Do New Zealanders no longer support Ukraine?

Of a possible 55 heads of state, only four made time to join a virtual address delivered by the African Union Assembly on June 20 by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Source: Ghana Web

So Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is to address the NZ Parliament next Wednesday. The address will be outside business hours (I will be interested to see how many MPs turn up) but it will please our Prime Minister, Jacinda Adern, who has pushed hard to get this address. As she sees it:

“This address is a valuable opportunity to reiterate our support for Ukraine directly to President Zelenskyy and hear from him what the international community can do to continue to support its people, and its sovereignty.”

But the New Zealand people don’t appear to share the Prime Minister’s enthusiasm for Zelensky. Just look at the negative comments this news received on the Twitter announcements of the address by the NZ Herald, News Hub Politics, and 1News NZ.

Ukrainian flags were everywhere 9 months ago. Twitter activists used them in their comments.

 

Gone are those Twitter activists from 9 months ago who proudly virtue-signalled their support for Ukraine and hatred for Russia. They seemed to be everywhere. Nowadays such enthusiastic supporters are few and far between. The mood is quite the opposite.

There is an occasional “Slava Ukraini!” But the vast majority of comments are hostile to this address. Comments raise issues of the corruption in Ukraine, Zelensky’s personal corruption, his attitude of entitlement and his insistent demands for money and weapons, and his support for neo-Nazis in Ukraine.

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is the FT’s person of the year 2022. The 44-year-old has earnt a place in history for his extraordinary display of leadership and fortitude https://t.co/Rxsl03pzS8 pic.twitter.com/ibp52B4N66

— Financial Times (@FinancialTimes) December 5, 2022

This surprises me as I expected that New Zealanders had blindly accepted the government’s position on Ukraine. Even accepting New Zealand’s UN vote against a resolution condemning the glorification of Nazis and racism (see Is New Zealand covertly supporting the glorification of neo-Nazism?). Western Governments and media have competed in glorifying Zelensky as a brave and charismatic leader. The Financial Times even listed him as their Person of the Year.

Has the person on the street resisted all this pressure and come to their own mind about Zelensky?

I realise that Twitter commenters can be unrepresentative because they tend to congregate according to their biases. But these comments were on news media Twitter posts, so I expect them to be more representative. Maybe Elon Musk has somehow changed the composition of Twitter commenters, but I doubt it.

 

Have more and more ordinary New Zealanders resisted the media and government pressures to conform over Ukraine and the war in  Ukraine? Are more and more New Zealanders now thinking for themselves.

 

I think the more politically conscious amongst us have learned things about Ukraine and the causes of the war that they weren’t conscious of 9 months ago. The enthusiastic, but unthinking, support from Ukraine has dissipated. We have become more aware of the real nature of Ukrainian society and its recent history. We have become conscious of the 2014 coup which overthrew a democratically elected government. We now know now about the widespread influence of ultranationalists and neo-Nazis in society and in the military national battalions (see The subtlety of neo-Nazi influence in Ukraine – ignored by our media).

Whatever the reason I welcome this trend. A society blindly led by the government and media as happened 9 months ago is dangerous.

 

 

A week of good news in New Zealand

It’s been a week for good news in New Zealand. Well, most people see the news as good.

The first good news was the Prime Minister’s announcement a few days ago that she is expecting a child. Great news for her and her partner, as she had expected that assisted fertility treatments would have been required. Also, the news seems to have been enthusiastically welcomed by most New Zealanders – even her political opponents – on the whole. It is hard to tell if the few negative voices are die-hard anti-labour people still annoyed at the September election result. Or died in the wool misogynists who do not understand the role women play today in our society.

Today we had news of New Zealand’s first successful launch of satellites into space. The launch was carried out by Rocket Lab at their launch site in the Māhia Peninsula.

Quite exciting to follow a launch like this and hear the updates in Kiwi accents!

The Video above is a little over 30 minutes long – but, if you want to watch the actual launch, fast forward to about 18 minutes.

The rocket carried three satellite into orbit. Professor Richard Easther from Auckland University  said the launch represented a “red-letter day for New Zealand:”

“To put this into perspective, we are now one of just a dozen countries to have successfully built and deployed a rocket that can put satellites into orbit.”

The other nations are either world powers such as the USA and Russia, or smaller countries “which are armed to the teeth” such as Israel and North Korea.

According to Easther  – “New Zealand really stands alone with a technically advanced, commercially focused launch vehicle.”

He added it was “just the first chapter in what promises to be a fascinating story for the country and our technology and science sectors.”

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Political maturity in New Zealand – at least compared to the US

A moment of clarity in the NZ election negotiations. Credit: NZ Herald.

Maybe it is the social media silo effect but I think a lot of New Zealanders feel proud about the way our recent elections went.

Once again we are a world leader. A new impressive young female Prime Minister. An atmosphere of cooperation – or at least respect all around from (and towards) the winners and losers. And a feeling that our new Prime Minister may have the unifying skills necessary for the job at this time.

But what has impressed me is the beginning of some clarity about the nature and causes of our problems. We are talking about housing and child poverty as indicators of a failed economy and not low inflation, the balance of payments, etc., as indicators of a “successful economy.” No matter how good the “accepted” economic indicators appear to be an economy is not successful if it fails to protect its children and has the degree of homelessness we are seeing.

Winston Peters’ honesty about the causes of our problems being inherent in an economic system oriented towards the interests of dead money and not towards people is refreshing. It’s a long time since we have heard such economic honesty from a politician in our parliament. Also refreshing is the fact that our media (not known for admitting such basic problems) has repeated his statement.

And isn’t it heartening to have a Prime Minister flagging an interest in ministerial jobs aimed at helping children rather than something like finance?

Maturity

Like many, I am cynical of the concept of “capitalism with a human face” but New Zealand at the moment should be seen as a glowing example of how democracy should work. Yet we have the US promoting itself as exceptional, a leader of the free world” and the best example of “democracy.” A self-belief so strong it wishes to impose their example on “less fortunate” countries. And, too often, even New Zealander commentators and journalists get captured by such silliness.

But come on!

Just imagine if Bill English threw his toys out of the cot because his “natural” assumption of power has been denied by the electoral system. Just imagine if he attempted to “explain” his failure by promoting the fiction that the “Russians did it,” or blamed President Putin for his problems. Just imagine if all sorts of attempts were now being made to produce “evidence” of collusion between our new leaders and those horrible Russians. I am sure we could, if we were that childish, find examples of meetings with diplomats, maybe even professional or financial links with someone indirectly connected to a firm which may exist in St Petersburg.

And what about all those pro-Labour and pro-Green”trolls” on social media? Hell, they were all over Facebook and Twitter! Surely that is evidence of manipulation by Russian “troll farms.” And what about the “fact” that the pro-Russian media heavily promoted Jacinda Adern and is glorying in her victory?

OK, perhaps not even Hillary Clinton would accuse the NZ Herald of being “pro-Russian” – but here is the “undeniable evidence” – this story run by Sputnik which, for this purpose, we could describe as being a propaganda arm of the Kremlin!

Oh dear. The “evidence is mounting up.” It’s becoming “undeniable!”

I am glad we live in a country with more political maturity but isn’t it sad that the most powerful (militarily) country in the world is so politically immature. And, also sad when even commentators in New Zealand buy into that immaturity.

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