Category: Everything Political

Power and Periods

Those who are at the top of unequal power structures always develop a mythology to rationalise the inequality. Kings were Kings because of Divine Right, etc etc.

In the modern world of business-oriented hypercapitalism, the mythology is that of productivity. You will be rewarded in accordance with your productivity – what you contribute determines your compensation.

This is a mythology. Who determines productivity? By what metric? What opportunities are given to display productivity? What else is going on in an employment relationship besides productive labour?

Alasdair Thompson has been mocked and chastised for saying a small portion of women’s lower pay is because of menstruation-related sick days. The mockery shouldn’t obscure the fact that this has revealed how the mythology is maintained. Women across all employment are paid less; therefore, they must be less productive; therefore, reasons for their lesser productivity must be found.

Thompson should be given the boot, but more urgently, his ideology – shared in toto with our current government – should be exposed to sunlight and revealed as the mirage it is. Because even after everyone agrees that, no, menstruation does not limit productivity – well, the ideology will remain in place. It was never founded on facts, and it will shift to new ground. It isn’t menstruation, then. Well, it must be because women are more emotional and not hard-nosed enough to pursue their economic self-interest. I just invented that now.

Rationalisations are easy. Shifting an ideology is bloody hard. This is an opportunity.

Blackout

I am angry.

Last night under urgency Parliament got a new law about internet and copyright almost all the way through. Three things about this make me angry:

(1) The law specifies that if you are accused of downloading illegally, you are presumed guilty (more info)

(2) The law gives government the power to punish a person by removing access to the internet entirely

(3) A controversial law such as this should not be put through under Parliamentary urgency.

More info about the bill is here.

This is a shameful episode in NZ politics. Bad law, and indefensible process. You cannot legislate morality, and you cannot legislate to fix technological failure.

Both major parties voted for this law. Only the Greens opposed (with two independent MPs). Remember that at election time.

Freedom Theatre founder killed

Horrible: one of the founders of Palestine’s Freedom Theatre has been killed in Jenin, in the West Bank.

Juliano Mer Khamis, an Israeli of Arab and Jewish parentage, was shot dead by masked gunmen in Jenin. (NOTE: before you make an assumption, this almost certainly was nothing to do with Israel, and indeed a member of Hamas has apparently been arrested).

The Freedom Theatre is a great initiative, building peace through creative expression (and, crucially, giving young people something to pour energy into that isn’t the intifada). When Cal and I visited Palestine in 2004 we visited the Al Rowwad Theatre Society in Aida camp, which was affiliated with the Freedom Theatre. It was a very humble environment, but everyone we met was committed to using performance and creativity as building blocks to a greater peace. As a result of that visit I’ve been on the main Freedom Theatre mailing list for years, and in January got their announcement of their new show, an adaptation of Alice in Wonderland.

Needless to say, this is a terrible event. From this distance I don’t expect to ever know or understand how it came to happen. It is clear however that the path to peace, difficult enough already, has just been made more challenging.

Mother Jones has a good article, covering Khamis’ acting and filmmaking as well.

Māori are confused

Duncan Garner on TV3’s morning news show Firstline just now: “Māori are confused. You’ve got Tariana Turia and Pita Sharples saying this is good legislation… and on the other hand you’ve got the last of the activist Māori saying we don’t want this.” (Starts at 4’41 into the clip, although he says “Māori are confused” at other times as well.)

Y’know, it’s good that Pākehā don’t get confused when John Key and Phil Goff say different things, or the country really would be in a pickle!

On reptiles and taking action

Stephen Judd has commented a few times here in reference to his decision to get involved in an NZ political party. His experiences have been interesting and extremely encouraging. This may not be as much the case internationally, but in NZ at least access to political decisionmaking is there for the taking.

Now he has blogged about it, and there’s a lengthy digression involving secret lizardpeople.


Go read.

Welfare Working Group Logic

The WWG report was released today and it was much as expected (full report here in PDF).

NZers will hear heaps about it in coming weeks, particularly the already-infamous “solo parents: when your baby is 14 weeks old you must start looking for work” recommendation. I want to look a bit closer at this, because I think it exposes the thinking behind this whole report quite clearly.

It’s section 3.7, starting on page 76. The last paragraph says this:
“The Working Group suggests that if the changes to the work test requirements do not address the incentives to have additional children while receiving welfare assistance, then the Government may need to consider financial disincentives, say by withholding part or all of the extra payments that come with having an additional child.”

The Executive Summary (PDF) describes this a bit more clearly:
“Government monitors the effect of this policy. If it is not effective, Government should consider whether further financial disincentives are necessary, including that parents not qualify for any additional financial assistance through the welfare system for any additional children born whilst in receipt of welfare, other than access to emergency assistance.”

Rephrased: if financial disincentives don’t change human reproductive behaviour, try harsher financial disincentives.

No consideration whatsoever for the view that having children has a range of causative factors, and despite popular mythology, continued access to welfare is not a strong one.

The ideology is taken as fundamental premise. There is no room for corrective measures. Failure is not a sign that the premise is wrong, rather that it hasn’t been applied fiercely enough.

The only comforting thing about this document is that it is mostly political theatre, and Key and company will distance themselves from extreme points like these. But remember who appointed this group, and know that this was always expected. John Key and company need to wear this report, for it is exactly what they asked for.

Who to blame?

[My laptop’s back in the ‘shop, trying to resolve the bluescreening problem. Hopefully they won’t spend too long messing about with it. Anyway, in the meantime I’m sharing my lovely stronglight’s laptop, but the timeshare + busy means blogging will continue to be light. Light is the new baseline, it seems.]

It’s election year. John Key and his National party are well-placed to swing back into power. There’s a chance a coalition of other parties could win a majority, but I don’t think it’s shaping up that way just yet. Key himself is confident – what else can explain his decision to campaign on asset sales, which the NZ electorate has a history of opposing?

Key and the Nats still seem to be doing no wrong, even though they are, y’know, doing stuff wrong. What’s happening? Why aren’t they catching some cost from the policy damage they’ve done? I’ve seen people blame the media, and I’ve seen people blame a weak political opposition. I blame both.

Goff and the opposition know the game. Politics doesn’t play fair, but it does play by rules. By any measure, the Labour party has failed to play smart or strong. It hasn’t given the media any reason to take them seriously. It hasn’t taken hold of the political narrative. It has shamefully indulged in “me too” politics when making a point of difference made both strategic and moral sense. They have failed. Blame them for Key’s strength.

The media also deserves condemnation, for settling for being exploited functions of the political game rather than pushing towards higher goals. Instead of setting the agenda, the media plays out its allotted role, reporting the latest scandal, forgoing analysis, indulging in personality politics and photo opportunities, letting itself be distracted. The media gives politicized claims a pass without checking the facts and gives voice to an overwhelming majority of rightward-tending opinions. They have also failed. Blame them, too, for Key’s strength.

None of which gets us anywhere. Blame carries some interest, in terms of understanding why things have got to the point they have; but for those who want a fairer society in New Zealand with greater social equality and a proportionate sense of what matters to our future, blame is just a distraction.

Action is needed.

NZ has a democratic system where every single vote counts. But when the country’s heading one way, just casting your vote isn’t enough. If this matters to you – don’t bother worrying about blame for how we got here. Start thinking what else you will do to get us out.

Crime Deterrence

July 2008: sports broadcaster resigns after it emerges he violently and viciously assaulted his then-partner.
April 2009: sports broadcaster pleads guilty to the charge
Jan 2010: sports broadcaster back on the air!
Jan 2011: sports broadcaster begins weekly on-air chats with the Prime Minister.

So there’s the lesson, people. If you are guilty of brutally assaulting a woman, it could be as long as TWENTY MONTHS before the Prime Minister jokingly tells you which celebrities he’d most like to have sex with. CRIME DOESN’T PAY.

World Avoidance

Having a baby in the house is endlessly involving, and it’s a convenient excuse not to think about (and blog about) all the nonsense out there.

Like the NZ government announcing it’s gonna sell off big chunks of state assets that make reliable income for the state, simultaneously throwing away future money for a mere handful now, and pushing national infrastructure towards an unprotected environment.

Like the UK discovering that Clegg’s choice (of the shark’s eyes monster) has proved more destructive to the nation than anyone could have dreamed, as he and the Lib Dems enable an eager dismantling of the public infrastructure.

Like the US descent into broken politics continuing at rapid pace as the response to horrific politically-rationalised violence has been even more incitement to violence by political voices.

Like the fact that increased environmental disruptions are costing the world huge sums, and global warming predicted this and predicts even more to come, but climate change response is off the agenda completely after the embarrassment that was Copenhagen.

So I’m not going to think about any of that stuff. I choose to live in a bubble a little bit longer. I’ll play The Game with myself, and hopefully I won’t lose too often. My tiny little girl giving smiles? That’s all the reality I want to think about right now.

Wikileaks Addendum: Sex Charges

Just want to add – while I have srs reservations about the sex assault/rape charges against Assange, and the way in which they have been handled (which reeks of politicisation) and reported – I’m not in favour of minimising the allegations. Let the justice system do its work. Even if the handling has been awful, I have faith in the courts sorting stuff out effectively.

Smearing the complainants = not good.