue” – the civil servants and media wonks are at variance with the rest of the nation. So, how did they take the result? Oh, the vote was due to “misinformation” and “racism” by the No side. How naughty of the people not to do what they were told!

We need to be aware of just how removed this wretched political/media elite is from the rest of the country and be very wary of anything that comes out of their mouths. Their interest in upholding our hard-won democracy is not as strong as it is among the rest of the country. As the results on 14th October showed, “Canberra” and “Wellington” are fast becoming dirty words in the lexicon of democracy.

A Wellingtonian.

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