Britain's 'regret' at Maori killings when Cook landed

Yahoo – AFP, October 2, 2019

A statue of Captain Cook stands in Sydney's Hyde Park (AFP Photo/WILLIAM WEST)

Britain's top diplomat in New Zealand made a low-key "expression of regret" to Maori on Wednesday over deadly clashes that occurred when Captain James Cook's arrived in New Zealand 250 years ago.

British High Commissioner Laura Clarke travelled to the North Island town of Gisborne for a ceremony with the Maori iwi, or tribes, who Cook met when he landed in October 1769.

The explorer's arrival sparked a series of skirmishes in the following days that resulted in nine deaths and is still recalled with anger by locals.

In a statement posted on its Facebook page, the Rongowhakaata Iwi Trust said the ceremony with Clarke was to acknowledge the hara, or atrocities, committed 250 years ago.

"Cook and his crew landed on the banks of the Turanganui river at 4pm, within 30 minutes they had opened fire and (local chieftain) Te Maro was dead," it said.

"Our whanaunga (relative) was the first casualty of The Collision."

It added: "After only being here for two hours, Cook and his crew had trespassed, terrorised, killed and stolen from us."

The British High Commission issued a brief statement about the event but refused to provide further details, saying it was a "private dialogue between the envoy and the iwi.

"The expression of regret responds to a request from the local iwi for this history to be heard and acknowledged," the statement said.

"The British High Commissioner will acknowledge the pain of those first encounters, acknowledge that the pain does not diminish over time, and extend her sympathy to the descendants of those killed."

Local media reported British officials had "sworn the iwi involved to secrecy" and carefully avoided framing the statement as an apology.

However, New Zealand's race relations commissioner Meng Foon, a former Gisborne mayor, had no such qualms.

"It's a significant day today... I hope that the apology or message will acknowledge the murder of nine Maori from Turanganui-a-Kiwa (Gisborne)," he told Radio New Zealand.

"I hope they both can move forward and tell our history."

On three epic voyages, Cook helped chart the vast Pacific Ocean more than any other, making him one of the most celebrated explorers of his era.

But his legacy has been questioned by many modern scholars amid accusations that his "discoveries" led to colonialism and the devastation of the traditional societies he encountered.

China fines foreign shipping firms

Chinese authorities have imposed multimillion dollar fines on several overseas shipping companies accusing them of price fixing. This is the latest case involving Beijing's scrutiny of foreign firms.

Deutsche Welle, 28 December 2015

China on Monday fined seven major Korean, Japanese and European shipping companies that transport vehicles for automakers a combined 407 million yuan (around $65 million, 59 million euros) on price-fixing charges.

Investigators found Europe's Wallenius Wilhelmsen, South Korea's EUKOR, Japan's Mitsui O.S.K. Lines and other shippers improperly coordinated bids and routes to keep prices high, said China's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) - the top state planner and one of several agencies tasked with oversight of monopoly cases.

An eighth shipper, Japan's NYK Line, was also implicated but escaped a fine by cooperating with the authorities, the NDRC said. The biggest penalty of 284 million yuan (about $45 million) was imposed on EUKOR Car Carriers Inc.

The commission accused the companies of mutually agreeing to raise shipping costs and using unfair means to set prices - mainly on routes linking China with North America, South America and Europe.

The latest penalties target "roll-on, roll-off" shippers that move cars, trucks and construction equipment aboard specialized vessels carrying hundreds and sometimes thousands of vehicles.

The NDRC said the companies had already acknowledged responsibility and apologized.

Sweeping investigations

The case follows sweeping investigations into foreign firms in China in sectors ranging from technology to autos.

Business groups say the secretive and abrupt way investigations are conducted is alienating foreign companies. But regulators deny foreign companies are treated unfairly.

Regulators have investigated or penalized auto makers, dairies and technology suppliers under China's 2008 anti-monopoly law in an effort to force down prices Chinese consumers complain are too high.

In August last year, the Chinese government levied a combined 1.24 billion yuan fine on 12 Japanese auto parts firms for price-fixing.

And in perhaps the biggest anti-monopoly penalty imposed by Chinese authorities to date, US chipmaker Qualcomm was fined 6 billion yuan ($975 million) in February on charges it abused its dominance in wireless technology to charge "unfairly high" licensing fees.

sri/hg (AFP, AP)

French agent apologises for 1985 sinking of the Rainbow Warrior

Yahoo – AFP, Guy Jackson, 6 Sep 2015

The Greenpeace boat "Rainbow Warrior" lies half sunk following an attack by the

French secret service in Auckland, August 14, 1985 (AFP Photo/Patrick Riviere)

Paris (AFP) - The French secret service frogman who attached the mines which sank the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior in New Zealand 30 years ago apologised for his actions in an interview Sunday with investigative website Mediapart.

Jean-Luc Kister, whose face was not covered in the hour-long video interview, said he believed it was now the right time to say sorry to the family of Portuguese photographer Fernando Pereira, who was killed in the explosion, to Greenpeace and to the people of New Zealand.

"Thirty years after the event, now that emotions have subsided and also with the distance I now have from my professional life, I thought it was the right time for me to express both my deepest regret and my apologies," Kister said.

The bombed hull of the Greenpeace 

flagship Rainbow Warrior, following its 

sabotage by the French secret service

 is shown in Auckland port on August 1,

1985 (AFP Photo/Ross White)

On July 10, 1985, the Rainbow Warrior was docked in Auckland on its way to protest against French nuclear testing at Mururoa Atoll, about 1,200 kilometres (750 miles) southeast of Tahiti.

Kister was working for France's spy agency, the DGSE, which carried out an unprecedented mission to stop Greenpeace by bombing a peaceful protest ship without warning in the waters of a friendly nation.

He was part of the so-called "third team", whose mission was to attach two large limpet mines to the hull of the converted trawler, working with fellow frogman Jean Camas.

A third member of the team, Gerard Royal, a brother of France's current environment minister and former presidential candidate Segolene Royal, picked up the two men in a dinghy after the covert operation.

"I have the blood of an innocent man on my conscience, and that weighs on me," a visibly emotional Kister said in the interview. "We are not cold-blooded killers. My conscience led me to apologise and explain myself."

He said the mission that the 12-strong unit were ordered to carry out by then French defence minister Charles Hernu was "disproportionate" and he claimed that other less drastic ways of damaging the ship, such as breaking the propeller shaft to prevent it from taking to sea, were rejected by the government.

Name was leaked

"There was a willingness at a high level to say: this has to end once and for all, we need to take radical measures. We were told we had to sink it. Well, it's simple to sink a boat, you have to put a hole in it."

Kister's name was leaked to the media soon after the bombing, albeit with a spelling mistake as Kyster. He said he considered his unmasking to be an act of "high treason".

"I'm not angry at the journalists, it's the political powers I blame. If it had been in the United States, other heads would have rolled."

Two days after the bombing, two of the agents who took part -- Alain Mafart and Dominique Prieur, who had posed as a couple of Swiss tourists -- were arrested by New Zealand police and their identities revealed. Hernu, the defence minister, was forced to resign two months later.

The Zodiac used by French Secret Services

 in the sinking of the Greenpeace boat

"Rainbow Warrior, in July 1985 (AFP Photo)

Mafart and Prieur were charged with murder, eventually pleading guilty to manslaughter and receiving 10-year jail terms, but they were freed within months under a deal that sparked almost as much anger in New Zealand as the bombing, involving France threatening to block trade access to European markets unless Wellington handed over the agents.

France has since made an official apology for the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior and paid damages. In 1996 it halted the nuclear testing that had prompted the Greenpeace protest.

The interview was carried out by French journalist and Mediapart founder Edwy Plenel, who in September 1985 revealed in a Le Monde newspaper report the involvement of the DGSE frogman in planting the explosives.

Plenel says one aspect of the infamous bombing remains unexplained to this day -- how much then president Francois Mitterrand knew about the operation.

Although Mitterrand was aware that it was going to take place, "at which point did he know the operation was going to be so violent?", Plenel asked.

A huge dome is shown in 1980 covering a crater left by one of the 43

nuclear blasts on Runit Island, in the Marshall Islands, the fallout from

which is expected to last 25,000 years (US Defence Nuclear Agency/AFP)

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"Fast-Tracking" - Feb 8, 2014 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll) - (Reference to Fukushima / H-bomb nuclear pollution and a warning about nuclear > 20 Min)

Pope braves storm for emotional Philippine typhoon memorial

Yahoo – AFP, Jean-Louis de la Vaissiere, 17 Jan 2015

Pope Francis, wearing a plastic raincoat, waves to well-wishers after

a mass in Tacloban, on January 17, 2015 (AFP Photo/Johannes Eisele)

Tacloban (Philippines) (AFP) - Pope Francis braved heavy rain Saturday to celebrate an emotional mass with a sea of weeping survivors of a super typhoon in the Philippines that killed thousands, saying their pain silenced his heart.

Francis flew in from the national capital of Manila to Tacloban, one of the cities devastated 14 months ago, to be greeted by hundreds of thousands of people but also another severe tropical storm.

"Long live the pope," the crowd chanted as he walked off the plane to be immediately buffeted by strong winds and intense rain, which later in the day forced him to cut short his trip to other typhoon-hit areas.

Devotees pray during a mass held by Pope

 Francis, in Tacloban, central Philippines, on

 January 17, 2015 (AFP Photo/Johannes 

Eisele)

His welcome echoed the rapturous reception that millions gave the pontiff during the first two days of his trip to the Philippines, reinforcing its status as the Catholic Church's bastion in Asia.

Most of the people in the crowd at Tacloban wore thin yellow plastic ponchos handed out by organisers, and the pope also put one on before walking on to a nearby stage to celebrate mass in heavy rain.

"I would like to tell you something close to my heart," the pope said as many in the crowd clutched crucifixes and cried.

"When I saw in Rome that catastrophe, I felt I had to be here. And on those very days, I decided to come here. I'm here to be with you."

Super Typhoon Haiyan, the most powerful storm ever recorded on land, left 7,350 people dead or missing in November 2013 as it devastated fishing and farming towns on central islands that were already among the Philippines' poorest.

Many of those communities are still struggling to recover, with the rubble of destroyed buildings lying in piles and millions of felled coconut trees strewn across idle farmland.

The 78-year-old pontiff acknowledged the enduring pain being experienced by the survivors.

"Some of you have lost part of your families. All I can do is keep silent. And I walk with you all with my silent heart," he said.

The pope sought to reassure his audience, declaring Jesus would never let them down.

Francis's five-day visit to the Philippines is partly aimed at helping the Church expand its influence in Asia, but he had repeatedly said giving comfort to typhoon survivors was his top priority.

Renewed hope

"I can't explain how I feel. I am filled with gratitude. Never in my life did I think that I'd see a pope," 68-year-old housewife Virginia Torres told AFP, wiping tears and raindrops from her face after the pontiff left the mass venue.

Torres, whose house two hours' drive from Tacloban was wiped out by storm surges, said the pope's address had given her "renewed hope" even while filling her with pain.

"I was overwhelmed with emotion, especially when he mentioned that he can relate to our suffering... everything that we went through came back."

The pope was due to spend the entire day in Tacloban and nearby areas that had also been destroyed by Haiyan.

However Tropical Storm Mekkhala, which was expected to bring much more intense rain to the region in the afternoon, forced the pope to cut short his trip.

In the town of Palo, about 12 kilometres (seven miles) from Tacloban, he told a crowd of thousands who had gathered at the main church that he needed to leave quickly to avoid the storm.

Pope Francis (C) holds a holy mass in Tacloban, on January 17, 2015 (AFP

Photo/Johannes Eisele)

"So I apologise to you all. I'm sad about this, truly saddened. Because I had something prepared especially for you," he said.

His motorcade then raced back to the airport and he departed shortly after 1:00 pm (0500 GMT), four hours earlier than scheduled. However the main event of the day was the morning mass.

The Philippines endures an average of about 20 major storms a year, many of them deadly.

But the unprecedented strength of Haiyan, with winds of 315 kilometres an hour, was an extreme weather event consistent with man-made climate change, the United Nations' weather agency and scientists have said.

Huge crowds

The Philippines has long been the Church's stronghold in the region, with Catholics accounting for 80 percent of the former Spanish colony's population.

Massive crowds gathered along the pontiff's motorcade routes during his first two days in the Philippines.

Pope-mania was expected to reach a peak on Sunday, with organisers expecting him to attract as many as six million people for mass at a Manila park.

If as big as expected, the crowd will surpass the previous record for a papal gathering of five million during a mass by John Paul II at the same venue in 1995.

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"A Summary" – Apr 2, 2011 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll)

(Subjects: Religion, Shift of Human Consciousness, 2012, Intelligent/Benevolent Design, EU, South America, 5 Currencies, Water Cycle (Heat up, Mini Ice Ace, Oceans, Fish, Earthquakes ..), Middle East, Internet, Israel, Dictators, Palestine, US, Japan (Quake/Tsunami Disasters , People, Society ...), Nuclear Power Revealed, Hydro Power, Geothermal Power, Moon, Financial Institutes (Recession, Realign integrity values ..) , China, North Korea, Global Unity,..... etc.) - (Text version)

“… The Weather

Let's talk about the weather. We retreat to exactly what we told you before in this very chair. The water cycle is a cooling cycle, not a heating cycle. You're going to have more severe winters and storms. It's going to get colder. But it gets warmer before it gets colder. That is the cycle, and it has always been the cycle. You can see it in the rings of the trees and the cores of the ice. Don't let your scientists pull the political wool over your eyes for their own purposes. Start seeing these things for what they are. It's a recurring cycle based on four Earth alignment attributes, including the wobble (the precession). You're in this cycle. Prepare.

The beginnings of it will be with you from now at least until the end of the 2012 36-year window, and you can watch it work. The first thing that happens is that the ice melts at the poles, but not completely. It's the way it has happened before. As the redistribution of weight from the poles to the oceans of the earth takes place, the weight is redistributed to the crust, and that creates earthquakes. And the earthquakes that will be the most powerful are the ones that are closest to the poles. We told you that some time ago. So it's not a mystery that suddenly you have some of the most powerful earthquakes that you've ever had. Not only that, but a cooling ocean creates larger storms.

What do the conspiracists do with all this? "See? We're doomed. Here it comes," they say. "Here it comes! The end is here!" Twenty-two years ago, we gave you the information that is happening today. We told you about the weather. We told you to get ready for it, but we still haven't told you why the water cycle is needed. We've hinted at it since it is very controversial, and we'll lose many readers right here and now. Here's the prediction: The scientists are going to laugh and biologists are going to scratch their heads and roll their eyes.

The Refreshing of the Cycle of Life

When you change the temperature of the waters of the planet, it changes the life cycle of the ocean and it eventually renews itself. The life cycle of the planet has a limit to its viability over time. There has to be a refreshing of the very cycle of life, and this is what the water cycle does. Are there any places you've seen too many fish lately? Yes. Millions of salmon in the north. Odd that it was in Alaska, isn't it? Alaska is very close to the poles where the water temperature is being felt first. Oh, again the experts will tell you that this is not the reason. It's about hatcheries and rivers. But nobody predicted this, did they? Science is fast to give you reasons, but slow to give you logic in advance. They always seem to be surprised.

We are saying things we haven't said before. Again, watch for this, an actual change in the life cycle of the planet's oceans because of the water temperature shift. Biologists are going to have to start redesigning the paradigm of how everything works, including reefs, ocean bottoms, and how plankton survive and reproduce. Listen, this is not the first time that the life cycle has been refreshed! But again, this may take generations of humanity to complete. In the process, you may again lose species. This is normal. Gaia is slow, and Humans are impatient. Your textbooks may someday tell of how naive humanity was back in 2011 when they tried to blame weather changes on everything but a natural cycle. Now you know why there is a water cycle.

So what does that tell you about Gaia? Gaia is beginning the cycle of refreshing life on over-fished oceans. It tells you that in the cracks, there is love and caring about the Humans who live on the earth. There's a reason you're here. There's a plan here, and a benevolent Universe and quantum energy with intelligent design. All is there for you, precious, sacred Human Being. …”

British Columbia salmon return one of largest seen in region (Sep 2013)

Pink salmon, shown in a file photograph, 

have a lifespan of two years

.

Australia apologises to Indonesia for border violations

Google – AFP, 17 January 2014

Australian Immigration Minister Scott Morrison speaks during a press

conference in Sydney on September 30, 2013 (AFP/File, William West)

Sydney — The Australian government said Friday it had apologised unreservedly to Jakarta after its navy "inadvertently" violated Indonesian waters.

"We deeply regret these events," Immigration Minister Scott Morrison told a press conference.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop spoke to her Indonesian counterpart Marty Natalegawa on Thursday night and "offered an unqualified apology on behalf of the Australian government for inadvertently entering Indonesia's territorial waters," Morrison said.

She also gave "an assurance that such a breach of Indonesian territorial waters would not re-occur".

Morrison said Australia's embassy in Jakarta would make a formal apology Friday.

He said the government received information on Wednesday that Australian authorities had "inadvertently" entered Indonesian waters on several occasions, in breach of Australian government policy.

"I should stress this occurred unintentionally and without knowledge or sanction by the Australian government," he said.

Lieutenant General Angus Campbell, who heads the military-led Operation Sovereign Borders to stop asylum seekers arriving in Australia by sea, refused to detail the border violations for "operational reasons".

Under Australia's new government, asylum-seekers arriving by boat are sent to Pacific islands camps for processing with no chance of settlement in Australia, while boats intercepted at sea can be turned back to Indonesia.

The policy has angered Indonesia which has suggested it could infringe its sovereignty.

Campbell said the breaches involved "the passage of a vessel or vessels on several occasions".

"Positional errors have been made in the movement of our vessels," he said.

"The personnel on these vessels believe they were at all times operating outside Indonesian waters.

"I believe our people were acting in good faith."

The chief of staff and the head of the border protection agency would review the violations, Morrison said.

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Asylum seekers from Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran cry as Indonesian officers
 force them to leave the Australian vessel Hermia docked at Indah Kiat port in
 Merak, Indonesia’s Banten province in this April 9, 2012 file photo. (Reuters
Photo/Aulia Pratama)