When the people were battling Dan Andrews’ goons in Flinders St and on the steps of the Shrine of Remembrance, it sent, well, maybe not shockwaves, but certainly ripples around the world. American commenters in the independent media sphere, especially, were shocked at seeing images so at odds with their image of laid-back Crocodile Dundee-land.
But what about now, when thugs with riot shields are decking old men and shooting rubber bullets at families in Middle-Earth? You know, that place with all the hobbits and that nice lady who hugs people?
Well, I’m sorry to tell you, BFD readers: the rest of the world hasn’t noticed. Not CNN, the BBC or Fox News. A straw poll of some American friends who follow independent media confirmed that they’d heard nothing about it, either. Although they were shocked: not just at the violence in little old New Zealand, but the fact that you still have mandates.
It’s mostly bad timing. At the moment, American news is reporting little else but “Ukraine! Ukraine! Ukraine!” (It’s purely conspiratorial, of course, to think that that at least partly explains why Jacinda sent in the goon squad now, while the rest of the world is looking elsewhere.)
Our countries being so close, the event has pinged the local media — a little. After all, they’re not going to report anything that reflects badly on their beloved Queen of Kindness. So, they just regurgitate the talking-points of the Team of $55 Million.
But even the evil, far-right, Murdoch Press (Boo! Hiss!) were taking a good old swig of the Pravda Kool-Aid.
New Zealand anti-vaccination demonstrators set alight their own protest camp outside parliament on Wednesday after riot police moved to end their weeks-long occupation of the legislative precinct.
Police abandoned their light-touch approach, with hundreds of officers using perspex shields, pepper spray and water jets to force back protesters, who responded by hurling bottles, bricks and paint bombs […]
In recent weeks, police have accused protesters of hurling human faeces at them, spraying a “stinging substance” at officers and slashing tyres on police cars.
The Australian
So, nothing you wouldn’t get from Stuff or Newshub.
Oddly, it was the mouth-organ of the middle-class left, The Age, which gave a more even-handed account of events.
Wearing riot gear and using pepper spray, New Zealand police on Wednesday moved in on the hundreds of protesters who have been camped outside the nation’s Parliament for more than three weeks.
A fire broke out among some tents, sending smoke billowing over the site before it was doused by police, as officers towed cars and worked to completely clear the grounds.
They even actually bothered to give the protesters’ side of the story.
Lisa Suasua, 55, who has been part of the protests for weeks said she would stay until the end.
“They [the police] have been pretty brutal. They don’t talk, they ask us to move on,” she said.
“They came in about 6 in the morning and started pulling up the tents in the church [grounds] that has women and children in it and just started coming through with their riot gear,” she said […]
Protesters have been well-organised, setting up tents on the lawns outside Parliament and trucking in portable toilets, crates of donated food, and bales of straw to lay down when the grass turned to mud.
They even dug a vegetable garden, set up a childcare tent, and assembled makeshift showers as they signalled their intent to stay for a long time.
The Age even concedes that not all is going well for the Queen of Kindness.
The protests have led to a more charged political atmosphere across the country. Ardern’s security detail has been increased after protesters heckled her at events, including as she was leaving a school visit in Christchurch last week.
The Age
Even the Guardian — the Guardian! — managed something like an even-handed report.
Fires burned across parliament grounds, and violent clashes broke out between protesters and police at an anti-vaccine mandate demonstration on New Zealand’s parliament grounds, in extraordinary and chaotic scenes rarely seen in the country.
Guardian
Of course, the Grauniad has to spoil it all by devoting fully half of their article to quoting the “Maori King” and spouting a bunch of Te Lingo (although, unlike the NZ media, they at least acknowledge that no-one actually speaks it, by providing handy translations). Curiously, they say nothing about the fact that there was a large Maori cohort at the protest — well over-representing the number of Maori in the wider New Zealand community.
So, at the moment, New Zealand, you’re on your own.
Unless you happen to be invaded by Scott Morrison or something.
