It isn’t the country I grew up in and frankly it is lost for good.
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Nor the one I grew up in during 1950-60s
you mentioned the anti-Vietnam crowd..
In 1968 or there abouts some protesters pushed some coffins for miles down a NZ highway..(I think it was in Canterbury..
there were 28 coffins, one for each NZer who had died in Vietnam at that time...
The families of the dead soldiers didnt ask them to, they just did it...
At the time i was appalled...
I had 4 cousins in Vietnam and my brother was in the NZ Navy patroling the China Sea..and I had girl cousins in the NZ Air Force based in NZ...
I keep calling Helen “Potter” but her name was Clark wasnt it ???
When I saw her in Lyttleton I felt she was a weak leader, a puppet..She read of a greeting in Maori to us and every time she said a word that I had never heard before, a word that sounded like a certain 4 letter curse word, the Maoris standing near us would giggle amd laugh hysterically...She repeeated it several times and she had to have heard their response...I was embarrassed for her...she was obviously set up...the PC idiot...
The Maori I learnt in school was not the Maori she was speaking...
TN,
Tks your reply. I was very young when the VN war protests were at their peak but my dad and brother in law were both in the NZ Army at the time. The former served in the Emergency in Malaya and trained many of the signallers who deployed to Phuc Tuoy Province with the ANZAC Brigade, and the latter was at RMC Duntroon but graduated too late for the war. The B in law later went on to attend the Command and Staff College at Ft Leavenworth (81) and he and my sister both said it was the most enjoyable 2 years of their life. I recall seeing footage of returning NZ service personnnel being heckled and attacked on the return home parades. My father and his colleagues had nothing but contempt and disgust for the NZ Labour (Socialist) Party, Lange and all of his fellow travellers.
Yea it was Helen Clark and she was a nasty piece of work. I think she’s now got some sinecure on the diplomatic or UN circuit. They just can’t keep their snouts out of the public trough.
My best pals still work for the NZ MoD and I was shocked at the depth of their admiration and praise for the horrid Obama. Like you said in the earlier email many NZers were amazed others don’t think he is worth spit. Even got called a racist. We had a ferocious set to over that but they are real clear now on my views about the current usurper in the WH.