A spate of Islamophobic incidents continues nationwide. In Las Vegas, police are investigating a possible hate crime in which a man wrapped bacon around the handles of a mosque before Sunday morning prayer. In New York, an Israeli man has been charged with a hate crime after he allegedly accosted four Pakistani Americans in Brooklyn brandishing a pistol and screaming, “I want to see the blood of Muslims in the street.” Meanwhile, in Fresno, California, an elderly Sikh man was hit by a truck and then beaten in the street by two men on Saturday. The attack left 68-year-old Amrik Singh Bal with a broken collarbone. Police say he may have been mistaken for a Muslim, as has happened in other violence against Sikhs nationwide. A recent study finds hate crimes against Muslim Americans and U.S. mosques have tripled since the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino. The Council on American-Islamic Relations has reported more incidents targeting mosques this year than in any other year on record.
David Gauke, financial secretary to the Treasury, became the most senior UK figure to react to the execution, which has led to clashes in Tehran, and prompted widespread denunciation elsewhere. He said Nimr’s death was a “worrying development”. The US Department of State had said earlier that the move risked “exacerbating sectarian tensions at a time when they urgently need to be reduced”.
The case of two Oregon ranchers headed to prison for illegally setting fires on federal lands has snowballed into a standoff with a group of armed right-wing militiamen, who have occupied the headquarters of a wildlife refuge and said they’re willing to use violence if police attempt to remove them from the facility.
The situation began to unfold early Saturday afternoon in the remote city of Burns in southeast Oregon. An estimated 300 protesters, some of them carrying guns, paraded through the city, decrying the prosecution of Harney County ranchers Dwight Hammond Jr. and his son Steven. The two men were convicted of arson for setting fires on their property that spread to the adjacent Malheur wildlife refuge. The younger Hammond, 46, served a year in prison, and his father was sentenced to three months. A judge later ruled that their sentences were too short, and ordered them back to prison for about four years each.
Lawyers for the Hammonds have reportedly said they accept the court’s ruling and will report to federal authorities on Monday to begin serving their new sentences. Their cause, however, has been taken up by a loose coalition of right-wing groups led by Ammon Bundy, the son of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who led an armed standoff last year against the US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) over a 20-year legal dispute that involved unpaid cattle grazing fees.
The mayor of a city in the central Mexican state of Morelos was shot dead the day after she took office.
Gunmen killed Gisela Mota Ocampo at her house in the city of Temixco on Saturday morning, authorities said. She had been sworn in as mayor of the city on New Year’s Day.
Morelos Governor Graco Ramírez attributed the attack to organized crime.
“This is a challenge by organized crime against the constitutional and democratic order,” Ramírez said on Sunday morning. “Gisela Raquel Mota Ocampo was an honest and committed public servant.”
Dozens of mayors and other elected officials — who often have little personal security — have been killed in drug war violence across Mexico that has left well over 100,000 people dead in the past decade.
A war of words has broken out between Iran and Saudi Arabia after Riyadh announced that Shia religious figure Nimr al-Nimr was among 47 men it had executed on terrorism charges.
The Saudi interior ministry announced the executions on Saturday, listing the names of the 47 killed, all of whom had been convicted on charges of terrorism.
The government said those convicted had plotted or participated in attacks against residential compounds and government buildings.
Nimr, who led anti-government protests in Saudi Arabia’s east, was previously convicted of sedition, disobedience and bearing arms. Nimr did not deny the political charges against him, but said he never carried weapons or called for violence.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Sunday that Saudi Arabia faced “divine revenge” over Nimr’s execution, saying the religious leader “neither invited people to take up arms nor hatched covert plots. The only thing he did was public criticism.”
You read that right – we are bribing someone to get a free trade deal with a country that gives 200 lashes to a woman gang raped, a country that treats women less than we treat our sheep, a country that crucifies people, a country that beheads just like ISIS behead.
Key describes ISIS as barbaric so what will he call Saudi Arabia after they executed 47 people today?
How can we embark upon a secret war supporting butchers, tyrants and warlords as allies to kill a group of religious fanatics every inch as sadistic as one we are bribing to get a trade deal with?
How on earth is that the NZ we believe we are?
Oh but ISIS are different aren’t they folks? ISIS is medieval and barbaric and can not be negotiated with – which kinda still sums up Saudi Arabia very well.
Let’s not forget that Key is using Muslim’s under surveillance and ‘Jihadi Brides’ to avoid answering questions he doesn’t want to answer.
Questions like –
Why are we in this war with America supposedly ‘training’ Iraqi soldiers when the yanks have spent billions trying to do the same thing?
Are we having the SAS target for US airstrikes?
What happened to the Afghan civilians we handed over to known torture units?
Should the Governor General be investigated for war crimes when he stands down?
Are we being spooked into giving the Government unprecedented powers into our lives without credible oversight?
You know, questions like that.
Key’s argument for sending troops to ‘train’ soldiers to fight (and his insinuation that the Left are hypocrites for not supporting his humanitarian re-invasion of Iraq) is…
More dog airhorn than whistle for war, because that’s what us moral crusaders for – what is it this time, Democracy? Freedom? Corporate rights to buy and manipulate whatever natural resources the latest country America is invading this year, really want to hear when it comes to empty and meaningless justifications.
Mr Key has decided to hang his argument on (pause) the evil that is ISIS!
So on the one hand – we can got to war to fight a movement that is a human rights abuser but we’ll bribe other human rights abusers if that fits our interests?
That’s the country we are is it?
If you are not angry you are not paying attention.
An unbelievable exclusive by David Fisher, the SIS & GCSB are staffed by racist scum…
NZ’s spy shame: An ‘old boys’ club’ that makes racist jokes, report finds New Zealand’s intelligence agencies are largely staffed by white males in an “old boys’ club” with “excessive” and “unnecessary” racist jokes made at the expense of Maori and Pacific staff, a diversity study has found.
…this is being spun by the Government as a recruitment issue, we shouldn’t allow them to get away with that. The SIS & GCSB are telling racist jokes in the workplace while other Maori and Pacific Island staff have to grin and put up with the racism. What’s the bet they tell sexist jokes as well?
These are the people who have been given enormous power by John Key to legally commit mass surveillance and send that mass surveillance directly to the NSA and it’s staffed by racist scum?
Does this racism expand beyond jokes? Do they target Maori, Pacific Islanders and Muslims more with their powers? They spy agencies claim they have an ‘unconscious bias’, which is exactly what the Police admitted to last month as well.
How much ‘unconscious’ bias does one need before you have to admit that you are a conscious bigot?
How have we allowed spy agencies to be staffed by racist scum and how have we allowed them so much power? Remember the SIS worked with the PMs Office to falsify information and smear Phil Goff in the lead up to the 2011 election. If we have spy agencies willing to become involved in domestic politics to keep a Government in power, and that Government in turn then hand vast new powers and millions more in budget – what do we call that other than corruption?
The sleepy hobbits of muddle Nu Zilind have much to answer for in allowing Key to turn our spy agencies against us, especially now we know they are staffed by racist scum!
Legendary actor and comedian Bill Cosby has been charged with sexual assault. One of the nation’s most powerful and wealthy entertainers, Cosby has long faced allegations that he drugged and raped dozens of women in cases that stretch back decades. Many doubted Cosby would ever face criminal charges. But on Wednesday, authorities in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, announced felony charges of aggravated indecent assault against Bill Cosby stemming from an alleged 2004 attack. The indictment alleges Cosby urged Andrea Constand to take pills and drink wine until she was unable to move, after which he assaulted her. This allegedly came after Constand twice rejected Cosby’s sexual advances. Constand reported the incident at the time, but the District Attorney’s Office refused to bring charges, citing a lack of evidence. In the ensuing years, more than 50 women have come forward to accuse Cosby of sexual assault.
Young black men were nine times more likely than other Americans to be killed by police officers in 2015, according to the findings of a Guardian study that recorded a final tally of 1,134 deaths at the hands of law enforcement officers this year.
Despite making up only 2% of the total US population, African American males between the ages of 15 and 34 comprised more than 15% of all deaths logged this year by an ongoing investigation into the use of deadly force by police. Their rate of police-involved deaths was five times higher than for white men of the same age.
Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has set up a studio on the Greek island of Lesbos to highlight the plight of refugees.
The island has been the main point of entry for hundreds of thousands of refugees over the past year and the studio would produce several projects with themes related to the refugee crisis from him and his students, Ai told reporters.
Temperatures at the North Pole may not have topped the freezing mark — there are mixed reports from different weather buoys — but it was an unseasonably warm Wednesday at the top of the globe. The storm system that brought spring-like Christmas warmth, along with deadly floods and tornadoes, to eastern North America swept across the pole with raging winds that sucked warm Atlantic air in its wake.
An international network of buoys sends back data from the high Arctic, and one of those — located at 87.3 degrees north latitude — recorded a high of just under 34 degrees (0.7 degrees Celsius) on Wednesday. But another, located a fraction of a degree further north at 87.5 N, only reported 16 degrees (-8.5 C) — still nearly 50 degrees Fahrenheit above the usual temperature for the end of December.
“So in summary, the forecast warming was qualitatively pretty good even though temperatures at the Pole didn’t reach up to the freezing point,” the University of Washington’s Polar Science Center noted.
At least 980 Iraqis lost their lives in violent attacks during the month of December 2015, around 90 more than November, the UN has said.
The UN Assistance Mission for Iraq, known as UNAMI, said in a statement on Friday that 506 of those killed in December were civilians, while the rest were security forces, including Kurdish Peshmerga and paramilitary troops.
The figures were released a day after 60 Iraqi government and allied fighters were killed in an Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) attack north of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province.
“The year 2015 has seen thousands of Iraqis killed and injured as a result of conflict and terrorism. This is unacceptable,” Jan Kubis, the special representative of the UN secretary-general for Iraq, said in the statement.
“The Iraqi people have every right to live in peace and tranquillity. The UN continues to deplore this continuing loss of life.”
There were many stories and angles to events that simply were not covered by the mainstream media in 2015, these were 10 of them.
10: Role of the Media in the Ponytail incident + Examination of Key’s bullying
Two of the parts of the ponytail bullying incident that simply wasn’t covered well enough in 2015 was how the NZ Herald covered the story and how Key did this bullying on 10 separate occasions. The Press Council’s handing down of their most damning finding against the Herald and Rachel Glucina was merely a slap over the wrist with a wet bus ticket and Mike Hosking attack on the waitress while attracting a BSA growling faced no actual real punishment for abusing his position of power.
The Herald KNEW that the interview had been taken under false pretences and still ran with it. Glucina inserted a spin that Amanda Bailey was politically motivated into complaining and Hosking attacked Bailey for not going to the mainstream media with her story (despite the NZ Herald playing such a spiteful role in spiking Amanda’s story).
The focus quickly became one of Key over stepping his position, and minimised as that when the reality is that this occurred on 10 separate occasions. Once would have been bad enough – but on 10 separate occasions? That part of the story demanded far more scrutiny than it was given.
9: America’s wars, expansion into South Pacific and 5 Eyes
Before the election Key said he would’t send troops into Iraq, after winning the election he promptly u-turned and agreed to send troops. Key said it was the price of being in the ‘club’, it was a line he would live to regret because what we saw in 2015 was Key’s total acquiescence to American Empire. Consider
We were outed spying on allies and trade partners for America via the 5 Eyes mass surveillance system.
The fact that most NZers still think the TPPA is a trade deal shows how poorly the media have explained what it’s actually about. In 2016 Key wants to give the SIS, GCSB and Police even more powers and is considering allowing a US warship to visit NZ despite them refusing to tell us if their ship has nuclear weapons on board. Why is the GCSB and SIS trying to manipulate our opinions on their vast new unchecked powers? Why do most NZers still have no idea what the Kim Dotcom case is actually about? How do our secret intelligence agencies keep breaking the law and still get away with it time and time again?
Once upon a time NZ proudly stood against American Empire, 30 years of neoliberalism and cultural domination by America has bred a nation of quislings who don’t blink at the atrocities America commits for corporate greed.
8: Rape Culture
You would have thought after the horror of roast busters that Police would have learned – they didn’t. This year another case of privileged boys managed to get away with sexual assaults. The truth about our appalling sexual assault and rape culture has been ignored once again. Tens of thousands of victims of sexual assault and rape have gone without any justice and the response is total silence. If we were serious about combating rape we would have proper sexual education programs in all schools that included consent lessons and would run mass media social advertising campaigns telling men that this is not acceptable. None of these solutions were considered and the issue swept under the carpet again. We do ourselves and our country a terrible disservice by not confronting our rape culture.
7: Abuse of power
The full extent of how much abuse of power the Police embarked upon when raiding Nicky Hager’s home should have been the only story the media were running for at least a month. It was left up to the ever brilliant Gordon Campbell to spell it out to NZers...
In the case of the Hager investigation there are several disturbing aspects. Beforehand, the Police knew they were unlikely to find any evidence relevant to the identity of the hacker they were trying to find. Hager was officially not a suspect. Justice Clifford’s decision says that this was a mission motivated by little more than hope. Secondly, what the judge called the Police’s “fundamental error” was that they failed to reveal to the District Court judge issuing the search warrant that the target of their warrant was a journalist – and therefore someone likely to enjoy the protections afforded to journalists under the Evidence Act.
This looks particularly suspicious when – at 8.30am in a search that went on to 6pm– the Police actually asked Hager whether he wanted to invoke his journalistic privilege. Which Hager immediately did. As a result, this prevented the Police from examining the material they were gathering. It became evidence that had to be bagged and sealed, and could be opened subsequently only at the order of (another) judge. Therefore, if this was a raid designed to get evidence that would quickly uncover the hacker’s identity, it had become pointless almost as soon as the Police gained entry to Hager’s house.
The more important point being : if the Police knew about the probability of journalistic privilege being invoked, why didn’t they tell the District Court judge beforehand – in which case, the judge might have asked them some awkward questions. With hindsight, it looks like a willful lack of disclosure by the Police officers concerned. (Lets leave aside for now the issue of how the Police managed to find a judge who must be the only person in New Zealand unaware that this Nicholas Alfred Hager bloke named on the warrant was, in fact, a journalist. Did it not occur to the judge to ask any questions at all? Given that the scrutiny of the judge is supposed to be a check and balance on Police getting search warrants willy nilly, this part of the story isn’t very re-assuring, either.)
So, where are we now? Hager has had his belongings (some of them the basic tools of his trade) held in Police custody for well over a year. Hopefully – if the Police don’t appeal the decision – those belongings will now be returned, and lets hope that the inconvenience gets added to the compensation and damages payment Hager is now surely liable to receive, after being on the receiving end of an unlawful Police warrant and search.
Already there has been a lot of talk about how Justice Clifford’s decision has set a precedent and raised the bar on journalistic privilege. I don’t really think so. The rules were already there in black and white in the Evidence Act, and the Police broke them at will. If sufficiently motivated, they will do so again. The next time someone royally pisses off the political Establishment, it’s a safe bet that the Police will come knocking on their door.
In this case, the Police were hoping to find something that might criminalise Hager, and shut him up for good. If that didn’t happen, they could at least harass him, inconvenience him and disrupt his ability to do his work for months and months on end. That goal has been achieved. Ultimately, you can bet no Police officer will be sanctioned over this affair. And as always, the taxpayers will pick up the compensation tab for the Police incompetence (and/or malice) that has marked their behavior on this occasion.
…the manner in which all of this was simply routine for the cops is the truly terrifying part. This follows a pattern of the Police illegally spying, deliberately deceiving the court, bullying people into suicide and lying to the public about how many people had actually complained about the Roast buster case.
6: The privatisation of social services
NZers became furious when they heard that prisoners were running rampant in the private prison run by SERCO, not because SERCO are a private prison experiment and that a private corporation shouldn’t ever imprison citizens, not because SERCO have a terrible human rights record overseas, not because SERCO have been caught deceiving other Governments they work for – oh no. NZers were furious because they expected prisoners to be suffering in prison, not running fight clubs, boasting about drug use or booze making. NZers didn’t mind that SERCO represented the beginning of a massive privatisation agenda in social services because NZers don’t really care about prisoners or beneficiaries or state house tenants. The media should have challenged the stereotypes and prejudices of NZers towards those facing the hardest edges of National’s right wing agenda, but that would mean a media not frightened of challenging middle NZs bigotry and courage is in rare supply in the mainstream media these days.
5: The Keydasian effect
The cult of celebrity and depoliticised media have created a Keydasian effect.
Key loves commercial radio. It’s a cultural and political wasteland for NZers who have about as much intellectual curiosity as a coma patient. Commercial Radio is a colourblind medium judging a rainbow.
Key can appear on commercial radio and laugh it up with the bloke BBQ mentality that passes as public debate because Key has depoliticised the role of Prime Minister.
National can’t win the economic argument for their free market dogma because the reality is all it does is enrich those already wealthy. Rather than explain what his Government will do to actually lift 1 in 5 children out of poverty, Key will tell Maori cannibal jokes, gay red shirt jokes, marry a rock DJ in a mock Gay wedding, camp mincing down run way walks, discuss how often he uses the c word, dance Gangnam styles on radio, laugh at David Cunliffe for criticising domestic violence, talk about stealing, peeing in the shower, masturbation and prison rape jokes.
Key’s ability to appeal to the anti-intellectualism of his supporters by dismantling the responsibilities of the Prime Ministership down to a pop culture youtube clip could come unstuck if we had a Jon Stewart type who could highlight this, sadly satire in this country is as dead as investigative journalism and all we have is John Oliver.
When we consider the depoliticization of the role of PM with this Government’s mass surveillance powers and attacks on journalists who challenge them, we have a creeping casual fascism hellbent on focusing on the trivial and stupid while crushing the important.
4: Suicide
The horror of our suicide rate gives us a glimpse behind the ‘she’ll be right’ veneer of our culture and the dark torment of an alpha male macho mental landscape that is terribly fragile. Beyond the gated communities and success of booming property, there is a black splinter that pierces the soul of the NZ psyche that we refuse to raise for fear of what it will reveal.
Our under funded social infrastructure, our ‘me first’ consumerism, our 30 years of neoliberal mythology, our disconnection from one another, our untreated pain, our lack of hope from grinding poverty in a first world country, our toxic masculinity, our unspoken rape culture, our inability to express emotion beyond anger – all of this demands questions we don’t want to hear as a society and the shame of suicide continues to hide and smother any healing.
We spend millions on road safety based on the premise that the road toll is a public health issue yet we don’t put any of that effort or political will into a suicide rate that dwarfs our road toll. Why? Because politicians don’t want the answer as to why so many of our fellow citizens decide to end their life in this supposed ‘gods own’.
We are is in denial about our depression, pain and suicide as we are about climate change and poverty.
Look at the mentality of the National Government who at one stage in 2010 tried to not allow funeral costs for the families of suicide victims because, as Nick Smith put it, ‘suicide is not an accident’. That cruelty mirrored Nick Smith trying to deny rape victims any counselling by defining rape as an ‘acute event’ rather than a mental illness.
We have a right wing Government who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
We huddle frightened on these lonely grey crags at the end of a jagged world and slowly one by one slip off into the swallowing dark. Until we are prepared to confront many of the individualism-over-all myths and rebuild our tattered communities, our suicide rate will continue to eclipse the sun, bleakly reminding us of our whispered deceptions.
3: The killing off of critical media
3D, Native Affairs, Dita De Boni from the NZ Herald and Campbell Live were all silenced this year while Mike Hosking, Paul Henry and Patrick Gower got louder.Why critical media was killed off in 2015 was a question the media refused point blank to truly engage with. After the revelations of how connected the mainstream media were with Cameron Slater in 2014, their lack of self scrutiny was as damning as the decisions to axe some of our finest journalists.
The Government and Maori Party are desperate to unlock what they calculate is $8 Billion in Maori Land that is currently not being used as economically as the Government wants.
Currently collective land owned by Maori needs a long consultation process with all Maori connected to that land. What the Government wants to do is lower that threshold to just some who need to be consulted.
The Government claims such changes will allow Maori land not currently being used to its economic maximum to become more profitable. The reality however is that the land will simply be opened up to those wishing to exploit the new lax regulations.
If Government want Maori to use their land more economically – then the Government should open up loans and funding for Maori to develop and use that land as they see fit. All these changes will do is make it easier to sell that Maori land, not grow it.
There’s another issue at stake here though, who are the Government to decide for Maori that they aren’t using their land properly?
No Government would ever tell Pakeha that they aren’t using their land properly.
The Auckland property bubble and speculators are denying the poor and young from ever owning a house. If the Government are concerned about land use, perhaps they should look to change laws on Pakeha land use, not Maori.
1: Poverty denial
Despite all the deeply divisive crap this Government have managed to do, despite the appalling abuse of political power, the failed ideological experiments, the economy set for their rich mates – despite all that – they are polling higher now than they were on election day. Yes we can claim the polls are rigged, yes we can argue about methodology, but the cold simple fact is that out there amongst the masses, they love John Key as much as a shark loves blood.
Perhaps the ease with which NZers are manipulated is the blame of a vacant and subservient mainstream media or perhaps the property speculating middle class are prepared to tolerate anything for untaxed capital gains, but today there are 4 classic examples of issues that NZers should be deeply concerned about but aren’t. New data this year showed a terrible increase in Child Poverty…
…15% in 1984, 29% now. Once upon a time 305 000 kids in poverty would have horrified egalitarian NZ – 30 years of neoliberalism and we blame the parents for not being able to feed kids from the pittance they are paid in welfare and inequality soars...
The elite and high-income earners of New Zealand have increased their wealth by almost $200 billion while debt among the poorest has climbed to $7b, a new study of inequality says.
Since the 1980s, inequality has drawn closer to levels seen in more unequal countries such as the United States.
Researchers Max Rashbrooke, Geoff Rashbrooke and Wilma Molano set out to update the the data used to inform the picture of wealth here, burrowing into official statistics.
30 years of neoliberalism has robbed us of the political awareness to understand what is occurring around us. The vacant aspiration of success that National sell has become an immovable cultural force in NZ and a mainstream media that simply regurgitates the myths means we can’t progress.
It will only be when the property bubble pops that all our baby boomer and middle class friends who think they are millionaires will suddenly remember Key rules for the 1% – not them.
The higher National’s poll ratings go up – the longer the lines outside City Mission & food banks grow.
*Trigger warning: this post includes discussions around rape and violence against women*
Sports broadcaster Tony Veitch has been the target of “online abuse” and he wants you to feel really sorry for him. After he made a joke during an All Blacks Vs France rugby game about not knowing the difference between a “punch” and a “fist in the face”, he was subject to an online backlash over his ironic comments. A few days ago he updated his public Facebook page with this post in response to the backlash:
Tony paints himself as some kind of unsung hero who has rebuilt his life after surviving what he called a “hideous relationship.” You can lie by omission. What Tony fails to point out in his post is this: In 2005 he beat his then partner Kristin Dunne-Powell so badly that he broke her spine in four places. This was the “hideous relationship” he was referring to. In 2009 he went up against six charges of assault, of which all but one were dropped. He admitted in the court of law to “one charge of injuring his partner with reckless disregard” as Stuff media reported; these were the injuries that resulted in Kristin’s numerous spinal fractures.
I’d like you to take a moment to think about the kind of force which is needed to snap and fracture bone. Marc Otten, a neurosurgeon at Columbia University,said in relation to the force needed to break a spine, “If you’re talking about somebody with a normal spine, then you’d need tremendous willpower.” Take some time to think about how hard Tony would have had to kick Kristen repeatedly, in the back, for her spine to give way and splinter.
After beating Kristen he went to bed, leaving her to drag herself around, unable to walk or even reach the phone. When she pleaded with him to call her an ambulance he even refused her this basic help. Before this incident there had already been years of documented sustained abusewhich included Tony violently kicking and punching Kristin. Yet, Tony wants the public to feel sorry for him? He wants to convince you that somehow he is the victim. I responded to his post with these words:
Tony also negates to tell you he paid almost nothing for his horrific crimes against his partner. He did attempt to buy Kristin’s silence with 100,000 bucks worth of “hush money” and he was ordered by the courts to pay a measly 10,000 fine and got 300 hours of community service. He lost his Friday morning Radio Sport breakfast show after he was convicted but he later regained what he calls his “dream job” and he has continued commentating on sports with a weekly radio spot.
In 2011 Tony even had PM John Key on his show where they talked about which famous women John would have on his “wish list.” Because shooting the breeze’ with a known violent offender who has shown no remorse and done no restorative justice work, about which famous women he has a “crush” on is totally how a prime minister should behave? John Key, one of the most powerful men in Aotearoa, implicitly publicly sanctioned Tony’s abuse against Kristen by appearing on his radio show. But John’s dismal behaviour should surprise no one as he is well known for “minimising” and pardoning gendered violence.
When the heinous acts of the rapist gang known as the “Roast Busters” made international headlines, John said in response to this group of young men who had been violently gang raping young girls then boasting about it on Youtube, “boys will be boys.” Newflash: behaviour like Tony’s and the “Roast Busters” are culturally taught and therefore need to be challenged, unlearned, and the behaviour patterns disrupted. Violent misogynistic behaviour is not just something young boys will eventually grow out of. We raise boys to adhere to rigid, toxic stereotypes of manhood; collectively and culturally we tell boys the way to become men is to sever some of the most powerful and life saving emotions we have as human beings: compassion and empathy.
Young men are taught that to be vulnerable is to be weak: all these things are directly associated with the feminine. The word “girl” is often used to humiliate and put down boys and men who act in ways perceived as “weak” or “emotional.” Eve Ensler, noted playwright of The Vagina Monologues and founder of One Billion Rising, said in her moving TedX talk,
“I think the whole world has essentially been brought up not to be a girl. How do we bring up boys? What does it mean to be a boy? To be a boy really means not to be a girl. To be a man means not to be a girl. To be a woman means not to be a girl. To be strong means not to be a girl. To be a leader means not to be a girl. I actually think that being a girl is so powerful that we’ve had to train everyone not to be that.”
Toxic stereotypes of masculinity which tell boys and men they need to always be “tough,” that the only emotion they are allowed to feel is “anger” with maybe the exception of jealousy, all intersect with violence against women. These entrenched ideologies can’t just be palmed off and minimised as some passing adolescent phase or a one off thing. Men like Tony and the Roast Busters are not some aberration, they are a product of a culture that glorifies male power and dominance, while at the very same time glorifying and sexualing the subservience and submission of women. Aotearoa has the higest rates of intimate partner violence in the developed world; this is not just an epedemic it is deeply cultural.
The Roast Busters, like Tony, got away with their crimes; they were given no long term punishments and no jail time. What kind of message do you think this sends society? Other than the very large, clear sign that as a man you can beat, rape, and even kill women and get away with it. My own father sexually abused me as a child, and just like Tony, and exactly the same as the Roast Busters, he served no time for his crimes either. He was ordered to pay a couple of thousand bucks in compensation for what he did. Money, regardless of the amount, could never ever ease the lasting pain he has caused. My Farther, quite like Tony, has gone on in life, in his case to have another family, continuing to live in relative peace and happiness.
So often men who commit unspeakably violent acts against women’s bodies go unpunished, thanks in part to a biased and sexist “justice” system dominated and controlled by white men. These men serve power; their perspectives and their efforts help the powerful, and not the relatively powerless. The lives of women are meaningless in the court of law.
Tony whinged publicly about the “online harassment” he was experiencing via his Facebookupdate because of his ill informed comments, but I doubt it compares to the “online harassment” that was directed at me and anyone else who called bullshit on Tony’s post that described himself as the victim. If you need any more evidence that sexist and abusive attitudes like Tony’s and the Roast Busters aren’t just some aberration but are in fact widespread, here it is. This is just one of the personal messages I received from a man in response to the post I made on Tony’s update:
And of course men lifted photos from my Facebook page and made personal attacks on my appearance
The day after Tony’s “I am the victim” post, Women’s Refuge tweeted this:
This is why I need feminism: because every one of those comments was actually directed at me. AsWomen’s Refuge pointed out what they tweeted was only “a few” of the abusive comments being thrown at me in response to my previously mentioned post. Any other women also who stood up to Tony were also called “crazy” or “loony” time and time again; the word “feminist” was endlessly used as an insult, as if fighting for gender equality is some kind of evil that must be outed:
Tony Veitch did not moderate any of these abusive and often misogynistic comments; he stayed silent and allowed them to remain on his Facebook page until he finally took his post down 24 hours later. Please tell me again how he is a changed man and deserves redemption? I guess Tony only cares about “harassment” and online abuse when it is happening to him. Notably Netsafe has come out in defense of Tony. Stuff reported yesterday that Netsafe Director, Martin Cocker, had said in support of Tony “[People] just become abusive and angry and try to create a public shaming type event out of it, at which point this crosses over from a positive thing to a negative.” Martin has suggested some people had “stepped over the mark” and some of the reactions were born from a “mob mentality.” Martin was not talking about the violent comments directed at any women who took a stand against Tony, he was talking about the “online harassment” Tony allegedhe was facing.
Where is Netsafe’s defence of Kristin? In Tony’s original post he slagged her off: remember that “hideous relationship” comment? Where is Netsafe’s defense of me and the other women who endured the very public online “mob like” attacks from Tony’s supporters? Spoken word poet and writer Hadassah Grace penned a necessary and powerful political essay entitled, “Who the hell is Tony Veitch” which she posted the day after Tony made his post. In it she takes a stand against violence against women and speaks about the serious trauma Kristin continues to endure because of Tony. For her efforts Hadassah received these online threats:
And yes, it gets worse and even more violently abusive:
You want to talk about “online abuse and harassment”?! Try highlighting the threats of violence and rape women who dare have a dissenting opinion in public space have to deal with on the daily. Honestly, fuck Tony Veitch. He has no idea.
In Aotearoa we don’t just give rich white men like Tony a “get out of free jail card” when they beat women over sustained periods of time and break their bones, we celebrate them. We pat them on the back, hand them a beer, watch a bit of rugby with them and say: “Oh well, you only kind of fractured Kristin’s spine and it was a one off, so don’t sweat it bro!” No wonder Tony thinks he is the “victim” and has done nothing wrong; our society, including John Key and now also the executive director of Netsafe, have collectively reinforced this message. While Tony was busily “rebuilding” his career Kristin’s injuries eventually prevented her from returning to her own job. In Kristin’s 2009 victim impact statement she said,
“Since July 2008, my family and I have been harassed and hunted by some journalists… It feels like there is no end to the spreading of malicious lies, rumors and falsehoods… this has made it difficult for me to regain employment.”
If anyone knows what it feels like to be “harassed” and about the work it takes to “rebuild” your life after massive trauma, it is Kristin. Hadassah Grace writes,
[Kristen] has had to have years of physical therapy and counseling for PTSD. Muscles in her back have permanently atrophied, causing disfigurement. She has ongoing triggers and panic attacks. She has been hospitalized for nervous breakdowns as a result of PTSD.
On the other hand Tony who put his partner in a wheel chair, will not face any life-long consequences for his appalling behaviour, on the contrary; he gets a secure job which puts him in the top earning bracket in Aotearoa – that 10,000 dollar fine he paid is mere pocket change to him. He has hundreds of thousands of supporters and dudebro cheerleaders who are prepared to defend him via social media till their last, abusive breath. After his “poor me” post Tony gained at least another 2,000 “likes” on his Facebook page. Despite what Tony apparently believes, compared to Kristin and the one billion women and girls who are survivors of rape and violence on this earth, he has not had to “rebuild” shit.
You can read Hadassah Grace’s full “Who the hell is Tony Veich” piece in full here.
If you liked my words you can follow me on twitter, this is also a cross-post from Chloe King’s own blog site Posse. which you can check out here.
Every so often I make a comment on social media and am intrigued by the responses I get from people who share my Samoan and Pasifika heritage, grew up on the same streets as me in Otara and sat next to me in pews at church. Having had similar experiences at school, church and state housing, I’m always a little taken by how we now reflect on the world. I think it’s a great thing that after years of living in this country, people are able to express very diverse views of the world.
So over the weekend just gone our little family thought it would be good to spend a couple of hours on the final weekend of the school holidays rallying in solidarity with refugees around the world who continue to be displaced and are fleeing for their lives. As a family we’re still feeling the sting of the recent deportation of a family man and dad back to Tuvalu after a number of community meetings and attempts to get residency.
So it came as a surprise to me after some posts on social media that my very own ‘shared experiences’ “friends” commented (publicly although mostly privately) that NZ had more pressing issues internally to attend to, rather than open its doors to refugees: like poverty, the housing crisis and more jobs. Motivated by the impression that if we aren’t feeding, housing or employing our own, then refugees will only thwart current attempts.
Yet we have a government that gives hundreds of millions to bail out finance companies, gives more millions in loans to struggling media outlets, yet more millions for a referendum on a flying symbol and another million to host a prince for a week who attends dress up parties wearing a swastika. For that kind of money we could have had a wide reaching schools breakfast programme, maintained the warm up home insulation programme, increased our social housing stock and created a whole lot more jobs. Instead, as someone commented on my post – It’s not a case of one or the other akin to opportunity cost in an open market system. Nor is it a case of one before the other. We have enough resource to achieve these goals alongside each other. I’ve had a gutsful of the biased media reports that tell us these refugees will only promulgate Muslim ideals, become an economic burden and in the Pacific instance, shouldn’t be here anyway because they’re here illegally. These reports are highly prejudiced but in my opinion are driven by a deep-rooted fear. The fear of not knowing, understanding or empathising with people, values or aspirations that are different. It’s that very fear that fuels a neo-colonial view of the world – a value propagated by mainstream news media. The challenge for my own ‘shared experiences’ “friends”, but moreso for NZ as a nation, is whether we succumb to that popular discourse and heed the hype.
I was surfing through radio stations on my cellphone a couple of weeks ago while sitting on the bus and I heard the words “climate change refugee.” I stopped on the station from which these words rang out which unfortunately happened to be radio talkback station RadioZB.
Yeah, I know: why on Earth I did not change the station as quickly as possible–simply as a measure of self-preservation–is beyond me. I knew what I would hear: a lot of people ringing in to rant with RadioZB host Danny Watson, who I quite soon enough would find out is not fond of recognizing his own cognitive dissidence, talking about a deeply complicated and human crisis from a point of ignorance and xenophobia.
I was not disappointed.
The first caller swept the defining issue of climate change aside, suggesting that human induced climate chaos will not affect anyone in our lifetimes. In other words: this caller believed anyone claiming climate change refugee status is full of shit. The caller was responding to the case of Ioane and Erika Teitiota and their children, who have been living in Aotearoa since 2007 and applied for climate change refugee status in 2011. Teitiota and his family were recently denied this refugee status by our New Zealand supreme court. Ioane was deported back to his homeland of Kiribati on the 23rd of September and Erika and his children followed a week later.
The caller declared that “the climate change refugee needs to be sent back [home].” Not once did this caller who had phoned in to speak with Danny use Ioane’s name, preferring instead to refer to him as “that climate change refugee” or “the climate change refugee.” This was an act of dehumanisation. It is easier to condemn people to suffering and hardship when we do not know their names or their stories.
I kept listening while others called in to name Ioane and his family as “overstayers” echoing the position of our current colonial National PM John Key. Journalist Morgan Godfery in a recent email to me, wrote:
“The indication from Key was pretty clear: he labelled them “overstayers” (the rhetoric is uncomfortably close to the days of the dawn raids and the stigmatising of Pacific peoples).“
Not once did Danny challenge any callers on their prejudice or stigmatising language and I am not sure why I thought he might. I guess hope makes me more optimistic than I should be at times.
I decided to call into RadioZB for the first time ever and tell Danny and his listeners (who I swear are all old white dudes) the serious consequences and hardships that Erika, Ioane, and their children will face once deported to Kiribati. I know, it was a futile mission if ever there was one. I got on air with Danny and attempted to explain to him why the Teitiota’s should have been given climate change status. Paraphrasing from memory, I said:
In Island nations such as Kiribati which is the lowest lying country in the Pacific, ocean creep is destroying Kiribati’s groundwater supplies; the IPCC has predicted Kiribati will be devoured by rising oceans in our lifetime. In Aotearoa we have a responsibility to our Pacific neighbours to offer them climate change refugee status, and Kiribati is becoming uninhabitable. As the ocean rises, smashing over storm barriers, there is less and less land to live on so people are being forced, increasingly, into smaller and smaller living quarters. Poverty rates have exploded on Kiribati. This is no place to raise a family.
Danny disagreed, to say the least. He accused me of hyperbole and stretching the truth, telling me: “You will never win friends and influence people with that rhetoric.” If the types of friends I’d win by using a different “rhetoric” to the language of compassion I use in response to climate refugees would be people like Danny, I think I’d rather be a Nancy No Mates, thanks.
Danny even suggested we build a “climate change refugee camp” for people like the Teitiota’s. Interestingly, just last week climate activists from all over the Pacific staged a direct action outside of ANZ’s flagship bank on Queen Street, Auckland, assembling and then occupying a “future climate refugee camp.” As Pacific Scoopreported,
“The camp represented a future that the people of the Pacific are fighting hard to avoid. It aimed to highlight ANZ’s complicity in the climate crisis that puts all Pacific Island nations at risk, and to urge ANZ to divest from fossil fuels.
Pelenise Alofa of the Kiribati Climate Action Network demonstrates in front of the Queen Street branch of ANZ Bank. Photo / Alexandra Wimley
The very suggestion of a “refugee camp” as a solution for Pacific people who have been made homeless by the effects of climate change is exactly what many Pacific peoples are trying to avoid. But hey as always white dude commentator knows what’s best for indigenous people?
Danny even tried to qualify his stance on climate refugees by saying he had family/friends in Bali so they could claim “climate change refugee status because in 50 years a volcano might blow.” This left me gobsmacked, mainly at Danny’s continued insistence on his sense of entitlement to an opinion defined by ignorance and his heartlessness.
Unfortunately Danny’s very public views are not some aberration; his opinions on climate change are not in the minority in this country. Even as sea-levels continue to rise as the Arctic melts because the planet is warming and the dominant cause is greenhouse gas emissions, the NZ Herald reported that New Zealanders have some of the highest rates of skepticism over global warming in the world. Skeptic or not you cannot negate the mounting scientific evidence that climate change is without question the defining crisis of our life-time, but what also I learnt from Danny and his old white dude callers–other than calling ZB is a really bad idea if you want to disagree with the conservative host–is this: the lack ofcompassion within modern New Zealand society is also a critical issue; levels of compassion within our society seem already to be in crisis mode.
It is important to note I started writing this political essay before the news came to light that Ioane had been served with an assault warning for pushing a female employer at his work place last year. Other employers have also come forward to report assaults by Ioane as OneNews stated last week. This assault warning was taken into consideration in relation to Ioane’s case for climate change refugee status as 3Newspointed out. I have been assaulted and endlessly felt up by men at different workplaces as I work in the low-waged service industry; abuse is a daily threat I face and it is both scary and humiliating, and while it is obvious to say it should always be taken seriously by both employer and the police, they hardly ever do.
So, I ask: since when does National care about assaults against women, especially those in the workplace? Since before it slashed funding to rape crisis, or after? Since it cut all funding to the “It’s not OK!” campaign? Since John Key himself, over several months, harassed a young waitress at his local café and over and over again put his hands on her self without permission? Yeah, about that:
I guess gender-based violence and harassment of women is only taken seriously by John Key if he isn’t the one doing it, and if it serves his right-wing agenda. In this case John’s pathetic, desperate, scrabbling anti-refugee position and as Kanoa Lloyd pointed out on 3New’s “Newsworthy” if the man who perpetrated violence directed at a woman is a person of colour. All that is actually happening here is another classic case of formalizing institutional racism.
If suddenly the National party cares so deeply about the welfare of vulnerable women why then wasn’t special consideration taken for Erika and her children? Why must they suffer for someone else’s actions? It is well established that it is women and children who are being disproportionately affected by climate change. However, the National government says nothing about this; no, not a fucking whisper. The ongoing hypocrisy of this government is breathtaking.
Journalist Taberannang Korauaba, indigenous to Kiribati, wrote for Pacific Scoop, “[Ioane] personally has no difficulty going back to Kiribati because he worked here and he can cope with life on the islands.” But there are fears for the welfare of his family once they are deported. Morgan Godfery explains these fears are not imagined; rather, they are more than real. In the NZ Herald he writes,
“If the Teitiota children are deported to Kiribati they will have to adjust to a new culture, a new environment, and even build up immunities to new diseases. They will most likely live on Tarawa, the main island, where dead bodies contaminate the freshwater lens, population density spreads disease, and ocean creep is poisoning breadfruit trees and taro plantations.”
While many living on Kiribati have labelled Ioane a “traitor” for speaking out about the conditions of the pacific nation and have accused him of “misrepresenting Kiribati” and wounding national pride as Public Address reported, there is, however, mounting evidence that Kiribati is becoming uninhabitable. This is a situation rapidly being compounded by the worst-case scenario effects of the onset of abrupt, catastrophic climate change. In his piece entitled “Exile By Another Name,” on Ioane’s plea for climate change status, investigative journalist Kenneth R. Weiss writes,
“since this case has come to light, Tarawa residents have been alarmed that 2,400 children fell ill and nine children died after picking up a rotavirus likely from sewage-contaminated water […] Other infectious diseases are taking advantage of the crowding in this island nation’s shanty towns. Tuberculosis is on the upswing. Leprosy is spreading.”
As ocean levels rise around Kiribati, those living on the islands are being forced into smaller and smaller living quarters; it is common knowledge that condensed populations can become the source for outbreaks of disease. Already on Tarawa there are 50,000 people packed into overcrowded shanty towns, and this is where Erika and her children, now, must live. As rising oceans continue to devour Kiribati, these deeply problematic and life-threatening issues are likely only to worsen.
People like Danny and other global warming skeptics believe they will not live to see the true and absolute devastation of abrupt climate change in their lifetimes, or, they at least make a “choice” not to acknowledge it. And why should he or others care about the welfare of those who will bear the brunt of human induced climate chaos? After all, he thinks that the metaphorical volcano of climate change ain’t gonna blow for at least another 50 years, give or take.
But, it is exactly this kind of irresponsible and compassion-bereft attitude–that states climate change is somehow a non-issue and a problem for our next generations to deal with, held by Danny and our politicians such as John Key–that has, in part, led to so much widespread national inaction over such a defining and earth shattering issue.
A few weeks ago I attended the opening of a spanking brand new facility in south Auckland. As the only person from my local board present, I was keen to stand alongside my colleagues just over the border who had worked tirelessly for some years to bring this project to fruition. It’s a great facility and I encourage people to pop over and check out Toia – the Otahuhu Recreation and Leisure Centre and library when you get the chance.
I arrived about 20 minutes prior to the official programme starting and thought it would be a good idea to get a sneak preview of the facility with time to spare. I approached the front desk and politely asked if I could go through and have a quick look around the pool facility before we got underway. The counter people told me that I couldn’t enter as I needed to wait for the opening to begin. Sweet as.
About to walk away two very well dressed palagi women walked right past me and called to the counter staff that they were going to have a look around before the opening began. To my surprise, not a word from the counter staff. As the 2 well dressed palagi women walked in, 3 well dressed palagi men came out of the facility (one being a councillor colleague), quickly stopping to greet me as they left saying that I should go in and check the place out. After our short greeting I turned to the counter staff who now looked very awkward but remained silent. I gently told them that they had to succumb to the stereotypes that Council officials look and sound a certain way. And further, that they held racist views and would do well to confront their prejudice. It took all my deep breathing techniques to hold back some descriptive words that would’ve been my preferred sentences, now walking away to join the official party.
Back at my desk on Monday, I thought to send an email to the manager to advise of my experience at the weekend opening. I decided not to name any people in the letter, but merely outline what happened with the view to improving practice and hopefully, internally held perception. The manager person came back a couple of days later apologising that that was my interpretation of events and it came down to the centre staff being “very busy on the day and trusted the incident was a one-off”. I couldn’t have felt more reassured!
Critical race theorist Gloria Ladson-Billings contends that racism is a normal part of everyday life for minority groups (2005). That race is never a focal issue for white, middle class and privileged groups because society is built on their accepted norms and traditions. Both the treatment I received and the subsequent (and supposed) letter of apology is evidence of the very dismissive, normative nature of how minority peoples’ daily racism is (mis)treated and poorly understood. Since being elected onto Council, this isn’t the first instance of this type of treatment and if recent history is anything to go by, it’s by no means the last.
I have this skill, so I am told, of really annoying or even enraging people who hold right-wing views, and in particular young Tories. I recently exercised this skill in my blogpost “In the playground of the rich, wealth flaunting is a sport.” I was told I was a “gutter journalist” by many upset readers and fans of the super affluent who flooded my Facebook to call me names and engage, often, in poverty shaming rhetoric.
All this, merely for daring to talk about “The Fulltimer Society,” a club started by some young men who sell an affluent party lifestyle during a time of great inequality in this country. I also upset and angered friends of Max Key for “checking his privilege” in my piece. Max Key is the son of our millionaire prime minister Mr. John Key.
Even political blogger Cathy “Chop Chop” Odgers (also known “Cactus Cate”) who was involved in smear campaigns against the Serious Freud office and was one of the stars of investigative journalist Nicky Hager’s book, Dirty Politics, stopped by my Facebook page to tell me what she thought of my piece:
Cathy like so many others is woefully unaware of just how hard it is to “make it” as a writer or in any industry or creative endeavour which adds to and develops culture instead of obliterating it. Especially if like me, you write on or engage in issues around poverty, inequality, and speak about structural racism and sexism. Those topics are not easy sells to fat cat editors who might be able to pay you for your work; in America only 1% of all reporting is focused on poverty. Newsrooms and newspapers have been laying off reporters for a while now, as Barbara Ehrenreich recently wrote for The Guardian:
“Once-generous magazines shrank or slashed their freelance budgets; certainly there were no more free lunches.”
I guess, for a lawyer such as Cathy who specializes in trusts and tax who earns staggering amounts of money for all up working a job that is useless and serves to protect the wealthy, which is why her job is useless? The idea that accessing upward mobility or a better job is often pitted with structural hurdles, is a foreign concept to her? Cathy may as well have said: “poor people should just stop being poor”.
What I found most unsettling and even disturbing was not the name calling or even the threats of violence I received, but how so many young people clawed, like Cathy did, to protect power while at the same time ignoring how power structures serve to continue oppression and the disenfranchisement of people and entire communities.
Max Key stands to inherit millions of dollars as well as beach houses and holiday homes. He also benefits from the structural privilege accorded to his gender, class, and race. But apparently according to those messages he is the victim and I was the bully. I was told I “attacked him.” He is the one suffering “hardship” as I was informed by two of his friends and members of the “Fulltimer Society:”
Actually, it does matter that Max Key is so “under exposed” and utterly removed “from the grind that less fortunate children are exposed to.” It matters when anyone may be able to bring change to serious inequality, poverty, racism, or other such issues of structural social disadvantage but opts instead to ignore them.
While tens of thousands of people of conscience marched on the 15th of this month all over Aotearoa to speak out against the TPPA–an alliance between corporate interests and governments which would erode our civil liberties and destroy our sovereignty as a country–in the USA a Black Lives Matter protest was happening on the streets of St. Louis. It is important to note there are generally a few BLM protests happening at any given time in America. I followed on the ground updates via Twitter: Linda Tirado, author and anti-poverty activist, Tweeted this image of a BLM protester chalking the following words on the pavement:
When you stay silent on matters of racial injustice that include the targeted killing and what the journalist Kareem Abdul-Jabber calls the “assassination” of unarmed people of colour by police in America. Or the reality that Maori–our first nations people–represent 15% of the population but make up half of Aotearoa’s prison population, as Toby Manhire recently reported for The Guardian, you accept that situation and you consent to this structure. When you refuse to acknowledge there is a growing chasm between the super wealthy and people who are poor then you collude in the construction or the maintenance of that structure. And if the TPPA is passed this chasm will only get bigger.
By not actively speaking out or working against the TPPA, and against racial bias from the street to the legal system and elsewhere, and all such issues of structural inequality, you are saying: it doesn’t matter, and none of it matters. Or worse yet, you blame those who are facing structural equalities for their own circumstances – for example when you condemn and shame people living in poverty instead of the systems which create poverty, which amounts to a form of victim blaming and only serves to excuse, reinforce and further entrench oppression and injustice.
Not everyone is a “victim” of the system, no matter what Max Key’s friends believe. Many people from privileged backgrounds benefit–without even thinking about it because they do not have to-–and become the wilful enforcers of systems of oppression.
Eric Garner was a black man who was murdered by police in America for selling untaxed cigarettes. Over and over again he repeated clearly: “I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe.” These were the last words he would ever speak as police officers held him down while another placed him in an illegal choke-hold, squeezing the breath and life from his body. “I can’t breathe” now rings out during Black Lives Matter protests and uprisings and has, at times, become a trending hashtag on Twitter, opening conversations around race and racism in the USA. The white police officer who put Eric in a chokehold served no time, a grand jury decided not to return an indictment.
However, Daniel Pantaleo who filmed the brutal killing was not so lucky; the police tried to put him behind bars and as Molly Crabapple wrote for Vice, “In December, a grand jury declined to indict Pantaleo, but Orta, his supporters say, has been the target of a police campaign to destroy his life ever since.”
Max Key, knows nothing of hardship. Those who expose injustice and cruelty will nearly always be punished for their bravery to serve as a warning to others.
This is business as usual in the USA. This, we are told, is just how the world works.
Max might be a “nice guy” as so many of his fans and BFFs told me while also indignantly exclaiming “You don’t even know him!” I may not know him personally but, what I do know is this: like so many who benefit from oppressive systems, Max says nothing about the hardships of others. Not a fucking whisper. The NZ Heraldrecently reported that over 300,000 kids are now living in relative poverty in this country; but sure, it is Max who is suffering the real “hardship” in all of this. Let’s talk about how hard done by he is, shall we, with his fancy swimming pool, beach houses, convertible cars, and blossoming model/DJ career.
So often journalists and those who messaged me and posted on my Facebook to let me know how “mean” I was and call me a bitch or whatever else they could come up with, in turn portray people who benefit the most from the misery and deprivation of others as the victims.
This is a key way in which the powerful maintain their dominance: they portray themselves or others with whom they identify as mere hapless victims who are unable to do anything about the gross inequality we are witnessing in this country and around the world.
What could they do instead? Share their ludicrous sums of money with communities that are in hardship and stop hoarding it. Perhaps they could even use their privileges to benefit others, rather than just themselves and a select few. This is just an idea, for any super rich-ass people who might be reading this. Perhaps they feel their hands are tied. Anyway the reality is increasingly becoming clearer that you are either rich or you are poor. The myth or story we hear from above though continues to be that this stark economic and social binary is a result of the individual choices we make in our lives. “You get what you work for,” right?
This is just business as usual. This, we are told, is justhow the world works.
Between the petty names and the hypersexualised messages sent to my inbox, it became incredibly clear that many believe rich kids such as Max Key-–who is cultivating a celebrity presence via social media-–and young people who start societies such as “The Fulltimer Society,” are completely off limits. They have special exemption from critique or criticism. I even had one white dude message me in response to what I wrote to let me know he would like to “shove a fucking cactus down my fucking throat,” rounding off by calling me a “cunt,” and in another post called me a “niggah.” My friend who is a writer living in America suggested that it was likely this guy used that word against me because to him black people are the lowest of the low. So, it was a big insult.
All of these reactions made it clear that many people believe the lives of the rich and affluent are “off limits.” Perhaps this even extends to those who worship wealth and play the dandy like some kind of Nick Carraway character from The Great Gatsby; after all, some of the guys who started the “Fulltimer Society” don’t necessarily come from wealthy backgrounds.
However, the lives of the working class and those who are poor are never “off limits.” We don’t get special exemption from name calling and shaming in relation to our “life-styles.” I come from the working class and I am routinely told that I am lazy, no matter how many minimum wage jobs I am working at any given time. If I am fired, for whatever insufficient reasons and from whatever precarious job I am working, and if I need welfare between jobs, I get called a “benefit scrounger” and I am made to feel worthless. Cathy Odgers pointed out that with my “literary talent” I should have managed to land a better job in a higher pay bracket. As if it is that easy!
If you are born into wealth you are likely to get the contacts and thus the networks which come with it regardless of how talented you are. I don’t have that benefit, and most millennials growing up today don’t. Instead of contacts and networking opportunities we are handed austerity and pushed into situations where we are competing with each other for low-paid precarious jobs in a flooded and cut-throat job market: jobs we often do not even want but have to work in order to survive.
There is a reason why The Hunger Games series resonates with so many people. It portrays a futuristic dystopia where young people from the lower classes are selected to battle each other to the death in an annual ritual death match. These “games” are enforced by a heartless totalitarian leader: President Snow who lives in the affluent capital, disconnected from the day-to-day hardships and deprivation his people are forced to endure. The books and movies resonate with so many because young people who come from the real political underclasses often feel they are living in a dystopia ruled byheartless leaders; we live in a structure which is a parallel reality, where we have to battle each other for shit jobs, just to survive. The odds are never in our favour.
In Aotearoa we have one Mike Hosking, our most prominent media mongrel and our very own equivalent of Fox News’ Sean Hannity. Both are committed to protecting the super wealthy, especially those such as our millionaire PM John Key, or Donald Trump – who could take out the award for racist of the year without even trying, as if either actually needs defending. Both media mongrels say the most offensive shit about people who are poor, and both have prime time “current affairs” shows. The lives of the poor are rarely off limits, if ever. Mike recently weighed in on changes to child support, asking:
“The cost of a child is the cost of a child. If you can’t afford one, why did you have one? And if you did have one and can’t afford it why are you expecting the rest of us to pay the bill?”
I wonder how many tax deductible business lunches Mike has, had? I guess it is okay if we, as taxpayers foot the bill to subsidise some of his food bill? But parents living in poverty gostruggling to feed their kids well, they shouldn’t have had kids in the first place? Where is the moral distinction between Mike, getting a tax deductible business lunch and a person who is struggling to survive getting a WINZ food grant in New Zealand or food stamps in places like America? Can someone please, tell me?
Should we just give the super affluent a “get out of jail free card”? Must we just allow power to go unchecked and unfettered? After all, this is exactly what some of our most prevalent political pundits do, including Mike Hosking, who himself is a millionaire – he protects his own. He acts as a mere messenger for the right-wing and endlessly defends John Key’s behaviour even when it is outright fucking creepy.
For just one famous example, when Key was found out to have yanked on a waitress’s ponytail repeatedly over several months, even after she had expressed over and over again it was completely unwelcome and was causing her distress, Mike ran to his defence like he always does:
Let’s just face it: We can tell it was sexual harassment in the workplace because if it was a dude with a ponytail John would not have yanked on it. Similarly, from this singular incident we can tell Mike Hoskings serves the powerful and not the disempowered. He is committed to obscuring power, not exposing it. As veteran journalist, John Pilger has stressed for most of his career:
“The media is the invisible government.”
From his endlessly repeated rhetoric we see that Hosking believes power and the elite few who hold it must be vigorously protected at all costs, even if it is at the cost of the vast majority of people living in Aotearoa.
Already we are seeing the rise of third world diseases in this country, attributed to the growing rates of heart-numbing poverty in low socioeconomic communities. More often than not the vulnerable and downtrodden are not protected by our governments, neither those from the right, nor the relatively nominally left of the Labour party. (Seriously, does anyone even know what Labour stands for in this country anymore, other than pandering to the centre-right?) New Zealand gangs are doing more to feed kids in poverty than the National government, who actually voted against the recent “Feed the Kids” bill.
Just typing those words is heart-wrenching and jarring. Our most vulnerable people are not being protected by their own government, nor even having their voices elevated by the vast majority of media tycoons such as Mike or journalists, who are meant to be truth speakers in times of universal deceit.
This then, is business as usual. This, we are told, is just how the world works.
