Diane Revoluta

Seven Reasons The Malborough Express Reeks (And Not Just of Racism)

Wed, 29 May 2013 23:33:00 -0400

1. Racism. It’s a thing.

A non-exhaustive list of how this cartoon depicts brown people:

Greedy;
People who see child poverty simply as a way to get free food;
Fat;
Lazy in that instead of “going out and getting a job” to feed their kids they just wait for a hand-out;
Booze-drinking, cigarette-smoking gamblers;
People who can’t afford to feed their kids because they are booze-drinking, cigarette-smoking gamblers;
People rorting the system and taking advantage of the state.

It’s not an example of insidious, nuanced racism; it’s that glaring, in your face, brown-people-are-lower-beings kind of racism.

There are people who fall into some of those categories – people of all colours and races. If you want to see people rorting the system and taking advantage of the state, look no further than your local accountant’s office, where books are getting fiddled and tax avoided left, right and centre. If you want to see greed, this good Kiwi bloke seems to know a fair bit about excessive wealth. In a country where booze drinking is a national sport, and where our government is basically gambling’s greatest proponent, these are by no means characteristics of a race; they are traits of a whole nation.

2. Child poverty. It’s also a thing.

For those who have been tirelessly working in this space and pushing for a Food in Schools program, this cartoon basically reinforces every single shitty, fear-mongering argument against addressing our country’s child poverty problem.

Child poverty is not something you can choose whether or not you believe in. Just last week, Amnesty International labelled our track record on child poverty (and domestic violence, a problem inextricably tied to social inequality) a “stain on New Zealand’s human rights record”. It exists, it’s not going away – especially in a society of increasing wealth inequality, and in solving it we all stand to gain. Last year, in what was a fantastic piece of journalism, John Campbell went into schools and showed the country the embarrassing state of our children’s lunchboxes. What we discovered was that a number of children are not only coming to school with empty lunchboxes but with empty bellies. As Campbell repeatedly reinforced, whether or not you ascribe blame to the parents – and god knows some New Zealanders will until they are blue in the face – these children are still going hungry. And when they are hungry they will not learn. And when they do not learn, they might drop out of school. And when they drop out of school, they might struggle to get a job and end up turning to crime. That trajectory is simplistic, yes, but it’s also, sadly, the way in which these cycles work. Breaking the cycle at the start costs the individual and the state a huge amount less than twenty-years down the track. Child poverty is harming our kids, our society and our future.

You know the situation is bad when we see action from a government fast becoming characterised by its complete lack of inaction. The government’s KickStart Breakfast programme has been subject to a range of criticisms, and rightly so. But the problem is not that it has taken action, it’s that it hasn’t taken enough.

3. It used the phrase “namby pamby”

This is the only other person I know who uses the phrase “namby pampy”. They are not even words, they just rhyme. It’s like the noise you imagine a 7-year-old bully using to taunt another kid whose mum kisses them on the cheek at the school gate. When you’re in the business of selling words, you really should be able to come up with a better adjective – at least a proper word – to level against us PC Brigaders.

4. It employs a dude who appears to have a record in creating racist cartoons

This isn’t the first racist gem from cartoonist Al Nisbet. Back in 2001, Nisbet put his name to this nasty piece of work entitled “Heh! Heh! Can we pull another one, Aunty Helen?”. The cartoon is described as: “A large hand, labelled ‘Maori’, has a firm grip on a Christmas cracker, which is weakly held by a small pakeha hand. The ‘Maori’ has already won several crackers, lying on the table below.”

Wow. Wish Māori would stop hogging all of the crackers. Especially the crackers that give them, as a population of people, the highest incarceration rate in the world. The crackers that mean, yes, child poverty affects Māori and Pacific communities more than Pakeha communities. The crackers that produced some pretty hideous injustices over the past 170-odd years. Thanks for your concern, Nisbet, but I think the “weak, small Pakeha hand” is doing pretty well out of the current allocation of crackers.

5. It meant we heard from Susan Devoy

For someone who generally fails to comment on any hot race-related issue, and when she does it comes out so forced and unnatural that I really think we need to be making enquiries into the use of coercion down there at the Race Relations Commission, we have already heard far, far too much from Susan Devoy.

6. It perpetuates the myth that if you’re fat, you’re also greedy, trying to rort the system and basically the lowest form of human being

Sorry to all of you down at the Malborough Express, that hub of hard-hitting and news-breaking journalists, but you are not the first ones to come up with this stereotype: the idea that if someone is overweight it’s because they’re some kind of wild and depraved animal that can’t keep themselves from devouring anything within a 100-metre radius is, ironically, one of the laziest stereotypes out there. While racism in the mainstream media has generally become less obvious and more insidious, the stigmatisation of big bodies is (as a friend recently described herself) about as subtle as a clown. Every day we see fat people depicted as disgusting, lazy, morally blame-worthy lumps of flesh ambling along our streets, straining our health system, acting as a blight on our thin=beautiful society. The Malborough Express is just another media organisation participating in the kind of stigmatisation and discrimination of big bodies that one day we will look back on with shame.

7. It exists and presumably some people read it

I haven’t been to Marlborough before, but I have no doubt that there exists some decent folk. People who don’t think child poverty is a laughing matter. People who don’t ascribe a colour to people who “abuse the system” People who deserve a good, intelligent read over their morning coffee.

The editor’s response was to defend it, to say it is “getting people talking”. What he wanted people to “get talking” about, I am not sure. Presumably not racism, body politics and how shit his paper is. Presumably, he wanted us to talk about how this program is going to lead to people abusing the system, how child poverty is about parental not state responsibility, and how the solution to child poverty isn’t the KickStart Breakfast Programme. Of all the varied and valid criticisms being levelled against the government’s current plan, that “brown people are going to come and eat all of the food” is not one of them. If you have to be controversial and outrageous to get someone to listen to your argument, your argument probably isn’t worth listening to. Never has this been truer than in the case of the Marlborough Express.

The Myth of Inspiring Women

Sun, 19 May 2013 23:25:00 -0400

The origins of the marathon come from the Greek legend of Pheidippides. The story goes that Pheidippides ran 26 miles (or 42.2km, hence the oddly precise distance when measured in kilometres) from the town of Marathon to Athens to proclaim the defeat of the Persians. Upon arrival, he dropped dead from exhaustion and the marathon distance was born. I know “hey, this killed a dude so let’s make it a regular event” isn’t great logic (although, see also: archery, javelin, shot put, boxing and probably most sports that came out of Ancient Greece) but, even today in an age of gel shots and cushioned socks, it speaks to the enormity of the physical and mental challenge.

Recently I ran my first marathon, in the wake of which I have experienced a number of states. Some of these were expected: hunger – wow, I was so hungry; the inevitable metamorphosis into a more-prune-than-human state after hours of blissfully soaking in every possible repository of hot water; a few days avoiding all inclines and gently lowering myself down stairs as if my limbs were that of a tin soldier; and an extended period of tiredness I still cannot shake. I expected, to some extent, all of those states. What I did not expect was to feel a lingering sense of uneasiness; a niggling sprain of the mind triggered every time someone said “oh well done, you must be so proud”. I knew if this had killed an Ancient Greek and yet I was just hungry and tired, I should feel a sense of accomplishment. And yet, I didn’t.

I feel lots of things. Basically, this sums me up. I feel things after thinking about things too much and analysing things until I feel like I could map their genetic make-up in my sleep. A marathon was something about which I expected I would feel proud. My discomfort, probed and prodded by people congratulating me and inquiring as to my tired muscles and sore shins, stems from this question that I keep coming back to: why do I run? What made me run 42.2km and the countless kilometres in training? Why do women like me – young, professional women who try and do one million other things – run? When I run a marathon and try to outwardly appear as that misnomer of a woman who juggles All Of The Things, am I simply playing the very game I purport to reject? Have I built myself up as someone who, by projecting this image of doing All Of The Things, fosters self-doubt and feelings of inadequacy in other women? And the perennial question insofar as my brain musings, am I a bad feminist for all of these sins against the sisterhood?

***

Recently I was asked to speak at an event for young women as an “inspiring woman”. The purpose of the event was to “empower girls to be an active member in the community… to achieve things they would not necessarily think they could”. I was asked to discuss “what I had done so far and how I had been able to get there at such a young age”. At first, I was flattered. It’s quite nice having your ego stroked by a stranger. Then my mind turned to how I felt about being classed as “inspiring”. I realised that being inspiring means having achieved a few milestones that can be nicely summarised or rattled off in a 50-word blurb. It means having a scattering of letters after your name, the more the merrier. It’s a box ticking exercise of what it supposedly means to be successful as a young woman in 2013. It took me back to the high school arms race: who could pack the most badges onto the lapel of their blazer; who could have their name read out in assembly the most; who was, in retrospect, the entirely fucked up notion of a prefect (which, ever so ironically, Word suggests I change to “perfect”). I had been that 17-year-old and I thought I had left her far behind.

I couldn’t make the event, so there was never any decision as to whether or not I would speak. I think I would have and I think I would have gone along and tried to make a case for why we are looking for inspiring women in all the wrong places. Why doing things like marathons and law degrees don’t make you inspiring. They might make you employed and fit, and they might be things you value – god knows society does – but in no way should they be seen as some kind of formula for respect. I would want to tell those girls how, actually, as of late I have been a pretty terrible daughter and sister, struggling with the non-existent relationship with most of her immediate family. I would want to tell them how often exercising as much as you do in the lead up to a marathon is borderline disordered behaviour and probably worth a trip to a therapist rather than a self-congratulatory status update. How I have an ever-growing pile of parking tickets. How I am unsure of how I fit into the social justice space that I spend a lot of my time occupying as I am someone doing pretty damn well out of the existing structural inequality in our society, and is it really possible to lead change when essentially you seek to benefit from maintaining status quo? How with all of this Doing Inspiring Things lately, I’ve been the most tiresome, difficult and flat out unpleasant person to those closest to me. Right now, I feel like the most inspiring woman to me would be one who was kind and generous in spirit and time. How actually an inspiring woman is just a decent human being.

Because here’s the thing: lately I’ve been feeling really hollow. When I think of being hollow, I always have this image of this majestic but decrepit old tree being slowly eaten from the inside. A tree that’s hanging in there but, really, is just a few ant bites away from collapsing entirely. I feel like soon those ants are going to get in, have a little gnaw, and the whole facade will crumble away. I feel like the endless platforms from which we shape and project our identity have left me feeling flat, left me feeling false, and like I’m not actually that person in that instagram or in that status update.

Which brings me back to my marathon. “My marathon” – like it’s a child, or a first step or some other kind of life-defining feat. When I look at the reasons behind why I would run a marathon, and when I undertake that excruciating exercise of extracting the true reason why I did this, I come up empty in terms of inspiration. For me, a marathon was an exercise of pride, of perfectionism, and, if I’m going the whole-hog with the honesty, an exercise of self-loathing. For many women, the marathon has evolved from a mode of relaying victory at war to a declaration of victory in a more insidious war: the war against the self.

After the run, many people said many nice things to me. I projected an image of easy, breezy, just-ran-a-marathon-now-time-for-brunch Di. Part of me reasoned “hey, it’s OK to feel proud about this, if you post it on Facebook it might be a nice change from the stream of cute dog pictures and articles about social and criminal justice”. I wanted to let people know because their response would perhaps make it seem more worthy, more of an achievement. Maybe it would make me feel proud.

I feel so happy for every person who undertakes a marathon and does feel proud. But seeking affirmation as a means to feel proud, that is where the hollowness breeds. We should seek to achieve in a way that make us feel good about ourselves, do the things we truly value – not the things we feel like other people will deem valuable and worthy of acknowledgement. I’m ignoring the complex interplay between what we value and what we’re told to value, and sometimes the former is so obscured by the latter it’s difficult to see what’s us and what’s just a sum of the world in which we live, but for me there was no sense of pride in running a marathon. My reasons were tied up in projecting an image of someone who has it all, someone proclaiming victory in the race to be a perfect woman.

Being able to run a long way or contribute time to a cause says nothing about how inspiring you are: it simply says a lot about where your priorities lie. I want young girls to have role models, but so often we shape our role models around problematic and unattainable ideas of what it means to be a woman. Those young girls don’t need to hear from a bunch of women who have achieved success in the normative sense of the word. They basically live inside a billboard for that picture of success every single day: success looks thin, rich and powerful, and accessorised by a sprinkling of adorable children.

Holding up this image of a successful woman feels like setting a generation of young girls up to fail. Prioritise family? Well, get off the corporate ladder. Building your career? Uh oh, is that the Bad Mother Brigade I hear coming after you? Care about how you look, you’re shallow; don’t care about how you look, you’re letting yourself go. Be strong-minded, but don’t be a bitch; eat well, but not too well; get eight hours sleep, but you better believe you’re the one picking up that crying baby.

Why do we seek inspiration in a way that ignores the fact that there is no one ideal? Why do we hold on to this notion that there is some kind of hierarchy of success out there to which young women should aspire? I’m going to make an assumption that not one woman on that panel would have been a woman who had spent the last ten years raising a family. Not raising a family AND. “Just” raising a family. Because that wouldn’t be enough: raising a family is a side-project, something you’re expected to do on top of your career and your pro bono work and your camellias and your marathon and your Wednesday night date night with your beloved husband.

I don’t subscribe to this myth that there are inspiring women, and by default “just women”; and I feel a far greater sense of accomplishment to be able to finally project an image that doesn’t leave this gaping sense of hollowness than I get from running any distance.

black cab: the great yellow invisible

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 05:51:45 -0400

black cab: the great yellow invisible:

lafoliedefougere:

I found this article on the New Zealand Herald today: “Asians dominate NZ immigration”.

Gingerly, I read it.

After my usual rabid foaming of anger at the same old same old (the elderly are living in fear of slaughter from vicious triads, the fabric of NZ society is looking a touch too…

Saving Gen-Y but not from what we need saving

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 21:56:00 -0400

During one of my many stints as a nanny, I remember one morning my ten-year-old warning me that I “probably shouldn’t eat toast for breakfast”. Why, I asked, hoping desperately it would be because there was some delicious breakfast cereal hiding in the cupboard that only a fool would turn down for toast, or because she knew the bread had been left out the previous night and there was a high chance it would now be dripping in puppy slobber. Of course, it wasn’t for better options or hygiene that I was been warned of the evils of toast: it was because of Carbs – the most insidious and decision-dictating organic compound known to man. Or, at least, woman. The thought of this beautiful, bubbly little being, whose favourite activities included creating detailed lesson plans to teach me Swedish and discussing the nuances of Hannah Montana, being even aware of what a “carb” was – much less that She Should Not Be Eating Carbs – was terrifying. At age ten, this girl was poised at the precipice of a lifelong unhealthy relationship with food – one that would inevitably be shared by her peers and normalised by the world around her.

I know I had it pretty lucky on the body image front growing up. I was raised in a rural community where your body shape was less important than whether you could drive a quad bike (I couldn’t) or whether your parents let you hold the lambs during docking (mine didn’t). For all of the other issues I may have inherited from my parents, body image issues were not one. My mum still considers a cheesy quiche healthy, and pudding was as much an essential meal as breakfast or lunch. I definitely wasn’t being put on a diet at age seven and being humiliated at Starbucks by my mother pouring my hot chocolate in the garbage as she stormed out of that haven of calories. Despite a fairly expansive vocabulary honed through the reading and rereading of The Babysitter’s Club, obesity was not a word with which I was familiar. I can distinctly remember kids at my school – admittedly, largely boys – boasting about who weighed the most. I’m not saying I existed in some image-blind utopia, and I’m acutely aware of the fact my perception would have been at least partially shaped by the fact that I was the wonderful misnomer that is a “normal”-sized child, but at age ten, I didn’t know what a carb was or why toast was the Weight Watcher’s equivalent of adultery.

Obviously my seemingly size-blind bubble could not last. Sometimes I look around my demographic – young professional women, many of whom are high achieving – and marvel at the fact that it seems not one of us has escaped the crushing pressure to be a particular shape. Of course, the way these body image issues manifest and the extent to which they intrude on our daily life varies. But the pervasiveness of weight-related angst is nothing short of remarkable. I stand at a function where drinks and nibbles are provided and watch women wistfully eyeing up cupcakes, only to eventually succumb by cutting one in half and slowly nibbling away at it. I sit at potlucks and feel an almost physical weight around the table as a bunch of twenty-somethings talk about how everything looks just so divine, delicious and delectable, and “ohmygod can you send me the recipe of this tart” only to politely decline a slice. I see post after post of brunch-porn on Instagram only to flick tabs to Twitter and see scatterings of MyFitnessPal workouts. I write this and I eat a fucking rice cracker. There is an epidemic and it’s called Agonising Over Every Mouthful.

However, TV3’s new show “Saving Gen-Y” is concerned with a different “epidemic”, one that is apparently wobbling down our streets with no dignity, the one that people cannot save themselves from because they’re too lazy and disgusting and busy blissfully stuffing their face with Tim Tams. From the TV3 website:

“The show Saving Gen-Y follows the physical and psychological journey of eight young New Zealanders. This programme tracks a year in the lives of a group of eight young New Zealanders trying to break their cycle of food addiction. For some it is a life-or-death decision, as their health is at grave risk due to their weight. For others, it is a decision to improve their quality of life. Through the eyes of our eight people, Saving Gen-Y presents a thought-provoking series that will challenge teenage obesity in New Zealand.”

Below this synopsis you’ll find photos of “our eight people” (/miserable fat people) standing in their underwear and accompanied by bios. The bios, which include vital stats such as the person’s current weight and where they go to school (because there’s nothing like interschool gossip to fuel viewership), purport to be a two-paragraph psychological assessment, served up for viewers to salivate over from their sofas of superiority. The eight young people are depicted as having two things in common: they’re fat and they’re fucked up. Size is equated with misery, normality – both physically and mentally – with thinness.

The Weight Loss Idol model of reality TV is by no means new. Shows like The Biggest Loser consistently top the ratings under the guise of an attempt to help the helpless. What is new – at least in New Zealand – is a weight-loss show specifically focussed on, and arguably targeted at, young people. Perhaps these young people do want to lose weight, which is a) totally up to them, and b) zero percent my business; regardless, it’s clear that putting them on national TV in a country as small and insular as New Zealand to be humiliated and exploited is not going to “save” anyone. Maybe the producer, sipping on coconut water and nibbling raw seeds while sitting behind a desk talking about how we need to SAVE GEN-Y, ought to consider another generation that needs saving: the generation of predominately young women growing up believing their happiness and success in life is inextricably linked to a number on the back of their dress, a generation of girls who would rather be blind than classed obese.

There are so many wonderful people writing on body politics, and by no means do I purport to be one of them. My perspective is as a young woman who lives every day in a world where food really is for thought – for analysis and obsession but not for consumption. I do not put myself out there to be above body policing – at least on a personal level. It feels incongruent critiquing the policing of women’s bodies when I know I can be an authoritarian dictator of my own body. I am a product of so many things, included but not limited to an insulated upbringing, an all-girls high school and now a profession that tells me I should be this high-flying career woman with two kids and a Bond girl body to boot.

No one in Gen Y – not me, not the young people on this show, not the ten-year-old I nannied – need these body missionaries purporting to “save us”. What we need is a free and frank discussion about the dangerous pressure put on especially young women – and increasingly younger girls – to be thin. We need to talk about the problems inherent in assuming you have a right to “save” anyone. We need to challenge the basic premise that You Will Be Happy When You Are Skinny. When there’s a TV show addressing these issues, we can start talking about really “Saving Gen-Y”.

Sticks and stones and weed and bombs, Mr Prosser

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 15:04:31 -0500

Yesterday the story broke of Richard Prosser, a Member of Parliament for the NZ First Party, publishing an opinion piece in which he argued that Muslims should be banned from Western air transport because – among other reasons – “most Muslims are terrorists”. While many people dismissed his comments as being that of a bigoted, small-minded racist not even worthy of a page click let alone words on a page, and many more took to social media with angry, pithy comments pointing out that if all extremists are banned from Western air transport Prosser himself will have some difficulty getting around, some penned more powerful sentiments. Here, my dear friend Saziah shares why Prosser’s rant was more than something to be dismissed and filed under “trolls will be trolls”, or put down to a pathetic political attention grab by an increasingly irrelevant party, and instead a painfully personal attack – while perhaps not new, not to be dismissed.

Normally anything I have to say about, well, anything, but in particular political and quasi political and pseudo political things, is confined to (a) the (arguably) safe confines of my head, (b) my Facebook and Twitter, and (c) rants via txt and email to various friends and, on occasion, my sibling.

Expressing opinions on Facebook has its pros and cons. On the one hand, there’s that instant gratification of a “like.” On the other hand, there’s my heavy self-editing because I am sometimes quite self conscious, often too angry and always aware that my friends list encompasses a diverse mishmash of new friends, family friends, old friends, colleagues, relatives etc and that it would be all too easy for a poor choice of words to unintentionally offend or antagonize. Of course, some days I am basically like “ZOMG WTF POTATOES!?!@”

So today, as per usual, I posted a link about Richard Prosser’s Muslim men should not be allowed on planes thing on my Facebook, accompanied with a comment along the lines of “No, Mr Prosser, YOU are a troglodyte” and emailed Di with a (commonly used in our case) “wow have you seen this” one liner email.

I was going to leave it at that. GRRR ARGGH – that’s all you’re getting out of me when it comes to discussing an obviously racist sentiment expressed by a racist MP. I wanted to limit my response to trollolollll and move on because I just wouldn’t know where to start with what was wrong with what he said (hint: all of the things!). Why waste my breath, you know?

Except Di responded, not only in her usual supportive solidarity and shared degree of frustration. But she asked me if I was okay. Because surely something like this must be quite hurtful.

And she was right. I am not okay. I AM hurt. And for once I felt I should at least speak out in more than the confines of a negligible status update, because this hurt.

It hurts because you know when this hits the different news websites, and when Campbell Live or someone else picks up on it, while a lot of people will dismiss it as “Prosser’s just an idiot” and some will point out that it’s completely inappropriate for an MP to say something this blatantly racist, others will start reminding everyone not to forget that Muslims *really are* terrorists so why is everyone defending them, and more people still will silently agree that it was about time someone “spoke up.” At time of writing, Peters, while assuring everyone that this is not what his party stands for, hasn’t outright condemned Prosser entirely or demanded an apology.

I won’t talk about how advocating THAT degree of discrimination is not only socially and morally abhorrent but legally fraught. I will not list for the you the number of rights it would trample on.

I will tell you why, personally, this is yet another slap in the face. For me, politics is always personal. But this hits home. It hurts me in the same way it hurt me when, post 9/11, some stranger in a West Auckland supermarket had the audacity to walk up to my mother and tell her to go back where she came from because she wasn’t welcome here, simply because she was wearing a head scarf. It hurts in same way it hurt me when my younger brother came home from his part-time job one day in a North Shore mall, having dealt with a customer who, in response to my brother’s generic offer of assistance, said he didn’t need any help from the likes of him, who were “coming here” and “taking all the jobs.”

This isn’t to say anything of the years of name calling as children and “harmless joking around” as adults we’ve had to put up with. Yes, yes it’s hilarious when someone lumps all Bangladeshis together with Indians and Pakistanis and Sri Lankans and, in my case, a few times “Africans” (because, don’t you know, Africa is a country).

It goes beyond the exhaustion of having to detail my ethnic origin and travel history to every person who asks, and they do ask, all the fucking time. I don’t usually have a problem telling you I am originally from Bangladesh, I am proud to be Bengali, or why I don’t have an accent, or why I speak English well. Of course I give them the polite, quick version “oh my parents moved around a lot when I was a kid” instead of “I wasn’t born in Bangladesh and I have never lived there, I am a New Zealand citizen and of course I can speak English, I have a fucking Masters degree in Law for fuck’s sake” because, really, I JUST want to pay for my chocolate bar and leave your shop. And look, now the chocolate bar has multiplied into several chocolate bars because of the stress you’ve caused me. So, really, kudos on the ingenious sales strategy.

But fatigue from that sort of borderline offensive, often “harmless” curiousity I can handle.

This hurts particularly because, on an official level, it goes to the heart of the question of my identity.

Richard Posser’s suggestion that Muslim men of a certain age not be allowed on Western planes is offensive, blatantly racist and, let’s face it, ludicrous. There is no doubt about that. But Mr Posser’s comments hurt me personally because he is challenging who I am.

I am a Bengali New Zealander. I am also a feminist, a bookworm, a foodie and a cinephile. Some days I have good taste in music and some days I have bad taste in music. I love the beach but hate getting sand everywhere. I speak several languages. I still get upset at the thought that Dumbledore dies. When I lived in Auckland, I thought of West Auckland as home. Now that I live in Wellington, I think of Auckland as home, and of Wellington as “my city,” whatever that means. I bake decent brownies (oh the irony).

Oh, yes, I am also a Muslim.

You would think that would be the only thing about me that would be relevant to this conversation. But it is not. We are a sum of all our parts. Reducing us to one characteristic, especially one that is viewed with a lot of prejudice and misunderstanding, dehumanizes us. It is destructive. It is destructive to our personhood, in your eyes. And it is destructive to my identity in my own eyes.

I am not a perfect creature, and I grapple with my own identity every day, much the same way most people, for various reasons do. Possibly more so because of added factors. What I don’t need is an MP telling me what I am or am not.

Richard Prosser’s comments hurt because he’s saying I’m not a real New Zealander. I am an Other. I am suspect because I don’t, undoubtedly, look like his daughters. My little brother, now 20, studying a Bachelor of Commerce, with his terribly cheesy sense of humour and his kind, kind heart, who loves his sports and protein shakes but who I will partly always think of as that bossy toddler with chubby cheeks, is for no other reason than because Mr Prosser, from his position of power and privilege says so, not enough of a New Zealander. Because of only one thing, out of the many things that he is, because he is Muslim. Not enough of a New Zealander to deserve the minimum modicum of respect one would expect from an MP when talking about one of the citizens of this country, simply based on his faith, and, let’s be honest, the colour of his skin. Not enough of a New Zealander to get on his Western planes.

I can’t begin to discuss the issues behind considering Muslims a homogenous group, of defining the term “Western” or even how comments like this create and solidify the language of “us and them.” It is a self fulfilling prophecy. In Othering us, you are causing us to consider ourselves the Other, thus creating an Other when previously there was none. How, in 2013, are we still grappling with basic orientalism? After all these decades, isn’t it actually shameful that Said’s words still remain relevant?

Have some Muslims committed acts of terrorism? Yes. Have some Christians? Yes. Have some white people? Why yes. And so on and so forth. Are all the complex geopolitical issues from which a lot of this sentiment stems so easily summed up as “Muslims bad, non Muslims good” – I would argue: fuck no.

More importantly, I shouldn’t have to explain myself. I shouldn’t have to question my identity as a routine Tuesday afternoon activity. I shouldn’t be made to feel like a second-class citizen, not simply because I am not, but because such a thing should never exist, because if there is a hierarchy, a differentiation between citizens in that way, our personhood in the eyes of the State loses all meaning. Citizenship loses all meaning.

To allow MPs to spout that form of rhetoric unchecked makes us complicit in this concept of second-class citizenship. And it kills me that that means I am part of the system that is dehumanizing me. An MP who doesn’t understand that the legitimacy of his role and the power it entails derives from the people of this country, and that I AM the people of this country, my Muslim brother is, my Muslim friends are, my Muslim parents are, that MP can never understand that his position is not simply a platform to mouth off but an office bound by duty to the people, like me, from whence his power comes.

It makes me angry that MPs have such little appreciation for their role, that they would abuse it in this manner. All we’ll get from politicans on this is a lot of political posturing to their own ends. All we’ll get from the media on this is some blasé reporting, no critique that wouldn’t fit into a nifty little soundbyte that would retain consumer interest, no critical analysis, not one mention of the word “Islamophobia.”

I was hurt, and I needed to get this out. It is not an intellectual or academic piece of writing on rights and power politics, I didn’t go into immigration or multiculturalism or geopolitics or counterterrorism or traverse the topic of race in any meaningful way. Incidentally, one could argue, if anything, only making statements after carefully taking all such relevant issues into consideration actually IS Mr Prosser’s job. But this is a snapshot of how just another passing instance of racism, which will no doubt fade away in everyone else’s memories by tomorrow, made me question something as fundamental as my being here, in New Zealand, in my very own home. And I can assure you I’m not the only one.

For all the difference it makes I might as well have banged my head against my desk and left it at that. I should have left it at “No, Mr Prosser, YOU are a troglodyte.” I should have just left it at grrrr. Arrrggh.

"The press covers crime (especially relatively rare instances of random violence against white..."

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 16:17:09 -0500

“The press covers crime (especially relatively rare instances of random violence against white people) because crime sells – because the white audience loves to hear about it. Then the intensive, decontextualised and highly salable coverage of crime becomes evidence of a Crime Epidemic; the Audience gets “sick and tired” of hearing about a thing that every marketer knows it actually never gets sick or tired of hearing about, and it empowers its elected representatives to Get Tough. Thus the criminal is demonised.”

- Jonathan Franzen, “Control Units”

"Let me tell you a story of an experience I had as a trial judge, which may bring home to you the..."

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 18:55:59 -0500

“Let me tell you a story of an experience I had as a trial judge, which may bring home to you the importance of a representative bench. One slow afternoon, I was asked to take a family property division case. The wife’s counsel was female. The court reporter was female. The court clerk was female. The only male in the room was the husband, representing himself. We heard the wife’s case first. I then turned to the husband and invited him to make submissions. He seemed to be having trouble rising to his feet. I repeated my invitation, reassuring him that he need not be nervous; we simply needed to have his side of the story and his evidence in order to make a just decision. Finally, he struggled to his feet. With a look of umbrage, he said: ― Frankly, your Honor, I feel a little outnumbered. I assured him that he needs have no concern because he was the only man in the courtroom; we would do justice, and he would not be prejudiced by his gender. He proceeded to present his side of the case, and in the end, I divided the property 50-50, as the law required. It is only when I went home later that evening that the thought struck me: how many times, for how many decades, had women stood before all-male tribunals with all-male lawyers at counsel table and in the body of the courtroom — if they had the courage to even enter them — and felt more than “a little outnumbered”? How many Aboriginal Canadians and other members of minority communities brought before an austere and perhaps alien justice system would have similarly felt “a little outnumbered”?”

- Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin, Chief Justice of Canada “Judging:The Challenges of Diversity”, Judicial Studies Committee Inaugural Annual Lecture, 7 June 2012

seemsforever: durianseeds: “I Think I Am In Friend-Love With...

Sat, 01 Dec 2012 02:58:21 -0500

seemsforever:

durianseeds:

“I Think I Am In Friend-Love With You” written by and illustrated by Yumi Sakugawa, published in Sadie Magazine, 2012.

i love this.

If a constitutional review is announced and no one knows, did it happen at all?

Sun, 02 Sep 2012 00:12:00 -0400

There’s a constitutional review going on but you’d be forgiven for not knowing. Or, frankly, caring. You know when a word has got five syllables it must be important, but there are so many reviews going on and, well, sometimes you only have so many review spoons. For many New Zealanders, bigger concerns occupy our minds: jobs, debt, and, for an increasing number of people, survival.

But this review isn’t just about one particular issue or one particular government policy; this is about the way we set up government and keep it in line, which affects all of the issues and all of the policies. Back in December 2010 the National Party and Māori Party announced a “wide-ranging review of New Zealand’s constitutional arrangements”. The terms of reference include electoral maters such as the size of Parliament and the length of Parliament’s term; the role of the Treaty of Waitangi within New Zealand’s current constitutional arrangements; and whether we should have a written constitution.

Upon making the announcement, Bill English stated: “This is the start of what will be a considered process over the next three years.” That was in December 2010 – nearly two years ago – meaning we are nearly two thirds of the way through this “considered process”. So far the only public signs of progress have been limited to the appointment of an advisory panel and a cross-party reference group, and a couple of half-hearted press releases. Those who have seen this “progress” have had to seek it out. There’s no website, no announced plan for public engagement, and no public education campaign as to what consideration of all of these important constitutional issues even entails. The MPs on the cross-party reference group have conceded that they have met just once, which was presumably after the announcement and before the change of members following the 2011 election. No doubt the Constitutional Advisory Panel has been working hard, but without political impetus in terms of generating conversation, funding engagement, and putting the review on the political agenda, its work is effectively meaningless.

And what is painfully clear is the lack of political impetus. It’s hard to generate interest in something few people even know exists. It’s even harder when those who are supposedly trying to generate interest serve to lose from the likely outcomes of that interest.

At EmpowerNZ, a recent event aimed at generating a discussion around whether New Zealand should have a written constitution (a private and non-governmental initiative, I should add), Dame Claudia Orange had one word for what a constitution is about: power. Who has it, how they exercise it, how the power is constrained – this is a constitution. At the moment, those questions can be quite easily answered: Parliament has the power and the government of the day exercises that power with few constraints. Indeed, New Zealand has one of the most unfettered versions of parliamentary sovereignty in the Western democratic world. What does that mean? Our constitution gives more power to our Parliament, and contains less checks and balances, than that of most other countries. On the face of it, we trust our politicians to act according to our interests more than any other Western democracy.

So it is not surprising politicians are in no hurry to make noise about this review. One outcome of adopting a written constitution could be that the constitution is made to be supreme law. That would give the judiciary the power to strike down legislation inconsistent with the constitution. That would mean our Prime Minister couldn’t get up, give the finger to the Waitangi Tribunal and say I’ll Do What I Want, because the courts might just Do What They Want.

The enormous opportunity for change cannot be overstated. We are one of only three countries in the world with an unwritten constitution. And that’s been, in large, working OK. Politicians seem happy to trot out the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” line. But how can the public judge it “ain’t broke” if we aren’t aware of its existence – of its flaws and its risks? Are we really going to wait around until it is seriously “broke” before actually sitting down and doing something? And who determines what is “broke”? I would say the fact the majority of the population doesn’t know what a constitution is – the instrument that fundamentally controls the relationship between the state and the People – shows the situation is pretty damn broke. Do we wait for politicians – the people who ultimately benefit from the lack of constraints on public power – to say it is “broke”? Or do we look at a current situation, such as the water rights claim and its implications for the legislation to sell off state assets, and say, well actually, now is probably as good a time as any to be looking at the almost unfettered power of government to legislate. Now is as good a time as any to look at what place the Treaty of Waitangi – as the founding document of this country – has in our constitutional arrangements and how it ought to be considered when legislation infringes on the rights contained within.

I don’t necessarily advocate for a written constitution. What I advocate for is the opportunity for the People to make that decision themselves. That opportunity will not be realised by announcing a constitutional review, which the government knows will mean absolutely nothing to the vast majority of New Zealanders, and proceeding to do nothing but a few token press releases and photo opportunities.

At this recent conference, a cross-party panel was given an opportunity to discuss the possibility of a written constitution. The National Party MP made the caveat that “he was not speaking on behalf of the National Party”, because as a party, they have only discussed the review once. Once. Two-thirds of the way through this “considered process”, and the party co-leading this whole review have only had one conversation within caucus. When the review was announced, many touted it as just a token gesture to the Māori Party of which nothing would eventuate. Sadly, that’s looking increasingly likely.

Many people I have talked to about this review – people who are politically engaged, well educated and many who are concerned about the current direction in which our government is heading – have plainly stated they don’t know much about it. They have said if they did know something about it, they would probably really care. Perhaps that’s the greatest sign that something is “broke” in our current constitutional arrangements: that a government can put all of these things up for review, bank on the fact few people will understand what’s at stake, and carry on down its path of flagrant disregard for the rights of citizens.

Note: I was a facilitator at the recent EmpowerNZ event. These thoughts are my own and do not represent the thoughts of any of the speakers, facilitators, participants or organisers at the conference.

Postscript: It seems in August an “interim website” was set up, which details the plan for public engagement. Not only has the launch of this “interim website” come one-and-a-half years after the review was announced, it doesn’t even show up in a Google for “constitutional review New Zealand”. And we all know if it doesn’t show up in a Google search, no one is going to know about it.

The cowardice of New Zealand First

Tue, 31 Jul 2012 04:29:00 -0400

Today Winston Peters made a public statement that NZ First would not be voting in support of the Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Bill. This was not because the NZ First necessarily opposes the Bill, but because, to quote Peters:

“NZ First… wants a public referendum to decide the issue. We believe issues such as this should be decided by trusting the people of NZ to decide rather than to leave it to temporarily empowered MPs.”

I understand that when you belong to NZ First, being only “temporarily empowered” must always be at the forefront of your mind. But it is clear that MPs abusing their power as democratically elected leaders is not NZ First’s motivation for demanding a referendum. Instead, it is painfully clear the real reason behind this stance: cowardice.

Let’s start off with the obvious: representative democracy. The basic premise of representative democracy is that it is unworkable for decision-makers to consult with the wider public on every issue so we elect a smaller number of people to represent our views and make decisions on our behalf. A system in which decision-makers go back to the public on every issue is known as direct democracy. New Zealand does not have this system. Instead, every three years we elect 120 MPs to act on our behalf, spend some of our money, and make decisions that promote the rights and well-being of all citizens. We do this in the belief that this model is more desirable than requiring them to consult on every issue that comes before Parliament. In this system, temporary empowerment and accountability through elections are generally seen as good things. Dictatorships are not.

While this is the basic premise of representative democracy, it does not mean once MPs are elected they have a free reign to do as they wish until the next election. They should be regularly gauging public opinion and ensuring they are acting in the interests of the people. However, referenda are often a bad way to go about this, and referenda are especially bad ways to go about this when the issue in question is of some importance to all New Zealanders but of heighted importance to a minority of New Zealanders. In other words, a referendum should be a last resort and should almost never be resorted to when we are looking at a minority issue.

There are many reasons I believe referenda are an undesirable way of gauging public opinion. They are blunt: they over-simplify often complex questions and insist that we provide a yes-or-no answer. The “anti-smacking” referendum showed – if nothing else – the futility in asking a question to the whole nation if it is a poorly-worded question. Referenda are hideously expensive – even if done with an election. And, most importantly in my opinion, they no longer provide a useful voice of the nation. One only needs look back to last year’s election to see the traditional methods of voting are not working. The trip-down-to-election-booth model does not reflect modern life. It’s probably the only time in three years I actually use a pen to write something important. Referenda are no different – if you are only able to mobilise 68% of the population on what is effectively a vote on every issue for the next three years, good luck mobilising them to vote on just one issue. Until the process around referenda – including the way in which citizens initiated referenda signatures are collected – reflects the realities of modern life (read: computers) they will generally not be a useful way to gauge public opinion.

I qualify that with the word ‘generally’ because I believe referenda still play an important ‘last resort’ function. It is for this reason that I support the asset sales referendum. It’s clear that Labour and the Greens did not see a referendum as their preferred option. There has been a long and hard campaign against asset sales going for some time now. I have no doubt that if Labour had been in a stronger position on other fronts (namely, popularity in terms of leadership and wider policy), asset sales could have easily taken them to victory in the 2011 election. However, that was not to be, and as a last resort to protect what essentially is the future wealth of all New Zealanders I support the efforts to stop asset sales.

Which brings me to the major difference between the asset sales referendum, which I accept has merit as a last resort, and NZ First’s call for a petition on marriage equality. Asset sales affect all New Zealanders. Currently, we all own those assets and they are about to be sold back to us and eventually sold to whoever can afford them. It affects us, our children and our grandchildren. However, marriage equality is different. It affects us all, yes. One does not need to be in a same-sex relationship to support basic human rights. However, the difference with marriage equality is that is has a large impact on the lives and rights of a minority of New Zealanders – 10 per cent if you accept conventional statistics. This is not to say I think anyone who heterosexual should not get a say on marriage equality. It’s simply a fact that it affects some people – namely those who are currently deprived of rights afforded to all other citizens – far more. It is for this reason I believe a referendum would be the worst possible way to go about changing the law in this area. MPs need to be mindful when they vote on this Bill that public opinion is important, but that as a minority issue public opinion is just one consideration, and that protecting the rights of minorities should be a greater consideration. I strongly believe public opinion is in favour of marriage equality, but really that’s just a bonus.

It is clear that Winston Peters likes to fancy himself as the cunning maverick of New Zealand politics. No doubt he is very aware that there is no way National will initiate a referendum on marriage equality. They have repeatedly said it’s not a priority for them. Further, there is no citizens-initiated referendum in the pipeline, and of course no one is going to collect 200’000 signatures when the issue is already before the House. Instead, Winston thinks he has found his party a way to take no stance at all and allowed NZ First to do what it does best – sit on the fence. Essentially, NZ First has shown itself too coward to take a clear stance – ironically, in a situation it as a party did not need to even take a stance, given that it will be a conscience vote.

Perhaps, though, Winston has for once positioned himself on a barbed wire fence. What this stance shows is a party battling with its identity. It is a party that fears sitting too close to the left and too close to the right so positions itself nowhere. It is no secret that NZ First has taken a number of left-leaning positions lately, including opposition to asset sales and support for extending paid parental leave. Perhaps Winston is scared that NZ First appears too left-leaning and he felt the need to throw a line to conservatives. However, this is not an issue to assert political identity or to try and grab a few cheap votes. This is an issue that allows New Zealand to finally afford all citizens the same rights under the law. It allows New Zealand to remove what is currently a massive black mark on our human rights record. When you have a suicide rate among young queer people as high as it is, you have an opportunity to tell them they are not second-class citizens that deserve to be discriminated against by their own country. NZ First can claim that they do not necessarily oppose marriage equality. However, to take no stance as they have effectively opted to do is essentially the same as taking a stance against marriage equality. In the words of Desmond Tutu: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor”.

thedsgnblog: Peter Orntoft | http://peterorntoft.com I’m a...

Mon, 14 May 2012 18:15:16 -0400

thedsgnblog:

Peter Orntoft | http://peterorntoft.com

I’m a visual communicator based in Copenhagen. I’m currently available for freelance work so don’t hesitate to contact me if you’re interested in a collaboration. Check out my website for resumé and more work.

the design blog: facebook | twitter

"There is absolutely no argument that justifies the view marriage should not be extended to same-sex..."

Thu, 10 May 2012 22:41:00 -0400

“There is absolutely no argument that justifies the view marriage should not be extended to same-sex couples. Not one. If you oppose same-sex marriage, and opposing same-sex marriage is different from opposing marriage generally, then you support the notion that particular people should be deprived of a right extended to all others by virtue of their sexual orientation. You stand hand-in-hand with those people who once told women they could not vote and blacks they were not allowed to own land. You tell me that my brother and my best friend are lesser beings worthy of lesser rights. If you are a Member of Parliament, it is time to listen to your people, stand up and reject those arguments founded in bigotry and hatred, and push for marriage equality.”

- My plea to John Key submitted here: http://www.marriageequality.co.nz/

Something is rotten in the state of New Zealand

Fri, 04 May 2012 21:30:00 -0400

Yesterday somewhere between 2000-5000 people marched in Wellington against the government’s plans to partially sell state assets. This followed a similar sized march in Auckland last weekend and a week-long hikoi starting in Cape Reinga. After last year’s record low voter turn out, it would seem that when it comes to political issues apathy is rife in New Zealand. People seem disinterested in the traditional ways in which politicians engage with the public and disillusioned by the corruption and lack of integrity displayed by some politicians. Which is why the size of these protests and the strength of the opposition to asset sales is all the more impressive. Protest is the antithesis of apathy, and the fact that an issue has mobilised so many New Zealanders is good reason for the government to sit up and take notice.

Did John Key sit up and take notice? No. In fact, John Key’s response to thousands of New Zealanders spending their lunch break protesting on the streets (and thousands more supporting them from around the country on Twitter, Facebook and other online forums) was this:

“How many people did they have? Ok, where was it? [laughs] Well, OK, no I wasn’t aware of it.”

More repugnant than his words is his manner. Key laughs and smirks as he dismisses this protest – the angry, desperate voices of thousands of the people he represents demanding answers. When around 10’000 people protest over your actions in the space of a week, you know about it. And if you don’t – if you’re not ‘aware of it’ and you show a complete lack of interest in being made aware of it – you are positioning yourself as a leader content on acting without the support of the people and without even the respect to listen to their grievances. The image of that hardened face, scornful smirk and that disdainful laugh are not images of democratic governance. We elect our leaders to represent us: to listen, engage and give life to the will of the people. The very reason we participate in the democratic process is the expectation that the successful candidate will act as a voice for all of the people – not just those who voted for them. A leader who refuses to answers the hard questions, a man who laughs at thousands of his people voicing a plea for change and disrespects the sense injustice that drives people to protest, is not fulfilling their function as a democratically elected leader. At the very least, John Key has a duty to listen to and respect those with a dissenting view.

Last night, Key appeared on Campbell Live for perhaps one of his longest and most pressing interviews in some time. For this, people congratulated him. They said that John Key had ‘fronted up’ and YOU GO JOHN KEY, YOU GO for doing so. John Key deserves no praise for finally agreeing to an interview with a reputable journalist. The fact we see Key fronting up to the media on controversy within his government and hard questions stemming from his actions as a rare event and one for which he deserves praise reflects a dire state. This is part of John Key’s job description. Currently, he is the teacher that refuses to get up in front of a classroom; he is actor that refuses to perform. As the leader of a democratic state, paid and entrusted with power by the people, he has a duty to ‘front up’ and be accountable for both his actions and that of his government. This is not something to be congratulated; this is something to be expected.

Every day I hear Radio New Zealand reiterate that ‘John Key is unavailable for comment’ on whatever the pressing issue of that day. John Key is never available for comment. He is available to Year 6 students to discuss the perks of being prime minister, yet he is unavailable for interviews with one of the most widely listened to and reputable radio shows in the country – every morning and every day. If John Key wants to discuss how much he enjoys being prime minister, what, with all of that free food and spare change jangling in his pocket, that is just fine with me. But that is the warm fuzzy part of being a democratically elected leader. His core function is to represent and be accountable to the people. It is this function for which John Key needs to start being ‘available’.

John Key states that this government has a mandate for asset sales, given that ‘over one million New Zealanders voted for National’ in the 2011 election. Despite this incredibly flawed logic that ignores the fact people vote for a party for a myriad of reasons – perhaps least of all policy – and the fact Labour, as the only viable alternative for many voters, was wallowing in the depths of unpopularity, this argument cannot withstand a citizens initiated referendum that patently states he does not have this mandate; that the majority of New Zealanders – red, blue or otherwise – oppose asset sales. If this referendum takes place, a vote on the single issue of asset sales must override his supposed ‘election mandate’. If it does not, and if he continues to smirk and laugh in the face of widespread opposition and discontent, this country needs sit up and take one, long look at where we are heading. Because there is something rotten in the state of New Zealand and it is this: we have a government that is committed to seeing through its agenda with absolutely no respect for the will of its people; a government more concerned with backroom deals and short-term solutions than representative government and this country’s long-term future. We have a man leading us who does not see it as not his problem – not something about which he should even be aware – that thousands of people are vocally opposing his government’s plans. A man who has the audacity to laugh in the face of his people, who continuously refuses to be held to account for the actions of his government, and a man who is disinterested in the mounting frustration and unrest in New Zealand, is something rotten and we all need to sit up and take notice.

Wellington being all beautiful and stuff.

Fri, 04 May 2012 21:09:56 -0400

Wellington being all beautiful and stuff.

Things I would like to ask John Key

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 03:41:00 -0400

Does it ever bother you that your entire public persona is built around making you seem like a buffoon? That your media advisors’ mandate is simply to make you seem like a loveable chump? Do you realise that by playing into this caricature you are implicitly agreeing with the notion that the majority of New Zealanders are just too dumb to elect a leader who is smart, forward-thinking and politically astute?

Have you ever considered that it is not that youth are unengaged with the political system, but that your conception of engagement fails to reflect the way in which young people engage? Yes, voting is important, but a triennal vote is only one form of political expression and not necessarily the most important form to all young people. Remember John, it’s a dynamic environment. Things, technology, forms of engagement – they’re all changing. When you tell young people that you think they’re so disengaged they can’t even get out of bed before 7pm, you’re not proving that young people are disengaged with the political process; you’re proving that politicians are disengaged with young people.

Have you considered a good concealer for those bags under your eyes? Do you think it’s wrong that your appearance is almost never the subject of such snarky remarks, yet when Helen Clark was leader more words were written and more conversation had about her appearance than perhaps any other aspect of her leadership? But seriously, get some sleep.

When you came into government, did you actually believe that you would simply ‘cap the public service’ and not butcher it to pieces? I should probably remind you that when you came into government, the world was already in the throes of an economic recession and, on your own admission, things were pretty bleak. Yet, on these facts, you thought that you could save all of this money (which, by the way, is actually a tiny drop in the bucket in terms of public expenditure: please refer to ‘building new prisons’ question below) within the public service without making any job cuts. And now things have suddenly changed so dramatically that you need to cut hundreds of people from the public service? It just seems odd.

On the subject of this bleak economic outlook, our ‘dynamic environment’, and preparing New Zealand for a long-term future that is likely to be charactised by increasing insecurity around land, water and resources: asset sales. Common sense, try it some time. You might enjoy the feeling.

Do you find it ironic that so much of your success is framed in terms of your ‘state house upbringing’, yet your proposed welfare reforms further stigmatise any reliance on state support and frame those who receive support from the state as no-hopers and bludgers? Does it ever occur to you that the very message your reforms send will act as a barrier to moving off welfare; that while it seems your family had faith in you and supported you in every endeavour, not every child in New Zealand grows up with those kind of positive messages, and so when even their own Prime Minister tells them they’re no hopers, it’s pretty hard to get past that and go on to become ‘the next John Key’?

Actually, in general, inequality in this country: when is that going to feature on your agenda? I have a few different types you could look into if you need suggestions – income, gender, racial just to name a few. Also, so you know, increasing GST and giving tax breaks that ultimately serve only to benefit the wealthiest doesn’t count as addressing inequality.

I’m a little curious as to why you have proposed a new $900 million prison in Wiri. If this is spare cash just lying around, can I please suggest 101 better uses for this government expenditure? How about giving it to some of those services like Women’s Refuge that actually make a positive, useful contribution to keeping our communities safe and from which you cut funding last year? If you are spending this $900 million with the hope that this prison will actually prove effective in either reducing prisoner rates or cutting crime and building safer communities, please let me direct you to the overwhelming amount of the international literature and research that conclusively proves more prisons and higher incarceration rates do nothing to bring down crime and that punitive solutions ultimately benefit no one. I can send some to you, highlighted and all, given that you probably won’t have any public servants left to do this kind of research.

That’s probably enough for today. I would hate to bore you with the ramblings of a politically disengaged and somewhat despairing young person.

Unmuted: You Don't Have My Vote

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 02:41:40 -0500

Unmuted: You Don't Have My Vote:

innovateafrica:

You must have heard of the viral video created by Invisible Children (IC), a U.S. organization that has launched a one-year campaign (expires December 31, 2012) to eliminate Joseph Kony, the head of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel group in Northern Uganda that has been embroiled…

thedailywhat: Urban Intervention of the Day: Austrian artist...

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 23:54:30 -0500

thedailywhat:

Urban Intervention of the Day: Austrian artist Werner Reiterer’s “Street Chandelier.”

[notcot.]

Response from the New Zealand Herald

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 15:13:00 -0500

I have received the following response to my complaint to the New Zealand Herald. Needless to say, I do not find this satisfactory; I think Holmes’ article clearly DOES intend to be a commentary on all Māori people, and — sorry New Zealand Herald — but Holmes’ rant was hateful and bigoted, not ‘raw and provocative’. This article was nothing ‘like Helen Clark’s [criticism] of protest leaders as “haters and wreckers”’ and, while I am an ardent believer in the freedom of speech, I do not believe in inciting racial hatred or irresponsible publications that cry freedom of expression when a journalist has simply overstepped the line of decency and good taste.

I will be lodging a formal complaint with the Press Council and hope the New Zealand Herald comes to its senses and apologises for this article.

[Edit: It seems this was the stock reply the Herald sent to everyone who complained. It also seems the Herald needs to work on its email policies, because my friend received her response along with a thread of emails which included the Online Editor making a snide comment to David Hastings that ‘There are eight other identical messages featuring this exact same stuff from different people…’. As my wonderful friend and the recipient of that thread responded, ‘”stuff” was arguments based on principles stated by the Press Council, and references to the Bill of Rights Act 1990. So basically professional principles and the law. You should look those things up sometime, it’s fascinating “stuff.”’]

Dear Diane,

Thank you for your formal complaint regarding the Paul Holmes column of Saturday Feb 11.

As you are no doubt aware, it is one of many messages we have received on both sides of the ledger since publication. Those supporting his right to his opinion have markedly outweighed those against. Having said that, we are concerned that a number of people have taken such strong exception to it.

There is no question the piece was written in a raw and provocative style. But it is not, as many people have suggested, a commentary on all Maori people or Maori culture generally but on the few protesters who disrupted proceedings. Nor does it breach Press Council principles, which accommodate freedom of opinion in comment pieces.

It was one of a series of opinion pieces discussing Waitangi Day and its place in New Zealand society which began the previous Saturday with a front page cover story by Buddy Mikaere and included an editorial which recognised the obvious divisions in society but supported the idea of the day as being our national day.

The column in question was clearly aimed at the behaviour and attitudes of Waitangi Day protesters at Waitangi itself – similar to criticism by former Prime Minister Helen Clark of protest leaders as ‘haters and wreckers’, in another context. Disparaging and critical words, but neither intended to cast all Maori in that light. Holmes expressed his opinion as a columnist as he is entitled to do in a country where freedom of speech is regarded as a central pillar of public discourse.

Although many have objected to it — as is their right — I hope they can recognise that the very ‘freedom’ in the concept of freedom of speech is meaningless if it applies only to speech that offends no one. As has been recognised by the Press Council, true freedom can mean the freedom to be ignorant, offensive and wrong.

We strive to publish the breadth of opinion on major public issues and no doubt will carry strong views in the paper and on our website in response to the latest Holmes column.

David Hastings

Editor

Weekend Herald

seemsforever: gpoy

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 05:13:02 -0500

seemsforever:

gpoy

itsaboutinterior: Genius :) Photography by Noemi Goudal.

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 22:18:54 -0500

itsaboutinterior:

Genius :)

Photography by Noemi Goudal.