1/10 It was sad enough to see veteran left-wing journo Chris Trotter endorse Putin's invasion of Ukraine at The Daily Blog. But now John Minto, a legend of the activist left & the face of the protests against the '81 Springbok Tour, appears to have followed suit on the same site.
2/10 Minto says that Biden & the US, & not Putin, are to fault for the invasion of Ukraine. He accuses the US of seeing to encircle & blockade Russia. Minto refers back to the US reaction to the attempted stationing of Soviet missiles on Cuba in the '60s.
3/10 But I think Minto draws the wrong lesson from the Cuban missile crisis. The US saw the deployment of missiles to Cuba as wrong because it was a violation of the so-called 'Monroe doctrine', which said that the US had the right to control the states in its 'backyard'.
4/10 The Monroe doctrine led to obscenities like the coups that got rid of elected left-wing governments in Guatemala & Chile in '54 & '73. The Monroe Doctrine was wrong. So is the 'Putin doctrine', which says Russia must control its neighbouring states.
5/10 Minto criticises the expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe. I share his antipathy towards US foreign policy. But peoples of Eastern Europe democratically decided they wished to join NATO. After the nightmares they suffered under Stalin & his successors, is that any surprise?
6/10 Like Chris Trotter, who insists Ukraine & Russia are indivisible, Minto ignores the agency of the ordinary people of states on Russia's frontiers. Minto's article ends with a lame appeal to help strengthen the UN. The old Minto would have had something very different to say.
7/10 Ukrainians have united to fight an anti-fascist war. Protests in Russia have supported them. Volunteers from around the world are creating a new version of the International Brigades that defended Spain from fascism in the '30s.
8/10 Even in faraway NZ, the Ukrainian community & its supporters are mobilising to get money to the forces on the frontline. In the last 24 hours I've been making contacts with a group working hard to supply helmets & bullet proof vests to defenders of Kyiv. Money's flowing.
9/10 John Minto made himself a hero when he was beaten & bullied for his fight against apartheid South Africa. Now, tho, he's making excuses for Putin, whose regime in many ways resembles that of apartheid South Africa.
10/10 Here's a link to Minto's article: thedailyblog.co.nz/2022/02/25/hyp… Like Trotter's piece, it is in many ways a tragic document. What went wrong with these men?
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1/11 Since the revitalisation of feminism by the #MeToo movement, many female artists who were neglected by publishers & curators are getting attention they deserve. Miranda Art Gallery & Atuanui Press has published a book of Diana Halstead's drawings. I wrote the introduction.
2/11 Halstead's father was a minister in Sid Holland's union-busting government. Her whole life can be seen as a quiet rebellion against her background & upbringing. Disillusioned with life in Auckland's upper class, she spent much of her time with animals & in the natural world.
3/11 Halstead studied at Elam in the early '60s, but what affected her most were the journeys she took to Auckland museum's galleries. She saw the Nukuoro goddess Gawe (also known as Kave), which had only recently been liberated from the closet where she had spent decades.
1/10 I'm concerned that a new epidemic is stalking NZ. Unlike covid, this disease attacks only a select group of the population - ageing men with reputations as left-wing politicos. & it affects the brain, not the respiratory system. Matt McCarten seems to be the latest victim.
2/10 We've seen veteran left-wing journo Chris Trotter & legendary activist John Minto justify Putin's brutal invasion of the Ukraine. Now McCarten, former president of the Alliance Party & face of Unite union, says he's working to get a Trumpite elected as Auckland's mayor.
3/10 Molloy has gotten rich running bars & restaurants. He spent 8 thousand dollars putting a statue of Trump in one of them. He's ridiculed vaccine mandates. He's claimed that immoral 'subterranean gay bars' are spreading covid in NZ.
1/6 Vladimir Putin losing battles in Ukraine & friends around the world, but he still has at least one admirer in NZ. In a column for the Daily Blog Chris Trotter has saluted Russia's dictator & his invasion of Ukraine. Trotter calls anti-Russian fighters 'slavering curs'.
2/6 Trotter's column features a history lesson that might have come straight from Putin. He salutes the USSR, saying its breakup & the departure of Russian troops from former Eastern bloc states were a 'catastrophe'.
3/6 Trotter blames the 'cut throat nations' of the Baltic, Poland, & the Ukraine for the genocide of the Jews during WW2, & says the West should have been grateful that Stalin took over these 'bloodlands' after the war.
1/8 Multiple videos from Ukraine show Russian tanks running out of fuel, & soldiers standing round listlessly. Supply lines are breaking down, as Ukrainians harass the advancing army. Something strangely similar happened during the first months of NZ's Waikato War.
2/8 NZ's governor & settler politicians invaded the independent Waikato state after denying its right to exist & making absurd claims it was planning to attack the NZ capital in Auckland; Putin's used the same rhetoric about the Ukraine. But both invasions stalled.
3/8 After crossing the Mangatawhiri Stream, the northern border of the Waikato Kingdom, the invading army had to pause for months. The Great South Road, which connected it to Auckland, came under constant pressure from Maori guerrilla attacks.
1/12 Bryce Edwards & Liam Hehir argue many of the protesters at Wellington are 'old-school greenie activists', & therefore by definition can't be fascists. But there's a long history, in NZ, Australia, & Europe, of a convergence between fascism & certain types of environmentalism
2/12 Altho the vast majority of greenies past & present have obviously not been fascists, a minority played a role in the formation of the fascist movements of the '30s. & one of NZ's most famous & distinguished intellectuals was a green fascist.
3/12 With its rhetoric of blood & soil & its presentation of cities as places of corruption & disease, fascism appealed to men like Jorian Jenks, who was a leading member of Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists. At one point, Mosley named Jenks his deputy fuhrer.
1/4 I've noticed a few of the hippy dippy types around 'Camp Freedom' invoking Orwell as some kind of authority. But if the tie-dyed brigade take the trouble to read Orwell, they'll discover he harboured an almost comically over the top hatred of their lifestyles.
2/5 in his 1937 travel book-manifesto, The Road to Wigan Pier, Orwell complained about how the socialist movement was attracting 'every fruit juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer' & 'Nature Cure' Quack in England'. Orwell has an intense distaste for the counterculture.
3 I wrote about the Road to Wigan Pier here: books.scoop.co.nz/2012/07/25/pee…. Like most of Orwell's 'non-fiction', it is a mixture of careful observation & artful fabrication. But the fabrications help drive home devastating truths. As Picasso said, art lies to tell the truth.