Announce protest actions, general chit chat or give your opinion on issues we haven’t covered for the day.
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EDITORS NOTE: – By the way, here’s a list of shit that will get your comment dumped. Sexist language, homophobic language, racist language, anti-muslim hate, transphobic language, Chemtrails, 9/11 truthers, climate deniers, anti-fluoride fanatics, anti-vaxxer lunatics and ANYONE that links to fucking infowar.
This is a bit grim for anyone with COPD; and that’s disproportionately Maori, and the poor. Anyone with persistent breathing problems, that they have never got around to (or could afford the expense of) addressing, had better follow the guidelines for over 70s during Pandemic Alert level 3:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5247(20)30009-4/fulltext
https://www.healthnavigator.org.nz/health-a-z/c/copd/
https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/populations/maori-health/tatau-kahukura-maori-health-statistics/nga-mana-hauora-tutohu-health-status-indicators/respiratory-disease
It’s happened again – I was typing out my thoughts and then touched on one key down the bottom and they vanished. This has happened before, the keyboard is designed to offer certain responses which I don’t want and I can’t find an easy answer to my problems. I could probably change to another program or platform or something but it means retraining myself and probably there will be problems there too. I have spent too many hours to count over the last few years writing expressing hopes suggesting what could be done, and how we could have a better nation tackling all our problems, not just some, though it would mean cutting down our wants and living a bit more simply, mindfully, carefully. I didn’t notice much difference but there was hope, and then Covid-19 came along, our own destructive cyclone, the bomb that kills off living people and leaves structures alone. So I am taking a break, and I hope that others will keep on.
This morning I have been listening to Nick Drake and the River Man – it resonates with me today:
“River Man”
Betty came by on her way
Said she had a word to say
About things today
And fallen leaves.
I have a friend Betty who rang yesterday, and I have fallen leaves to clean up all around my front yard.
Said she hadn’t heard the news
Hadn’t had the time to choose
A way to lose
But she believes.
Where we all are. And she believes that trying to understand what drives people can help us understand.
Going to see the river man
Going to tell him all I can
About the plan
For lilac time.
If he tells me all he knows
About the way his river flows
And all night shows
In summertime.
We have both been to see the river man, to try to get in touch with nature and our nature, human nature.
I have made great plans for lilac time, but the weather or something was wrong – they didn’t, couldn’t work.
Betty said she prayed today
For the sky to blow away
Or maybe stay
She wasn’t sure
For when she thought of summer rain
Calling for her mind again
She lost the pain
And stayed for more.
Betty thought and rested and tried again. So did I, picking up little positives and hoping they would grow.
Going to see the river man
Going to tell him all I can
About the ban
On feeling free.
If he tells me all he knows
About the way his river flows
I don’t suppose
It’s meant for me.
Oh, how they come and go
Oh, how they come and go.
I’ve been talking to the river man flowing round the country. And some of what the river man says is so wise.
And I have listened to all he knows. And how the river flows, but what i think is that the flow isn’t meant for me,
and people who want to live with respect and love for each other.
And the words of Magic speak for all the young ones being abandoned by The System and are committing suicide though a small majority seem happy to accommodate it. And those that aren’t happy argue about whether the sky should blow away, or how free the ban on feeling or being free should be.
Magic
I was born to love no one
No one to love me
Only the wind in the long green grass
The frost in a broken tree.
I was made to love magic
All its wonder to know
But you all lost that magic
Many many years ago.
I was born to use my eyes
Dream with the sun and the skies
To float away in a lifelong song
In the mist where melody flies.
I was made to love magic…
I was born to sail away
Into a land of forever
Not to be tied to an old stone grave
In your land of never.
I was made to love magic…
https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/nickdrake/magic.html
Mandatory Mass Surveillance is Coming to You! The ministry of health has been consulting on tracing with the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), New Zealand’s communications spy agency, amid growing concern globally that contact tracing could lead to mass surveillance.
Will Maori and poor people, beneficiaries be forced to be tagged in or they’ll lose a portion of their income?
Did you know, have heard of, Dean Parker, Playwright and socialist?
Part of an obituary – memorial from Roger Hall.
Roger Hall, friend and playwright: There was some debate as to whether Dean was an unlucky playwright, or whether his plays inflicted bad luck on theatres. The run of his Midnight in Moscow at Court Theatre in Christchurch came to an abrupt halt on February 22, 2011 when the earthquake brought the house down.
A season of the same play performed by Auckland Theatre Company was halted by fire, and had to be transferred. The day before his adaptation of Macbeth was to open at Dunedin’s Fortune Theatre, the board permanently closed the theatre.
Had his latest work at Circa gone on a bit longer, he might well have been blamed for Covid-19….
Also Marilyn Duckworth tells us about his fine sense of humour and qualities.
Dean himself:
Dean Parker (1947-2020) died at his Ponsonby home a week ago. His plays included Midnight in Moscow, Wonderful, and an adaptation of Nicky Hager’s book The Hollow Men. He was chairman of the Auckland branch of the Socialist Unity Party and wrote in ReadingRoom last year, “New Zealanders like to believe in giving everyone a fair go and not doffing the cap.
But being a New Zealander means the exact opposite. It means loving to doff the cap. It means ganging up on anyone stepping out of line. It means being as obsequious as possible to the rich and powerful. It means the most tawdry display of brown-nosing you’re likely to see. We are a little people.”
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2020/04/21/1137196/dean-parker-has-left-the-building
He apparently was a man who went full on to expand the consciousness of who we are, and that opinion is objective and counts for a lot. Do we see a sudden vision of us all in the above words? We should. I remember a similar shock from hearing Slavoj Zizek about Slovenian attitudes. He told one story that goes: ‘ A Slovenian was told by God that he would be rewarded with anything that he wanted, and his neighbour would be given double. He asked to be blinded in one eye.’ We are said to be dour; for our future’s sake we should make change and look for the good in others, and not decry but ask for improvement, only when necessary.
“But being a New Zealander means the exact opposite. It means loving to doff the cap. It means ganging up on anyone stepping out of line. It means being as obsequious as possible to the rich and powerful. It means the most tawdry display of brown-nosing you’re likely to see. We are a little people.”
Interesting :). Absolutely true (to a degree). And when the natives start to get restless or a little uppety, we (NuZull) often don’t seem to like it. It’s actually worsened over the past 3 decades with the advent of the neo-liberal religion
It reminds me of what some people used to say about lil ‘ole NuZull – often the ones that had come from their big OE and now considered themselves all sophisticated and worldly.
Expressions like “NZ is the pimple on the arse-end of the world”.
And then there’s all that insecurity shit – the way Kiwis are SO anxious to find out what tourists think of the place, or when NZ hits international headlines – the NZ MSM goes ape. OOOh ! NZ was in the NY Times.
It’s also why we appear to parachute in and appoint ppl from the Empire to senior public service and corporate positions to show us little colonials the way (often after they’ve fucked up elsewhere).
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