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“Now the work of movements begins”: government corruption, media bias, youth voting and the role of revolutionaries

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September 16, 2014

I am so tired of the dirty politics of the National government, aren’t you?

I am tired of John Key and his pathetic attacks on award-winning journalists who have spent their careers fighting and digging for truth and good. The sad reality is John Key’s crafted ignorance and spin seems to seduce so many into still believing he is ‘just your average kiwi bloke’. I am tired of watching and listening to politicians squabble and talk over each other like kids at kindergarten fighting over the best toys. I am tired of listening to so many candidates and MPs pay lip service to women’s rights, and push policies to end violence against women when I know how little so many politicians really care about the serious brutalities so many women face today. ‘Women’s and Minority issues’ have rarely mattered to the fat cats in parliament.

Thank god for MPs such as Jan Logie who was a volunteer for women’s refuge before joining the Greens, and refuses to allow violence against women to be a ‘non-issue’ in parliament. Billy Connolly once said “The desire to be a politician should bar you for life from ever being one.” This surely does not apply to every person who gets into politics, as Logie is proof of.

I am tired of the media’s obvious bias and hard right-wing leanings that mislead the public and I am tired of Paul Henry and Mike Hosking saying the most racist and sexist things and paying no consequences for their vile. In fact, they are paid a lot of money to dispense their ignorance as if it was gospel!

Amy Goodman said in her book Breaking the Sound Barrier:

It is the responsibility of journalists to go where the silence is, to seek out news and people who are ignored, to accurately and clearly report on the issues – issues that the corporate, for-profit media often distort, if they cover them at all.

If this election and the last six months in the trenches of Aotearoa’s political battlefields teaches anyone anything, it is just how corrupt our media is.

From the revelations of Nicky Hager’s Dirty Politics, which exposed National Party’s attack dog, the right-wing political blogger Whale Oil for what he is: an extension of National’s propaganda machine who has done the dirty work of MPs such as Judith Collins, who is, at best, a disgrace to politics. To political blogger David Farrar who amounts to Whale Oil’s snivelling lap-dog, licking up the scraps Whale Oil leaves behind. It is clear that in our New Zealand media we have a small handful of political, mostly white male, pundits who as Amy Goodman wrote “know so little about so much, explaining the world to us and getting it so wrong”.

The journalist and film maker John Pilger has stressed for nearly his entire career “the media is the invisible government”. In our left movements we are demanding a change in government, but what we should also be demanding is a change in media.

You want revolution? Occupy the media.

We need a progressive media, not Paul Henry whinging about protesters burning Israeli flags and whose sexism was typified when he asked scientist Michelle Dickinson if she had sex with Richard Branson, live on his show. We need a media as Amy Goodman suggests that breaks the sound barrier, and expands the debate, a media that cuts through the static and brings forth voices that are shut out. We need a media that is connected to community not corporate interest.

There is so much hype about getting National out and Labour in, at least in our left-wing movements and on my facebook feed. I guess many of us young people might be harder to fool when it comes to believing there will there be some kind of radical change if Labour get in – at least for us.

Unless, of course, in our everyday lives we the people hold whatever government takes power after the election to account…

I completely understand why so many young people refuse to vote or just cannot be bothered – I know, I have been one of them. I felt pretty alienated from politics when I was in my teens and early twenties. So I find it easy to understand why so many young people read Russel Brand’s political essay ‘We no longer have the luxury of tradition’ for the New Statesman last year in which Brand declared he had never voted and you shouldn’t either, and felt a real connection to Brand’s words and opinions. Governments around the world have rarely included the young in an authentic or meaningful way. Internet/Mana may be using a political language that is more accessible and exciting for our youth, but the proof will be in whether youth actually turn out to vote this year.

Sure, I fist pumped the air a lot while reading Brand’s words last year but despite my excitement at Brand calling for a spiritual rebirth and chants of ‘fuck the government’, I am voting this year. I am voting not because I think Labour will make life particularly easier for the poor, the beaten or the disenfranchised but because I know you do not elect a government to make change, you elect one that will make is easier.

I have little faith in parliamentary process but I do believe I need to be part of the democratic process of voting.

What I do have faith in is the global activist movements that have forced governments to hear the voices of the people and to behave themselves.

It was environmental activists who pushed Obama to delay a decision on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, proposed to run from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. I have faith in the anti-war activists such as Cindy Sheehan who camped outside Bush’s ranch and refused to move until she gained an audience with him so she could tell him what it felt like to lose a child in the Iraq war. I have faith in the all-female 20,000 strong Pink Sari Army in India who distil their own brand of justice with their pink-batons against men who beat and rape women. These women in pink who grab fate with both hands are winning back their lives. I have faith in the performance art and punk group Pussy Riot whose female member’s destabilised Putin’s regime and started a global movement.

It pays to remember, during this election time, who the people are that have stood up against goliath, and won.

During the riots and protests in Greece an activist scrawled on a concrete wall ‘fuck heroes, fight now’.

It is the unknown people who refuse to sit down and stay silent when they are witness to injustice and oppression, who, through their countless small actions, as Howard Zinn stressed till the day he passed, radically change this world. We do not need heroes to rescue us, even if Hollywood is busy trying to convince us otherwise. And we cannot rely on the policy makers to write inequality, poverty and violence out of our futures.

The real work of social change and justice is done by change makers, not policy makers.

Right now the battle cry for the massive environmental movement in America is: ‘To change everything, you have to change everyone’. A change of government in New Zealand may make some of the inequalities a little less ‘unequal’ and a bit more ’bearable’ but it is the radical movements that have drastically changed our world and shifted the public conversation and consciousness for the better.

Never forget this.

It was the Occupy Movement that forced massive inequality on to the public agenda and now it is common knowledge that most of the wealth is coveted by 1% of the population – and millions of people are getting more and more angry at this incredible display of concentrated wealth.

It was ex-members of the Black Panthers, not Bush’s government, who organised massive community rebuilds in New Orleans after the levies broke and washed away homes, lives and families. And it was a group of women who founded Women’s Refuge in New Zealand in the 1970s. (At the time domestic violence was not on the government’s agenda. The women of refuge used their homes to hide and shelter women, often at great peril to themselves, who had survived the most horrific and barbaric beatings and rapes at the hands of their intimate partners.)

Governments rarely hold themselves to account – as John Key’s consistent denial of the staggering evidence in Dirty Politics, that incriminates his government is proof of. It is up to us, the people, to demand accountability from our political parties and leaders.

Whatever political party is elected, whether it be a National coalition again or a Labour-led one, this is when the work of movements begins.

We live in a country that has never had such a huge divide between rich and poor; one-in-four children now live below the poverty line in Aotearoa. The Greens and Internet/Mana have progressive policies to eliminate this disgusting example of inequality – of violence. Because poverty is a form of violence.

But it is not-for-profit organisations such as Auckland Action Against Poverty who are on the ground right now, engaging in direct action; whose members and volunteers are fighting to end poverty and challenging National’s cuts to welfare that have plunged people further into desperate poverty.

The time is now: to connect with our communities, to listen to the silenced majority and, most importantly, to refuse to allow our government (whoever that may be after the 20^th of September), to ignore and minimise massive social problems and continue to serve corporate interests and the super-rich of this country.

Do not wait for change – patience is not always a virtue.

Force it – demand it.

We are the leaders we have been waiting for: it is people power that will radically change this country for the better – not Labour, and certainly not National.

Green Pasifika candidates

Efeso Collins

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September 11, 2014

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In the last couple of elections the Greens have stood Rev Mua Strickson-Pua as their candidate in Mangere. A well known personality in the Pacific community, often seen by many as a little eccentric. I’ve enjoyed seeing Rev Strickson-Pua make his case for the the party vote at the various Pacific and education functions I’ve attended. He’s a passionate individual, faithful and steadfast to the Green philosophy and message. In a number of previous posts, I’ve commented on the increasing numbers of Pasifika young people who have warmed to their ideas and considered a party vote in their favour.

It was to my shock then, that when the Greens released their Party list, I saw no Pasifika names – or at least Pasifika names who had a real chance of being elected. The messages that many of our young people are warming to are in line with better stewardship of the environment, a focus on children and eradicating child poverty, better health and educational outcomes for those on the margins. For many of our young people, the Greens offer a particular vernacular that NZ-born Pacific youth can seriously relate to and understand. But in order to cement their message, the Greens are going to need people who have Pacific heritage.

Labour have for many years been the Party that encapsulates the aspirations of Pasifika people. There are a number of Pasifika list and electorate candidates who are well known to local communities which bodes well for the Party. A number of those candidates should make Parliament because they’re in safe Labour seats including Faafoi (Mana), Sio (Mangere), Williams (Christchurch East), Salesa (Manukau East) and Sepuloni (Kelston). Jerome Mika in Papakura will undoubtedly pick up quite a bit of protest vote against Judith Collins. He’s a strong local voice and has been active in the union movement for many years. Someone to definitely watch for in the future is Upper Harbour candidate Lemalu Herman Retzlaf who is an excellent orator and practising lawyer.

Next Sunday, the Greens may well be in discussion with Labour about how to form a strong, stable and visionary coalition government. Both Partys are agreed on a number of key platforms and should be able to form a cohesive working relationship. I also expect that both Partys will have the support and strength of Harawira, Harre, Sykes and Minto to draw from too. Further, on current polling I expect that Marama Davidson will become a new Green MP next week. She is well known in the south and amongst Pasiifka communities and can perhaps begin the much needed dialogue with Pacific communities alongside Jan Logie.

In the end, if the Greens and Labour are going to be a coalition thats truly representative of the ideals and values they espouse, then the Greens cant just rely on Labour to be the partner that brings Pacific people into the coalition tent. The Greens must seriously engage with Pasifika communities and prove that they’re committed to those communities by nurturing Pacific candidates to then put on their list.

Revenge porn, consent and why people need to stop victim blaming Jennifer Lawrence

Chloe King

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September 5, 2014

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As anyone with access to the internet knows, a few days ago the news broke that Jennifer Lawrence’s iCloud account had been cracked and over 60 nude photos of her had been leaked to the public. The cracker did not stop at Lawrence over 100 mostly female actresses, athletes and singers have had their naked photos hacked and posted on the internet sewer known as 4chan – an anarchic nameless playground that appears to be mainly, but not exclusively inhabited by angry young men. Early on 4chan declared ‘there are no girls on the internet’ unless of course they are naked ‘girls’.

The gossip blogger Pariz Hilton was one of the first to snipe and repost the naked (uncensored) photos of Lawrence on his website. However, after a massive backlash from the twittersphere he took them down and apologised, something that strikes me as beingtoo little and much too late. The leaked nudes have spread throughout social media rapidly as people are sharing them without the consent of the subjects. Many of these images are showing up on blogs, news sites and yes even on our very own The Edge and The Rock radio station websites. Blogger Jessie Hume drew parallels between the actions of The Roast Busters posting pictures of their young female victims to The Rock’s radio hosts Jono and Rob reposting Lawrence’s naked photos to their website. Of course, being the proud misogynists that Jono and Rob are they made a joke of the whole incident posting this picture/parody:

As Hume said ‘Here we have an instance of Jono and Ben posing like “exposed celebrities”. But do you know what I’m seeing? I’m seeing two dudes who basically “roasted” a woman online (exposed pictures of her without her consent) just like the Roastbusters did, who are then making fun of the situation, just like the Roastbusters did.’

Clearly, making fun of women being publicly humiliated is a good time for Rob and Jono, The Rock and the demographic they represent. Making jokes at the expense of women who have been violated and who are victims of a sexual crime minimises the reality of the damagedone. This is what rape culture looks like.

Of course it is not just Ben and Jono who are revelling in the humiliation of famous women, as it’s apparent that millions of people worldwide have taken pleasure in clicking on links that direct them to naked photos of famous women’s bodies. This vulture voyeurism makes those peeping complicit in a criminal act on a global scale. That is not hyperbole, this is the truth. It is illegal to post naked photos of someone on the internet without their expressed permission and if you, creepy dude, are looking at them you are now complicit in this crime.

The attacks on celebrity women grab the headlines, but as Amanda Marcotte suggests ‘the vast majority of victims of non-consensual nude picture-sharing—usually called “revenge porn”—are ordinary, non-famous women.’ There are hundreds of websites dedicated to ‘revenge porn’; jilted ex-boyfriends post without permission, naked or sexually compromising pictures of supposed ex-girlfriends. As Marcotte wrote:

…this violation gives us a peek into a sick but thriving subculture, or really a series of subcultures, of men who are excited by the idea of violating a woman against her will and who get together in online spaces to swap ideas on how to do this, tell bragging stories about violating women, and sharing the photographic evidence of their violations.

The predictable knee-jerk reactions have ensued after the photographs leaked, the internet has been rife with victim blaming of the women. After all, according to the argument, they should not have taken these pictures in the first place so what did they expect? Why does this all sound so fucking familiar? In one sharp tweet Lena Dunham sums up what is so wrong with these types of reactions:

We live in a culture that endlessly blames women for other people’s violence and violations against them. We live in a culture that fears a women’s sexuality, but teaches us it is the only real currency of value. This culture shows us again and again that if we as women decide to cash in on our sexual currency then we will be shamed for it. A culture that minimises the abuses women suffer and endlessly tells them that any violence they suffer at the hands of men was our own fault. Whether a man rapes a woman or her or hacks the accounts of over a hundred famous women’s online accounts in the search for naked photos and dumps what he finds in public domain, these brutalities must have occurred because of our choices and our behaviour. We should not have taken those nude photos in the first place or worn that short skirt.

So to anyone whatever gender you maybe, who clicked on links that showed you naked images of Jennifer Lawrence or any other famous person who did not give you permission to do so, you are now complicit in a crime and are perpetuating rape culture.

Manukau East – the next Coalition in action

Efeso Collins

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August 28, 2014

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A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of opening Voice Up – a youth forum run by young people in Otara. I had been asked as Chair of the Local Board to set the scene, encouraging young people to take part in the democratic process by casting a vote. The organising committee invited local politicians to front up to our youth and speak directly to them about their ideas on engaging young people and taking our community forward. There was a good turn out of people which indicated to me that our young people are keen to hear more from politicians and moreover, are going to vote.

The candidates were asked questions about housing, public transport, the economy and education. It was an engaging discussion with some people speaking the general rhetoric that political partys often throw around, whilst some spoke directly and intelligently about how policies affected people at the grass roots. This was especially the case with Jenny Salesa, Peeni Henare and Marama Davidson. These speakers knew their own Partys policies well, but most importantly were able to explain those policies in ‘speak’ that everyone could understand.

I was impressed with the way in which Salesa, Henare and Davidson were able to draw meaningful connections between their policies and how there was general agreement in the ideas they were promoting on behalf of their Partys. Further, their was a collegiality between these speakers that had a genuine appeal for those in the room. Admittedly, there were times where I couldn’t tell them apart because of their passion, knowledge and general agreement.

Manukau East is a strongly held Labour seat and I expect Salesa to retain the seat, coming in as Labour’s replacement for the retiring Ross Robertson. She is a talented individual – fluent in Tongan and English, has a legal background and well connected to Pasifika communities. Her performance that night gives me cause to have no doubt that she’ll make a great MP and one day, a minister.

Word on the ground leads me to believe that Peeni Henare should comfortably take back the seat of Tamaki Makaurau for Labour. Henare is intelligent, a gifted orator and has a genuine humility that resonates with young people. The Greens Marama Davidson was clearly pitching for the party vote and on current polling, she should get into Parliament at no. 15 on the list. She is a powerful communicator, highly intellectual and grass roots – hard.

I was most impressed with the way these 3 presented that night and were no doubt the stand out candidates. They’re young, educated, bilingual and brown. They represent the changing face of NZ politics and each one of them is MP and ministerial material. Moreover, they gave a glowing example of what the next Coalition government will look like. With the last couple of weeks focus on Hager’s excellent book, at least these three can give us confidence that the new, up and coming crop of future MP’s will choose not to entertain the gutter politics we’ve had exposed of late.

Blogwatch: An open letter to David Farrar: Please, be that guy

Chloe King

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August 26, 2014

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Dear David,

In light of Nicky Hager’s book Dirty Politics, you wrote a blog entitled ‘Some changes on Kiwiblog’ and you suggested it was time to tighten up ship on your website, saying “I want to improve trust in myself, Kiwiblog, and perhaps the wider blogosphere.” I am sure this seems like a commendable sentiment at the moment, given you are good friends with Cameron Slater who is at the centre of the firestorm of Dirty Politics. You know what they say: like attracts like.

But let’s leave Dirty Politics out of this letter I am writing to you, as I am sure you are sick of hearing about it – most right-wing leaning people are. And let’s talk about Tania Billingsley:

David, in your blog you said you felt “traumatised” by having you emails hacked by the anonymous hacker who leaked your information to Nicky Hager saying: “While some will take huge pleasure in what has happened, let me say that it is genuinely traumatic to have hacked e-mails to and from yourself”. Do you know what else is traumatising, David? Having some guy follow you home, enter your house, attempt to rape you and then steal items that belong to you from your home.

You must know who I am talking about? In your blog you also spoke about ‘that one time’ when you did not speakup publicly in defence of Tania Billingsley who survived a sexual assault at the hands of a foreign diplomat – who then allegedly burgled her home. Have you ever heard that saying “silence is complicity”, David? You wrote:

“On the recent case of Tania Billingsley, I said [David Farrar] in a phone conversation [to Slater] that I didn’t think speculating on her motives was a wise thing to do. I made contact after a friend of Tania’s asked me to have a word. But I accept that having a direct conversation doesn’t mean I shouldn’t also publicly say when I think something is wrong. So in future I will more often. One can be friends, and say I think you are wrong with what you are doing. And yes we are friends. When I had some health issues a couple of years ago Cam was there for me in a big way, and on a personal note, I know he will remain there for me, and I will for him. But again, it doesn’t mean I can’t say I think you are wrong and shouldn’t do it, just as he regularly calls me out for being a pinko, or the such!”

Is this the part where I fall on my knees (as a feminist) and say “thank you David, for feeling bad about not publicly challenging the vile words Slater wrote against Tania”? But hey, the billion women who have survived violence and rape in this world should just be happy that you went to Slater privately and gently let him know it might be a bad move to make wild accusations at Tania. Accusations which stem from a culture that constantly blames the survivors of rape for their own rape.

Being called a pinko is super offensive, maybe Cam is not such a great friend after all? Real friends do not name call each other, at least that is what I have always thought. I feel it is worth mentioning to you what survivors of sexual assault get called by friends and the general public: “fucking whore”, “bitch” ,“slut”… The list goes on.

A few years ago my cousin was brutally raped and sodomised – and when her rapist was done he called her a “fucking animal” and told her to “get the fuck out of my room”. There are many other dehumanising and violent names women are called when they refuse to stay silent on the abuse they have endured, but let’s leave it there for today.

It is nice Cam was there for you when you had “health issues”. You know what happens to people who speak out about surviving sexual assault? They lose friends. Because so often people would rather pretend rape and sexual assault does not exist then face it front on. Out of sight, out of mind.

But it is great you had support in your time of need. I am so happy for you. Meanwhile thanks to National’s cuts to funding of women’s refuge many are now struggling, and recently Christchurch had to shut the doors to their only rape crisis centre because they no longer could afford to stay open. I wonder where women who have been raped or sexually assaulted will go for support in Christchurch, now? But it is great, David, that you got the support you deserved in your time of need – I am so happy for you.

When I discussed your blog with my male friend who is a feminist ally he had this to say in reaction:

The post in question comes across as pretty humble. But it got me thinking… Farrar mildly regrets Slater’s public obnoxious attack on a survivor of sexual assault. Slater simultaneously attacked a community service in Wellington that is devoted to supporting women who are sexually assaulted. Farrar admits all this, and in the same breath calls Slater his friend. What kind of person is happy to be friends with that kind of slime?

Don’t get me wrong, David, it is great you have come to the realisation that you should have publicly called Slater out on the disgusting way he treated Tania. But your realisation does not exempt you from your failure to speak out in the first place. Slater staged a public hit job on Tania, in which he accused her of “baiting her attacker” – also known as putting yourself up as ‘rape bait’– victim-blaming Tania and publicly ridiculing her. And you, David, said nothing – other than a phone call in which you indicated it may have been a “bad idea” to assume what Tania’s motivations were. This one phone call does not get you off the hook. It does not pardon your failure to act.

So here is your chance, David Farrar, to make it right. You indicated you regret not publicly speaking out about how Slater treated Tania Billingsley.

Well, I am telling you it is not too late. Why don’t you write the blog you should have done over a month ago? Why don’t you stand with Tania and the thousands of other rape survivors in New Zealand? Why don’t you publicly call out Slater for his abhorrent and shameful treatment of Tania – of all survivors of assault?

It takes conviction and bravery to stand up as a man against rape and violence, and against sexism – especially when it is your friend you are standing up against. We need to create a climate in our culture where when men behave in sexist and violent ways they lose status. You, David Farrar, can begin to do this by calling out Cameron Slater’s sexist and victim-blaming mentality that he has shown time and time again against survivors of assault and rape – this behaviour that was epitomised in his treatment of Tania.

If you find the courage of your convictions and choose to write this blog, you need to know there will be consequences for your words. There is always a backlash, regardless of your gender, when you publicly speak out against sexism and violence. These conversations are polarising and make so many people feel uncomfortable; often they threaten those who benefit from the established order of things. It is likely you will face negative and abusive diatribes from people – this is one of the consequence of speaking out.

But I want you to know David, I will have your back if you write in defence of Tania and in opposition of Cameron Slater’s treatment of her. I want you to know I will stand with you and stand up to those who will attack you for raising your voice against the brutalities of our world – our New Zealand rape culture.

We all make mistakes, David, but what truly defines a person is how they go about fixing them. The time is now. Be brave. Make a stand. Please, be that guy.

Yours hopefully and sincerely,

Chloe King.

“You just have to keep on fighting” – an interview with Metiria Turei

Morgan Godfery

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August 22, 2014

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We’re meeting in her office. It’s austere, though she does have a nice teapot. The view is startling. One can map the Bowen Triangle, though the teapot is still more interesting. A group of pink faced men are running across the rain soaked streets. I think they’re lobbyists, I do hope they get wet. Views like this work on two levels: distraction and confirmation. You can stare into the distance and contemplate the universe or you can look below and let reality sink in – you live in a tightly packed bubble.

Not that Metiria Turei would fall for a view. She didn’t come to Parliament to embed herself in the Bowen Triangle. “I came with the view of speaking for everybody who was completely ignored. There is a huge body of Maori who have no voice at all. They are the ones I wanted to speak about in Parliament and, hopefully, represent well in Parliament”.

Speaking – person to person or politician to the people – is something Metiria does very well. “I might babble a bit” – she’s talking person to person here – but babble isn’t right. Turei speaks in tunes. I had to resist the very Maori impulse to let this Maori woman’s maternalism wash over me. I’m here to conduct a serious interview, dammit. Yet her energy is infectious. It’s not so much an energy that makes you want to get up and go, but a hypnotic energy. This doesn’t translate on TV. Metiria comes across as too earnest on screen. But it’s much easier, person to person, to spot the genuine conviction and then respect it.

Shifting roles and shifting circumstances is the story of Metiria’s life. “I’m one of those people who lives in the crack. The crack between the Maori world and the Pakeha world. When you live in the crack, sometimes it’s an unpleasant place to be, sometimes it operates well as a bridge”. I didn’t say this out load, but I’m thinking it in my head, unpleasant seems like an emotion Metiria finds hard to express. Her smiles are easy and often. Her face is round and inviting, not angular and cold. A stranger would never guess that she sometimes works 18 hour days. Her face refuses to reveal any age lines.

“I come from a working class Maori family, but we had a very strong upbringing… we were the household where everybody would come and stay if they were in trouble, particularly financial trouble. There was a constant flow of people… My parents, at the same time, wanted to create a middle class life for us. On the outside we had a very flash house, but on the inside it never had any carpet or anything”.

It’s roots like this that make Metiria an unconventional politician. Politics isn’t a career option, it’s a responsibility she has to her people. “I’m now in a very privileged position”, she tells me, “I can get on the television and I can call out Jamie Whyte… that’s the job I’ve got to do because other people can’t”. This is a theme we keep returning to – speaking for those “who have no voice at all”.

I ask whether this grinds her down. I know from experience that it can suck to always be on the wrong side of the majority. “Unfortunately they still hold the power. You just have to keep on fighting”. This reassures me. But don’t take this as a suggestion Metiria looks for political scraps – they find her. Yet she refuses to play the victim. She isn’t the sort to keep a closet full of wet hankies.

“You do have to have a thick skin. At the same time you can never have a thick enough one. At times it can feel like you’re being completely flayed”. Flayed seems like a strong word, but given the year Metiria has had I’m surprised she didn’t choose a stronger expression. Politics is blood sport, after all.

“It’s nothing compared to what they’re doing to everybody else”. True, but it understates the sort of criticism Turei has had to suffer through… Personal criticism. Metiria Turei the person, not Metiria Turei the politician, is fair game. It gives new meaning to the saying the personal is political. It inverts the rules of engagement too: play the ball, not the man becomes play the woman, not the ball.

You’ll remember the controversy from February. Anne Tolley led an extraordinary attack against Metiria in the House. The first battle – dubbed “jacket-gate” – erupted when Tolley declared that Metiria, as middle class woman in a designer jacket, couldn’t claim to speak for the working class. Metiria’s jacket became the measure of her political credibility. Tolley channelled Judith Collins who had, only last year, accused Metiria of wearing “hideous” jackets.

I know what you’re thinking: these people really are petty. They really are, but there’s more. In the latest attack Jamie-Lee Ross used his speaking slot in the House to savage Metiria’s dress sense. The pattern is clear: play the woman, not the ball. Bonus points for doing so under Parliamentary privilege.

Metiria’s response, far from being personal, has been political. “People hated the fact I called it out as racism. They could see the implied classism and they could see the implied sexism but they could not see the implied racism. People would say ‘yeah, of course it was sexist… BUT it’s not racist’”.

Metiria returned fire, but in a way that got under her opponents skin. Rather than availing herself of the enemy’s weapons – personal politics – she exploited what they left unsaid: the political context. Politicians must remember, she explains, that “it’s not actually about you”. “It’s not me they’re attacking… As a genuine challenge to their power and authority, of course they’re going to make awful accusations and do hideous things”. (“Hideous” being a reference to Judith Collin’s attacks). In other words, it’s the idea of an effective Maori woman that Tolley, Collins and Ross are attacking.

Thus Metiria is dangerous because she is making a political critique. “[Racism] affects Maori every day”, I’m nodding furiously at this point, “and in all sorts of ways that can’t be named”. We’re back at that theme again: speaking for those “who have no voice at all”. The job of an effective politician, then, is to name what the victims can’t. Calling out racism, classism and sexism – rather than being a tired trifecta of isms – is a challenge to the government’s mind set. If Turei is seen to “babble” about it, it’s because she has found the government’s soft spot. I think this is a testament to Metiria and person and Metiria the politician – that ability to transform the personal to the political.

Personal to political. It’s another theme that keeps popping up. Metiria didn’t come to the left through historical materialism, Lenin’s theory of imperialism didn’t drive her left, it was whakapapa that did it. “We” – meaning Metiria’s whanau – “didn’t speak about politics at all, but you can’t help but know that people are being done over. The question then becomes what do you do? What we did is take care of people. The connection between being compassionate about people’s needs and being political melded together”. “My upbringing gave me the narrative”.

She’s drawing me into that maternal glow again, but for a different reason now. Here’s a kindred spirit. “At the end of the day no government ever paid attention to the people I’ve cared about”. These are words which could have come from my own mouth. “No government has put their interest at the heart of what is done”. And this is why I trust Metiria. She hasn’t lost touch with her roots. She reaches for her teapot, which I only now notice is green, and my gut is telling me to vote Green.

Cameron Slater: Zionist and political pundit

Chloe King

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August 20, 2014

22

It is hard to know where to start with right-wing blogger Cameron Slater (Whale Oil), especially after the release of Nicky Hager’s book Dirty Politics. This confirmed everything many of us thought Slater to be: a snivelling pundit who serves those in power and has a vested interest in distorting the truth to serve his own agenda and those of his morally bankrupt mates like Judith Collins of the National Party.

As Hager’s book was released Slater had already boarded a plane to Israel, on a paid media trip. Yeah, you could not make this shit up. As New Zealanders begin to learn the full extent of Slater’s corruptions, smear campaigns and how much he and his Whale Oil blog have influenced elections in the last six years, he is being paid, as I type this, to also pedal Israeli propaganda.

Slater tweeted this picture a few days ago:

It must be nice to suntan on an Israeli beach and not have to worry about bombs raining down on you for simply existing – the Israel Government’s collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza amount to a holocaust. Just over four weeks ago an Israeli naval ship bombed a beach in Gaza killing four children while they played, injuring others. It is impossible for me to forget the images of these tiny fragile bodies of Palestinian children whose lives were erased in the name of Israel’s security :

But please, Mr. Slater, sip your fucking-minted-fucking-lemonade and tell the world, “What I am witnessing in Tel Aviv is a vibrant, free and open democracy of tolerance,” as Slater reported to New Zealand’s Stuff on Sunday in the article ‘Blogging, money and burred lines’.

Unfortunately for Palestinians, this “free and open democracy” only extends the people of Israel. The body count for Israel’s latest bombardment in Gaza rests at over 1,900, while thousands have been injured in the name of this “free and open democracy”. I spoke to Julie Webb, an activist who is currently working in Gaza, who told me that an independent on the ground news source in Gaza, the Gaza Scoop, has had their headquarters bombed. They are increasingly desperate for foreign journalists to come to Gaza and bear witness to the atrocities that have been, and will continue to be, carried out by the Israeli forces.

Slater went on to say during his interview with stuff: “From the hotel I am staying at 100 metres across the road there’s a gay beach and the gay beach is 200 metres from the Orthodox Jewish beach – I bet you there’s not a gay beach in Gaza.”

I bet in Israel small children are not bombed to death on beaches while they attempt to engage in normal everyday activities – if you really want to play that game, Slater.

The Israeli propaganda machine is, of course, in full swing as it attempts to distort and cover the truth of the atrocities Israeli forces have committed against Palestinians in the last six weeks. All over the world tens of thousands of people marched and protested in opposition to Israel and in support of Palestine. They are some of the biggest protests for Palestine the world has ever seen; in London over 150,000 people marched for Palestine. People are waking up.

Israel is in full [media] damage control and it is clear Cameron Slater is happy to be complicit in creating static and pedaling propaganda on behalf of the Israeli government, as his Whale Oil blog is already a testament to. Throughout Israel’s recent bombardment of Gaza many blog posts appeared on his site condemning Palestine – obviously Gazans deserve to be bombed and murdered because HAMAS!!!

Travis Poulson who writes for Whale Oil went so far as to call Palestinian children “devil spawn” in one blog and also said:

As a kiwi my eyes are really beginning to open up about the kind of people a lot of the Gaza Palestinians are. Not all, but as I type this I have just finished watching the news and am left with a sense of uncertainty, even impossibility as to the likelihood of any resolution. We have already seen the plight of the Palestinian, we get it rammed down our throat on every news channel or bulletin that we watch. The reasons behind it are not Israel or Israel’s actions. If the Palestinians as a whole believed in peace there would be no wall.

Slater’s blogs on his site are relentlessly aggressive. Early this year Slater headlined a blog ‘”Feral dies in Greymouth, did world a favour” in relation to a West Coast car crash victim and has more recently engaged in sustained and ongoing attacks against sexual assault survivor Tania Billingsley and continues to deny the existence of rape culture. In the book Dirty Politics Hager reveals a conversation between Peter Smith and Cameron Slater which is a disturbing snap shot into his thinking:

When the devastating earthquake struck Christchurch on 22 Febuary 2011 … writing to his friend Peter Smith, he said, “That place is fucked … they should just board it up and close it down. Smith replied, ‘A real tragedy but it will fuck labour for the election.’ Slater said, ‘Yep blessings.’ Later his views hardened: ‘What I can’t believe … is how we have to bail out those useless pricks in the sth island, again.’ Smith replied ‘I said to someone today that National should let then rot, after all they are useless scum Labour voters especially in the areas where the earthquake hit…” Slater added, “Those are suburbs are hard core Labour … the owners will be Nat voters though and the voters tenants, so the houses are gone and the scum are gone too, and so they should get nothing.

When this conversation was put on public display in the streets of Christchurch by the Campbell Live crew last Friday there was disgusted outcry from everyday New Zealanders – and rightly so it is a shameful example of the callous attacks Slater makes on people he has never met and will probably never know. But in contrast there has been so little outcry and condemnation of the Zionist and dehumanising language used in relation to Palestinians on the Whale Oil blog site.

New Zealander’s lost their lives and homes in the Christchurch Earthquake but Palestinians have lost their lives and homes as well in an ongoing genocide committed by Israel forces over the last 66 years. Our outrage should not be limited to just New Zealander’s who are targeted by Slater and his blogging cronies such as Poulson.

Even while many in New Zealand are not understanding the links between Slater and the National Government courtesy of Dirty Politics at this point, one thing is clear to almost everyone: Slater is abhorrent.

If anything, his involvement in passing on Israeli propaganda could likely backfire, at least partially thanks to Dirty Politics. It’s certainly not ideal for the Israeli Government to be dealing with people of such … questionable repute. It doesn’t help their message when such morally bankrupt people are delivering it. Which is a wonderful piece of irony that we should all take a little pleasure in, even if it feels somewhat empty and bittersweet.

Show me what democracy looks like: 6 activists for Palestine #Occupy the NZ Super Fund Office

Chloe King

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August 16, 2014

6

At around 12pm yesterday Nadia Filistin, who has been a major organiser in the Auckland protests against Israel’s ongoing assaults in Gaza over the last 6 weeks which has killed over 1900 Palestinians and injured thousands, updated her Facebook status with this:

‘Right now we’re occupying the NZ Superfund office in Auckland to oppose New Zealanders tax money into companies which profit off Israel’s violence against Palestinians. #StopSuperfundingIsraeliApartheid’

Ella, Grace, MZ, Nadia, Milo, Kirsty, Marcus (last names have been left off to protect the activists) entered the Zurich building at the bottom of Queen Street and on Level 12 they chained themselves to the desk of NZ Super Fund and successfully shut down the office for three hours. The activists demanded “the divestment of OUR tax dollars from various companies which work to profit off and sustain the Israel’s brutal and bloody regime of apartheid.” Nadia said “we occupy to oppose the investment of our tax money into Israeli apartheid through investments in companies like G4S and Israel Chemicals LTD which produces white phosphorous.” White phosphorous is a chemical that has been, and continues to be, used illegally by Israeli forces in civilian areas. G45 is a private global security company which provides Israel with the equipment for its apartheid wall, checkpoints, illegal settlements and detention centres. Literally our tax paying dollars are funding war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Billy Hania, who is Palestinian and an activist and transported the 6 activists to the NZ Super Fund office sent me this raw footage of Nadia speaking on the reasons why they #Occupy:

The CEO of NZ Super Fund agreed to talk with the protesters but his answers did not satisfy Nadia, the main spokesperson, who updated her facebook with this response:

NZ Superfund building on lockdown. Police outside. CEO Adrian Orr came to meet with us to discuss our demands of divestment. He says they will continue superfunding Israeli apartheid with our tax dollars because they can’t divest from every company which “annoys” people. News flash Adrian Orr, these companies don’t just annoy, they sustain and profit off the occupation, murder and repression of Palestinians. Not good enough.

I started protesting against Israel’s genocidal actions against the people of Palestine over 8 years ago. I have attended 5 protests for Palestine and each one has been bigger than the last. People are waking up. Adrian Orr, many of us in Aotearoa do give a fuck about what the Zionist state of Israel have done to the people of Palestine – their actions amount to a holocaust. We care deeply when we learn our tax dollars are used to profit off this suffering – this genocide. We will not sit idly by and allow the actions of the NZ Super Fund to sanction and support these brutalities and use our tax money to do it.

We need to call for a serious investigation of companies like NZ Super Fund who are involved in Israeli arms. As David Shearer MP for Labour reported over a year ago “The NZ Super Fund should immediately dump its shareholding in a company producing a notorious chemical that has been used as a weapon.”

When I rang Billy Hania who was on the ground with other protesters who had gathered in support of the occupation of the NZ Super Fund office, he told me all 6 activists including Nadia had been forcefully removed by bolt cutters and arrested in trespass and taken to the police station. They were later released last night, but Nadia had these thoughts while locked up:

One last thing for tonight, when we were locked up in the cold dank cells at the police station today and all went quiet, I lay down and thought HARD about all the Palestinian, men, women and children, who have spent time locked up in G4S (a private security company which our tax money is invested in through NZ Superfund) equipped detention centers and prisons. These are people who are detained without charge for much longer, darker and scarier times than I can even imagine.

Right at this very moment there are 5271 Palestinian political prisoners, 196 of whom are children, who are currently languishing in G4S secured prisons in Israel. Prisoners in G4S secured prisons, including child prisoners, are routinely tortured, mistreated, forced to sign confessions and beaten (even to death). There only crime is being daring to exist as Palestinians.

Thousands of people turned up to the first protest on the 19^th of last month in support of Palestine and in opposition to the continued bombardment of Gaza by Israeli forces. Thousands again turned up the following Saturday and hundreds turned up to Rallies for Palestine on both the 9^th and the 2^nd of this month in Auckland. Tomorrow marks a national day of action against Israel’s crimes against humanity and thousands will again march down Queen Street and other main streets of New Zealand cities in solidarity with the millions of people worldwide who stand with Palestine.

‘Apartheid is a crime against humanity’ wrote Nelson Mandela, ‘Israel has deprived millions of Palestinians of their liberty and property [and] persuaded a system of gross discrimination’. Do not remain silent. Do not look away. Do something.

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*You can march today (16th of August) against Israel’s genocidal actions against Palestine – thousands will meet at 2pm in Aotea Square JOIN US. #FreeGaza

Why chanting “fuck John Key” is a battle cry not profanity and how the Occupy Movement helped shape the Internet Party

Chloe King

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August 11, 2014

42

There has been major condemnation and controversy over Internet/Mana’s ‘Join the Revolution – Change the Government’ video in which Kim Dotcom is leading students in chanting “fuck John Key” at a concert put on by the Internet Party. Duncan Garner on Thursday condemned the chanting on his Radiolive show and Labour MP Chris Hipkins took to his twitter to express his outrage at the students and Kim Dotcom’s actions, “Getting a bunch of people drunk and getting them to chant abuse isn’t political leadership. It’s thuggery and megalomania intertwined” said Hipkins.

Meanwhile in Gaza and Iraq. Good to see Garner and Hipkins have their priorities in the right place.

Many New Zealand commentators and apparently MP’s are labouring under the idea that students are mindless morons who cannot think for themselves and where obviously just so overcome with ‘fame fever’ when Kim Dotcom took the stage they, without thinking, started screaming the words “fuck John Key” because if Kim does it, it must be cool? I hate to break it to Garner and Hipkins and the many other people who are condemning Kim and the students’ actions but the “fuck John Key” chanting started before Kim Dotcom even took the stage. As this raw footage proves.

Here is a NEWSFLAH for all those people who have been so mortally offended by the profanity spoken by students at a concert: the mantra “fuck John Key” has been around for a while now. Those words were said loudly and proudly at the student protests two years ago. I know because I was there.

The New Zealand media painted us as violent thugs and whingeing stupid students then too. In reality we were protesting John Key’s cuts to education. We protested privatisation, charter schools, league tables and performance pay. We felt axing allowances to post graduate students was not only a callous decision by National but also an attack on our right to higher education. Many students had to walk away from their chosen field of study and their career. At one of the first student rallies on July 21, 22 year old law student, Tessa Baker, said she would be $65,000 in debt after graduating from a five-and-a-half year degree with honours at the end of the year. “I am only able to study because my parents financially support me but I think education is so important it needs to be available to all, but it just isn’t,” Baker said.

Believe it or not, many young people in Aotearoa are fully aware of what John Key has done to this country from gutting the welfare state to selling off New Zealand’s assets – and thousands of young people care deeply about these issues. Internet/Mana is hearing our voices. This is why both these political parties are gaining such passionate responses from young people, responses that conservative right-wing parties like National could only dream of. Instead of passionate applause and fist pumping, National has been meet with their billboards being defaced and torn down. Awkward. What some people call ‘vandalism’ I call ‘art activism’.

Many young people, like me, know exactly what Key and his government represent and it is not young people, those living in poverty or the working poor. John Key has managed to alienate a massive demographic in New Zealand and if he thinks his ‘young Nats’ can bridge the divide he is dreaming.

We are not just blindly saying “fuck John Key” because we think it makes us look cool. That kind of [political] anger comes from the feeling that so many of us have been left behind with no employment or under employment. Many of us are struggling with massive student debt we cannot pay back. As the meme goes:

So yes, fuck John Key who thinks there is nothing wrong with hassling young, often over-qualified, people into jobs that do not exist or are underpaid and unfulfilling and thinks ‘we should just be happy with our lot’. Fuck John Key whose government’s welfare reforms have further plunged people into poverty in Aotearoa all in the name of saving a buck but is at the expense of New Zealand’s most financially desperate and vulnerable. Fuck John Key who is a snivelling cowardly Israeli apologist and who is complicit in the deaths of over 1,900 Palestinian people since Israel’s genocidal bombardment of Gaza that started a month ago. Fuck John Key and his rape apologist government who thinks the young men in The Roast Busters just need to ‘grow up’ and who made no apologies to Tania Billingsley for his government’s disgusting handling of her complaint that a foreign diplomat had sexually assaulted her. Fuck John Key for saying Kim Dotcom was Laila Harre’s ‘sugar daddy’ insinuating she is a whore – because casual sexism is cool when John Key does it and he does it a lot.

So from the bottom of my heart fuck John Key and his selfish, misogynistic, rape minimising, war mongering government that only cares for the rich, disregards the voices of young people (unless they are rich and mostly white) and has no compassion for the working poor or those suffering under the poverty line. Because hell, they just need to work harder.

I guess it would have been a mouthful for the students in Christchurch to list all their grievances they have with the National Government at a concert put on by the Internet Party so “fuck John Key” just had to do.

Students and Kim Dotcom chanting at the concert has been likened to Nazism by political marketing specialist Jennifer Lees-Marshment who said “reminds me of propaganda, chanting-type campaigning more reminiscent of Hitler and fascism [in Nazi Germany] than New Zealand in the 21st century” and NBR’s Rob Hosking makes this comparison about the ‘mob’ chants:

Firstly, they are being led in the chant by a German who is an enthusiastic collector of Nazi memorabilia and who thinks “nigger jokes” are funny. At this point, a detached observer has to conclude there is a bit of a Nazi-ish aspect to it, and anyone not seeing any Nuremburg-ish echoes is being wilfully obtuse.

Are you kidding me? Given the current situation in Palestine these are a misdirected comparisons to make. John Key has backed the latest assault on Gaza in which Israeli forces, who are armed to the teeth by the Obama administration, have bombed UN Shelters full of innocent civilians and injured thousands – some Palestinian people have lost most of their family to Israel’s bombs and bullets. Why don’t you take your lazy accusations of Nazism, Hosking and Lees-Marshment, and direct them at someone who is complicit in a holocaust being carried out right now? Mr John Key: you and your government have blood on your hands.

One of the reasons why, and there are many, Internet/Mana are so effective at engaging the youth is because they are using the language and strategies of the Occupy Movement. This movement was “born out of 33 years of war” said Noam Chomsky. It was a people powered movement that was mostly led by teenagers and people under 30. In his talks Chomsky regularly pointed out one of the greatest achievements of the Occupy Movement was to put the inequalities of everyday life on the international agenda. It is now a cliché to say the Occupy Movement changed the conversation, but once again in New Zealand we can see the conversation shifting. “Altering the narrative” wrote Greg Ruggiero of the Occupy Movement, “is a necessary victory toward transforming everything else.”

Internet/Mana has called on New Zealanders to ‘Join the Revolution – Change the Government’. The idea of revolution and of radical social change and disrupting the power brokers of this world is at the core of what drove the Occupy Movement. And it is what is driving young students to yell “Fuck John Key” – not cheap booze as Duncan Garner reductively claimed on Thursday afternoon on his RadioLive show.

Internet Party are using open forums for people who have joined the party (membership costs $1.29) on their website. New Zealanders can create and shape policies and voice ideas through Loomio, an open source tool for group decision-making. Anyone over the age of 18 can for a one off payment of $1.29 log on and propose policies and once posted, others can block, agree or disagree with the policies and constructively comment on them; this is democracy in action. At Occupy camps all over the world we used ‘the human mic’ to capture the voices and amplify the ideas of protesters who were part of the movement. It was an effective and powerful way of hearing each other loudly and clearly and for making decisions collectively. The use of Loomio by the Internet Party represents the same opportunity; to address a problem through public forum and discuss ways to fix and solve social issues that New Zealanders’ think are important.

This is what democracy looks like.

When I spoke to Miriam Michal who is a candidate for the Internet Party about my belief that there is a deep connection between what the Occupy movement stands for and what the Internet Party is doing, she responded:

Our policy development relies on the participation of our membership. Our members contribute to the policies and the general direction of the party from the comfort of their own desks, sofas, beds. People have been amazed at this as though it’s revolutionary, but for us it was the most natural and obvious thing to do. Because how can a political party pretend to represent a section of the population if the people aren’t meaningfully involved? The Occupy movement got this, the Occupy movement was also about voicing the concerns of the people. But the Occupy movement was outside the system, and we will be inside it. We have to work to bring change on every level that we can. It’s imperative that we normalise people participating actively, because at the moment it is seen as radical and threatening.

You want to capture the imagination of young people – especially poor and desperate young people? Capture their voices. Let the youth of New Zealand know you hear them. Many young people want to change New Zealand and many of us want to change the world. We are idealistic and we are dreamers but we are also educated and determined – and we have time on our hands because we cannot work jobs that do not exist. Youth unemployment accounts for more than one third of unemployment in New Zealand. John Key, we can’t work your fucking ghost jobs. The feminist writer Laurie Penny said “The most important political battles are fought on the territory of the imagination. Young and unemployed people need to know: you are more than your inability to find a job.”

Millions of us around the world are devastated by the state of our own backyards and global communities and we are desperate to change them – the Occupy Movement was epic proof of this. Internet/Mana is offering young people in New Zealand a new political platform to stand on, just as Occupy did. And this is unnerving the establishment. As PR professional Mark Beckham said in defence of Internet/Mana’s video,

The alarmed reaction from the commentariat and twitterati reveals the extent to which the ruling elite are simply not comfortable with real people being political. And here lies the problem at the heart of the professional era of politics; the failure to understand or connect with the untidiness of real people.

As young people we have inherited a world were wars are being fought in our name, of debt and horrific violence and oppression and so many of us are determined to change and disrupt these inequities and brutalities; we can imagine better. We can imagine a country where 285,000 children do not live in poverty. Where the poor and disenfranchised are not marginalised and shamed when they need help, but instead supported and offered opportunities to lift themselves above the poverty line. We can imagine a world that is free from inequality, racism and sexism. All of this sounds like an impossible dream but this does not mean we stop trying to achieve it. For many of us giving up is simply not an option.

“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic.” Wrote Howard Zinn “It is based on the fact human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice and kindness.”

Why Hillary Clinton is not ‘a beacon of female empowerment’

Chloe King

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August 8, 2014

10

Hillary Clinton is ‘the best known women in the world’ according to the BBC, and right now they are probably correct; she is currently doing a world tour to promote her new autobiography Hard Choices in which she name drops everyone from Bono to Aung San Suu Kyi. In her book, Clinton talks often of her ongoing commitment to women’s rights, to standing against atrocities committed against young girls such as female circumcision and of lifting the position of women in impoverished developing countries. In the words of Palestinian activist and writer Nadia Filistin: “As the purported story goes, a major part of her [Clinton’s] agenda during her time as Secretary of State was to put the spotlight on women’s issues internationally.”

Clinton is being held up by many social commentators as some kind of vision of ‘female empowerment’ – after all, she has smashed glass ceiling after glass ceiling, and she is a proud self-declared feminist. Hell, maybe she is even a ‘feminist icon’.

Last year The Daily Beast said of Hillary Clinton: “Hillary Clinton’s rise has also been buoyed by something bigger than hard work. It is the vindication that eventually comes when your struggles are seen to be on the right side of history.”

Hillary? On the right side of history? Don’t make me fucking laugh.

Selective historical amnesia is a comforting Western privilege – after all, it is the victors’ who write mainstream history. As Nadia points out,

There are over 100, 000 reasons which illustrate very clearly why Hillary is no feminist icon in Iraq alone. Hillary may have not been one of the architects of it, but she voted for the Iraq war and was and remains a hawkish proponent of the War on Terror. She said any nation lending Al Qaeda ‘aid and comfort will now face the wrath of our country. I’ll stand behind Bush for a long time to come’. Super conservative estimates have put the death toll in Iraq of well over 100, 000 thousand civilians. Many, many of whom were of course, women and children, the very demographic she professes to care about so much. She once said she’d ‘do everything [she] can to make sure that women compete at the highest levels, not only in the United States but around the world.’ Apparently, going home in a body bag somehow constitutes as a ‘chance’ at competing at the ‘highest level of success’.

More recently, the former US Secretary of State and aspiring President of the United States Hillary Clinton, was on the BBC’s Women’s Hour. Jenni Murray, who interviewed her ‘presented Clinton as a beacon of Female achievement,’ writes John Pilger. She made no mention of Clinton’s ongoing and enthusiastic support of Israel’s murderous and genocidal actions against the people of Palestine, even though Israel’s current assault on Gaza has killed over 1800 Palestinians – hundreds of them children. Nothing was said about Clinton’s support for illegal mass surveillance and the controversial pursuit of whistleblowers such as Edward Snowdon. And there was a resounding silence about her administration’s terror campaign using drones to kill men, women and children.

Jenni Murray is not the only influential (white) feminist commentator to back Clinton. Elizabeth Plank, a very influential feminist writer for the viral media website Mic, has been vocal in her support of Hillary for a long time now:

Clinton, who used feminism and the ‘liberation of Afghani women’ to promote, support and justify the continued invasion and occupation of Afghanistan that followed the 9/11 attacks – Jenni Murray did not remind her listeners of this, either.

In Clinton’s new autobiography she speaks of her dedication to the women of Afghanistan under the chapter ‘Afghanistan: To End a War’: “When I became Secretary of State, I requested that all our development and political projects in Afghanistan take into the account the needs and concerns of Afghan women. Creating opportunity for women was not just a moral issue; it was vital to Afghanistan’s economy and security.”

While Clinton banged the drums for war in Iraq (although, in her book Clinton is really sorry about the whole ‘Iraq thing’ – little bit too late for ‘sorry’ don’t you think, Hillary?) and later, Afghanistan, she forgot to mention women there had long implemented their own systems of powerful resistance to the violence and oppression they face. The women of Rawa, Revolutionary Association of Women in Afghanistan, have been attempting to alert the world to the suffering of Afghani women since 1977.

As John Pilger writes in his book Freedom Next Time: “The women of Rawa still travel secretly throughout the country, with cameras concealed beneath their burqas. During the Taliban time, they filmed an official execution and other atrocities, and smuggled the videotape to the West.”

When Marina (the codename for a leading member of Rawa) spoke to Pilger she said, “we took it [the footage] to all the main media groups: Reuters, ABC Australia, for example, and they said, ‘Yes, it’s very nice, but we can’t show it because it’s too shocking for people in the West.’” As Pilger suggests, this was before 9/11 and the Western media had not yet discovered interest in the women of Afghanistan.

The arrogance of Clinton in alerting the West to the suffering of Afghani women only to further her administration’s agenda cannot be missed – as if the women in Afghanistan were hapless and unable to stand up for themselves. The lives of Afghani women only mattered to the American people when Hillary, a white woman, declared it a cause she was committed to ‘helping’. The women of Rawa had been courageously alerting us to the horrific violence they face for over thirty years. Our Western media did not want to know – we did not want to know.

As Marina said:

[After 9/11] the Taliban suddenly became an enemy of America. They persecuted women, yes, but they were not unique, and we have resented the silence in the West over the atrocious nature of the Western-backed warlords, who are no different. In some ways, we were more secure under the Taliban. You could cross Afghanistan by road and feel secure. Now, you take your life into your own hands.

Clinton did not think this important enough, either, to mention in any speeches she gave on the ‘plight of Afghani women’, or in her new autobiography.

Malalai Joya is the youngest person ever elected to the Loya Jirga (Grand Assembly – the Afghan Government). In 2003 she addressed the Loya Jirga, speaking for the people of Afghanistan, while surrounded by the American-backed warlords, murderers and criminals (also known as Afghan politicians and leaders), and she bravely condemned their actions in allowing these criminals in Government.

Joya is a woman among warlords who refuses to be silenced. Since speaking out she has faced multiple assassination attempts, but continues to travel the world speaking truth to power – she refuses to let the West forget the crimes that have been, and continue to be, committed against her nation and people. Joya wrote in her book Malalia Joya: Raising my Voice:

Some people say that when the [American] troops withdraw, a civil war will break out. Often this prospect is raised by people who ignore the vicious conflict and humanitarian disaster that is already occurring in Afghanistan. The longer the foreign troops stay in Afghanistan, the worse the eventual civil war will be for the Afghan people. The terrible civil war that followed the Soviet withdrawal certainly could never justify […] the destruction and death caused by that decade-long occupation […] Today we live under the shadow of the gun with the most corrupt and unpopular government in the world.

As Joya has said time and time again: “No nation can donate liberation to another nation.”

If Clinton really wanted to help liberate the women of Afghanistan she would have worked with people like the women of Rawa and Joya, not against them.

If Clinton or the mainstream media in America had mentioned that women in Afghanistan were, of course, more than capable of standing up for themselves and had already built their own subversive systems of resistance, Hillary’s self-appointed position of White Feminist Saviour on Horseback would have looked not just insulting and disempowering, but also dismissive of female Afghani activists and the organisations they have built to support women and girls in Afghanistan.

Hillary Clinton did not save these women. Instead she silenced these women. Instead she enforced the stereotype of Asian women being hapless victims that needed to be saved (by white people) from evil dark men. “In Afghanistan we know how the media can throw dust in the eyes of the world,” Joya said, “promoting some perspectives while silencing others.”

Clinton’s own brand of feminism is doublespeak.

Clinton can call herself a feminist, and I will never dispute her autonomy and right to do so, but I will question her pimping of feminism in order to justify the continued occupation of Afghanistan in the name of ‘women’s liberation’.

I will question her brand of feminism, which declares she is for the rights of all women in America – as long as they are rich, of course. Hillary backed her Hubby’s 1996 welfare reforms, that radically cut the amount of financial assistance given to the poor and unemployed in the USA.

No prizes for guessing who hurts the hardest when governments slash welfare; women and children of course.

When well-known and influential white feminists such as Jenni Murray and Elizabeth Plank promote someone like Hillary Clinton as an example of female empowerment and freedom, it comes at the expense of other women in countries like Afghanistan. These endorsements by feminist commentators are not only short-sighted – they are a lie.

When you sanitize the crimes and actions of people like Hillary Clinton and talk only of their achievements and good deeds, you pardon them of their crimes and complicity in the oppression and killing of innocent civilians. Civilians who never wanted, and never asked for, the wars being fought by foreign powers on their land, in their own countries. Wars fought in our name.

As white feminists in the West, we cannot conveniently forget the histories and experiences of fellow women in countries such as Afghanistan, in order to create our own (female) Western histories. To do so is to undermine the basic meaning of feminism. It amounts to implicit racism wrapped in the body of morality and white female empowerment.

“Making symbolic commitments to women’s rights whilst simultaneously disregarding the human rights of ‘collateral damage’ (in the form of thousands of women) who fall into the firing lines of [Clinton’s] wars,” writes Nadia Filistin, “is not feminism.”

Paul Henry; the issue is you, not flag-burning

Chloe King

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July 29, 2014

26

There will always be reductive, dangerous and reactionary responses to different forms of oppressive violence by our western, often biased, mainstream media. These reactionary responses purposefully distract from the real issues and those who are at the root and the cause of the violence. Through doublespeak the perpetrators are turned into the victim by a mass media – who become complicit in the crimes of others.

We have witnessed these purposeful distractions and complicity in our media’s response to the violent assault being carried out by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip which started a few weeks ago.

The predictable knee jerk reactions by the mainstream media of: “Palestinians commit violence too” have ensued; As if the violence committed by both sides is of equal force. Always forgetting to mention the Israeli army is the second largest in the world. Never saying this army is funded to the tune of $4 billion a year by the Obama administration. Before this, Bush financed Israel’s ongoing oppression of the Palestinian people which has lasted 66 years to date. Palestinians do not have an army. Any “fire power” comes from Hamas. So you can imagine the means of defending the Palestinian people, is not comparable to the damage that Israeli forces have caused.

This disproportionate fire power is reflected in over 1000 Palestinians killed, all mainly civilians, compared to the 42 Israelis killed, who were mostly soldiers.

One would hope people would stop saying stupid shit in response to horrific violence. But no such luck.

In a recent interview with grass roots activist and Internet Party leader Laila Harre on Wednesday night during the Internet’s Party Party, Paul Henry bought up the burning of a flag at Auckland’s first protest. Paul Henry wasn’t so much upset about the mass killings being carried out against a mainly defenceless people in the name of “security”, but by a few protesters at the march who burnt a flag. Yeah, I am serious. Thousands turned up that day and protested peacefully, free of antisemitism, violence and racism. I was there I know this to be the truth. But please Paul Henry do not focus on a few people burning a flag and distract from the reasons why people hit the streets – you know, like the mass genocide of Palestinian people and the bombing of hospitals and schools by Israeli forces. During his interview with Harre, Paul said:

“I want to draw your attention to what I think was an unfortunate protest which took place on Saturday, it was a pro-Palestinian protest and as you can see [he shows Harre a picture of an Israeli flag in which the star has been replaced with a swastika] it is a very offensive flag it is a swastika in place of the Israeli flag and that is highly offensive and insensitive to many people.”

Harre responded,

“I saw a picture of a burning flag, I did not see a picture of that flag… I would say that three thousand people marched up Queen Street, there well might have been some individuals trying to bring the issue into disrepute but I know a huge majority of people there were raising concerns about the actions of Israel in the Gaza strip are doing that from a position of peace.”

Instead of knee jerk reactions, we need to take a moment to understand what the adaptation of the Israeli flag with a swastika represents; Jews survived a holocaust at the hands of Nazis and now many Israelis are complicit in causing (silence can be deadly, just as it was in Nazi Germany) what many social commentators have called a holocaust against Palestinians. The flag symbolised this position. It was a reminder of history repeating itself. The Israeli flag itself is a symbol of Palestinian oppression and lost statehood. The one person in the protest who bought the flag which has caused outcry was told many times to leave by organisers of the protest such as Nadia Filistin, as she said:

We slugged our guts out to create an anti-racist event that was safe, I spent sleepless nights explaining clear boundaries around the differences between anti-semitism and anti-zionism over and over and over and yet STILL, despite a crowd of thousands embracing the clear anti-racist message we were explicit about – one single person with a swastika emblazoned on an Israeli flag (who I literally told to leave- as did multiple other organisers- and he said “fine I will” then joined in regardless) is still the story here, while people die this very moment in Gaza.

After Paul Henry railed at Harre on her opinions about swastikas on flags he went on to cry bloody murder over those who burnt an American flag and, not an Israeli flag, but an adaptation of the Israeli flag with a swastika – I was there I watched it burn:

Paul Henry was very VERY upset by this action.

There is something seriously wrong with the humanity of a person when the burning of a fucking flag, is more upsetting for them than the burning of innocent unarmed Palestinian civilians by the white phosphorus and fragmentation bombs of Israeli forces. Weapons that are illegal to use in civilian areas as England’s TV4 reported. If a flag means more to you than a human being Paul, then I think it might be time to look in the mirror and hand in your resignation. After all you are a reporter, you are meant to give a shit about humanity, aren’t you? Or are the lives of Palestinians worth less than a flag? They are ‘the other’ – just collateral damage in the name of security and peace?

Of course this peace and security only extends to the Israelis. Just as security and peace only extended to Americans not Iraqis when Bush invaded Iraq. Some lives seem to have more worth than others. Our mainstream media encourages our commitment to this false narrative – this comforting belief permits us in the west to accept the most horrific of actions committed against other humans in far off countries. In the words of Hala Nasr an Egyptian spoken word poet who speaks in solidary with the Palestinian people and helped organised the protest on the 19^th of this month:

/ not down with others policing my politics
/ not down with apologising for the shit anti-semitic politics of others
/ they are NOT my allies
/ but neither are YOU, if you:
corner a collective of a diverse many and (from your white-high-horse, never-organised-a-damn-thing-in-your-life keyboard hacktivist pedestal) offload assumptions & expect excuses
/ NAH mate, this aint my baggage. This is YOURS

The outrage Paul felt at a flag being burnt, unfortunately, did not stop at him. An article published by Stuff last Wednesday ‘Flag Burning Defended’ started off with John Minto, candidate for Mana and veteran activist for Palestine who spoke at the protest on the 19th, defending the flag burning he said,

“I think in the context of what I would call the massacre of hundreds of Palestinians I think nobody should show the slightest surprise that an Israeli flag was burned.”

Mana is the ONLY political party in parliament that is unequivocal about taking the side of the oppressed on the issue of Palestine. The action of flag burning at the protest was condemned by Labour, NZ First and the Greens. Predictably National has remained silent – and complicit. “When the truth is replaced by silence,” the Soviet dissident Yevgeny Yevtushenko said, “the silence is a lie.” All these political parties are yet to find the courage and the clarity to speak out and condemn the atrocities being committed by the Israeli forces. Labour’s foreign affairs spokesman David Shearer said

I completely condemn what they’ve done. I completely understand why they want to march but let’s march in a way that respects everybody but at the same time makes the point. We should not want to see this sort of thing that I don’t think does us any good and it takes it to a new level in New Zealand which I don’t think is appropriate.

David Shearer does not think burning a flag is an appropriate action? Really? Given the context the flag was burnt, I tend to disagree. As Nadia responded to his words,

People who have ended and destroyed human life under the name of nationalism & respective flags, and their complicit allies, giving stronger condemnation statements to the people burnin’ pieces of synthetic fabric in protest of war crimes than they give to those responsible for the murder of hundreds of Palestinians. David Shearer, I’m looking at you with your spineless “two-sides are wrong” bullshit.

What is inappropriate is David Shearer using the reductive and reactionary “but Palestinians use violence too” arguments in defence of Israel’s murderous actions. This narrative as Nadia points out “willfully distorts the deeply unequal reality of disproportionate violence, apartheid, occupation, siege, ethnic cleansing, bombardment and continued illegal settler colonialism being carried out by Israel.” While our government and those around the world stand idle. While the whole world watches inhuman acts being carried out against Palestinians, as Billy Hania an activist who is Palestinian points out, “the political establishment covers up these crime against humanity through the colonial mouthpiece; a mainstream media that is complicit in this devastation and destruction.”

Palestinians are media unpeople, their suffering and the atrocities committed against them minimised, or suppressed. When people show more outrage at the burning of a flag than Israeli forces bombing hospitals, schools being used as UN Shelters and mosques–places of refuge–while Palestinians are still inside, you know we have a collective problem as a society in connecting with our own humanity.

This minimising of the Palestinian experience, who are indigenous to their land, is a narrative that should be familiar for us in New Zealand. Something Paul Henry confirms after his interview with Laila Harre. When he finished his whinging about how offended he was about a flag being burnt he decided to bring-up a statement by Mana leader Hone Harawira who had drawn parallels from the current situation in Palestine and the act of colonial brutality committed by the New Zealand government against Māori in Parihaka. To which Paul shacked his head and said “Really, Hone? Really? God almighty, there is a man looking for a protest”. Because hell, Paul had come this far he may as well go for the ~racist of the year~ award.

Natalie Robertson an indigenous rights activist, artist and AUT lecturer who I had the privilege of being taught by for 5 years, said in response to Paul Henry’s profound ignorance:

I just wrote this post on the Facebook page of The Paul Henry Show. It has disappeared without being posted, so luckily I copied it before posting: I stopped watching TV3 Nightline news when it became the Paul Henry show. Tonight I watched other TV3 shows then The Paul Henry show came in. It didn’t take long for Paul to display his utter ignorance and arrogance and casual racism. He read out a statement by Hone Harawira drawing a connection between the NZ settler government’s treatment of Parihaka, with the situation in Gaza. Paul groaned and complained and said, “really?”.

Well, really Paul, do you any in-depth understanding of the bombing of Parihaka, of the invasion by ground troops, by the encircling and capture of the people, of the civilian deaths, of the five-year army occupation and the continued rapes and systematic oppression of the citizens of Parihaka, of the suspension of habeas corpus with the imprisonment of the leaders, held without trial? Obviously you don’t because if you did, you wouldn’t say such ill-informed things. My bigger problem is with TV3 giving you air time. Why, TV3, why?

Parihaka is a perfect parallel to what is happening in Gaza; an indigenous people heroically defending what little is left to them. If anyone is still unconvinced of the connection between Parihaka and Palestine these graphs should clear-up any remaining doubt you might have:

Paul Henry who, like me, comes from white privilege and has benefited so greatly from white imperialism found it so easy to brush off indigenous stories, histories and opinions with a shake of his head; “It doesn’t matter. Get over it.” As if indigenous history was not worth remembering, “The struggle of people against power” wrote Milan Kundra “is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”

Paul Henry’s commitment to ignorance and dismissal of the connection Hone drew from Palestine to Parihaka, is not only an embarrassment to ethical reporting but it is deeply coded in racism. I know, as a white person, my anti-racist education will always be ongoing. It is our duty as thinking feeling human beings to eradicate racism within ourselves and in our societies whenever we can and wherever we go. It is our duty to rail against the enforced forgetting and minimising of indigenous history in Aotearoa – Paul Henry should be ashamed. Many of us should feel ashamed. When I was much younger I used to brush off Maori land claims as if they held no meaning – at least, not to me. I now look back on this and cringe. I am embarrassed. As Qwul’sih’yah’maht (Dr. Robina Thomas) profoundly asserts,

“Becoming a racist is painless, but unbecoming a racist is excruciatingly painful.”

Our duty to stand against intolerance and racism should not finish with just ourselves or at the edge of the shores of Aotearoa. Like so many people have already in our country and around the world, we need to stand united against the racist Zionist Israeli government who acts with impunity and has, in less than a month, displaced over 100,000 Palestinians and massacred over a thousand innocent civilians in the Gaza Strip as well as injuring over 5,000 more Palestinians.

On Saturday just passed thousands again marched in protest for Gaza in Auckland, Paul Henry will be happy to know no flags were burnt. The mainstream media has little choice now than to report on this second protest in a positive light. Mohamed Hassen, the spoken word poet read his poem, ‘For Gaza’ at the end of the march he finished with these words:

//you will never cleanse us from your hands
never shake us from your dreams
we will never stop fighting to breath
we will never stop living
never submit to you
never shake
never yes
never bow
we will never stop
we will never stop
being//

Burning the Israeli flag is not the issue, it is a legitimate response to the issue.

*If you would like to learn more about what’s going on in Gaza, and the History of the Israeli occupation there is a forum this wednesday:

A feminist takedown of Whale Oil

Chloe King

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July 26, 2014

38

Whale Oil does it again. How many more times is he going to attack and discredit Tania Billingsley publicly? In a short blog published on Wednesday ‘Nothing to be sorry for‘ Whale Oil also known as Cameron Slater, is defending John Key in his refusal to say sorry personally to Tania for his fucking appalling handling of the Malaysian Diplomat case. Tania Billingsley reported to police in May of this year that diplomat Muhammed Rizalman followed her home, entered her house and then attempted to rape her.

Tania asked John Key for an apology as it was Murray McCully, John Key’s Minster for Foreign Affairs, who did not take the allegation seriously, allowing the diplomat to flee back to Malaysia. Although McCully could not have stopped the diplomat from going back to Malaysia without being in breach of international law, he could have asked the Indonesian government to wave diplomatic immunity. As RadioNZ reported Malaysia was prepared to waive his immunity, but still McCully failed to act. This inaction, as I have previously stated, is a classic example of our state system and how it views sexual crimes.

Cameron Slater sees no point in John Key apologizing personally to Tania. He wrote, “Tania Billingsley demanded an apology from John Key in her political hit job against the government, apparently he looked bored and that outraged her. She won’t be getting an apology from John Key though, and why should he?”

John Key said he would say sorry to Tania once he knew her name, he lied. If Key had said sorry it would mean he takes responsibility for governmental incompetency. Key apologizing to Tania would mean he admits to being wrong and behaving in ways that minimize rape and sexual assault, as Rape Crisis has said Key needs to take the case more seriously. When you minimize rape, when you do not take it seriously you trivialize, legitimize and normalize it.

In another blog published last week by Cameron Slater, ‘Tania Billingsley and the Green and Rape Crisis Fingerprints’ he not only denies the existence of rape culture in New Zealand when he said “I do not subscribe to the notion New Zealand has a culture of rape,” but also casts doubt over Billingsley’s alleged attack by the diplomat. This blog by Slater is an exercise in both victim blaming and rapist apologizing – all narratives that create rape culture; they are harmful and vilify the victim while pardoning the perpetrator. In his blog Slater effectively accuses Tania of baiting her attacker Muhammed Rizalman. Obviously, as women we like being raped so much we seduce our rapists into attacking us – this is victim blaming in the most disgusting sense. Slater mused,

‘Now, dear readers, what are the odds of a Malasian diplomat deciding to follow Tania home from a bus stop, apparently at random? What are the odds of him picking a woman that is befriended with and herself involved in women’s issues going back many years? What are the odds of him randomly standing there not touching her, then, backing off and waiting for police to arrive out in the street? What are the odds of Green MP Jan Logie getting involved, erm, randomly? What are the odds of a situation that has NONE of the hallmarks of an attempted rape, being shopped by TV3 as attempted rape and the label “Rape culture” being used to intimidate and shut up critics like ourselves lest we look insensitive to (real!) rape victims?’

Rape is fun “if you just ease into it and relax”. In Slater’s world Tania has an agenda – this agenda is pushing and proving the existence of rape culture and obviously, pegging an attempted rape on an unwitting diplomat is the perfect scenario to do just that. Slater’s “proof” behind his position is that Tania knows Tabby Besley, who has previously worked at Rape Prevention in Wellington. She also contacted green MP and women’s rights activist Jan Logie for support and has previously spoken out against rape culture. Yeah, that is all the evidence he has. Move aside Sherlock Holmes.

Whale Oil claiming Tania has an agenda and needed to come up with an explosive way of proving the existence of rape culture is ridiculous. What are the Roast Busters proof of, then? Are they just an aberration? An anomaly? A gang of young men getting underage girls drunk and having sex with them, then boasting about it in youtube videos and online? Elliot Rodger’s who is responsible for the Visa Isle massacre in America, in which he shot and stabbed 6 people because “dumb blonde sluts would not sleep with him” spoke of his sexual self-entitlement to women’s bodies in a youtube video and a manifesto before he committed the Massacre. Like Rodger’s the Roast Busters held the same ideologies and beliefs; they believed women owe men sex.

Soon after the explosive news of the Roast Busters broke, two other 16 year old boys in New Zealand unrelated to the Roaster Busters, were arrested and eventually convicted of the same thing; getting an underage girl drunk and then taking turns raping her. After the girl was abused by each teenager separately and left naked in a bedroom, she was further humiliated by a group who came in with their cell phones lit up and touched her. In America the Steubenville rape has been dubbed the Abu Ghraib of rape culture. Two all-star footballers took turns raping a young girl who was comatose from alcohol consumption while many young men watched. They made jokes at the victim’s expense, filmed and photographed the assault on their phones and later uploaded them to youtube.

These sexist and misogynistic beliefs held by Rodger’s and the men involved in the Staubenville rape are not just something that happen in far off countries, they are part of New Zealand culture; they are part of New Zealand rape culture. The Roast Busters and the two teenagers who raped a young girl are powerful evidence of this and I am not the only person who thinks so, thousands of people all over New Zealand took to the streets on the 16^th of November of last year, to protest rape culture in the wake of the Roast Busters scandal.

John Key brushed off the actions of the Roast Busters by saying “these young guys just need to grow up” he may as well have said “boys will be boys” and be done with it – language which minimizes the actions of rapists is all part of rape culture.

If Tania needed evidence of rape culture, she already had it. Rape culture is all the things I have already spoken about; the minimizing of rape, victim blaming but it is also the daily catcalling by men of women on the street, it is the sexual objectification of women’s bodies and it is the denial of wide spread rape – something Slater seems so hell bent on doing.

Why would Tania need to create evidence of rape culture in New Zealand? When our own Prime Minister John Key has time and time again perpetuated rape culture himself. He has done this by his refusal to apologize to Tania, with his minimizing of the Roast Busters actions and his governments slashing of funding to services that support victims of sexual assault, just recently Christchurch’s only Rape Crisis Centre had to close due to lack of funding. As Tania said in an essay she wrote in relation to her attack and in response to the government handling of the case, “We have seen this rape culture reflected in our own government’s response to my assault.”

Cameron Slater’s blogs are rife with sexism, homophobia, racism and transphobia – recently he wrote about Kelly Ellis who is transgender and a Labour MP and made fun of her genitals and body shamed her. As Ellis said when I spoke to her, “This is just part of his [Slater’s] women-hating. He used me and my body to have a supposedly funny crack at gender equity within Labour’s caucus. His talk of my genitals is an attack on me and my privacy. No one should have to put up with that.” How low is Slater willing to go? Cameron Slater is not a journalist he is a conservative gossip columnist. His blog ‘Whale Oil Beef Hooked’ is the ‘News Weekly’ of the right wing. Denying the existence of rape culture may bring you comfort Mr. Slater but your comfort silences those who have survived sexual assault and rape.

This week Slater told Heather du Plessis-Allan of Seven Sharp that he talks with John Key all the time, after all best buds have to stick together. If anyone has an agenda here, it is Cameron Slater, and not Tania.

Astronaut tweets photo of explosions over Israel and Gaza from space

Chloe King

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July 25, 2014

0

This is what a war zone looks like from space:

From aboard the International Space Station, German astronaut Alexander Gerst tweeted this image as the station passed over Israel and Gaza in what he called ‘his saddest photo yet’. As metro magazine reported “The clusters in light signify the densely populated areas of the troubled regions, and each small patch of intensely bright light within them is an explosion.”

Since Israel began it’s assault in Gaza Time Magazine estimates more than 750 Palestinians, mostly innocent civilians, have lost their lives and thousands have been injured. Two Israeli civilians have been killed by rocket fire into Israel, and 29 Israeli soldiers have died in the assault on Gaza.

Politics beyond the veil

Morgan Godfery

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July 17, 2014

10

“Nothing can be achieved by performing a protest haka outside the fence or from an opposition bench in Parliament. It was not protest or opposition that negotiated the landmark programme of Whanau Ora, undoubtedly the most effective social and economic gain for Maori ever in our modern history”.

Parse the bullish language and spot the thesis: movements are out, governing is in. This is politics beyond the veil, where the political class rules the void. The Māori Party is not necessarily promising progress, its only promise is to govern. This is the lousy state of Māori politics. The highest value and the only end is sitting “at the table of government”.

And that creates a frustrating paradox for Māori activists: the Māori Party is the legacy of movement politics – that is, the Māori protest movement – yet it shuns political organising for the politics of integration. Sitting at the table is the means and the ends.

“If you actually want to achieve something”, explains Te Ururoa Flavell, “you’ve got to be there and that’s what we’re determined to do”. However “you’ve got to get the numbers in order to have real influence”. In other words, #realpolitik. Flavell is certainly right in one respect: the surest route to change is the cabinet. Yet that view – an article of faith in the Māori Party – is profoundly ahistorical. Did the first hīkoi, Bastion Point, Raglan Golf Course and Pākaitore achieve nothing? Was Parihaka for nought? Were He Taua, Ngā Tamatoa and the Waitangi Action all impotent? Of course not.

The Māori renaissance – and its radical wing, the protest movement – was a political offensive. It was not an institutional strategy, but a movement strategy. The aim was to build the infrastructure of dissent. With that, we could and did force change. From land to language, the government submitted to (some) Māori demands. The Māori Party is the legacy of this movement. The argument goes that the movement has matured. The Māori Party is an institutional strategy and that was the end which the protest movement sought. Well, yes and no.

The fight is against the system in its totality. Without engaging existing political efforts, the Māori Party leaves itself exposed. Its only leverage is the seats it holds which – without the movement behind it – are soon to be none. There is still a gap between the problems Māori face and our ability to combat them. That is, we are still on the wrong end of 174 years of inequality. Reversing that, or resisting the centrifugal forces that would put us down, requires that infrastructure of dissent. That means the movement and the political party. The relentless dissociative logic that the Māori Party employs means that it will never be the force it thought it would. If the party really thinks its only job is to sit at the table and govern, then do we really need them?

What does it mean to be a girl?

Chloe King

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July 15, 2014

7

The words “…like a girl” have been used as an insult to humiliate both men and women for generations; “you run like a girl”, “you hit like a girl” or even “you speak like a girl” are used to shame and put people down. A few weeks ago the feminine hygiene company ‘Always’ launched their Always #LikeAGirl campaign with a powerful video that, of course, has gone viral gaining over 30 million views on YouTube. It asks young people to demonstrate running, fighting, and throwing “like a girl”. They worryingly respond with flaying arms, waving hands, and hair flips:

When young girls are asked the same questions, the response is strikingly different. When director Lauren Greenfield, who directed the documentary ‘Girl Culture’, asks 10-year old Dakoda the same questions she responds by running with determination and strength. When asked to show what it looks like to fight like a girl Dakoda, punches hard at the air with focus and determination etched on her face. Many other young girls responded in similar, purposeful ways.

Some random commercial trying to sell sanitary pads to young women is obviously not about to ‘rewrite the rules’ for girls everywhere, but it highlights an important point: young girls are not the ones holding themselves back. It is society’s hoary old biases that are enforcing gender barriers and creating new ones that shackle these young girls to rigid stereotypes and limit what they think they can and cannot do. As the author Siri Hustvedt said when speaking on underground sexism, “Anything that becomes associated with girls and women loses status, whether it is a profession, a book, a movie, or a disease”.

When J.K. Rowling published her first Harry Potter book, her publisher Barry Cunningham told her young boys did not like reading books by women, especially not fantasy books. J.K. Rowling posted on her website, “He [Cunningham] thought that young boys might be wary of a book written by a woman”. Which is why she used her initials J.K. instead of her first name Joanne. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, as everyone in the world knows, went on to become some of the most successful books of all time, nearly outselling any other book in history, second only to the bible in sales.

I am going to go out on a limb here and say that boys and men probably knew Rowling was a woman when they paid for and read her books, given her celebrity status. I remember seeing a group of men who looked to be in their forties sitting at a bus stop early in the morning on the day ‘Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince’ was released. They were clutching their books with fevered joy and reading their brand new copies. These grown men must have stood in line at the special midnight release which took place in selected bookstores, throughout New Zealand in order to procure ‘The Half Blood Prince’ on the morning of its release. Hustvedt writes,

“Unconscious biases hurt women, but they also hurt men. I am sorry for men who feel emasculated by reading novels and doubly emasculated if the novel’s author is a woman. Not only are they the victims of irrational prejudice, they deprive themselves of crucial knowledge about the world”.

Biases and negative perceptions of genders are taught, we are not born with them. The good news is subconscious patterns of perception and behaviour can be made conscious. Siri Hustvedt goes on to say:

“Contemporary science confirms that our attitudes are shaped by implicit influences, but also that attention plays a role in reflective consciousness and judgement”.

Once people are aware of their negative behaviours and perceptions, they can change them. When the director for the Always #LikeAGirl add campaign challenged the negative perceptions the young adults held in relation to girls’ athletic abilities, they changed their minds. One young woman was asked if she would run differently now, if asked ‘how do girls run’? “Yes”, she said. “I would run like myself”.

Young girls may not hold the same biases and sexism towards loaded phrases such as “…like a girl”, but they are acutely aware of the sexism they face as girls. The New York Times recently shot an educational documentary called ‘Gnarly in Pink’ that is beginning to trend on the Internet. It documents a group of 6-year old girls who have started a skateboarding gang called ‘The Pink Helmet Posse’ in America. These little girls are skating the parks of Southern California wearing fairy wings, pink nail polish, and tutus while dropping into bowls and pulling 360s.

Sierra, one of the girls in the skateboard gang said “I want the same amount of girls to be skating as boys. I want to be a professional skateboarder someday”. Sierra, at six years of age, is keenly aware of the lack of female representation in the skateboarding world. As the ed-doc points out, only 33 of the 192 competitors in the X Games in Los Angeles last year were women. The late Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Wangari Maathai put it well when she said, “The higher you go the fewer women there are.”

The Pink Helmet Posse has been meet with engrained sexism and have had their abilities undermined, like any girl who takes up an activity or sport that is perceived as ‘masculine’ and is dominated by men, because they are female skateboarders. One little boy asked a girl in the gang called Bella “Can you even skateboard?” Bella was distraught. Her mother told her “You just need to prove you can”. Bella’s mum went on to say, “Her whole life she is going to have to prove to the boys she can do it”. What about proving to herself she can do it? Girls are taught to seek men’s approval from a young age and, as Bella’s mother makes clear, even young boys. As the feminist and Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie said in her Ted talk ‘We Should All be Feminists’: “We raise girls to see each other as competitors not for jobs or accomplishments, which I think could be a good thing. But for the attention of men.”

Bella’s mother’s assertion that her daughter would have to prove to boys she can skateboard, reflects a society that is largely dominated by the public opinions and judgements of men. J.K Rowling may have taken the literary world by storm with her Harry Potter series but her books were overwhelmingly reviewed by men, and of course she had to use her initials not her full name to appease young boys and her male editor. When major literary journals review books written primarily by male authors and the reviewers themselves remain overwhelmingly men, as Julianna Ross of .mic suggests, “They make the old boys’ club that is the publishing industry even less hospitable to women, as it reminds them that this is still not their world”.

When I spoke to The Girls Skate Network in America and asked the question “How many female judges are there for the Skateboarding division for both female and male categories at the X Games this year”? a representative said, “There are no female judges for X Games that I know of”.

When I talked to Alexis Pritchard-Todd, a Kiwi female Olympic boxer, on the phone, Alexis told me she first started training at 19, and on her first sparring session with her trainer Cam, she noticed he had many female boxers on his team. One of them was as young as 12. Alexis trains in a gym that fosters an anti-sexist and gender diverse environment. Alexis said “I never thought at any stage, ‘oh I am a girl, I am boxing this is not what I should be doing’. The culture in Cam’s gym has always been completely accepting of women fighters I have never ever had a bad comment from any of our fighters”. Creating environments that do not tolerate biases and belief systems that assume women are weak and incapable goes a long way to making women feel they can achieve. Positive role models like Alexis are powerful too. When I asked Alexis “what advice she would give young girls?” she said,

“I think all young girls need female role models or athletes in all sports – whether it be netball or any other sport out there – who are not afraid to be who they are. Don’t conform. Be yourself. That is what my mum always taught me”.

But not all athletic environments are as welcoming to women as Alexis’s gym, as the Pink Helmet Posse Gang has shown. These biases against girls’ abilities in sports and institionalised sexism contribute to them being twice as likely as boys to drop out of sports by the time they are 14. This worrying statistic does not, of course, stop at sports. Cara Santa Maria, a video who chose a career in a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) field, said in her recent vid-blog,

“Women make up just about half of the American workforce, but we hold less than a quarter of the STEM jobs. In fact, a recent survey revealed some surprising findings about girls’ attitudes toward STEM careers. Thirty percent of teen girls say that math is their most challenging subject, while only nineteen percent of boys say the same thing”.

In New Zealand, women make up less than a quarter of those studying for a Bachelor of Science in Engineering and just over a third of those studying for a Bachelor of Science in Information Technology. As the National Advisory Council on the Employment of Women (NACEW) points out, “These study trends mean that women do not fully participate in innovative work such as engineering”.

Women’s underrepresentation in science and maths, and occupying markedly fewer jobs in engineering has nothing to do with our abilities or capacity to undertake careers in STEM

“…the truth is, what appears to have the greatest impact on girls’ attitudes are sociocultural factors like stereotype threat”.

As Cara Santa Maria said during a video blog:

“You see, when people are afraid they’re being stereotyped, they can feel those eyes on them.”

Interestingly, the girls in the ‘Pink Helmet Posse’ embrace and at the same time challenge constructed negative “girl” stereotypes – they are yet to internalise stereotype threat. The 6-year old girls in pink (a gendered colour), skateboarding in tutus and glitter and dressing as princesses while dreaming of making it to the X Games are yet to learn that princesses are rescued and often conveyed as weak or hapless. The girls in The Pink Posse are rejecting and rewriting this narrative – this is a powerful resistance to engrained negative biases held against women and girls. In the book Fifty Shades of Feminism, Lisa Power writes:

“When I was seven, I remember sitting up crying in bed one evening, sobbing to my mother because I wasn’t a boy. Not because I was a boy inside, but because boys got to swashbuckle and command armies and be princes who actually did deeds, not princesses who sat and waited for something to happen to them”.

The girls in The Pink Helmet Posse are not waiting for something to happen to them, they have learnt subversion young. These girls have taken up a ‘masculine sport’ and are facing down sexism while challenging what the world has told them they can or cannot be or do, without compromising their own identities, which obviously they are still forming.

The animated blockbuster Frozen, inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen, follows two female protagonists, Elsa and Anna, who are sisters and princesses. Frozen’s storyline counters the tiresome and damaging Disney trope of girls waiting around for their Prince Charming. As Lauren Davidson wrote for .Mic:

“Audiences were quick to jump on Disney’s subversive plot [in Frozen] that undermines the traditional concept of ‘true love’. Because the act of true love that saves Anna isn’t a kiss — a passive event from a dominant male that happens to her — but rather it’s the act of sacrificing herself for her sister. What’s more, it’s Anna’s own action that saves herself, and not the deed of someone else”.

Both Anna and Elsa are action oriented in Frozen; they fight monsters and have adventures. They “swashbuckle”. Neither Anna nor Elsa command armies but they certainly command themselves; they make their own decisions and do not seek out men’s’ affirmation to validate their existence. Frozen does not focus on a princess waiting for true love then marrying some prince charming she just meet, but on sisterhood. Girls banding together to help each other to conquer great obstacles. Frozen was directed by a woman and grossed over one billion dollars; proving ‘female stories’ are something both young boys and girls want to see. Most importantly, this film showed young girls everywhere the power and importance of girls supporting and encouraging each other.

The girls in ‘The Pink Helmet Posse’ have banded together to create their own gang and are supporting each other in a male dominated sport that is, as the sexism they have already faced shows, hostile towards young girls. The more that young girls can see the benefits that come from standing together, the less they will see each other as competition for “the attention of men” and the more they will view each other as comrades who stand together not divided. As Laurie Penny wrote in her new book, Unspeakable Things:

“…it isn’t threats of violence that keep women down but the fear of being unloved; the age-old fear that men don’t want outspoken, difficult women. Deep down, I know if I choose not to play the good-girl game, I might not get as many kisses as I want. And that’s so much more terrifying.”

When women refuse to toe the line, when they reject and challenge archaic gender roles, when they refuse to “play the good-girl game”, when they seek affirmation not from men but from themselves and each other, women and girls can and do challenge and shift biased perceptions. They can change their communities and their lives for the better.

There is a war being waged on NZ men… at least according to this Facebook page

Chloe King

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July 12, 2014

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Men’s masculinity is under attack in New Zealand and four people, one of whom is a woman (it always stings that little bit more when a woman is pushing anti-feminist ideas), have created a Facebook page to do something about it. Sound your battle cries:

I don’t know why I was surprised to see this page pop up on my Facebook feed? After all David Cunliffe’s apology for being a man in relation to the epidemic of violence that women face has caused a lot of men (mainly white men) to get pretty upset . Then to add insult to some men’s injuries, the Labour party recently announced it will undertake a monumental shift in how rape cases are reviewed in court if it gets into power. As The Independent reported, “Political party wants to reverse the burden of proof in rape cases if it gets into power, making defendants prove their innocence to reduce the trauma suffered by victims”. Labour’s actions, according to ‘The Labour Party’s War on Men’ Facebook page, are obvious attacks on men’s rights, masculinity, and perhaps even their cocks as the page suggests:

“It’s only a matter of time before a penis tax is proposed by Labour in their war against men. Let the nutters know men are more than just potential rapists”

O.M.F.G! First of all, I am not even going to bother with the “penis tax” comment for obvious reasons. And secondly, this is the “not all men” argument again, only worded differently. Sneaky! Guess what, fuckknuckles? Men can be raped too! Labour’s law reversal, where the burden of proof would fall on the accused, not the victim, does not just apply to women who have been raped. It protects all rape survivors, making the court process for victims less brutal.

Perhaps this Facebook page was started by four people who think men cannot be raped? NEWSFLASH: it is estimated 15% of adolescent boys will survive sexual assault and as .mic reported, the time of disclosure for male rape survivors is usually 20 years after the assault. This is a long time for millions of men in the world to remain silent about the trauma they have survived. As Martyn Bradbury pointed out this morning in relation to this Facebook page “How insecure in your masculinity must you feel to buy into believing Labour are declaring a war on men?”

Labour’s law reform brings up the murky topic of “consent” – something many people seem to have issues defining or even explaining. Instead of giving knee jerk reactions to Labour’s law reversal – like the ‘The Labour Party’s War on Men’ Facebook page – we should take this opportunity to discuss issues around sexual consent. After all people seem to be confused by what the word “consent” actually means? David Farrar explains,

“Think about all the times you have had sex with someone, and how often could you *prove* consent”.

David, when I have sex with my partner we ‘check in’ a couple of times with each other during sex to make sure we are both ok – this does not interrupt sexual intercourse, it lets me know my partner cares about me and my sexual needs and boundaries. This is called sexual consent. When we first got together we had extensive conversations (also known as ‘mental foreplay’) about what we would like to do with each other sexually. This is called sexual consent. After a year and a half together we still ‘check in’ and make sure we are both comfortable with some of the sexual acts we are performing, even if we have performed these acts before. This is called sexual consent. These conversations also lead to more orgasms because we have become acutely aware of what gets each other off – conversation around consent can be sexy.

If you are too embarrassed to discuss consent and what gets you off sexually with your partner (David Farrar I am looking at you) then you are obviously too immature to be having sex in the first place. So do the world a favour and keep it in your pants.

The main issue commentators and those posting on the facebook page in question, have with Labours proposed law reversal, that will only apply in rape cases, is they believe it is an attack on the presumption of innocence until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt, it is not. As the New Zealand Herald stressed, being innocent until proven guilty would, obviously, remain.

New Zealand has one of the lowest conviction rates for rape in the western world, only 1% of all rapes result in a prosecution. Our justice system is failing rape survivors. Labour’s law reform is a monumental step that, if passed, will make the court process for survivors less harrowing and humiliating. Broadcaster Rachel Smalley points out, “If you look at the percentage of sexual violence cases that result in a conviction, it’s pathetic. The system is not working. Something needs to change. Rapists walk free every week.”

To say this law reform is an attack on men’s rights, as the facebook page ‘The Labour’s war on men’ makes claim, is to deny the reality men are survivors of rape to, further silencing their voices.

Here are just some of the *facepalm* comments and posts on ‘The Labour’s War on Men’ Page:

I could not have said it better myself than this response: “Toot if you feel emasculated by men acknowledging this country’s horrendous domestic and sexual violence issues”. Hint: don’t toot unless you want to look like an uneducated jackass.

A small minority of women do falsify rape claims however, it is estimated to be between only 2-8%. Displayed below is what I, and many feminists friends call “perpetuating rape myths.”

Feminism is evil and obviously sexist (yes, the poster is a female – women can be anti-feminists too):

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There is a war being waged on NZ men… at least according to this Facebook page