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    Re: NZ - a bit more on Jacinda, Labour and Ukraine Archived Message

    Posted by John Monro on January 1, 2023, 9:32 pm, in reply to "Our government refused to let Julian Assange come here, but had no qualms about this guy."

    Hello Morrissey, happy New Year.

    Re NZ and Jacinda Ardern and the triumph of wokism I know Jacinda personally, not as a friend as such but as a friend of a close member of my family. My six member family will be Labour supporters here or in the UK, where most of them now live. I am a Green supporter, but would otherwise vote Labour, as I did in the last election. I knew Jacinda as a personable, intelligent and kind young lady. She was alway though, a career politician, from her days working for Helen Clark here in NZ, to here Presidency of the International Union of Socialist Youth etc Her politics is one of gentle persuasion, compromise and incremental change. Maybe her Mormon background has something to do with this. But after her overwhelming win following her life-saving action in regard to Covid, I believe she, and her party, have seriously squandered their overall majority, and lost their way. The boom in property prices, the increasing divisions in wealth etc are all serious black marks. Labour continues to remain subservient to neoliberalism though it tries to smooth this creeds rougher edges It remains subservient to the US through the Five Eyes, and supports the war in Ukraine by training Ukrainian conscripts in the UK, presumably most will die a short while later. Nania Mahuta despite her organisational abilities and personal qualities, and some improvements in our relationship with Australia and the route to Australian citizenship by NZers in Australia, remains deluded about Ukraine and our related geopolitical travails. . My family will likely not be voting for Labour. though the alternative is more dire.

    We notice New Zealand's fawning capitulation to money and power, as for instance in the case of this US billionaire setting light to part of Otago. He's not the only one, James Cameron has a "pad" in the hills not so far from here. You can't see it of course, and the neighbours are treated with indifference

    We now have the prospect this year of having another National party along with ACT winning against Labour, entirely self inflected wound. Though I have to say that much of the really nasty stuff you hear or read about Jacinda is a concerning widespread red-neck misogyny of the more extreme kind, but what does National care about that if they can get into power. I suspect Jacinda won't even mind losing, she'll be free to find a job in the UN as her hero Helen Clark did

    Now the media here are pretty nearly as bad as overseas. but I have to say for the last couple of years, a new editor at the Dominion Post here in Wellington brought a more humane and considered approach to current affairs then previously. Anna Fifield is a Kiwi, with experience in NZ and overseas. With the Washington Post. After covering the coronavirus epidemic, Fifield returned to New Zealand in 2020, and in July became the editor of The Dominion Post and Stuff's Wellington newsroom. She took up her position on 5 October 2020 and left it in December 2022. There was a notable change in the tone of the newspaper.

    To give the paper some credit they have recently published two letters of mine in regard to the war in Ukraine, and other opinion pieces running contrary to the overwhelming "comments perceptions" . Other letters have expressed contrary opinions to mine of course I do not know why Fifield only lasted two years.

    I post them here.

    15/11/22

    Dear Sir / Madam

    Two days ago Nicholas Khoo wrote “ Why NZ’s morality narrative on Ukraine doesn’t work”, a much needed counter to the lack of rational thinking in regard to this war. . Khoo’s thesis being: us = good vs. them (Russia) = evil, is simplistic, hypocritical and more importantly, doesn’t work. Now NZ is to “extend support” to Ukraine by training Ukrainian soldiers whilst NATO arms Ukraine, pouring petrol on a conflagration where men are being slaughtered in their tens of thousands, fighting a proxy war against Russia to the last Ukrainian, for what? This illustrates perfectly the moral contortions Nicholas Khoo was dismayed by. We should be fighting, but in the UN for a ceasefire, and an agreement that might bring some sort of solution. Ukraine will “lose” Crimea (it actually belongs to Crimeans who mostly want to be Russian), they will “lose” parts of Donbas - subject to a separatist war since 2014 - and Ukraine will remain neutral. The US and NATO share considerable culpability for this war, a total failure of diplomacy, a bellicose intransigence over years provoking Russia. The US should, according to their own Monroe doctrine, withdraw from Europe, and Europe including Russia construct their own security umbrella for that Continent.

    Yours faithfully

    My next letter appeared the other day 22/12/22 - it was significantly edited and I copy the edited version

    Dear Sir / Madam

    ...... all that continues to happen (in Ukraine) merely reinforces my divergent opinion.
    Recently Mr Zelensky addressed the NZ Parliament via video. Following a standing ovation from all MPs, Mr Luxon acclaimed Zelensky as “Our generation’s Churchill”.
    Is this praise or a put down?
    Churchill, planner of the Gallipoli debacle....... Anglo-Saxon supremacist, ignorer of the famine in Bengal, and many other grievous failures.
    Later as leader in WW2 he atoned for some of these but, recall, in 1945 he effectively had to gave away half of Europe to another Russian autocrat, Stalin, rather worse than any Putin.
    Churchillian statesmanship is not just rousing rhetoric, (which any actor can emulate - edited out JKM) , but sober judgement in the face of painful reality. Yalta was a painful realism, only a similar painful realism now can rescue Ukraine.
    Today, Biden tells Zelensky “we’re with Ukraine as long as it’s there” - rather less than reassuring. I feel sympathy for Zelensky, so inadequately equipped in his tragic role; he and all Ukrainians have been and will continue to be betrayed by the West -.......


    Yours faithfully

    The above letter appears below another letter applauding Ukraine and Zelansky - who has done a "superb job of leading a country at war" and strongly supporting the NZ government's stance of supporting Ukraine for its "heroic stand". (And don't get me wrong, I agree that it's stand is heroic, no doubt about it, but it's just so tragically misplaced and unnecessary. JKM)

    And I do feel sympathy for Zelensky, he is a true Shakespearian tragic figure, in the mould, for instance, of Macbeth. How much happier he'd be clowning around in front of the cameras with no responsibility for anyone or anything, or pretending to play the piano with his penis? As it is, his doom is sealed - either a footnote to history drinking his life away in some terminally banal condominium in Florida, or perhaps left on the steppes of Ukraine to be picked over by his fellow vultures in his own country?

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