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“Minority report”: how the Terrorist Law will stifle dissent and could take away your basic human rights

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January 5, 2015

Science fiction has always offered us a useful way to think through issues, it is testing ground to explore and imagine alternative societies and worlds. In 2002 the neo noir film Minority Report, based on the short story by Philip K. Dick set in Washington in 2052, where “precrime” (crimes yet to be committed) a specialized police department, apprehends alleged criminals based on prophecies provided by three psychics called “precogs”. The preventive government in Minority Report claims these measures are to keep its citizenry safe, and protected. Electronic advances in a future state mean Medias presence is nearly boundless, invading and surveilling every aspect of daily life for the future citizenry of Washington.

Sometimes we do not need to imagine what a world like Minority Report might be like. Even if it is not always immediately legible or visible governments around the world are turning sci-fi dystopias into reality.

Aotearoa’s National party with the backing of Labour rammed through the Terrorist Law recently, 94 votes to 23. The law which gives SIS the power to carry out surveillance without a warrant for 24 hours, aims to tackle home-grown terrorism. John Key’s Government argued the rise of the Islamic State terror group in the Middle East increased the risk of an attack here, referring to ISIS.

“The threats faced by New Zealand have grown and it is important that we have the ability to respond to that,” Key said.

“The Government to protect New Zealanders at home and abroad and this legislation, passed with the support of a range of political parties, will better enable us to do that.”

The fear mongering of Islam by our leader John Key is of course, coded in islamophobia and incites xenophobia by pushing the tired but dangerous 9/11 narrative that Arab’s pose a great threat to our freedom, western democracy and national security. John Key has, predictably used the resent hostage situation in Sydney known as the #SydneySiege as further “proof” that his extreme and draconian Terror Law was justified afterall the Iranian man, Man Haron Monis, responsible for the attack forced the hostages to hold up flags with Arabic writing – clearly, he must be a terrorist? Monis’s lawyer, Manny Conitsis begs to differ saying:

“This is a one-off random individual. It’s not a concerted terrorism event or act. It’s a damaged goods individual who’s done something outrageous.”

But hey, anything and anybody to justify an unjustifiable law… right?

What should worry people about the Terrorist Law in New Zealand is that you don’t even need to commit a crime to have your passport stripped from you for up to four years. In Orwellian fashion our government can now withhold your right to leave New Zealand because they believe you might have been thinking of committing terrorist acts. Meaning, you can now be accused by authorities of a “thought crime” and stripped of your liberty by our Government, acting as some kind of “physic precog” that can predict crimes before they happened also known as “pre-crimes”, to leave your own country.

The only way out of Aotearoa, would be to swim for it.

I went to a meeting for the Human Rights Law commission a few weeks ago and Barrister Grant Willingsworth spoke at the start of the evening he said preventing a person from traveling overseas for 3 or 4 years is a more severe penalty than would be given for many quite serious criminal offences.

“It could perhaps be viewed as a kind of mega home detention.” He said.

Under New Zealand’s 2002 Terrorism Suppression Act, terrorism has a very broad definition. You might be heading to Palestine to join the struggle to oppose Israel’s genocide against a mostly unarmed indigenous people but the democratically elected political party Hamas who governs the Gaza strip, is largely designated as a terrorist organisation by western governments. Hypothetically our New Zealand government which is proudly pro-Israel and has designated the armed wing of Hamas a terrorist organisation, could decide you are guilty of a “thought crime”/”pre-crime” and claim you intended to join Hamas and strip you of your passport.

The Terrorist Law is designed, on purpose, to erode our basic human right to leave New Zealand. It is a law that could be used to stifle dissent and legitimate resistance to oppressive governments and state violence. Cam Walker, a good friend of mine and fourth year Law student at Auckland University sent a submission (those wishing to counter the Bill only had two days to write and submit) countering the Terrorists Fighting Legislation bill before it passed in parliament, he wrote:

“My primary concern with this Bill are the sections allowing the Minister to refuse or cancel passports rely on the wide definition of terrorism provided in s 5 of the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002. This may unduly impact on New Zealanders travelling overseas to fight for a legitimate cause such as national liberation from a colonial occupation or repressive government. The section 5 definition in the Terrorism Suppression Act nets behaviour associated with traditional guerrilla wars, far removed from the grisly atrocities of ISIS.”

Our National Government has been so quick to react with extreme legislation to a perceived threat of terror on the other side of the world, but just scoffed and laughed when they were shown New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions figures by Green leader Russel Norman. Turbo charged extreme weather events and rising sea levels resulting from climate change are a real terror that threatens New Zealanders.

I would argue what poses a grave threat to our western democracy and freedom are political leaders who support laws that can strip someone of their right to movement because they might commit a terrorist act and who justify warrantless surveillance on their own citizenry. Glenn Greenwald has argued for a large extent of his journalistic career that governments who justify warrantless surveillance and commit mass surveillance do so to keep the population submissive to government powers. Greenwald wrote in his book ‘No Place to Hide:’

[…] even if one is not personally targeted, a surveillance state that collects it all [electronic information] harms society and political freedom in general. Progress both in the United States and other nations was only ever achieved through the ability to challenge power and orthodoxies and to pioneer new ways of thinking and living. Everyone, even those who do not engage in dissenting advocacy or political activism,

Surveillance cheerleaders such as our leader John Key, who committed mass surveillance against his citizenry and then lied about it, offer up essentially one justification of mass and warrantless surveillance. Greenwald wrote “it is only carried out to stop terrorism and keep people safe.” In America many Democratic senators such as Ron Wyden and Mark Udall have argued, as the New York Times reported last year

“The usefulness of bulk collection has been greatly exaggerated. We have yet to see any proof that provides real, unique value in protecting national security[…] the NSA has not provided evidence of any instance when the agency used this program to review phone records that could not have been obtained using regular court order or emergency authorization.”

The record of mass surveillance preventing terrorist’s plots is pretty fucking poor.

In the words of graffiti artist and activist Bansky “I need someone to protect me from all the measures they take to protect me.”

Post the #SydneySige our MSM in Aotearoa which now acts as a state apparatus for the right wing and National government ran articles with fear mongering titles such as ‘Sydney Siege: “similar people monitored here” – PM’ and ‘Sydney Siege attack could happen here: PM’ our MSM such as Yahoo News and Stuff asked if a “terrorist attack” like the one in Sydney could happen here? Our Prime Minister stated we could be targeted by a Lone wolf “terrorist” similar to the one in Sydney. As previously said the #SydneySiege is now conveniently being used to justify the Terror Law.

None of our MSM pointed out you have more chance of drowning in your fucking bathtub than being killed or injured in a terrorist attack.

Unlike in the film Minority Report what mass surveillance apparatuses allow governments to gather in 2014 is a “Majority Report”. A massive drag net is used to collect citizen’s metadata – wading through millions of peoples data generated while using technology to find terrorists is almost impossible.

The purpose of the state and establishment has never really been to keep us safe from terrorism. The purpose is to keep us, their citizenry complaint and quiet – and fearful.

On earning a living wage and the right to use the bathroom without asking for permission

Chloe King

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December 31, 2014

18

So, I have done it – that is what you are meant to say when you finally land a job that is meaningful, has a living wage and where you feel like you are valued and treated with dignity, right? In my new job I get to use all those degrees I earnt (and landed me with crippling student debt) and I got to tell WINZ to go fuck themselves. Anyone who has had to live off social welfare will tell you how good that feels. And yeah, I am not going to lie: getting sick leave and other benefits feels pretty good. I’d always wondered what it might be like to legitimately call in sick to work and not desperately worry about how I was gonna pay rent the following week because I was down a hundred bucks. I’ve never had sick pay. It is a whole new world.

Benefits, like holiday pay, are pretty cool right? You don’t need to work yourself to the bone all year round and you can have a few weeks off each year just to kick-back. Why do ‘they’ even call “holiday pay” a benefit? Isn’t it a human right to be able to take rest and not have to worry about how we are going pay rent or, I don’t know, eat?

I used to hate people (just a little bit) who got paid holidays. Maybe hate is too strong a word? I guess “bitter resentment” more adequately sums up how I feel about those lucky people who get holiday pay. I have never ever had a paid holiday unless you count all those times I had to go on WINZ because I got fired from whatever shit job I was working at the time for whatever reason management came up with. I once got fired because I reported an older Pākehā male manager for bullying his staff; myself included. Suddenly my work was not good enough. I got fired the day after Christmas.

I know rich people often think being on welfare in Aotearoa is like some kind of luxurious holiday where you sit around all day eating chips, cake and drinking RTDs, but yeah, nah. Between desperately trying to find work in a global job crisis and trying to stretch that 200 bucks WINZ kindly gives you to pay for food, rent and bills, living a life of luxury does not really come into it. People on welfare aren’t flying off to Hawaii despite what rich people think. I promise.

I work in an open plan office now which is cool because I always have someone smart and interesting to discuss ideas and politics with. The thing is I keep asking for permission to pee or at least announcing I have to go the toilet because clearly my new workmates need to know about my bodily functions. I know this might seem like a really bizarre thing to tell you but bear with me. I have worked hospitality and a range of other low-paid service work for over a decade now. In these jobs you have to ask for permission to do anything: go for a smoko, sit down for five minutes, inform a rude customer their behavior is not ok (usually you are told to suck it up because the customer is always right) and yes, to relieve yourself.

You can’t just pee when you need to.

I have self-autonomy in my new job, and it feels fucken weird. I can go for a walk if I get stuck on an idea in my writing without asking (I know, I get paid to write now – what is this life?). I can go and grab a coffee without asking for permission. And yes I can go to the bathroom without checking with someone if it is a good time to do so.

The thing is that bars (primarily I have worked hospo to make cash) get really busy sometimes. You can’t always pee when you want to. I suffer from UTI (urinary tract infections) it is an ongoing problem that I can’t help unless I stop having sex and I’m not keen to give that up obviously. Or I just need to make sure I drink lots of water and go to the bathroom often. In my hospo working life I’ve often been denied the privilege of bathroom breaks by managers and owners. Usually they don’t care if you tell them that you get UTIs and if I hold on to long I will wake up in agony tomorrow morning and need to see a doctor I can’t actually afford on the shitty poverty wages they are paying me. Very rarely has any manager or owner cared when I have told them this. They want the work done and they want it done now.

I have often imaged what it might be like to work in a job where you didn’t need to ask to relieve yourself or take a break. I am not even joking. I’d wanted to pen something about this for a while now but thought it was not really worth writing about. Plus having zero self-autonomy in low-paid work is something you just except as inevitable. So you just shut up and get on with it and don’t really think about; it is easier that way because otherwise you just depress yourself.

What changed my mind on the worth of writing about this subject was Linda Tirado’s new book Hand to Mouth: the truth about being poor in a wealthy world. Tirado in 2013 answered, on a blog she frequented, a question someone had asked: Why do poor people do things that seem so self-destructive? Her response to this question cut to the bone of the realities of being poor and being a low-wage worker, and it went viral and lead to her writing the afore-mentioned book. Tirado wrote in her book:

“Some people have the luxury of asking themselves whether a job fulfils their career hopes and ambitions. I’ve got my own metric to gauge the fabulosity of a job. Does the job require me to keep my boss informed of the inner workings of my gastrointestinal system, or am I allowed to go to the bathroom at will? It’s physically uncomfortable to hold it forever, and it sucks to stand by for the okay like a dog waiting for someone to open the door. But for me, the indignity of the whole thing is less about potential bladder infection. It’s more about the tone of the place. In my experience, the jobs where the boss regulates your urinary tract also tend to demand a bunch of other degrading shit.”

Nearly every low-paid service job I have worked has demanded I keep to a strict compliance of telling owners and managers what I am doing down to toilet breaks; it’s like they don’t trust you to function as a thinking human being capable of making decisions yourself. I got fired once from a bar job because I forgot to tell a manager I was going to the bathroom. I got told I put the business in jeopardy because I missed service on a table in my absence.

In this capitalist system is it always profit before people.

Your bosses don’t notice or care if you work like a dog for them but they sure as hell notice when you don’t scrub a table clean or smile big enough for some pretentious, entitled customer.

When you work crappy jobs you have no rights or at least owners and employees actively deny you your rights. You can be fired at any time without warning; at least this is how it goes down in Hospitality. Maybe you looked at a customer wrongly? Fuck, who knows. I’ve been fired for turning up two minutes late just once. I have been fired because a manager was a sexist arsehole and I called him up on it. I have been fired because in all honestly I hate working in hospitality and it shows. Between customers who treat you like a trained monkey and are rude to you more than they are polite and employers who refuse to give you consistent hours or pay you a livable wage, it can be hard to feel any sense of pride for the job you are working or any sense of hope for the better.

I’ve suffered from depression and anxiety (it gets pretty stressful not knowing if you have a job next week or not and it’s not like you can save for a rainy day on minimum wage) which I am pretty sure was situational; it is crushing working so hard for such little money in a job with no hope of moving up.

Caring about some shit job and smiling on cue for customers becomes difficult when getting out of bed is a minor miracle. Mental health days are a luxury of the rich.

The sexual harassment you experience as a female bartender doesn’t help anxiety levels either. I once had a customer tell me there was something wrong with the toilet. So I went up with him to fix it, he pushed me into the cubical, locked the door and shoved his tongue down my throat. The most a manager has ever done when I reported shit like this was to get the bouncer to kick them out. I’ve honestly lost count of how many times I have had my arse and breasts grabbed by customers; yes, sometimes by male managers. It is easier to laugh it off than say anything and risk your shifts being cut.

I’ve been told by people (usually they found jobs, with security and benefits, straight out of University and can not imagine how you did not either) more times than I can count “you should just be grateful/happy you even have a job.”

I can not begin to tell you how fucking sick I am of hearing this.

Grateful for what? For being treated like I am worthless and expendable by employers? Grateful for zero job security? The only job security I have ever had was when I worked two bar jobs; if I lost one job I had another to fall back on. Grateful that I can work up to three bar jobs and not even crack five hundred bucks a week in one of this world’s most expensive cities? Minimum wage in this country is $14.25 it is estmated you need $18.40 to survive in Aotearoa. Grateful for ‘casual contracts’ which mean the employer has the right to cut my hours at a moment’s notice, while expecting me to be on-call just in case they need me?

“I resent the fuck out of it every time my schedule’s been cut and then I’ve been called in for tons of extra hours, as though my time wasn’t worth anything,” wrote Tirado “just so that my boss can be sure not to pay me for a minute that I am not absolutely necessary.”

In Aotearoa the use of ‘Zero Hour’ contracts is growing. These contracts mean the employers, namely giant profit driven companies such as Burger King and Starbucks, don’t guarantee any hours of work and employees have to be ready to come in when they’re called. One week you might have forty hours the next none – as you can imagine budgeting becomes impossible. These contracts are mainly being offered to women (this includes overwhelmingly women of colour; so often when we say “women” we think only of white women), young people and those over the age of 65 who are the most easily exploitable and therefore most likely to be desperate enough to sign these types of contracts. These contracts aren’t really being offered to Pākehā men. “These contracts are despicable and cruel, and designed to put workers at the beck and call of their employer,” Mike Treen from Unite Union said.

Stop telling low-paid service workers to be grateful for what they have; it is patronising, defeating and reeks of the arrogance and ignorance on the part of those who say it.

I wrote most of this blog on Christmas Eve. It is the first time I am not working some fifteen hour shift serving irrationally irate customers who want to buy little Sally some shit, made-in-China toy she does not need (possibly made by a child even younger than she) or serving Joe Dickhead a beer he also probably does not need. Employers/owners operating in the service industry rarely pay you extra or give you a bonus at Christmas time even though you work three times as hard and the company most likely made record profits during the Christmas shopping period. Other than time and a half or quarter (depending on how stingy the employer is) on Boxing Day and during the ‘jolly season’ in my ten years working the service industry I at least never got paid extra . They might give you a bottle of wine with a bow on it – if you are lucky.

Employers expect you to smile at rude customers and to not complain; just be happy you have employment no matter how underpaid or unfulfilling. But service workers around the world have had enough.

I was working on this blog when I heard that workers at the fast food restaurant Wendy’s, on Dominion Road in Auckland, had walked out on a strike. Joe Carolan of Unite Union messaged me saying those who walked out on the job are tired of zero hour contracts, bullying in the work place and irregular ten minute tea-breaks.

It was not only fast food workers that were tired of getting a raw deal. Nadia Filistin, an anti-poverty activist, updated her Facebook near midday saying:

“There is an ANZ strike today- Christmas Eve. Members are striking over the banks refusal to pass on record profits to the workers who made them happen in the form of a decent pay increase. Never mind that their boss, CEO David Hisco, highest paid CEO in the country earns over 2k an hour and gave himself a 14% pay increase this year.”

3News reported it was an 11% pay rise but in all honestly I think I would trust the words of a grassroots activist, who is committed to the struggle such as Nadia, over the MSM who often report disinformation to create static and minimise people power and protest.

The United States of America has, let’s face it, really run with this whole capitalist thing. Thousands of Walmart workers have been protesting and striking for over a year now. They are demanding better work conditions, more stable hours and a livable wage of fifteen dollars an hour. The six heirs to the Walmart fortune have more wealth than the poorest 30 percent of Americans. “They can’t even form a football team,” wrote Russell Brand in his book Revolution “how are they going to stop a revolution when we act on the unfairness of that statistic? The heirs to the Walmart fortune, whose dad was “good at supermarkets” do not support paying Walmart workers anything above poverty wages.

Recently hundreds of Walmart workers marched on million dollar mansion of Alice Walton, who is one of the heirs to the Walmart fortune, to deliver a petition demanding Walmart start paying their employers $15 dollars an hour. Walton called the police and 26 of the protesters were arrested.

People deserve to be treated with dignity (not having to ask to go to the bathroom might be a good start), respect and compassion by their employers and paid a fair and liveable wage.

After all, you get what you pay for. If you pay people sub-liveable wages they owe you, as their employer, NOTHING.

What WINZ are callously saying to people even when they know people are listening

Chloe King

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December 20, 2014

106

I went to WINZ last week to claim my transition to work grant because I’d finally found a job. I didn’t get the grant in the end even though it is, or should I say, was my entitlement but this is beside the point. When a security guard buzzed me into the WINZ office, (after the shooting of two WINZ case workers down in Ashburton they have tightened their security) I walked up to the counter where a young Pākehā guy who I will call Paul*, was in front of me pleading for an appointment.

“I have not eaten in two days, I’m so starving. I need a food grant” Paul told the receptionist as he took scraps of paper from his pocket that turned out to be his bank statements revealing a zero balance and a maxed-out credit card.

The receptionist responded:

“I’m sorry you should have made an appointment or budgeted better.”

Despite the receptionist’s callous, and in my opinion brutal, response Paul kept pleading over and over again until finally the security guard asked him to take a seat.

I said to the receptionist “You just blatantly lied to that you guy. There are always emergency appointments for desperate situations. Was he not desperate enough for you?” She ignored me and asked for my name.

I sat down one seat in front of Paul who had just been turned away from WINZ and told him about the emergency appointments that, seeing as it was midday, should still be available. He thanked me and again went up to the receptionist, repeated what I had told him, and got an appointment that he would most likely wait several hours for.

My heart went out to this guy. I have been in his situation before, begging for a food grant at WINZ. It can be a humiliating and frustrating experience.

Paul came back to his seat behind me and I heard him make a phone call. When someone picked up he said “I think I have got a food grant we will eat food tonight, at least.”

Fuck.

I felt my eyes well up.

I turned to this guy and asked as politely as I could, “Do you mind me asking, how’d you get so broke, babe? No judgement – I hate the WINZ system. I write for a political blog I’d like to hear your story.”

“It was either food or power. This month we choose power because of the penalties you have to pay if you miss payment.” Paul said.

I just want to repeat the part where Paul said “this month.” Clearly this was not the first time he has had to make the decision to go without either food or power.

“You try living off 250 bucks a week and tell me how to fucking budget?” Paul said to me.

If anyone out there can tell me how people are meant to live off so little in one of the world’s most expensive cities without forgoing basic necessities like food, I am all ears. As Nadia Abu-Shanab, who at the time was working for Action Against Poverty said in May of this year,

“We work with people every day who have been squeezed to the limit by a punitive approach to beneficiaries and the unemployed. We have seen incomes drop significantly in parts of Auckland. This winter, an untold number will face freezing homes and empty stomachs.”

Nadia makes clear what we already know: Paul’s situation is not unique in Aotearoa. There are thousands struggling to survive in a city where rents and food prices have soared. Wages have not increased to match these rising living costs. Despite this, our government persists in telling us we just need to work harder – as if hard work was a magic trick for fixing a broken system.

WINZ only gives you “just enough to survive on” as my first case manager said to me four years ago, after graduating university. Paul and Nadia’s words should be a reality check: welfare is not enough to live on for the majority of unemployed people dealing with the massive global job crisis.

Our benefit system’s ethos of “unemployed people only deserve just enough to survive on” is in itself problematic. Regardless of your situation, if you need help from the state because you lost your job, can no longer work due to disability, injury, or mental health issue or for whatever reason – don’t you deserve to do more than just survive?

When you are vulnerable and down, you have the right to be treated with dignity, respect, compassion, and kindness by whatever government is in power. Don’t you deserve to know you are loved and valued no matter how much profit you are or are not turning over?

Instead of compassion from our government, they are leaving our most vulnerable behind as blogger and advocate for Action Against Poverty Katie Dickie-Davis wrote recently for The Daily Blog:

“Last week people queued at the doors of the Auckland City Mission. They are people that are living without enough income to afford the basics let alone the extras we as a society have come to expect at Christmas. Extras like presents for the children and a feed on Christmas Day.”

Aotearoa has never been so unequal. The OCED recently released a landmark report showing that economies the world over are “being hamstrung by growing inequality – New Zealand was the worst effected,” as the Guardian reported.

John Key has dismissed the report. As Dickie-Davis went on to say

“Key has quite a history of denying inequality. Following his election win he did however state he wanted to reduce child poverty. Hmm. Colour me fucking puzzled? Denying inequality, dismissing the findings of report after report and yet admitting there might be some child poverty. Obviously someone is wrong.”

Just over a week ago I was walking late at night to a friend’s apartment at the bottom of Queen Street, when a group of young teenagers crossed my path. They were homeless. I ended up talking to a sixteen-year old girl who had been on the streets since she was fourteen. Her parents do not want anything to do with her she told me, and now she is pregnant and has no idea what she is going to do. This young girl told me John Key does not give a fuck about her and while laughing and throwing her head back she acclaimed “let’s put bombs in the beehive”.

We are one of the few developed countries in the world that has no national strategy to combat homelessness. Youth homelessness has grown since 2008 and Paula Bennett’s punitive welfare reforms targeted youth benefits.

The National government is sending a clear message to young people who are homeless and others struggling to stay above the poverty line: we don’t care if you fucking starve to death.

Post Script:

I wrote at the start of this blog that I have finally found a job! Not some crap low paid job either. For the first time I am being paid a liveable wage and I am using all those degrees I earnt. I have been hired as the Editor of Debate magazine at AUT. I feel incredibly humbled to be working at AUT in a position which will allow me to connect daily with students and hear their voices. I am at the very start of a rebrand and relaunch of the magazine, much of my time will be dedicated to seeing this through. I will no longer be blogging for The Daily Blog as frequently as I have done in the past. I hope to contribute to the Daily when I can.

Thank you to all the people who believed in me, gave me praise and yes, criticisms. Your support and robust debate has been invaluable. There are no words I can use to express my thanks to Martyn who spent at least 6 months urging me to write for him. Thank God I finally got over my lack of self-belief and committed to writing for The Daily Blog just under a year ago. It has been an affirming and incredible experience for me, writing soothes the soul.

Ngā Mihi

Chloe King.

Stop telling young people to vote. Tell them to start the riot.

Chloe King

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December 2, 2014

83

This year was the first time I ever voted and in all honestly I feel a bit ripped off. I knew the left would lose badly to the right, so it was not this which left me feeling short changed. It was the left’s behaviour after the fact.

Watching Labour cannibalise itself and witnessing some of David Cunliffe’s own MPs throw him under the post-election bus left me feeling pretty disillusioned.

So much for solidarity in tough times.

Megaupload tycoon Kim Dotcom bankrolled the Internet Party then stood on stage on election night crying and apologising for poisoning the Internet/Mana brand and declaring it his fault that Hone, Mana Party leader, lost his seat in parliament (self-awareness always comes too late). Dotcom’s ego eclipsed so many of the incredible policies the Internet Party had to offer. Greens co-leader Russel Norman had a public hissy fit on Waatea News and accussed Internet/Mana’s of stealing Green votes. As the saying goes “the right seeks converts and the left seeks traitors.”

We lost the election for many reasons – it’s not just down to National’s dirty politics and right wing attack dog and political blogger Whale Oil. Many of our own left wing politicians have behaved dismally. The endless infighting within our left wing movements and Labours refusal to work in solidarity with other left wing parties played an epic part in our downfall. Journalist and activist Kareem Abdul-Jabbar recently wrote this in relation to the powerful uprisings in Ferguson against class warfare, police brutality, and racial profiling which offers a model for civil resistance:

“Rather than uniting to face the real foe—do-nothing politicians, legislators, and others in power—we fall into the trap of turning against each other, expending our energy battling our allies instead of our enemies.”

I had never voted until this year, as previously mentioned. Not because I am an apathetic millennial – as the stereotype goes, I just never really saw the point in voting.

I have been an activist since I was 19 and since I can remember I have cared deeply for other people and their welfare. But like so many young people I have felt completely alienated by the political process and establishment. I worked out early that most politicians do not give a fuck about my generation. Even the ones that do have no idea how to connect in meaningful ways with global youth.

It is so easy to forget where you come from as John Key so succinctly proves. This is how we’ve ended up with token gestures like ‘The Young Nats’ and ‘Young Labour’ whose members are millennials but they often fail to connect with a disenfranchised and angry youth.

It is hard to care about politics when you are struggling to find your first job thanks to a massive global job crisis. Youth unemployment in Britain sits at an all-time high of 21 percent and youths account for more than one-third of total unemployment in New Zealand. Around 40 percent of youths in employment are underemployed.

Governments all over the world took stifling austerity measures after the financial crash that adversely effected the young, vulnerable, middle class, and poor leaving the super wealthy untouched and unaccountable. Anti-capitalist activist Naomi Klein wrote

“The only kind of contraction our current system can manage is a brutal crash in which our most vulnerable will suffer the most.”

When the Occupy Wall Street movement exploded all over the world it was mostly young people leading the movement protesting austerity measures and the staggering divide between the super-rich and remaining 99 percent. I sat in Auckland’s Occupy camp three years ago talking to homeless kids as young as 14, who spoke of having no future and no hope. They were painfully aware of how little their government cared for their welfare or their futures. When I spoke on the phone to Corie Haddock Candidate for Labour and who is the co-chair of ‘The New Zealand Collation to End Homelessness’ he told me:

“We are one of the few developed countries in the world that does not have a national strategy to respond to homelessness. Homelessness has grown across the board since 2008. One of the specific areas of growth of homelessness is young people.”

Jan Logie, Green MP, visited Youthline a few days ago and created a Facebook update in relation to her experience there. She wrote,

“I was disturbed […] to hear about how big the youth homelessness problem is and how some of the very worrying issues I’ve seen around alternative education seem to have got worse.”

There are without a doubt some incredible MPs and political party candidates working hard in parliament for social change and who are listening to the voices of young people. But they are so often are minority, not the majority.

So why would young people, especially those living in poverty who have been pushed to the margins of society in New Zealand, put faith and trust in a government and political process that does not include them and has left them out in the cold? Why do so many people patronisingly tell the youth of today to “get out and vote?” Why should they? Can you even tell me why I should vote without using the words “civic duty”? As Danny Dorling wrote last year for The New Statesman,

“The prospects for young people have never seemed so bleak. No wonder they feel society is rigged against them and are so reluctant to vote.”

Left and right wing governments all over the world from Canada to England are hiking tertiary fees and making it harder and harder for people to access higher education. Unless you come from wealth and your parents can support you through under- and post graduate study you are likely to be lumped with massive, crippling student loan. The reality that 1 in 5 Māori live in poverty as compared to 1 in 10 Pākehā, means the increasing tertiary fees will acutely affect New Zealand’s indigenous youth and ethnic minorities.

Our higher educational systems are already racially and socially divided but with growing tertiary fees, a young person’s potential to attend university will increasingly depend on how much their parents earn, not how hard they work, or how dedicated they are to learning.

Higher education should be a human right.

When students protested against massive educational cuts and the axing of student allowances at postgraduate level in New Zealand three years ago, our right wing leader John Key ignored their demands and flippantly told student protesters to “finish their degrees and go and get a job.” In a job market where in vocational qualifications such as teaching degrees in particular are almost not worth the paper they are printed on, this statement was not only dismissive, it was a lie by omission. As activist and journalist Laurie Penny points out,

“The message being sent to the next generation could be summed up with a second-person pronoun and any given expletive. You don’t vote for us; why should we care what happens to you?”

Representative democracy constantly disappoints.

The ruthless attacks on the poor and unemployed through the National government gutting the welfare state and Paula Bennett’s dangerous welfare reforms send a clear message to thousands of young people who are struggling to find work in a stagnant job market: we don’t give a fuck about you. As John Key gives ever increasing tax breaks to the super wealthy, our social safety nets are being ripped away. As Dorling states,

“When there is a dole, young people do not have to take any work, no matter how bad it is.”

Young people deserve to have job opportunities that are meaningful for them, and that pay them a living wage. Our youth are witnessing the collapse of our economy, the privatisation of their educational systems, the destruction of our social safety nets, and their very futures.

Russell Brand states in his book Revolution,

“I mean, if someone said they had a socio-economic system that creates a hugely wealthy elite at the cost of everyone else but it was ecologically sound, we’d tell them to fuck off.”

Russell Brand, spokesperson for the voiceless rage of a generation, infamously guest edited the New Statesman last year calling his issue ‘Revolution of Consciousness’. In his political essay ‘We no longer have the luxury of tradition’ he told everyone he had never voted and you shouldn’t either – it only encourages them. Brand referring here to politicians and those who benefit from funding their parties.

“I don’t vote because to me it seems like a tacit act of compliance; I know, I know my grandparents fought in two world wars (and one World Cup) so that I’d have the right to vote. Well, they were conned. As far as I’m concerned there is nothing to vote for.”

Political pundits and journalists around the world threw their hands up in the air and declared Brand irresponsible for telling people to stop voting. In an interview with veteran journalist Richard Paxman, Brand was told he was in no position to call for a revolution and a radical dismantling of our current failed [capitalist] system if he had never voted.

Paxman told Brand over and over that he needed to vote or else he had no right to complain. Yeah, that old trope. Brand said over and over that he had no interest in participating in a political process that represents and serves so few. As Brand wrote,

“The idea that voting is pointless, democracy a façade, and that no one is representing ordinary people is more resonant than ever…”

Telling people not to vote may have been irresponsible, but what so many pundits and journalists failed to understand about Brand’s polarising political essay was that it was also a battle-cry – one that echoed the voices of many activists and protesters on a global level.

His essay, given his celebrity status, was a sonorous drum that called for people to rise up against disaster capitalism and rampant greed, and demanded revolutionary change to the political and economic hegemony. If, however, you find Brand with his proud sexism (because LOL! Sexism is funny when he does it), whizzing around in a Rolls Royce being driven by his chauffeur, while telling rich people they are part of the problem a bit hard to stomach, rest assured that he is not the only one calling for such radical actions.

In an article written by Naomi Klein and published in Brands editorial debut last year at The New Statesman titled ’Science says revolt!’ she brought both the catastrophic consequences of climate change and a complex systems researcher named Brad Werner to our attention. Werner delivered a session titled ‘Is the Earth Fucked?’ at the American Geophysical Union’s autumn meeting where he used an advanced computer model to answer this question. He talked about,

“systems boundaries, perturbations, dissipation, attractors, bifurcations and a whole bunch of other stuff largely incomprehensible to those of us uninitiated in complex system theory[…]”

wrote Klein. But as she pointed out the bottom line was clear:

[…] global capitalism has made the depletion of resources so rapid, convenient and barrier-free that “earth-human systems” are becoming dangerously unstable in response. When pressed by a journalist for a clear answer on the “are we fucked” question, Werner put aside the jargon and replied “more or less”.

There was one dynamic in the model, however, that offered up hope as Klein powerfully points out:

“Werner termed it “resistance” – movements of “people or groups of people” who “adopt a certain set of dynamics that does not fit within the capitalist culture.”[…] this includes “environmental direct action, resistance taken from outside the dominant culture, as in protests, blockades and sabotage by indigenous peoples, workers, anarchists and other activist groups.”

“Mass uprisings, political protest, sabotage and direct actions along the lines of the abolition movement, the civil rights movement or Occupy Wall Street – “represent the likeliest forms of friction to slow down an economic machine that is careening out of control.”

Given the above, stop telling young people to vote. Tell them to fight. Tell them to protest against our ruthless National government that cares for profit not people or the planet.

Tell them to start the riot.

Tell them to be arrested if necessary.

Tell them the truth: they have been sold a fucking lie.

Tell them that getting degrees is unlikely to land skilled, meaningful work that will pay a living wage in our current social and political climate.

Tell them working hard at some low paid job, if they can find work at all, will barely afford them a basic standard of living.

Tell them this world has been stolen from them by corporate greed, by corrupt and lazy politicians who spend more time fighting amongst themselves than solving social problems, and by a failed economic model that works only for the super wealthy and then is sold back to them for more than they could ever afford.

Tell them it is up to us, the silent and silenced majority, to take this world back.

Tell them the revolution starts with them.

On baby boomers who give my generation unhelpful advice: JUST DON’T

Chloe King

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November 13, 2014

150

One of my mum’s colleagues recently told her that there is no money in what her daughter was doing; volunteering at a women’s refuge and writing on politics. This guy, dispensing all his pearls of wisdom, told my mother that setting up my own blog with various other writers is not likely to make me any money, either – he knew someone who had done the same and after a year was still wasn’t making any money off advertising. He believes my issue is “I don’t take advice well” and my swearing puts people off. I would have thought my radical intersectional feminist ideas and disdain for the government and establishment would be more offensive to some than the word “fuck” appearing in my blogs, but obviously not.

This guy at my mums’ work with all the unsolicited advice was of course a baby boomer.

A baby boomer or member of the ‘greatest generation’ telling a millennial how to live their life is nothing new, as anyone under the age of 30 can tell you. Last year I was working in some café in Melbourne as a kitchen hand. I had recently been fired from a well-paid bar job the day after Christmas and had to find work, any work, to pay my rent, so I found myself washing dishes and working under a baby boomer head chef who made Robin Thicke and Redfoo look like the patron saints of sexual equality. One day he decided to rant about “my generation” or “those young people”. He told me the economy is so bad because my generation is lazy and we just need to stop complaining and take any job, because “back in his day they took what was given to them and got on with it”.

As I turned to wash the massive pile of dishes I was being paid below the Australian hospitality minimum wage to do, I couldn’t believe he could not see the irony in his words: I have two undergraduate and two postgraduate degrees – but here I was, willing to work a low-paid job to make enough money to pay rent and buy food, at age 28, without complaining. I have spent the last ten years taking any job, no matter how underpaid, no matter how few hours, no matter how depressing, to make enough money to scrape by. You can’t really live off minimum wage. Millions other people on poverty wages around the world, like the striking Walmart workers in America, will tell you the same.

So here is some advice for baby boomers, who feel the need to give unsolicited out of touch and unhelpful advice to young people – like they have a clue:

Don’t tell us we need to work harder, because in your day “you took any job offered and did not complain”. Your wage was far more likely to match your living costs and there was no massive unemployment crisis when you were in your teens and early twenties. Don’t tell us we need to give up on our dreams and just take that McDonald’s job and be happy with our lot because we should be THANKFUL we even have a job. You should care what happens to us. We are your children. “Millions of young people are finding themselves forced to contemplate 50 years of fear, debt and depression” wrote the journalist Laurie Penny. Is that the life you think we deserve?

Don’t tell us we are selfish and narcissistic because we like selfies and Facebook and feel better about ourselves when we buy pretty things we probably do not need and likely cannot afford. “Diagnosing and labelling people [narcissistic] whose struggles are far more environmental or learned than genetic or organic” wrote Dr. Brene Brown “is often far more detrimental to healing and change than it is helpful.”

We need to humanise problems; this is how we can shed some important light on the issues young people face today. We live in a celebrity-soaked culture that tells us being ‘ordinary’ is worse than death. We are raised in a culture that tells us being superficially loved by many is more important than being deeply loved by a few. It should therefore come as no surprise to baby boomers that so many young people are obsessed with taking selfies and promoting themselves on twitter, Instagram and other social platforms.

Stigmatising young people as narcissistic or self-centred is unhelpful; young people are simply reacting to what Brown calls ‘a shame-based fear of being ordinary’. They are reacting to a capitalist system that values the individual over the collective and puts profit before people.

My generation are often acutely aware they are measured by the profit they can turn, not by how much they give back to their communities, or how deeply they care about the problems in this world. This was proved by my mother’s colleague who saw no worth in my writing or volunteer work because, so far, it has made me no money.

Don’t think you baby boomers have ANY idea what it is like to be young in this world, right now.

Most of you don’t.

The majority of you don’t know how it feels to go to university and be saddled with massive debt, because university was free for you. You don’t know how depressing it is to earn those degrees and tick those boxes only to spend most of your twenties desperately looking for any work. And then, when you get a job, it is either underpaid or you are underemployed so sometimes you go without food. Being hungry sucks, but working a dead end job with no hope of moving up sucks even more. The political magazine New Statesman said last year that my generation will be the first generation in a long time to be poorer than their parents.

Stop telling us not to imagine better and stop telling us to “just work harder”; the only thing that makes this world a bearable place is those people who dare to imagine a world that is better. “The most important battles are fought on the territory of political imagination” wrote Laurie Penny. I know so many of you lost hope after the Seventies. I would have too under the same circumstances. The government just did not listen to you. Seeing as you know what being ignored feels like, maybe you should start listening to us? We are starry-eyed and full of impossible dreams – just like you were – and have naive ideas about taking back the power from the corrupt governments and greedy politicians and corporations who sit safely behind their platinum titles.

Yes, we want it all. That does not make us selfish. Please stop telling us that. It actually makes us fearless.

We – the consumerist, selfie-taking brats – have started some of the most powerful social movements this century has witnessed; from the Arab Spring protests that toppled dictators, to the youth-led Occupy Movement that forced massive income inequality onto the public agenda, to the protesters in Greece who graffitied the words “fuck heroes, fight now” and braved tear gas and violence and sometimes death so their government would hear their voices rising up against suffocating austerity measures, to the young democracy protesters who started the Umbrella Revolution in Hong Kong: we know how to stand up.

Courage is contagious.

We are not waiting for a Che Guevara or Martin Luther King to lead the charge. Our movements are often leaderless because we want to lead together – this is democracy in action. My generation knows you can kill a revolutionary but you cannot kill a revolution. We learnt that from you, baby boomers. We value intergenerational wisdom and knowledge despite what so many of you think.

Our movements are about the collective, not the individual. This is in radical opposition to a capitalist system that cares only for the rich, detests the poor, and has failed so many of us. Leadership in the most recent movements has come from the bottom of the pyramid not the top.

We are still learning. We have made mistakes and will continue to do so. We understand that failure is part of the process of achieving colossal, long-lasting change. We are prepared to keep getting back up over and over again.

Perhaps those of us who have taken up arms and joined the struggle for change will eventually become jaded and frustrated with incremental change and give up, like so many of you did. Fighting when so few hear you is tiring. Some of us will go and get those corporate jobs we mocked and buy shiny cars and big homes we cannot afford and forget our dreams. And then it will be our children’s turn to dream of the impossible and try to change the world. And thank God so many of them will.

A world without dreamers, change-makers, social dissidents, and the optimistically naive would be a dystopia. Where there is hope, there is life.

We live in exceptional times. Our world is dying. We have polluted it so badly with carbon and gas emissions that our climate has been irreversibly effected. Sea levels are rising and more climate change-effected natural catastrophes are eminent. Whole islands of mostly indigenous peoples will drown and be washed away. The Carteret Islanders of Papua New Guinea and the Taro Islanders of the Solomon Islands have become climate change refuges and have already paid the price for our ruthless greed and callousness. Naomi Klein said in her book ‘This Changes Everything’:

“In our wealthier nations, we will protect our major cities with costly seawalls and storm barriers while leaving vast areas of coastline that are inhabited by poor and Indigenous people to the ravages of storms and rising seas.”

Our politicians have declared wars in our name with neither, our support or our permission. Obama’s video game technology of killing through drone warfare is being used, mostly, to terrorize and kill innocent civilians in distant lands. One of Obama’s first actions when he first took office, was to bomb an African nation. Please tell me again why he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize? America has declared a state of permeant everlasting war, western democracy is being consumed by a police state. In New Zealand, Prime Minster John Key would rather pump money into a flag referendum and go to war than feed kids living in poverty a healthy, nourishing lunch.

This is pure insanity.

We know our world is fucked up. We do not have all the answers, but we are searching for them – we are trying.

I think it is worth telling you what my mum, who is also a baby boomer, said in response to some guy at work telling her how her daughter should live her life:

“My daughter is incredibly passionate about what she does. I fully support and encourage her creative endeavours”.

My mother is a solo parent who went to university in her forties. She worked multiple jobs while studying to feed and clothe both my twin sister and I and is now saddled with debt she will likely never repay. My mum works in the public health sector which is nearly always underpaid. Some baby boomers understand what it is like to be young in this world and to struggle, but so many need a reality check.

So, baby boomers. Either join us in our fight to change the world or get out of our fucking way.

An open Letter to Sir Bob Jones: demanding a ‘liveable wage’ is not “absurd” it is a basic human right

Chloe King

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October 25, 2014

58

How out of touch with reality is Sir Bob Jones? You know, that white dude who invested in privatised SOEs after the selling off of our assets in the eighties and made a ludicrous and disgusting amount of money and is on the Forbes Rich List and now writes for the New Zealand Herald. His last op-ed ‘Living Wage is a Reward Not a Right’ was so hilarious it reads almost like a parody, only it isn’t. According to Jones those left-wingers demanding a living wage are “absurd” – yeah, it is completely insane to demand low-paid employees get a wage that might pull them above the poverty line and put food on their tables without having to forgo another necessity like paying the power bill.

Dear Sir Bob Jones,

It is nice you like to swoon around cafés, asking owners questions like: “I have a million questions. How do you cope with buggers occupying key tables for two hours over a single cup of coffee?” Not exactly journalistic questioning at its best. (How much do they pay you to write this shit?). I have worked hospitality for ten long shitty years and between the million orders you have to fill in a short space of time and the long hours, you are nearly always paid poverty wages to work, as an employee you don’t really care about people who are occupying tables for long periods of time. It is just one less table you have to worry about.

Mostly, when you work hospo, you are just dying for your next cig brake and hoping to god everyone magically just fucks off so you can finally go and take a piss and sit down. Standing for hours and hours on your feet starts to hurt after a while. Getting regular brakes in hospo is a privilege not a [workers] right. I’ve easily worked up to 16 hours without a brake because bars and cafes are nearly always short staffed – your employer saves money but you end working twice as hard.

If you really want to find out the reality of low-paid work, you might want to start by talking to the staff working at these places – not just the owners. Cafés and bars are notorious for treating their staff appallingly in New Zealand. Being paid minimum wage to work long shifts for such little pay and deal with irate and rude customers who often treat you like something they just stepped in and sexually harass you (working in bars often result in drunk customers harassing you) is not exactly self-affirming. In my experience (and I have a decade of it) owners and managers seem to take pleasure in making sure you know that as an employee you are worthless and expendable – and I have worked in over 9 different bars and 3 different cafés and only once I have been paid a fair wage and treated with dignity and respect.

Not to mention you have zero job security and employers often give you as many or as little shifts as they please, regardless of what your contract stipulates. This is made even easier by the recent popularity in zero-hero contracts, something that has been taken up especially within the hospitality industry

Speaking of job security, I thought I would share something with you Bob: the anxiety of having no job security is crippling. I used to work two bar jobs because I was so terrified of losing one, it was not like I had savings; you can’t save on minimum wage. The logic was: if I had two jobs and I got ‘rostered off’ I would at least have another job to fall back on. (In hospo terms, “rostering off” is a common practice where an employee turns up to work and for some explicable reason have no shifts on the roster for the following weeks. Effectively you just got fired, but without the annoying hassle of employers actually going through the process of a legal dismissal.)

Yeah, that is the only kind of job security I have ever had: holding two jobs in case I lost the other.

As Linda Tirado, a young mother who has spoken out about the inequalities and realities of trying to live on minimum wage, wrote:

“We all know that a lot of folks think that poor people are lazy and incompetent. They think we get fired from jobs because we don’t know how to behave, or we’re always late, or we just don’t care. But what rich people don’t realise is how unbelievably easy it is to get fired. And a lot of times what gets you fired is that you’re working more than one job.”

And this brings me to the illusion you seem to be labouring under, Bob, that if you train or study and make some ‘sacrifices’ you will finally win the prize of a ‘liveable wage’. You wrote:

“If you want the $18.50 “living wage” or better, choose employment paying it, rather than complain. That requires initial sacrifice, whether by studying for a professional career or accepting temporary low-paid trade or other specialist training.”

Dude, you should quit property investing and become a comedian because damn, this is hilarious. Getting a degree, especially a vocational degree, no longer guarantees you (did it ever?) a job – let alone a career with remuneration that pays back that staggering student debt you acquired while making those “sacrifices”. I know it did back in your day, Bob, but times, oh, how they have changed. Unlike the students of today you did not start off your career in debt: university was free. Baby boomers always forget to mention this or see it as ‘none issue’ – especially when they are telling us underpaid or unemployed people we just need to work harder and stop complaining.

When students revolted two years ago against John Key’s massive cuts to education he told protesting students to: “stop complaining, finish your degrees and go and get a job”. The only problem is there where so few jobs to “go and get”. The job market is saturated with over-qualified and often desperate graduates. I trained as a teacher and in just two years we lurched from a teacher shortage to a major oversupply. Leaving me and thousands of other graduates out of work.

The disenfranchising of the young is a major worldwide crisis: last year the New Statesman reported that “youth unemployment in Britain is 21 percent (958,000), a near record.” Recently on Russell Brand’s YouTube show The Trews the co-founder of the ‘99% Movement’ Dave Degraw said in relation to Americas unemployment crisis, “we only have full-time jobs for 50% of the working age population and of those jobs half of them pay under 35,000 a year.”

What this means is America’s economy only works for 25% of the population. The Huffington Post reported that more than 2 million graduates in America are unemployed and millions more are under-employed. In New Zealand 40% of our youth are unemployed or under-employed, and in 2012 the highest percentage of people graduated from universities in New Zealand only to find that their diplomas and degrees often counted for nothing in the job market.

Well educated or not, it is a struggle to find underpaid work let alone meaningful and well-paid work in a stagnant job market, where job creation has stalled. As Degraw said:

“In a technologically advancing society you need fewer and fewer workers so we have to address the issue of providing necessities to everybody[…] I’ve come to realise that we absolutely need a guaranteed income; a guaranteed living income so people can support themselves and buy basic necessities.”

The only reasoning you offer up for your support of the minimum wage is most small businesses cannot afford to pay any more than poverty wages: “What particularly interested me was the salaries for what’s essentially menial work. In most cases they’re on the minimum wage. Any more and they’re [business oweners] out of business.”

As the foundation ‘Closing the Gap’ said in reaction to your belief that small companies simply cannot afford to pay their workers anything above poverty wages,

“It is interesting that those that oppose a living wage always quote the example of “small businesses going broke” or “pay rises equal job losses”. No mention of the large multi-national corporations that export huge profits while expecting the Government to make the difference for their substandard pay. Nor that history shows that “pay rises equal more jobs” as economies thrive.”

The issue is it is not just small businesses refusing to pay a liveable wage so people don’t go hungry and can pay their rent. Massive lucrative companies such a Walmart in America are refusing to pay their workers above minimum wage also. Walmart workers have been protesting and demanding $15 dollars an hour and more stable work hours for over a year now. The six heirs to the Walmart fortune in America have more wealth than 30 percent of the poorest Americans. But these heirs do not support giving their workers 15 dollars an hour – this is not much to ask for really, is it?

The problem is not a lack of education or motivation, it has nothing to do with people on minimum wage needing to work harder to earn the “reward” of a liveable wage – the issue is greed and a (capitalist) system that values profit over people.

The problem is, Sir Bob Jones, you are part of the fucking problem: you are part of the elite 1% that has hoarded most of this world’s capital and helped to create massive wealth inequality. As Russell Brand wrote in his book Revolution, “Oxfam say a bus with eighty-five of the richest people in the world on it would contain more wealth than the collective assets of half the earth’s population – that’s three and a half billion people.”

A liveable wage is not a “reward”, it is a basic human right. People should be able to buy food without foregoing other basic needs like heating in winter or rent. People deserve to live in dignity and have time to spend with their kids and friends, instead of slaving away at some low paid job with little prospect of moving up or ever getting a pay rise.

Maybe what we need is a maximum wage so we can begin to close the gap between the super wealthy like yourself, Bob, and the poor and working poor. This current economic system is unsustainable, and people are rising up all around the world to demand a fairer and more equal world – from the Occupy Movement to the Walmart workers, who are relentless in their protests and demands for fair pay, people are tired of getting a raw deal.

Here’s what WINZ are patronisingly saying to people on welfare when they don’t think anyone’s listening

Chloe King

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October 14, 2014

225

Yesterday, a case manager from WINZ called to tell me that I needed to “imagine what I would do if I did not have welfare”. I replied “Well, I guess if I couldn’t live at home, I would be homeless.” The case manager responded by saying “Now, you see that is a really negative way of seeing it. You would find ways to support yourself.” She went on to tell me I just needed to take a minimum wage job, maybe cleaning or something, and that my expectation of being paid 15 dollars an hour was unrealistic. She informed me that training as a volunteer at Women’s Refuge and writing on politics was not making me any money, so I needed to lower my expectations.

After this case manager’s patronising attempts to get me to “envision life without welfare” I snapped and told her:

You may not be able to agree with me but you know John Key has gutted welfare, which has plunged people further and further into desperate poverty. You know it is nearly impossible to live off minimum wage in Auckland, yet you are telling me to just be happy with a wage that would leave me barely able to afford food. You know Key has slashed funding to education, meaning that the post grad qualification I have in teaching is almost worthless. You know the job market is shit and stagnant, and you know you are hassling over qualified people into unfulfilling and underpaid work and expecting them to thank you. And then you harass and humiliate people who become part of the revolving door at your welfare offices. There is a reason why people go on and off welfare; it is because the [capitalist] system we live in is broken. Not because we are inadequate or lazy. It is depressing working jobs where you are expendable and treated as worthless and paid accordingly.

The case manager then said in a patronising tone that she had just called to confirm an appointment and I was getting upset for no reason, and anyway I just needed to “think more positively about my situation”. This despite the fact that she had at the start of our conversation brought up the fact that I had been on welfare before, and she had pointed out that because I had so many degrees I should have no trouble finding work. The case manager must not have heard me when I had told her:

“Key has slashed funding to education, meaning that post grad qualification I have in teaching is almost worthless.”

Not to mention that preventing violence against women, the sector I desperately want to work in, is under-funded. Anything perceived as ‘women’s work’ always is. Women’s Refuge already relies on 60% of its work force volunteering their time. Without these courageous and dedicated women who work for free, many victims of domestic violence would go unsupported and often have nowhere to go. Without a doubt, lives would be lost without these volunteers.

Under our current National government, as Green MP Jan Logie said at ‘The Women’s Forum’ before the election, “we have seen the erosion of our women’s rights, economic position and pathways out of violence. They have cut the targets for women’s representation, legislated against equal pay, and removed vital protections for victims of sexual and domestic violence.”

It almost feels like a crime to want to work in a job where I might make a difference to my community and country.

Lord knows after my political rant at some random WINZ worker who was not even my personal case manager, my welfare could be cut this week – speaking out is a dangerous game to play. But hey, us benefit bludgers deserve what we get, right? We are just lazy losers and having a benefit cut out of nowhere is the price we pay for sitting on our couches all day playing PlayStation and drinking RTDs. Unemployed people are clearly what is wrong with society – not the super wealthy who horde every last penny creating massive wealth inequality and whose travel habits have a 250 times greater impact on climate change than those living in poverty. We just need to ‘work harder’, be happy with our lot and stop complaining.

Last night I paid a visit to Jill* who used to be an unemployment case manager for WINZ. She predominantly worked with people with disabilities and mental health problems. Jill told me that “every employee at WINZ has to meet a job target. If WINZ employees push people off welfare, they a get bonus and it can be one to two thousand dollars. Keep in mind that WINZ workers are also often low paid workers who have mortgages to pay and families to support.”

When Jill first started working at WINZ she told me that to meet these targets she was supposed to shove (and it was “shove”) her clients into any job. But having worked in the mental health sector previously, Jill was aware that this can set people up to fail and destroy self-confidence. Because of this she found short training schemes that were free and placed people on these educational programs, as she said “to buy her clients time”. She faced enormous pressure “to place people in jobs regardless of their capabilities.” In the end Jill quit after “seriously losing the will to live, sleep and eat” because “working at WINZ was just fucking awful.”

Months after she left, Jill spoke to a case manager still working at the same office and learnt that many of her clients she had managed get into training schemes had found “sustainable work.”

That word “sustainable” has a slippery meaning when uttered by WINZ workers. I have no doubt that Jill, with her moral convictions and refusal to meet her targets at the expense of her clients, managed to get at least some people into work that would be truly sustainable and perhaps meaningful. As Jill told me “I never met one job target the whole entire time I was there.”

But I doubt this can be said for many other WINZ workers as the system they work in demands that they force people into any job no matter how unsuitable or underpaid. When this case manager rang me yesterday she kept telling me I needed to find “sustainable work”. I asked the case manager to define what “sustainable” was supposed to mean in the context of WINZ. She could not tell me. In truth I need not have asked this question. I know, like anyone else who has been on welfare, that it really means: take any job no matter how underpaid or unsuitable and shut up.

Just over a month ago a Russell Tully walked into an Ashburton branch of WINZ, pulled out a gun and shot 3 case managers, killing two of them. Tully had recently been in the paper pleading for help. He had been living in a tent, he was homeless, desperate and mentally very unwell. Nadia Filistin who advocates for beneficiaries said in passionate response the shootings:

The man who murdered Work & Income staff today was homeless, destitute, chronically ill and repeatedly shunned by our politicians and our scarcely remaining “safety net”. Remember that thousands just like him will not murder. They will be quietly loathed, demonised and their collective pain will be depoliticised. Rather, thousands who do not react to the violence and contempt of our Government squeezing and beating people within an inch of their lives with punitive policy, will walk away. Some will commit suicide. Others will die on the streets. Others will carry on crushed by the weight of unjustifiable hardship and social and economic exclusion.

The ruthless and brutal welfare reforms of Paula Bennett under the National government have plunged people below the poverty line. More and more people are living in poverty stricken circumstances: new mothers living out of their cars and families who are on long waiting lists for state housing are living in over crowded cold damp homes. These people and many like them are desperate for help that often never comes.

James Baldwin once said: “The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.”

I am lucky. I was born into privilege: I am a white cis gendered heterosexual woman. I am well educated – I was afforded hardship scholarships and my student loan is small compared to most. I am not homeless. I do not have a mental health diagnosis. I have friends and family that continue to hold me up. There are, without a doubt, many people significantly worse off in Aotearoa than I am.

I am lucky. I am lucky. I am lucky. I will repeat this to myself, every day.

But I think it is worth sharing with you that I have felt seriously suicidal on welfare. I have drunk myself into oblivion and popped sedatives because I felt so hopeless about my situation. I have woken up and wished I had not. I have suffered from eating disorders retriggered when I had no money to buy food on welfare, and sometimes no matter how hard you try to find employment, your best is just not good enough. And that feeling of ‘not being good enough’ is overwhelming.

WINZ compounds these feelings of worthlessness by pushing you into poorly paid, exhausting and often depressing work that in no way reflects your skill set. If you cannot find work you are shamed, harassed and patronised. In the Grey Lynn WINZ branch they will not even let clients use the toilets.

Here’s what is notably not being said to beneficiaries: you are more than your inability to find a job. You deserve to eat food, to have a warm dry roof over your head, to feel loved and to be supported by your government regardless of your economic position. You need to know you are worthy, simply because you were born. “Human beings are worth more than their usefulness to capital” wrote the journalist Laurie Penny. I am so tired of being measured purely by my ability to turn a profit.

*Name has been changed to protect the identity of this person

Labour, leadership and White blokes

Efeso Collins

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October 13, 2014

26

David Shearer said on TV3’s The Nation this weekend that he appreciated the support Labour’s received from Maori and Pacific communities over the last few elections, but that it was important to again, secure the votes of ordinary white blokes who had deserted Labour, and voted elsewhere. I wonder if he’s talking about the many White blokes that live in his electorate, who decided not to give their Party vote to Labour? If the Labour leadership race is anything to go by, then they must all believe thats the case because all of them are just that… White blokes. To date David Cunliffe, Grant Robertson and Andrew Little have confirmed their desire to sit at the leaders desk. David Parker is expected to announce his intention to stand tomorrow and David Shearer is still sounding out his supporters.

In a recent post, I wrote that the Greens needed to ensure Pasifika representation in their top 15 at the next election to be fair to its broad constituency base. In the same way and in light of being further along the broad church journey, Labour need to exhibit their commitment to both Pasifika voters and its own values of fairness and inclusion, by providing a way for a Pasifika peron in its current caucus to stand for the leadership. I’ve been posting on facebook that my personal preference is for a Mahuta/Sio team to lead the Party, giving a clear message to its very faithful voter support-base, and the NZ public at large, that Labour is in fact the progressive Party it claims to be. Going back just a few elections and the words of former Party President Mike Williams ring true… that the Labour victory of 2005 was courtesy of the south Auckland booths. Its time to reward that loyalty and offer a completely new, fresh, unifying and culturally contemporary group of leaders in Labour.

There seems to be an agreement amongst those currently vying for the leadership that Labour needs to take up more of the middle ground. These White blokes have said that Labour needs to occupy that political space in order to win the votes of their peers, other White blokes. Around the Party I’ve also heard discussions about the socially conservative values of both Pacific communities and working class families. So perhaps there’s some merit to the White blokes appeal and approach that Shearer’s advocating? But Labour must also bring to the fore, a meaningful and culturally appropriate conversation about the role of Pasifika MPs and how they can be encouraged to seek the leadership. Moreover, Labour needs to actively encourage Pasifika MPs to put their names forward for the leadership contest.

I’m fascinated by the ongoing dialogue amongst leadership hopefuls that the Party needs to avoid merely representing lobby groups, feminist interests and the unions. And up until this weekend, Shearer’s been the first to openly admit that we need to win back the middle votes of White blokes. Of further intrigue is that there may be 5 White blokes seeking the leadership of Labour, that could’ve been six had Nash contested. The one thing I admire about Labour’s rules in going thru a Party wide selection for the leader, is that it forces people out of the closet to state their leadership ambitions. But it disturbs me no end, that to date there hasnt been a single Maori or Pasifika MP signal a desire to enter the race. The bottom line is we cant just sit on the sidelines and wait for someone to extend an invitation to us. Its time for Pasifika to stand strong in the mandate of loyal Pasifika votes and put themselves forward for the leadership. Its also high time for the Party to actively encourage that level of participation – because in the end, surely thats what it means to be progressive?

Information wars: Gaza as “the last taboo”, the threat of mass surveillance and the spirit of dissidence

Chloe King

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September 30, 2014

1

“When the truth is replaced with silence” wrote the soviet dissident Yevgeni Yevtushenko, “the silence is a lie.”

There has been a silence these past months full of noise, static and sound bites of those in power justifying their violence, lies and corruptions. All of this has been represented to us as news, “though it is really a parody in which journalists, variously embedded, gesture cryptically at the obvious but rarely make sense of it, lest they shatter the ‘one-way moral screen[…] between ‘us’ and the consequences of political actions taken in our name” wrote John Pilger in his book Tell Me No Lies.

When the bombs started falling in Gaza, few journalists in New Zealand’s obsequious mainstream media had the courage to question Israel’s motivations, and whether these bombs should be falling at all. Instead the predictable calls from our own political pundits of “Israel has the right to defend itself” were amplified and echoed throughout New Zealand’s mainstream media.

‘Journalists’ and MPs in New Zealand from Mike Hosking to the Green’s leader Russel Norman condemned both Israel and Palestine, as if Palestine has the same fire power of the U.S.-financed-and-mentored Israeli army – the second biggest in the world. While the democratically elected Hamas fired their piddly rockets, Israel answered with massive military invasions and aggressive attacks in the Gaza strip. Whole families in Palestine have been erased during this attack. What journalists often failed to point out in New Zealand and around the world is that the average age in Palestine is 17. Mostly it is children being killed and injured in the name of ‘peace’ and ‘security’ by the state of Israel.

From the genesis of genocide in 1948 to the current bombardment, Israel’s ‘security’ and ‘freedom’ is being built on the bones and bodies of innocent Palestinians, who were killed simply for existing. And we, as people on this planet, share some responsibility in the killing of innocent Palestinians.

Our elected Prime Minster John Key, like most leaders around the world, came out in full support of the murderous Israeli state and the only political party in New Zealand that had the courage to stand with Palestine was progressive left-wing Mana Movement.

Mana leader Hone Harawira has now been ousted from Parliament during our election just over a week ago. Cheers erupted at so called left-leaning Labour Party’s election party when Hone, champion of the poor and disenfranchised, lost his seat. The cowardice of our New Zealand political parties from the Green Party to National cannot be ignored – and should not be forgotten.

But something, within the communities of the world, was different this time.

People looked at their twitter feeds and could see in time tweets from those living in Gaza as the bombs were falling; the blood flowing. Citizens of the world watched their computer and T.V. screens and read their phones, and were witness to the carnage and atrocities being committed by the state of Israel against a mostly unarmed people.

Israel’s violence was undeniable. Now people knew.

Even our media machines in Aotearoa found it hard to censor and airbrush the obvious atrocities being committed. Social media wrote over the noise and hysteria of mass American and Israeli propaganda and people took to the streets in the biggest protests ever witnessed in human history in support of Palestine. People marched against not only Israel’s ongoing violence against Palestinians but also their Governments collusion in these crimes . “Yet, a critical public intelligence and resistance to propaganda does exist; and a second super power is emerging,” wrote John Pilger, “the power of public opinion, fuelled by the internet and social media.”

As our media falls silent on Palestine once again, the greatest hope the people of Gaza have are those who are prepared to do something about the injustice being committed against them. “We cannot let it go on,” said the journalist Jon Snow in his YouTube humanitarian plea for Gaza, “if your preparedness to listen and watch and read is anything to go by, together we can make a difference.”

We are idle no more.

The obvious biases in our media have become painfully clear during New Zealand’s election season. From Gaza to broadcasters Mike Hosking and Paul Henry and their obvious commitment to keeping our Prime Minster John Key in power (you’d almost hazard a guess that they are both best mates with Key…) who present us with a small window of narrative, framed by right-wing biases and a corporate agenda.

Right-wing political bloggers such as Cameron Slater and David Farrar, who as bloggers are not bound by the codes of ethics journalists are, as Nicky Hager’s book Dirty Politics revealed, acted as attack dogs for the National Party and have incited smear campaigns against National’s opponents – by proxy for National MPs such as Judith Collins who recently resigned her cabinet portfolios, although not from the party itself.

Cameron Slater acts as a faithful servant to the National Party; he reeks of state propaganda – and Israeli propaganda.

Our media is not for the people but is instead dedicated to maintaining the balance of power in the hands of a small minority.

Two weeks ago the Internet Party delivered to the public of New Zealand ‘The Moment of Truth’, Kim Dotcom, the internet entrepreneur, had flown in the Pultizer-prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald, Canadian lawyer Robert Amsterdam, a vehement defender of civil liberties, and whistleblower Edward Snowden who spoke over secured video-link.

Greenwald expanded on what had already been outlined in an article Showden wrote titled, ‘New Zealand’s prime minister is not telling the truth about mass surveillance’, for Greenwald’s independent media site The Intercept the day before: John Key had been engaged in mass surveillance of his citizenry via the ‘XKeyStone’ software tool, and lied about it.

I was sitting next to my good friend at ‘The Moment of Truth’ who is a hacktivist and staunch defender of internet privacy. I had always made fun of, and laughed at, his paranoia about ‘being watched’, he turned to me and said “I fucking told you so.”

Snowden, in all the hundreds of thousands of files and documents he has leaked and the claims he made, has been found to be lying or wrong exactly zero times. Snowden wrote:

The nation’s prime minister, John Key of the National Party, has denied that New Zealand’s spy agency GCSB engages in mass surveillance, mostly as a means of convincing the country to enact a new law vesting the agency with greater powers. This week, as a national election approaches, Key repeated those denials in anticipation of a report in The Intercept today exposing the Key Government’s actions in implementing a system to record citizens’ metadata.

Let me be clear: any statement that mass surveillance is not performed in New Zealand, or that the internet communications are not comprehensively intercepted and monitored, or that this is not intentionally and actively abetted by the GCSB, is categorically false. If you live in New Zealand, you are being watched.

Many pundits played down the revelations, pushing the narrative that New Zealanders would not really care if they are being spied on – if the revelations proved to be true; nothing to hide, nothing to fear. Key outright denied the allegations. Obama last year in June, weeks after the first revelations of the Snowden files, denied, live on air to journalist Charlie Rose, that his Government had been involved in mass surveillance of his citizenry. Of course, he was lying.

Predictably the character assignations of Kim Dotcom by a xenophobic media eclipsed the central issue of mass surveillance of ‘The Moment of Truth’. As the columnist for the New Zealand Herald Dita De Boni wrote “The National Party spin doctors have been hard at work, painting him [Dotcom] as an evil German trying to subvert democracy, throwing in a side smear of ‘secret Nazi’.”

In 2013, after the Snowden leaks, web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee warned that the democratic nature of the net is threatened by a “growing tide of surveillance and censorship”. The warning came as he launched his World Wide Web Foundation’s annual web index report, tracking global censorship. Sir Tim said, “One of the most encouraging findings of this year’s web index is how the web and social media are increasingly spurring people to organise, take action and try to expose wrongdoing in every region of the world.”

In 2011, Time Magazine named its person of the year ‘The Protester’ – the massive global protests of 2011, largely organised online and documented by social media, toppled dictators in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt. The spirit of dissent spurred Greeks to rise up against unaccountable leaders and Americans occupied public spaces, to protest income inequality – giving birth to the ‘Occupy Movement.’

Inspired by Arab activists and what the Occupy Wall Street movement was doing, thousands of activists in hundreds of cities around the world would join this movement, me included. I camped with hundreds of others in Auckland’s Aotea Square – most of the activists were teens or in their early twenties. I wanted to raise my voice in defiance of governments that cared so little for the poor, marginalised and disenfranchised while giving massive tax breaks to the super wealthy. I wanted to feel connected to something bigger than myself.

Rick Stengel wrote for Time Magazine in 2011:

Protests have now occurred in countries whose populations total at least 3 billion people, and the word protest has appeared in newspaper and online exponentially more this past year than at any other time in history. Is there a global tipping point for frustration? Everywhere, it seems people said they’d had enough. They dissented; they demanded; they did not despair, even when the answers came back in a cloud of tear gas or a hail of bullets. They literally embodied the idea that individual action can bring collective, colossal change.

The regimes in Syria, Libya and Egypt were overwhelmed by protesters and one of the first actions they took to control its defiant citizenry, as Glenn Greenwald wrote in his book No Place to Hide, “[Regimes in Syria, Libya and Egypt] literally went shopping for surveillance tools from Western technology companies.” The goal was to track people and activists who were part of the uprisings and protests.

Overwhelmingly the revelations that John Key had been engaging in mass surveillance have been meet by apathy and indifference. “Initially, it is always the country’s dissidents and marginalized who bear the brunt of the surveillance, leading those who support the Government or are merely apathetic to mistakenly believe they are immune,” warns Greenwald, “And history shows that the mere existence of a mass surveillance apparatus, regardless of how it is used, is in itself sufficient to stifle dissent.”

After New Zealand’s election last week, in which the right-wing won in a landslide victory, left-wing Facebook pages ‘John Key has let New Zealand down’ which had over 16,000 members and ‘National Billboard Make-Overs’ had been taken down by Facebook. Both these pages were forums of dissent, conversation and left-wing activism.

John Key does not want a dissenting population, he wants a fearful and compliant one. His disdain for activism and dissent has been clear throughout his reign.

When student protests erupted two years ago in opposition to massive cuts to education and student allowances, unmarked police were sent in and kettled protesters and student activists were punched in the face and dragged by their necks to the ground – I know, I was there and I witnessed it myself. John Key’s response was to tell us, dismissively, to “finish [our] degrees and go and get a job”. Key, of course, forgot to mention there are few fucking jobs to “go and get”.

Edward Snowden evoked the dissident and historian Howard Zinn when he said to Greenwald “…history also shows that seemingly ordinary people who are sufficiently resolute about justice can triumph over the most formidable adversaries.”

Snowden took on the whole entire American Government and won. “He [Snowden] exposed the extraordinary level of state surveillance the U.S. Government had been involved in,” Greenwald wrote. From the class riots of Fergusson to the resolute and dignified people of Gaza: ordinary citizens of this world, regardless of the risks involved, are rising up, refusing to give in or back down. So many of us have nothing left to lose and everything to gain.

Snowden said in a folder titled ‘README_FIRST’ sent to Greenwald before the leaks: ‘I have been to the darkest corners of the government, and what they fear is light.’

Activists are dreamers. We want more than what has been dealt to us based on the class, race and the economic position we were born into.

Yes, we want it all. Because we can imagine it all.

We want a world that is not engaged in endless war, where overwhelmingly it is poor and brown bodies that are blown into nothingness in the pursuit of white imperialism and domination. We want a world where the concentration of wealth does not sit in the greedy and closed hands of the one percenters. We want a world where no one becomes a climate change refugee.

We want governments that do not seek to control their citizenry through a massive surveillance apparatus while declaring it is for our own ‘security’ and ‘safety’ – this is one of the biggest lies we have been told this century.

Our hearts are heavy with the knowledge that change can take generations and many lives. But we keep dreaming. We keep marching.

The spirit of dissidence is contagious; from Bahrain to Gaza to New York to Auckland, we are rising and dancing and shouting and demanding change NOW.

Megaphones booming, banners unfolding and fists pumping – we will fight.

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

Chloe King

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September 16, 2014

34

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

1

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

23

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

1

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

16

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

19

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.

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