Parlez-vous kiwi?, Blogger

A fellow kiwi called by and commented on my blog a couple of time, curious I wandered on over to Parlez-vous kiwi? and enjoyed what I found over there.

She's a New Zealander with her very own French man and as I was reading through her posts, I came to the youtube you see at the end of this post, with a write-up about the French government sinking the Greenpeace ship called Rainbow Warrior in a New Zealand port in an operation codenamed Opération Satanique…

You see, she was taking her man back to New Zealand and had to warn him of the two subjects he couldn't mention to kiwis as a Frenchman. The second subject was the Rainbow Warrior incident. She explains: a ship of the environmental organisation Greenpeace, which was active in supporting a number of Greenpeace protest activities against seal hunting, whaling and nuclear weapons testing during the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was all about promoting peace. Two French agents, in 1985, bombed the Rainbow Warrior, killing a photographer on the boat in the act. The French govt initally denied any involvement and jumped on the “terrorist act” bandwagon.

When two of the French Agents were caught in NZ (posing as married couple ‘Sophie and Alain Turenge’), a police investigation ensued and both pleaded guilty to manslaughter and 10 years in jail. However, come 1986, and a political deal between French President and NZ President, the Frenchies agreed to pay NZ$13 million in return for the two French agents to be jailed in their own country.

You can read more of that particular post here.

I might have written about the Rainbow Warrior sinking here and ummmm here too.

And to my delight, she had also posted this youtube song, marking the 20th anniversary of the incident.