Sludge Report #59 - Planes To Ask China For

Friday, 20 April 2001, 5:04 pm
Column: C.D. Sludge

NOTE: Authors of this report will be anonymous and wide ranging, and occasionally finely balanced. Indeed you are invited to contribute: The format is as a reporters notebook. It will be published as and when material is available. C.D. Sludge can be contacted at sludge@scoop.co.nz. The Sludge Report is available as a free email service..Click HERE - http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/myscoop/ to subscribe...

Sludge Report #59

Planes To Ask China For

It has recently occurred to Sludge that NZ Prime Minister Helen Clark, seemingly the most popular Westerner to visit China in recent times, could perhaps play a role in the return of the United States missing spy plane.

Afterall, New Zealand could do with another Orion, and a look at some of the fancy, and expensive, US avionics and spying equipment which we have recently decided not to buy, would be good too.

The stature of New Zealand and Helen Clark as a global mover and shaker, and as a peacemaker would of course be strongly enhanced by any such development.

And at the same time, coincident with the Americas Summit, China could, by using peaceable NZ as a messenger, deliver George “Dubya” Bush and US hegemonic ambitions a beautifully understated two fingered salute.

Meanwhile while we are on the subject of planes from China.

George Bush, and for that matter Air New Zealand, aren’t the only poeple on the planet who could do with a few spare planes.

Sludge has today received the following picture of a Chinese strato-tanker suitable for use in Millennium Twain’s Hamilton based plan to build a space plane.

If Helen is to be in the business of asking for planes, then maybe she would like to ask to borrow one of these too…

For background on Millennium Twain’s plans for a space race see:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL9912/S00031.htm
Desperately Seeking Stratotanker

Earlier Sludge views on the China Spy Plane Crisis can be found at:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0104/S00053.htm
Sludge Report #57 – Why Dubya Should Say Sorry

Anti©opyright Sludge 2001

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Alastair Thompson

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Alastair Thompson is the co-founder of Scoop. He is of Scottish and Irish extraction and from Wellington, New Zealand. Alastair has 24 years experience in the media, at the Dominion, National Business Review, North & South magazine, Straight Furrow newspaper and online since 1997. He is the winner of several journalism awards for business and investigative work.

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