Chief Reporter
Windflow & General Dynamics: The Old Proverbial Hits the Turbine
Press Release
ABC - 13 March 2012
The announcement (http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/6547250/Windflow-brushes-off-nuclear-concern)
that 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).
Having signed up with such an unsavoury partner, Windflow would have been
highly advised to simply hold its nose and stay silent.
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”.
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).
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”.
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. This
really is such bullshit that gumboots are strongly recommended.
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.
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.
Murray Horton
Co-Editor, Peace Researcher
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