How did I miss this?

I am considering making this blog a party-political free zone next year, election politics are so very tedious. The only thing that is stopping me is that occasionally, making fun of politicians, is worth the energy it takes to read about this one. Maurice Williamson weighs into the debate on the 'obesity epidemic':

If some people can't lose weight no matter what. how come there were not fat people in the Nazi concentration camps?

Concentration camps? Of course that's the solution to the 'obesity epidemic' why didn't anyone think of it sooner. That's the way to make my body socially acceptable.

Although rest assured Maurice Williamson doesn't actually want to put us in concentration camps:

When Sainsbury asked Mr Williamson on air if it was wise to use such an analogy, the MP replied: "Maybe it wasn't".

But he said it was a good example of people getting a very low level of nutrients and working hard.

"No one's saying put them in a concentration camp but it is important to know that if you are working hard burning calories and not taking them into your mouth you won't put on weight."

He does understand that people died from having a low level of nutrients and working hard doesn't he?

Guess what?

You know sometimes you find random bits of information that really excite you, but no-one else cares about? Like the fact that Arthur Ransome was married to Trotsky's secretary - and then you have to find someone who cares about left-wing politics and read Swallows and Amazons as a child so they can be excited about this fact with you.*

One of the advantages of having a blog is that you can pretend that people who share your interests exist just by posting.

So it is with great joy that I share with my many, fascinated, readers my new knowledge about Dobby. The first House Elf to demand wages is named after Dobby Walker a communist, unionist and radical lawyer. JK Rowling chose the name because Dobby Walker was the person who invited Jessica Mitford and her husband Bob Treuhaft to join the communist party. I'm not sure that Dobby would have been particularly pleased by the comparison - Dobby the person ran a tight union ship - and Dobby the house-elf bargains down wages 10 galleons a week to one galleon a week.

Isn't that exciting?

* Although finding a radical subtext in his books would be pretty impossible from memory.

Things I should be writing about.

There's a Strike in Fiji. Make sure you read the comments, because there's some interesting stuff going on.

There's also a lock-out at Gateway Hotel. As regular readers know I believe that employers are thieving, parasite, dogs, but this is a particularly nasty lot of thieving parasite dogs, who seem to believe that labour laws are for other people. If you live in Auckland go and support them on the picket line. I'll post updates if there's anything else people can do.

There's also a great Kathryn Ryan interview of Melanie Trevethick. Melanie Trevethick has MS, and is taking a human rights claim, because of the difference between what she has access to, and what she would have access to if her impairment was caused by an accident. The discrepancy between the level of state support between someone whose injury or impairment was caused by accident, and someone whose injury or impairment is not attributable to an accident is completely unjustifiable.

This is an important social justice issue, and a feminist issue. From memory, 75% of money from ACC is paid out to men. There are many reasons for this (men's higher earnings and ACC does not recognise unpaid labour), but one of them is that men are more likely to suffer impairment related to accidents, and women are more likely to suffer illnesses, or process injuries that may be work-related, but are more deniable from ACC's perspective.

A few more things on wikipedia

I've discovered that the talk pages of wikipedia are far more interesting than the articles themselves.

For instance from the Eric Hobsbawm talk page:

I removed stuff about him being a communist. You need to prove to the reader he is. This is a very sensitive legal issue. Please don't just revert go get the sources you need to "prove" he is. thanks!

Documenting that Eric Hobsbawm is a communist - that would requrie some dedicated research.

Making fun of wikipedia is one thing, but this does represent a larger problem. At wikipedia being a member of the communist party is treated as libel in a way the, to me, far more serious charges of being a member of the Labour party, Democratic party, or Republican party is not. I've read the talk pages of a few communists (people who were at one point members of a communist party and remained dedicated socialists throughout their life) right-wingers tend to want to put 'communist' every second sentence in an effort to discredit them (the discussion on Pete Seeger is particularly torturous in that respect), and supposedly well-meaning liberals remove the word 'communist'. Either side is treating 'communism' like it's a taint, and most of the biographies follow this line, by emphasising when and why people left the communist party, and why they didn't leave it sooner. That's not lacking a point of view, it's just sharing a generally accepted point of view.

Or lets look at Louise Nicholas's Wikipedia page. The edit which made the page read "Louise Nicholas is a New Zealand liar who alleged that..." was only up two hours and twenty six minutes (which is, of course, two and a half hours too long). Then the article was edited so it said "Louise Nicholas is a New Zealand woman who falsely alleged that she was raped..." That was up for almost a day. But it still says "Louise Nicholas is a New Zealand woman who made allegations..." I understand it's unlikely to say "Louise Nicholas was raped by Clint Rickards, Bob Schollum an Brad Shipton", although I think that's a serious fault of wikipedia. But can't she at least say she was raped, rather than 'alleging' it?

That's just the start of it. The article on rape has rape apologetics so ridiculous and stupid that I hadn't even heard them before. Comparing the biographies of radical women and radical men, you get the entirely expected result that people are more likely to have written about radical men, and their actions are given far more weight.

I understand that wikipedia can be useful, but it is not the way of the revolution. Free spaces will always reproduce the power structures of existing society, without concerted effort. There is no counter-balance within wikipedia, no effort to give extra weight to the powerless. Therefore, no matter how much useful information it contains, it will always support the status quo, more than it challenges it.

People not gifts

From John Dewar's trial:

Today the court heard evidence from police Inspector Alastair Williams who said Dewar had told him about receiving an "unusual gift" from either Shipton or Rickards in the form of group sex.

I think it's the casual way women's humanity is dismissed that disturbs me so much in this quote. There are so many men who talk and think of women like this. Brad Shipton and his mates can't exist without all the other men who normalise the idea that sex is something that happens to women, not with women.

Shut Up Sue Kedgley*

Sue Kedgley is again trying to introduce compulsory country of origin labelling on food.

I have no particular objection to country of origin labelling on food, although I really don't care one way or another.

But this is the party that repeatedly argued that 'alternative' medicine shouldn't be subject to regulation or labelling, because it's natural.

I am so looking forward to not-voting for these people.**

*I think this is the third post title I've used twice, the others were 'Days Like These' (because I'm a Billy Bragg fan and a hack) and Locked Out (because I was a little over stretched at the time). The reason I've used this post title twice should be immediately obvious.

** I know I only have myself to blame that I voted for them in the first place. Although I have very low standards for voting for people - and really only stop when I get active satisfaction from not voting for them (like I will next year).

Review: The Chain, Buffy Season 8 SPOILERS

Wow.

This was what I was waiting for. This is a story of scope and shape that you couldn't tell on TV, and it's a story worth telling.

The Chain is the story of the slayer who is working as a Buffy decoy underground. We see her becoming, learning and doing and dying.

She tells her story in fragments, as she's dying. We get moments out of place, people we don't know asking her questions, and there are huge gaps in the story. She's trying to convey her experience and she doesn't have time to tell her life.

She's trying to convey one idea with her story - the importance of working collectively. She learns with the slayers, she learns what it means to work together, that it's actually amazing. Then she goes underground, and they build something together: her, the fairies, the slugs, the ravenclan and the thing that looks like a leaf-blower. We don't know the details, but we know that she forms relationships that matters. We see some of the joy that comes from working together.

Regular readers of my blog will understand that this would have been enough to make me absurdly happy and forgive the art.* But Joss gets to explore an idea that he could never explore with Buffy the character.

Because in reality it's not about individuals, even great leaders. It's not about Buffy, (or Che Guevara, Sylvia Pankhurst, Jock Barnes, Rosa Parks...) - "there's millions of people go into making a name. People facing things they couldn't imagine they would." It's the workers who go on strike, not the leaders whose work matters. In every movement the people who you've never heard of are as important as those whose faces get on T-shirts.

Then at the end, is the bit that made me cry:

The real questions run deeper. Can I fight? Did I help? Did I do for my sisters? My Comrades, Children, slimy slug-clan... There is a chain between each and every one of us. And like the man said, you either feel its tug or you ignore it. I tried to feel it. I tried to face the darkness like a woman and I don't need any more than that. You don't have to remember me

When I've been killed by an underground demon who is holding by body above his head (which I hope won't happen for many years yet) that's how I will judge my life.

* I loved the comic so much that my usual complaint about drawing is relegated to a footnote. Could we have one comic where a female character doesn't get naked for no reason? I also thought the slayers looked too generic, the one punk girl the exception which emphasises the similarities.

Then there was the line that this slayer needed her breasts padded to imitate Buffy. It was unnecessary, but also completely ridiculous. We can see the slayer's breasts right there in the panel, we know what comic book and SMG Buffy look like; she didn't need padding.

Beneficiary Bashing

You know what I've always found makes parents more likely to abuse their children? Giving them money. If only we made sure no parents had any money then I'm sure all our children would be safe.

Attacking the benefit system is a nonsensical response to child abuse - raising benefits would make much more sense. But regular as clock-work a child gets treated horrifically and people come up with stupid, unworkable, punitive suggestions for changing the benefit system. From Rotorua:

Rotorua's community leaders say it should be compulsory for all women on solo mother's benefits to have contact with welfare or community agencies.

Because being without a man, a job, or a fortune, is a sure fire sign that you're abusing your kids.

*****************

National is proposing Work for the Dole. They will start in South Auckland, and possibly Gisborne and Northland (which for the record has its lowest annual unemployment rate ever at the moment). I'm not sure they could have made their subtext any more texty without hiring a plane and sky-writing "WE ARE TARGETING BROWN PEOPLE".

Point of View

Byron at proletblog has always been a fan of wikipedia, an enthusiasm I don't really share. I've written a bit about this before. But since he's started writing about wikipedia and history:

As of yesterday I'm back at university, had my first lecture of the new semester yesterday which includes all the basics, what text book to buy, what times the tutorials are, and of course, a stern warning on the evils of Wikipedia, according my history lecturer Wikipedia is not to be trusted, in fact she was adament that if any of us cite Wikipedia we would fail the course.

I have no objection to that policy - although partly for the mundane reason that once you get to university you shouldn't be citing any encyclopedia.

There's the common argument against Wikipedia, which is it's unreliability. In the article on the miner's strike:

Folk singer Billy Bragg wrote several songs dealing with the strike as a current event, namely "Which Side Are You On?"

That's not an error that anyone who had a background in unions, let alone labour history, could make. The error was pointed out on the talk page in 2006, and still hasn't been fixed. Obviously errors aren't limited to Wikipedia - everytime I read a general history of New Zealand I go looking for errors in my area of research - but that sort of error shows that the author(s) do not have any depth of knowledge, or context in the subject they're writing about.

But my objection to Wikipedia as a font of historical knowledge is much more fundamental than that. As the article Byron linked to said:

. Despite Wikipedia’s unconventionality in the production and distribution of knowledge, its epistemological approach—exemplified by the npov policy—is highly conventional, even old-fashioned.

I would go further, and say it was conservative, and privileged the knowledge and experiences of the powerful over the knowledge and experiences of those without power.

Here's an example from the Talk page about the miner's strike. Someone asks:

people who were not there who work for a news paper take credence over people who were there, but didnt work in the media? I can provide quotes to living people,NUM activists,strikers,miners for quotes, but this would not be allowed?

Someone else responded

No, this is precisely the sort of thing which will not do - please read the verifiability policy and the reliable sources guidelines. Reporting something which someone said to you is not good enough - that's original research, which is forbidden.

Radical historians have fought hard to expand historical record beyond what people have written down. You cannot do radical history when you privilege what's written in newspapers about a strike over the experiences of people who participate.

If we're looking at open source history we need to dream bigger than a better version of Microsoft's Encarta. Wikipedia's policies against original research, its priviledging of published sources, and its belief in objectivity, means that it will always be limited, and reflect the history of the powerful. We need to move beyond that, we need to do original research, write about people's experience, and most importantly, we need to have a point of view.

Does he have an All Black friend?

I'm trying to write a review of Half Nelson (sample in my mind "it's a movie of empathy", "It's a movie about dialectics", "it's a movie about alienation" - I'm going to have to get beyond 'it's awesome' if I'm going to write an actual review). But I was searching for information about the John Dewar trial,* and read about a Christchurch rape trial

The woman who was raped was working as a prostitute and had used drugs. So the defence is arguing that she was ‘confused’ and didn’t know how many men she’d had sex with that night. It’s a little more sophisticated version of ‘prostitutes can’t be raped’. Instead the defence is arguing ‘Prostitutes can be raped, but they have so much sex that they can’t remember who raped them’.

The man who raped her**, was only found when he was training for the police, and his fingerprints matched fingerprints found at the scene of the crime.

I'm too angry to do anything with that information. So I may have something more coherent tomorrow, but in the meantime go read my first post on Take Back the News.

* Can someone explain why the media keeps saying 'John Dewar allegedly gave inadmissible evidence that lead to a mistrial' - the mistrial and the evidence are both fact. Does the allegedly disease hit journalists everytime a court case has anything to do with rape?

** This blog is an 'allegedly' free zone

Mute! Mute!

I don't watch much TV usually. When Joss Whedon returns, then I'll have shows . What this means is that I've forgotten how awful TV advertising is. I am often genuinely shocked and appalled by the shit they put on TV adverts.

There was an ad which told us that it was our patriotic duty to lose weight. "What happened NZ?" the viewer is asked - while we are shown pictures of fat people "How did we go from a nation of sports lovers to a nation of couch potatoes. Then there's some flag waving (real flag-waving, not metaphorical flag-waving, and an order to go on Weight Watchers. Although it didn't seem to be Weight Watchers usual style - their focus is usually more targeted to people who might join Weight Watchers (middle-class women).

Until the 'weight watchers' part came up I thought it was government funded. It appears that the government is going in that direction, which I find immensely frustration, because I actually like the "Push Play" campaign. It helps that there is some scientific evidence showing that regular exercise has some health benefits (unlike weight loss, only eating a chocolate bar once a term, and whatever else they've made up recently).

But the non-awfulness of the Push Play campaign is more fundamental than that it's not at all moralistic. It's focused on making exercise doable and fun. I have a very long blog post up my sleeves about the extreme fucked-upedness of linking morality, health and 'lifestyle'.* But for now I'll just point out that telling people they suck isn't a particularly good motivating factor

The Push Play Campaign isn't how I'd go about changing people's exercise levels (if I thought they needed to be changed and I don't have any data on that). Unlike Sue Kedgeley** I don't think people do the things they do because they're stupid or lack information, but because of lack of options. I'd be about lessening people's work hours, making public transport free, providing free recreational facilities, and making sure that everyone feels safe, and is safe, outside day or night. But I'm fairly certain the Push Play campaign isn't doing any damage, and may even help exercise seem more doable.

Unfortunately we seem to be pointed more and more towards state sanctioned damage doing.

* Although now I've mentioned it, you know I'm never going to actually write it.

** There's no way I could get through a post without a dig at her.

Who do you want to win?

My favourite blog at the moment is Lenin's Tomb. Lenin has a great breadth of coverage - I'm always marking his posts saying to myself "I should write about strikes in South Africa" and then I never do.

So I was delighted to see that Lenin's Tomb had responded to Katha Pollitt who was in turn responding to Alexander Cockburn.*

Alexander Cockburn started by quoting Lawrence McGuire:

"I was reading a recent piece by Phyllis Bennis recently. She talked about the 'US military casualties' and the 'Iraqi civilian victims' and it struck me that the grand taboo of the antiwar movement is to show the slightest empathy for the resistance fighters in Iraq. They are never mentioned as people for whom we should show concern, much less admiration.

"But of course, if you are going to sympathize with the US soldiers, who are fighting a war of aggression, than surely you should also sympathize with the soldiers who are fighting for their homeland. Perhaps not until the antiwar movement starts to some degree recognizing that they should include 'the Iraqi resistance fighters' in their pantheon of victims (in addition to US soldiers and Iraqi civilians) will there be the necessary critical mass to have a real movement."

I probably disagree with this argument - but mostly because I think the American anti-war movement has far bigger problems (they rhyme with Pemocratic Darty). But Katha Pollitt almost made me change my mind:

So, okay, call me ignorant: The Iraqi resistance isn't dominated by theocrats, ethnic nationalists, die-hard Baathists, jihadis, kidnappers, beheaders and thugs?

What made me so angry was the way Katha Pollitt dismissed the Iraqi armed resistance out of hand, as if the idea of supporting people fighting in self-defence was too ridiculous to take seriously.**

I wanted to respond, but got distracted in the face of research that would prove that Iraqis who want self-determination aren't just: "theocrats, ethnic nationalists, die-hard Baathists, jihadis, kidnappers, beheaders and thugs?" Luckily Lenin has done it all for me. He's responded to Katha Pollitt, and then put together information about what the armed resistance is actually like.

My position is a little different from Lenin's.*** In order to actively support any sort of resistance group I want to know how they treat their own people, and what sort of world they want to build. But it's an academic question, because I have nothing the Iraqi resistance needs. As Lenin (the blogger) said:

A little humility would compel her to recognise that the Iraqi resistance is doing far more to frustrate American imperialism than then American left is. The resistance is supporting us. It is their courageous insistence on combatting an enemy with immense death-dealing power, confronting them in the streets despite years of savage murder, despite the prospect of incineration and shredding, that is causing Bush's unpopularity.

The fact that I'm not prepared to support any particular Iraqi resistance group shouldn't obscure the most basic point - I want the Iraqi resistance to win. I want the US to get the hell out of Iraq, and not to be capable of leaving a puppet government behind us. Any other outcome will give the people who rule America more power and the people who are fighting them less.

* I'll be the first to acknowledge that not all Alexander Cockburn's arguments are worth thinking about seriously - particularly not his climate change arguments, which I haven't paid enough attention to accurately summarise, but have paid enough attention to to know they're stupid.

** I take these discussions so seriously I once started a pool at what the ratio of male/female speakers would be at a meeting on our attitudes towards the Iraqi armed resistance.

*** That's Lenin the blogger, although I'm guessing my position is also different from Lenin the Revolutionary leader.

Stand Down Margaret

I sleep walk.

I don't actually sleep walk - I sleep run. I have these dreams where a bomb is about to go off in my flat and I have to get out now. So I get out of bed and run out of the house. These dreams come in different intensities, but at their worst I know I'm about to die, and I'm terrified of that death.*

When I was small I lived in Thatcher's Britain, the Britain of Protect & Survive. I was terrified of bombs. When we moved to New Zealand I was five, and I listed one of my favourite things about this country that their were no bombs.

I don't think my terror dreams come from those years in Britain. I think they're a stress or anxiety response. But I think it's because of Margaret Thatcher and her pals that I dream of bombs. If I lived in different times I might be running from Wolves, or communists. I'd probably be just as scared, but that's small consolation when I can still taste the adrenalin from believing that I was about to burn to death.

As far as Thatcher's casualties go - my experience is nothing. The miners lives weren't ruined in their dreams, they were ruined in reality. While she never dropped a nuclear bomb, she did drop other bombs. Her economic policies led to redundancies and unemployment - those aren't just abstract ideas - they kill people. Poverty kills, hoplessness kills - the year after the miner's strike saw many more than the usual number of suicides. It's not just economic policies either Section 28, passed by the Tories, made it illegal to promote the teaching in state schools "the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship."

So when someone responds to me posting the lyrics to Merry Christmas Margaret Thatcher with: "Nothing Margaret Thatcher did is worth hoping for her death" - that really depends on what, and who, you value. People have died because of Margaret Thatcher.

I don't think individuals are the driving force for politics, if Thatcher hadn't been there, it would have been someone else. I don't particularly hope for her death any more, she's old and out of power, and probably a little bit out of it anyway. But when she does die you better believe that I'm going to celebrate. I'm going to dig out my parents old anti-Margaret Thatcher t-shirt and put it on, I will play anti-Margaret Thatcher songs all day, and I will write a post on this blog, maybe about Women Against Pit Closures.

My favourite phrase in Solidarity Forever is 'we will break their haughty power'. The power to ruin people's lives by remote control and sit back with a cup of tea is a haughty power indeed. To suggest that people shouldn't be angry about what is done to them, and other people, shouldn't be angry at that haughty power, is telling them their lives don't matter.

I think this is when my friends start shunning me...

I have now discovered if you search for: harry potter deathly hallows review buffy then this blog comes up first. I think that's the geekiest search to find my blog, but I could be blocking some out.

We will have pride in how we live

I have a new favourite Christmas song. I'm not sure what my old favourite Christmas song was, but there's no way it can be as awesome as Merry Christmas Maggie Thatcher from Billy Elliot: The Musical. This is the chorus:

So merry Christmas Maggie Thatcher
May God's love be with you
We all sing together in one breath
Merry Christmas Maggie Thatcher
We all celebrate today
'Cause it's one day closer to your death

I wasn't particularly fond of the movie Billy Elliot. I felt it wasn't particularly well written, and the mining strike was too far in the background. I wouldn't have expressed any interest in the musical, but my sister has just come back from the UK, and she brought the Cast Recording with her.

I'd consider a song about celebrating Maggie Thatcher's death enough to make a musical anyway, but there's more. There are songs of solidarity and struggle, which give workers' struggle weight and importance.

I'll probably never see the musical, for all I'm loving soundtrack and I'm still a little unsure about the idea. I believe passionately that we need to tell the stories of our struggles. Knowing about fighting and winning, even fighting and losing, is the hope in our history. I don't know much about the miner's strike, and I'm a trade unionist and historian, who was born in Britain. Billy Elliot: The Musical will keep the history of the miners strike alive.

But this a West End musical, with seat prices to match. At what point do people telling their own stories become the commodification of resistance? Does it matter that the creators don't see themselves writing about someone else's life, but feel resonances in their own life for the story that they tell?

Do ex-miners and their families get in free?

* . I think the miners, the union movement, and the working class, would have been far stronger if their vision of the future hadn't been so very limited.

Strength

"Louise - Nicholas - is - My - Hero. Who is Louise Nicholas?" The kid who had been reading my patch was seven, and I didn't know how to answer him. I didn't know how many of the concepts I'd have to explain. So I just said that some police officers had hurt her, and she'd fought against them.

I have so much to say in response to today's evidence in the John Dewar trial:

Mrs Nicholas told Dewar [Clint Rickards, Bob Schollum and Brad Shipton] had "treated me like an animal".

"You're not the only one," Dewar replied.

But first I need to say how awed I am by Louise Nicholas's strength.

John Dewar's Trial

Tomorrow John Dewar will stand trial for four charges of attempting to
obstruct, pervert or defeat the course of justice between. These all occurred between 1993 and 1994 and were related to his response to Louise Nicholas. He was supposed to investigate her complaint against Clint Rickards, Bob Schollum and Brad Shipton, and he didn't.

I'm sure I will write more about this trial in the days to come. Tonight I'm just going to encourage you to come along to protests that have been organised around the country and take against police protecting their own:

Wellington Protest at 12pm on Tuesday 24th July outside the High
Court, Molesworth St.

Auckland Protest at 5pm on Tuesday 24th July outside Britomart

Christchurch Information and street theatre at 12.30pm on Tuesday 24th
July in Cathedral Square outside the police centre.

They have taken untold millions...

It was already a good day. I'd gone to a support picket outside Spotless in Wellington, banged my bucket and made a racket. I'd gone on to collect for the lockout. The Brass Razoo Solidarity band were playing while we collected. There's nothing quite like collecting and leafletting while the sun shines and the Brass Razoo play solidarity forever. So I was already happy when I got a text message: "Great news about the lockout." I might have cursed this singularly uninformative text message, but luckily the radio immediately told me the details.

The court ruled that the lock-out was illegal, because the demand the company was making of the workers was illegal and interfered with the workers right to strike. The company said that it would lock-out all union workers in 13 DHBs, unless a certain number of workers in 10 of those DHBs agreed to work during the rolling strikes the company had planned. This was an extraordinary demand - in essence locking people out for not breaking their own strike. The company claimed people needed to stay for health safety reasons (but there were, apparently, no health & safety risks for operating on scabs during the lock-out). The union had met with the DHBs four months ago, and agreed that there was no need for members to stay back, as they were not performing life preserving functions (I would hope not on eleven dollars something an hour).

The Employment Court made the right decision, but there is much that needs to do. Spotless is still the only company that won't pay the national pay-scale. Spotless could lock workers out in two weeks, as long as they put a different reason on the lock-out notices.*

Please continued to donate money, and ring 0900 LOCKOUT. Tomorrow is payday for a lot of Spotless workers, and anyone who was locked-out won't receive anything and will have to go another week without pay.

* As hospitals are an essential industry two weeks notice are required of a strike or a lock-out.

Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (SPOILERS)

I wasn't going to buy Harry Potter: The Deathly Hallows. I could have scraped together the money, but at the moment if I have a spare $35 sitting around it should go to the lock-out fund. But I remembered that I had a $20 Whitcoulls voucher, and wanted nothing more than to read the book in one sitting, and it was an enjoyable and engrossing five hours or so.

A lot of what bothered me in the last few books really worked in this one. There's much better pacing and much less artificial tension, and plots that only exist because the characters aren't talking to each other. From the seven Harrys on I was totally there for the ride. When I ended the book, I felt satisfied (the epilogue was another matter), and I was certainly cheering at times.

As I've said before, I love serial story-telling. The only thing I like better than enjoying serial story-telling is picking apart serial story-telling. I like the sense of collective ownership that fans feel over these stories.

So I'm going to spend rather a lot of words analysing the meaningover the meaning of these stories, what I liked about them, and what didn't work for me. If you don't enjoy this then go somewhere else. I'm using headings because I'm too tired for transitions.

Fight back
My favourite line was when Harry Potter can't find a good memory for a Patronus and Neville (or Luna or someone) says "We're still fighting, what's a happier memory than that?" I'm a sucker for messages about the joy and strength that comes from fighting together.

There's been a real tension in between the single hero who must go it alone, and the idea that people are stronger together than they are alone. I've not time for individualistic super-hero crap, so I've been glad that the tension has generally been resolved on the side of fighting together.

But I felt this book took the idea a little bit further than any of the previous books had, as Dumbledore's secrecy and authority were undermined. I think she could have gone further than this, and with Dumbledore's ambiguity (although I liked what we got).

We also got people challenging Harry for acting alone, not just Ron and Hermione, but most of Hogwarts by the end, and Harry agreed they were right, and couldn't have won without them.

Of course that doesn't make Harry Potter an ode to collective action, Harry does act alone, and wouldn't have succeeded out there. But I don't think it buys into the individualistic super-hero crap which drives me nuts in many fantasy books.

Occupation
J K Rowling is a genre children's writer - most of what she's writing makes more sense when you know the genres she's writing in (I don't love the fact that she chooses the genre over sense, politics and at times characters). In the later books she's been pulling in world war two genres, and I think it works really well. I thought the creeping fascism of the ministry was very well done, and creepy. The scene's in the ministry of magic were particularly powerful.

I've preferred the books where our heroes were the resistance (5 and 7) than the others where they were more clearly part of the establishment. In this context the basic obstacles of the beginning, staying hidden, finding food and fighting boredom, worked really well. I also loved Lee's radio show (and could have used more of it actually, it'd be nice if it had been the consistent way our members had found out about the outside world - although would it have killed her to have a single female character on the show?). While the dangers of fascism isn't the most challenging message (although she has deliberately drawn parallels with post-September 11 Britain and US policy), I much prefer Harry, Ron and Hermione fighting the government, than being part of it.

The only way the occupation parallel didn't work for me, was the amount of collaboration at Hogwarts, which creeped me right out. Hogwarts was incredibly violent and abusive, bad enough that it would have done real damage to the students. Teachers like McGonagall just tried to mitigate that damage rather than fighting back. I think that decision was a serious one and should have been given more weight.

Death
I think she should have killed off more people, Fred, Tonks, Lupin, Colin Creevy Crabbe (or was it Goyle) and Snape (although that was clearly inevitable)? And fifty people we've no idea who they are? The ratio of named deaths to unnamed deaths seemed far too high to me, particularly since the people we knew were shown as being in the centre of the battle. If she wasn't prepared to even kill off Hagrid, Luna or Neville, she should have killed some more Weasleys, teachers, or other characters who we'd known for seven books.

I also felt she fumbled a bit with Fred's death - the tragedy of Fred's death is George continuing on without them, much more than Molly Weasley's rage (although I'm not complaining about Molly Weasley taking action). I found Dobby's death easily the most moving and important in the book.

Relationships
I said that the relationships would annoy me, and the idea of them certainly did. Why is it in fantasy everyone has to have met and got together with their soul-mate and life-partner by the age of 17? They're cookie dough; they're not done baking.

Having said that, I actually quite enjoyed Ron and Hermione. Their difficulties and uncertainties about each other, their unwillingness to declared. The way they treated each other didn't set off any dysfunction alarm bells for me (this is quite a major achievement really) Even Ron's attempt at suave moves in the beginning didn't annoy me; they were about him being nice, rather than about him being a dick. Which meant that I could appreciate that the reason he was turning to books for his moves was because he was really insecure about his position (I thought his fears that came out when he were trying to destroy the Horcrux were quite well done). When they finally get together, it's because Ron was listening to Hermione. She finally snogs him when he thinks about the house elves in the final battles. This seemed as good a basis for a relationship as any to me.**

But Harry & Ginny - 'I'm going to leave you because I'm putting you in danger' is my least favourite relationship device ever.**** Mostly because it usually just rings so false, it's a false attempt to create tension, where there's no real reason for it. If Harry and Ginny had just kept their relationship secret and made out at every opportunity the book would have been just the same. He wouldn't actually have put her in danger by kissing her (and she was doing a pretty good job of putting herself in danger).

What I find so frustrating about this, is that limiting women's choices for them is portrayed as a romantic act. Ginny's a smart girl, she can understand danger, he could have told her what his worries were and they could have made decisions together. Loving someone shouldn't mean limiting their agency.

But what's really odd is that the 'I'm a danger to you, I cannot be with you' plot was also part of Lupin and Tonks story. I guess I just don't understand where this plot comes from. Do people in times of danger break up supposedly to protect their partner? It seems completely unlikely to me. There aren't many circumstances where the enemy can use a relationship against you in real life. When authors use this device is there a real emotion that they're trying to map onto? Or are they just using it for cheap tension?

What I did like that the book ultimately valued friendship. Luna Lovegood's picture of Harry, Hermione, Ron, Neville and Ginny was awesome (if we had to have an epilogue couldn't we have found what she was doing).* The entire book is structured around Ron, Hermione and Harry, and the fact that Ron and Hermione start making out doesn't change the dynamic of that friendship. In the end it's Ron and Hermione that Harry turns to, even though he's decided that he's not a danger to Ginny anymore (I'm still rolling my eyes).

Love
Ultimately the Harry Potter stories were about the power of love. But not the abstract hippy sort of 'all you need is love', but the very real love we have for people we care about. That loving one person can be transformative and the love of one person can be translated outwards to help you fight for everyone.

This idea was shown in all the characters on our side, over and over again, in the friendships they made and kept and the way they fought together. It was shown with Snape and Lily, even though that was infinitely predictable. But I thought it was the Malfoys that showed this idea most powerfully, when their love for each other, eventually led them to take a stand against Voldemort.

I'm not entirely convinced by this idea. I think in the real world our enemies are as capable as loving as we are. But I do think there is hope in love. I think most of us who fight for a better world get our strength to fight not from the abstract idea of people, but the concrete reality of the people we love.

There are worse messages for a generation of children to grow up with.

Epilogue
The epilogue was the most disappointing part of the book, partly because it was so trite and predictable. But also because it showed that they had just saved the world, not changed it.* While I was reading it I hoped that the book would go further than it did. During the book the wizards attitudes towards Muggles, Goblins and House-elfs were all shown to be limited. The Ministry of Magic consistently acted in their own interests, not in the interests of the people. Defeating Voldemort was not enough. I didn't need them to succeed in this, or even necessarily to try, but I'd liked it if she'd left open up the possibility of trying to create a bigger change than beating one evil guy. The epilogue shut that down.

*I think left-wing activist women would probably appreciate the fact that he was the one to change his views. I've seen many relationships with sexually transmitted politics over the years, and usually they go the other way.

** Well technically non-consensual sexual contact, which is somehow welcomed by the woman is my least favourite relationship plot device, but I'm almost always successful in trying to avoid stories which use that plot device (yes that was a pointed remark about Buffy, yes this review contains too many Buffy references)

*** I strongly identified with both Luna and Hermione. I was nerdy and completely out of it as a teenager. Obviously these characters are created for women to over-identify with, so that's not a surprise.

Collecting for Women's Refuge

This week is the annual women's refuge appeal week. Women's refuges are desperately under-funded, the Wellington refuge gets less than half its money from government (and the amount they get is less than what Clint Rickards got paid for doing nothing last year). So I spent a few hours on the streets of Wellington trying to get money out of people. I quite like collecting, but not as much as I like collecting money

Starbucks was offering free drinks to collectors - I feel the same way about this as I do about the clothing industry raising money for refuge:

But I still took my free tea.

I expected more women than men to give money, but I would have expected two-thirds, or three-quarters. I'm obviously a ridiculous optimist, because one in ten of the donors was a man, maybe even one in fifteen.

I started to wonder about the women giving money. Was it solidarity that made them give? Or someone they knew? An insurance policy? A down-payment? Or just imagination?

Why did so many men not have this imagination? Why weren't they putting money in the buckets for the women they knew? Their mothers, sisters, daughters, and friends who could need refuge?

I started muttering this at men who walked by without giving money - "You're the problem, not me, not her, you, and you won't even give me a dollar."

There were some good experiences. I noticed a young guy hanging out in a T-shirt that said "I'll show you mine, if you show me yours" and rolled my eyes. But twenty minutes later him and his friend came and both gave some money.

My friend told me a story from collecting last year. A man gave twenty dollars, he looked like he wanted to say something, but he didn't. Later he came back and asked her if she wanted a drink, because it was cold, and gave another ten dollars. Then he said "I just want you to know that not all sons turn out to be like their fathers."

That's where the hope is, I guess. The possibility of change.

New blogs

Binary Heart is by a friend of mine. He's got some really good stuff about the Hospital workers. Plus he used a Buffy quote as a headline for the post he wrote about Clint Heine, which makes him super-cool.

Take Back The News is a feminist response to the way the mainstream media reports violence against women. I will be writing for it as soon as wordpress stops sulking (hopefully tomorrow). Anna, who has been writing so far, has got some amazing stuff, particularly on the word 'allegedly'. Far more useless analysis than yelling at the radio, which is what I've been doing up till now.

PS You know when I said I'd post some actual content, instead of just ordering my readers around? I lied; go to a picket line, or donate money to the locked-out workers.

They have to listen when the union talks

The Lockout and strike among Spotless Hospital workers is going to continue. The company hasn't agreed to the same pay-scale as the DHBs and other contractors.



This is from a picket outside the Spotless Headquarters in Wellington on Friday. There's going to be another picket on tomorrow (Tuesday 17 July) at 3.15. The more people the better. If you life outside Wellington there may be a picket line at your local hospital, if so go join it.

I've added a banner supporting the Hospital workers. You should get one too at binary_heart.

I promise to write some proper content tomorrow, and stop just ordering my readers around. But you should support the hospital workers

Review: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Movie

When I was walking to the movie theatre we were talking about what they would include and one of my friend's said 'don't spoil me' (and then claimed he was too busy to read the books, but apparently has plenty of time for the movies). Just to be clear that this post has spoilers for the movie, and every book that has been published.

The movie theatre had big stickers on the back of every fourth seat saying "1 in 4 women and children are the victims of domestic violence." Apart from my dislike of running together 'women and children' I thought that was an awesome way of representing the effect of violence within families. This week is refuge appeal week so give money if you can (last year the government gave more money to Clint Rickards than Wellington Women's Refuge, so it'd be good if other people could pitch in).

That wasn't the only good thing to happen before Harry Potter started, because they showed a Northern Lights preview (well they're calling it a Golden Compass preview, but whatever). I'm terribly excited.

I think the Harry Potter books are getting worse, and the movies are getting better, as the series progresses. I think this might be related. In the later books J K Rowling has no page limit, and doesn't have to listen to an editor so they just sprawl. She's particularly prone too over-foreshadowing, and overlengthy explanations by Dumbledore at the end of each book. I think all the unnecessary bits in the books make it easier to make a movie (even as the books are getting longer), as the movie can tailor itself to the essential story (which I think J K Rowling has been two drafts away from in every book after the third).

I'm not suggesting that Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is the greatest movie playing, but it is very engaging. David Yates was previously a TV director, and I think in some ways this services . In TV you are servicing characters and a story first and foremost. Previously directors (particularly Chris Columbus who directed the first two) were far too interested in set pieces to do either of those. Alfonso Curon, is a brilliant director, but in Prisoner of Azkaban he was more interested in creating mood and atmosphere than characters and story.

The casting directors did very good jobs and were very lucky, because the actors' physicality continues to work for the parts. Ginny was a walk-on part in the first movie, and would have been 9 when she was cast and that the actress has grown up in roughly the way the character in the book did.

Imelda Staunton was brilliant as Dolores Umbridge, and everything about her costumes, and design of her room emphasised her character, and made the movie. To underscore the banality of evil isn't a particularly new point, but it was incredibly well done. The movie is worth seeing just for Dolores Umbridge's room alone (you'll know what I mean when you see it).

While I have an affection for J K Rowling, it's next too impossible to put a radical reading on the Harry Potter books.* But I feel this book, in particular, has a good heart. The students getting together to fight authority is a theme that works for me, and the movie really emphasised this angle. The simple scene of Fred and George sympathising with the first year who had had the (creepy and totally sadistic) crazy cutting lines thing underscored that nicely (and their departure was spectacular. And the ending is a reiteration of 'we're stronger together than we are alone', which always makes me happy.

And just to go on the record with my (rather boring) predictions for the final book: Snape isn't evil, Dumbledore was telling him to kill him, Snape was in love with Lily and the reason Dumbledore trusts him will be something to do with that love. More than one Weasley will die in the final book. The love stories will annoy me.

Feel free to add your own thoughts about Harry Potter in general and predictions (but no spoilers, although I don't suppose there are any).

*And don't even get me started on the gender politics - which are made worse in the movies by upping the ways Mrs Weasley conforms to a stereotype (which is quite an accomplisment in itself).

Oh No, Not Again

I wasn't going to comment any more on Clint Heine, but his comment threads get worse. SimonD said:

I want to offer a job for Maia in K'Rd. My massage parlor needs 2 women to dance nude on stage.

Does anyone know Maia's full name? I want to forward the job offer to WINZ, so they can get registered unemployed people like Maia to apply. I know WINZ doesn't like unemployed people who are registered with them to decline a job offer (any jobs really). So, there is a chance that Maia will take my offer.

For those who don't know the NZ benefit system, if you turn down a job you can go on a benefit stand-down for up to 13 weeks. So people on benefits can't turn down work.

SimonD wants to coerce me into sex-work by cutting off my other forms of income.*

Clint Heine's objection to this isn't based on my right to my own body:

If her blog is accurate I do believe she is already well known to the WINZ staff in her area. I somewhat doubt you'd want somebody like her in with your lovely girls. :)

I'm proud to say that he's right. If I was to work on K'Rd I'd educate, agitate and organise, and SimonD wouldn't know what hit him.

But the point here is that coercing a woman to work in the sex industry by cutting off her other forms of income is rape. These clearly men view women as objects to be used by them, and my desire is irrelevant. This is the second time a man on Clint Heine's blog has expressed a desire to punish me with sex, and Clint Heine has no problem with that at all.

* In reality WINZ do not require women to accept jobs in the sex industry.

Stolenwealth

This is from the Wellington demo today, remember to go to a demo tomorrow (details here)

Why The Hospital Lockout Matters

Any time 1,000 workers get locked out it's important that we win. The fight for a single pay scale for service workers in the hospitals is an important one. Raising the starting rate of these low-paid workers to $14.25 an hour would be a great victory. But this is also a fight against contracting-out, and it's a fight we have to win.

Theoretically businesses, and government organisations, contract out services. They contract a company to clean, or to perform a certain task. But in reality they're contracting out employment.

Cleaning is a really good example of this. It's a low capital industry, and large cleaning companies don't get huge economies of scale. Companies get their printing done by a contract because they don't print enough to justify having the equipment sitting around all day. It takes about the same amount of equipment to clean a hospital whether the equipment is owned by Spotless or the Hospital, and neither of them can use the equipment elsewhere. In fact, by contracting out companies, and government organisations have to pay extra, to cover the profit that any cleaning company is going to make.

So why do hospitals (or businesses or anyone else) contract out their cleaning? Because they can use the tendering process to drive down the cost. To win tenders, and bid lower than other cleaning companies, the winning company has to either pay their workers less, or get their workers to do more cleaning in less time.

Contracting out is so effective, because everyone can claim that they're not responsible. The cleaning companies aren't responsible, because they can't afford to pay any more than they're given. The hospital that contracts out its cleaning isn't responsible because it's up to the sub-contractor how much money to pay.

It's a vicious way of keeping wages and conditions down, and the only way workers can fight it is by organising. Hospital workers in the SFWU have fought really hard to get this far. An agreement with the DHBs, and all but one of the contractors is a huge step forward. But it will be meaningless unless they can get Spotless to agree to the same terms and conditions, otherwise Spotless will be able to undercut other companies up and down the country, and wages will go on a downwards spiral again.

(Go here for more photos.)

Contacting out can affect all workers. Although low-paid workers like cleaners are the most vulnerable, all sorts of jobs can be done on a contracting out basis. So it's really important that all workers support the hospital workers in this battle against contracting out, and for one wage scale for all workers.

Or, what she said:



Go to your local picket line tomorrow; I'll post details of any other demonstrations. Keep ring 0900 LOCKOUT (0900 56256), and join Idiot/Savant's Pledgebank.

Things To Do

Support Locked-Out Workers

There's a rally tomorrow in Auckland at Spotless Headquarters, 600 Great South Road, Penrose, at 10.30am. If you live in Invercargill, Wanganui, Hastings,
Palmerston North, Gisborne, Tauranga, Waitemata, Counties Manukau or Northland rock up to your local hospital to support the picket line. Call 0900 LOCKOUT (0900 56256) to give $10 to the locked-out workers.

International Day of Action: Stop Aboriginal Genocide on Stolen Aboriginal Land
Indymedia has the full run down. Here are the details for NZ cities:

Te Upoko o te Ika/Wellington
12:30-1:30pm Friday July 13th, Demo at Australian Embassy (Hobson St, Thorndon). Meet at the park over the road from 12:15pm.

12-2pm Saturday July 14th, Rally and march from Midland Park to Te Aro park, Central Wellington.

Tamaki Makaurau/Auckland
11am-12pm Saturday July 14th, Rally and march from Britomart Transport Centre to Australian Consulate

Ōtepoti/Dunedin
12pm- Saturday July 14th, The crew in Dunedin will be Setting up a Tent Embassy in the Octagon

Otautahi/Christchurch
12pm- Saturday July 14th, Come along and join in the solidarity action at Cathedral Square

Support locked out workers

Hospital Workers have now been locked out by Spotless up and down the country. Spotless operates in Invercargill, Timaru, Palmerston, Hawkes Bay, Wanganui, Rotorua, Gisborne, Tauranga, Waitemata, Counties Manukau and Northland. If you're in any of those cities go to the picketlines and support the locked out workers.

The SFWU have some things you can do to support Healthy Hospitals. You might also want to contact Peter Jennings, the operations manager of Spotless; his cellphone number is 027 571 5723.

All things considered I think I'd rather be expelled from the Labour Party

I'd like to thank everyone who has posted and commented about James and Clint Heine's comments.

Clint Heine appears to be claiming that he thought James was talking about masturbation (he also claims to know that James was only talking about masturbation too, although I've no idea how Clint could know that).

He seems to think that this would mean that there was no implications of non-consensual sexual activity in what James wrote.

He's wrong.

James does not care about me as a person, he has no knowledge of, or interest in, my desires. His prescription of a dildo - whatever he imagined was done with it, was based on him, and what he wanted, not on me. To talk about sexual acts in a way that renders women's desire invisible and irrelevant is to promote rape culture. To talk of 'fixing' a woman with a sexual act and ignore her desires is to threaten rape.

I'm aware that James, and Clint had no intention of taking any action, that discussion of sexual violence is just words to them. But the effect, and the intention, is to police women's behaviour, with threats about what will happen if we don't conform.

I promise to get back to things that aren't about me tomorrow. I've still got a report on Angela Davis's talk to write (although I'm afflicted by a kind of curse, whereby if I ever mention that I'm planning on writing a post on this blog then it's guaranteed that I never actually get around to writing it).

The Dangers of Blogging While Female

Clint Heine linked to my post about The Australian Labor Party. The post and comments are almost entirely made up of personal insults, which is unsurprising. But one commenter, James, said (about me):

Nothing a big black dildo won't fix......

Clint replied:

James.....!!! Nice suggestion, go over there and tell her that :)

Insults go with the territory, I have no problem with people calling me a thieving, parasite dog. But James wants to hold me down and stick an object in my vagina (or mouth, or anus), and Clint thinks this is a good idea.

Clint Heine is blogging under his real name. He is affiliated with the ACT party, and was formerly President of Prebble's Rebels. Yet he is comfortable not just hosting, but encouraging a threat of rape against me. Are rape threats really that acceptable?

To anyone reading this, no matter whether or not you agree with what I say, do you believe rape threats are an acceptable response to a woman speaking her mind? I know the New Zealand blogsphere isn't known for being a place of high intellectual debate, but I'm asking for there to be a line. I am asking people to take a stand against what James, and Clint Heine wrote, however much you disagree with me.


Comments on this blog are on moderation until further notice.

A Thousand Pickets and They All Agree...

I've written about hosptial workers before. Some of the lowest paid workers in hospitals, cleaners, orderlies, kitchen hands, have come together to fight for better wages across the system. At the moment much of the work is contracted out, which has lead to a rush to the bottom for wages. Spotless has withdrawn from national bargaining, and a pay-scale the other employers have agreed to.

Spotless workers are currently voting on strike action starting Thursday morning at 7am. Spotless operates in: Invercargill, Timaru, Palmerston, Hawkes Bay, Wanganui, Rotorua, Gisborne, Tauranga, Waitemata, Counties Manukau and Northland. If you live there, make sure you make it to a picket line. If you don't live in any of those towns, consider a day trip.

For more information check the union website. I'll also post updates.

We're here today in solidarity...*

The Maori party has taken a stand for accurate analysis:

"All Howard has done is generate more anger and bitterness in the Aboriginal community, a lot of which is going to be internalised," Mr Harawira said.

"I said John Howard is ... trying to impose racist policies on a people who can't fight back,"

The Stuff article on this has the word racist in scare quotes: "Aussie PM 'racist' Maori Party MP claims." A policy that reduces benefit entitlements only to indigenous Australians, steals land, and invades communities is racist, we don't need MPs to point that out.

But naming racism is not enough, in days like these. If you live in Australia you must go to your local solidarity demonstration on July 14 (Melbourne details here and other cities here.

In Wellington there are going to be two demostrations one on Friday 13th from 12.30pm to 1.30pm outside the Australian embassy. The second will be a march meeting at Midland park at 12pm, and ending at Te Aro park.

*A friend of mine, I'll call him Manuel, was once on the megaphone at an anti-roading demo and started "We're here today in solidarity with the people of Iraq.." he realised what he said and said "Oh shit, oh well it's all connected anyway." Which is true enough, but I've never let him forget it.

Edited: Apparently Truthiness doesn't mean what I think it means - I had a vague feeling I was quoting Buffy, apparently not.

Australian Labor Party: Taking a stand against accurate analysis

I was in Australia last week, and heard quite a lot about Joe McDonald. A union leader in the construction industry who had been suspended from the Australian Labor party, because of something he'd said on a workplace visit:

I'm not going because Jello here said so but I really have got some important union business to do. I'm quite happy to go under the walkway down there and have the meeting if you are, or we'll have it here. I'm easy. This fucking thieving, parasite dog's days is numbered. He'll be working at Hungry Jack's when I'm still a union official.

You can find a fuller transcript at Serve the people

Bosses are theiving parasite dogs, thieving and parasiting is how capitalism works.

There is a more serious point here. The workers wanted to meet with the union official - the boss didn't want them to. The bully here, the person who was abusing power, was the construction boss, not the union leader.

New Zealand's construction industry isn't as unionised as Australia's. Workers die because they can't fight collectively for a safe workplace.

Update Comments disabled on this post.

Also I've edited the title - apparently truthiness doesn't mean what I think it means.

Life Support

Bedridden with a chronic lung disease, Patricia Alsteen depends on machines to help her breathe.

But the mother of four said she's worried that her electricity will be shut off because she can't pay a sizable power bill that accrued, in part, because of her life-support equipment.

For more see The Flint Journal

I imagine most New Zealand readers had the same thoughts I did when reading that article. But I didn't link to it to show another shocking case. I linked to it because right now, near me, there are people living in uninsulated, damp, drafty houses, who aren't turning the heaters on because they can't afford to. Some of those people are already sick, others will get sick.

It's no good, this profit based system, where you only get the necessities of life if you can pay. We have to stop it. For Patricia Alsteen and Folole Muliaga, and all the people who die and we don't even know their names.

Link via the Gimp Parade

Since when was eugenics breaking news?

The New Zealand left is very small, so I've known of Jim Flynn for ages. He always seemed like an old-fashioned, decent, social-democrat. I guess I didn't realise how old-fashioned.

Apparently university educated women have 1.85 babies by their early 40s, while women with no tertiary education 2.57 babies. Jim Flynn commented on this (the article I'm quoting from isn't on-line, but you can get the jist here):

Everyone knows if we only allowed short people to reproduce there would be a tendency in terms of genes for height to diminish. Intelligence is no different from other human traits. It's a function of the brain and brain physiology. A persistent genetic trend which lowered the genetic quality for brain philiology would have some effect eventually

Is a basic knowledge of history too much to ask? People have been worrying about declines in intelligence, and that educated (or in times when they said what they meant white middle class) women are not having enough babies, ever since they started believing Darwin. Those fears have always proved to be unfounded.

Of course they're unfounded. The class system gives some people privilege and others poverty. Those differences of resources cause any differences between classes, whether it's number of babies women have, or the way you perform on standardised tests. To suggest otherwise, to say poor people are poor because they are stupid, should be deeply offensive to anyone to the left of John Kerry.

Jim Flynn's cure is as horrific as his diagnosis:

"I do have faith in science, and science may give us something that renders conception impossible unless you take an antidote," he said.

"You could of course have a chemical in the water supply and have to take an antidote. If you had contraception made easier by progress, then every child is a wanted child."

I think I'd be more offended at this idea, if it wasn't so totally preposterous. It obviously comes from someone who has never had to worry about contraception, knows nothing about what is available, and thinks hormonal contraceptives are side-effect free (and that there's an anti-dote available).

It's sad that an old man, who has done good things, is spouting this rubbish, and apparently every news outlet in New Zealand is passing it on.

Would Switzerland take the 2011 Rugby World Cup as well?

I'm out of town at the moment, so I don't have many opportunities to write here. But I just wanted to take a moment to celebrate the fact that Team NZ lost the America's cup. The government won't have an excuse to throw money at businesses to make Auckland even more of a rich people's play ground.

Sometimes they just write themselves...

From The Guardian

Tony Blair on Tuesday appeared to have landed a major diplomatic job as the international Middle East peace envoy.

I've been trying for a good ten minutes to decide on a response to that piece of information, and I just can't do it. Nothing I could say would add to that sentence, which is complete in all it's ridiculous.

A thought

I have a theory, maybe it's more of a belief, that any woman's life can be told as a feminist story. That all of our lives are profoundly shaped by growing up in a society that hates us. More than that - I believe there's a real power in the stories of how individual women's lives have been bent and broken by this world, and the different ways of responding to that. I think the specifics of one woman's life can resonate as deeply, or deeper, than generalisations.

PS Will return to scheduled Angela Davis report tomorrow

Come to New Zealand - we'll treat you like a rock-star

If you're organising an anti-war demonstration in Wellington, at some point you're going to have to talk about speakers. Generally someone will talk about how we want to have really good speakers this time. Then everyone will nod, there'll be a long pause, and then someone will say 'well how about Keith Locke?'*

When I was in London in 2004 I attended an anti-war meeting, and they had a comedian who was really funny and someone who had been to Iraq recently and had specific information and two other really good speakers - just for a meeting.

Sometimes I think about the people who organise the anti-war marches in Boston, who can have conversations about whether to have Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn this time.

The left in New Zealand is generally very short of people who have knowledge, confidence, and authority which is what you need to be a good speaker. Partly that's our own fault, I think. I think we could do a better job of building contacts with good speakers, and building up each other's confidence and support people in gaining knowledge.

But it's not common, and so when someone comes from overseas who doesn't just have knowledge, confidence and authority, but also a place in history, it's the event of the year.

When Noam Chomsky came to Wellington they had to move the event from St Andrews on the Terrace to the Town Hall. Tonight, when Angela Davis was speaking in Wellington they filled a lecture theatre that seated 300, had an overflow room that seated half as many people again, and still they turned 200 people away. That was with minimal publicity.

I plan to write two posts on Angela Davis's talk, first I want to write about my reaction to the talk itself (and the audience), and then I thought it was about time I posted the argument for the abolishment of prisons, and why I agree with it.

But before I did any of that, I wanted to suggest that more prominent left-wing activists should come to New Zealand. We can't offer you much, but we can promise to treat you like you're the most exciting person to come to town since Angela Davis...

* I have some affection for Keith Locke, despite the fact that I hate his party more every time I think about them (although he supported something really dodgy recently - can't remember what). But he's not going to inspire anyone to the barricades.

Did the government try and nationalise the foreshore and seabed while I wasn't looking?

Bryce from Liberation* has written an article on Maori Nationalism and Maori liberation. I disagree with most of it (which is hardly surprising), but he does have some good points. In particular, I agree that it's important to look at the historical context of Treaty of Waitangi, and remember that it was a document of colonisation. But this statement just confused me:

. Peace groups, far-left organisations, and parties like the Greens have come out against government moves to bring about public ownership of the foreshore and seabed and thus guarantee public access.

Huh? I guess that statement is technically true. But only in the sense that the Australian government is current taking steps to nationialise Australia and ensure access for everyone.

Although I think it would be hard to sustain an argument that he government was trying to bring about public ownership to the foreshore and seabed to guarantee public access (particularly not as he's got a good analysis of the Labour government. The government has done nothing to ensure public access to the areas of the foreshore and seabed that is currently used by ports, or aquaculture.

Quite a lot of colonial land confiscation is also nationalisation. But selective confiscation isn't necessarily a step on the way to nationalisation. Racist selective confiscation certainly isn't. The Foreshore and Seabed legislation only targeted Maori ownership. That's the fundamental fact Bryce didn't mention.

* Definitely the best blog name ever - I wish I'd thought of it. I was too focused on having a blog name high up the alphabet and getting a Buffy quote in there. So I missed the bleeding obvious.

Justice for Mulrunji Doomadgee

Three years ago Chris Hurley killed Mulrunji Doomadgee.

Chris Hurley is a police officer, who arrested Mulrunji Doomadgee for 'Drunk and Disorderly Behaviour' - the criminality of being drunk often depends on the colour of your skin. How you get treated when you get arrested also depends on the colour of your skin. There was Royal Commission on Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in 1991, but 13 years later the recommendations had been ignored and Mulrunji Doomadgee died.

In police custody, he suffered four broken ribs, a ruptured spleen and a his liver was almost split in half.

Since his death, Mulrunji Doomadgee's family has fought for justice. The first police investigation was done by police officers who had dinner with Chris Hurley while they were 'investigating' the case. Last year the coroner decided that the police were responsible for Mulrunji Doomadgee's death.

On Wednesday the jury found Chris Hurley not guilty.

Mulrunji's death is a horrific, but it's just one of daily crimes against indigenous Australians. His arrest, his beating - they happen every day. The theft of land is what Australia is based on.

Then, yesterday, supposedly to protect children for sexual abuse the government announced a package of direct attacks on indigenous people. Most of which, like market rents, benefits, and land thefts - are simply neo-liberal attacks on people's basic subsistence.

I'm with Span

From Spanblather:

I'm still not really back to blog, but I'm perplexed by the Dalai Lama Fever that seems to be gripping our politicians - to meet, not to meet, to meet with this hat on or that one.

Maybe I've been watching too much Penn & Teller*, but what's so fabbo about shaking the hand of a man who wants to return Tibet to a repressive theocratic state? I mean sure, some self-determination would be ace, and I'd like to see an end to the Chinese occupation, but I'm not convinced that having the country run by misogynistic priests is really the best alternative.

I am so sick of the sort of hippie liberal who says stuff like "The Dalai Lama is so wise and spirtual, and so we must support Tibet's independence from China.

1. I don't like or trust great spiritual leaders. People who are called 'great spiritual leaders' do not usually have much interest in promoting freedom, liberation and equality for the oppressed and exploited.

2. If you believe in self-determination, and I do, it doesn't really matter whether the figure head of that struggle is a 'great spirtual man', like the Dalai Lama, or half a dozen chickens.

Review: Red Diapers, Growing Up in the Communist Left

Josh's older sister's farvourite game was 'Party Meeting' she played it with her friend Simone. Vera and Simone were the party leaders, teddy bears and younger brothers were the rank and file:

"Tonight," said Simone, "we will hear a report on the Negro Question from our junior member, who" - she scowled at me - "needs considerable education on the subject." She tapped her slide rule of Vera's desk and nodded at me to begin.

"The Negro Question's getting a lot better,' I said. "Because before they wouldn't even let Jackie Robinson play in the majors. But now we've got five Negroes just in the Dodgers alone." I counted them off on my fingers.

"There's Jackie, and Campanella behind the plate, and Newcombe and Black on the mound, and this season Junior Guilliam at second base. And he might even win Rook of the Year."

Vera and Simone looked at each other, shaking their heads and making tsk tsk sounds through their closed lips.

"I think we have to bring him up on charges," Vera said.

"White Chauvinism if I ever heard it," nodded Simone.

"Don't you know that even if they let Negores play a stupid game and get traded for money like slaves, they're still lynching them in the south?" Vera asked me. "Haven't you read your own father's articles on the Emmett Till case?"

"And what about Male Chauvanism?" said Simone, waving her ruler at me. "Did you ever stop to think that all your previous ballplayers are men? What about the plight of the colored woman?"

"He's left deviationist and right opportunist both at the same time," said Vera.

"Clear cause for explusion." said Simone"

That is from one of the almost 50 accounts from the children of communistsin Red Diapers. Having so many short accounts, gives a real depth to the book. There's a tapestry of experiences, with common threads, but also real differences.

I'm fascinated by the history of the Communist party of America, particularly in the 1950s, when the organisation was so persecuted. Partly because it is so foreign to the way I do politics, their way of organising wasn't just not my cup of tea, it was clearly counter productive to growing. The party line was often ridiculous (particularly during the war, my grandfather left the British Communist Party over the Nazi-Soviet pact, and the pro-war line that followed wasn't any better). Despite all these reservations, the Americans of the 1940s and 1950s I most admire were all in the Communist part. It was the only game in town - no one else was prepared to fight.

I loved these child eyes view of the fight. Both for the politics - in some tenements in New York everyone was either linke (Left) and Communist or rechte (right) Socialist - and for the common threads of childhood. Many of the children write about how terrified they were once Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed, they knew their parents were communists, would they be put to death too? Communist children didn't just have common fears they developed their own sub-culture. rather than 'pinky swears' they'd say "By my Pioneer Honour, Touch Red" - and each child would touch something red.

There are some terrible parents, of course, and some awful hypocrisy. One girl's father spent his time doing party work, and when his wife (who earnt all the money) was back late he asks his 11 year old daughter where the food is kept, and demands she makes his coffee. Mostly I think the communism and the parenting skills weren't particularly related, the good parents would have always been good parents, the bad parents would always have been parents. Although I suspect for some children, the more their fathers (the most controlling, abusive behaviour in these accounts were always from the fathers) portrayed themselves as righteous, the harder it would have been for the child to understand their behaviour within the family.

There were some really sweet family moments as well. One of the writers came from a Finnish-American community, where the Party had run the annual Christmas Eve event. One year, the party leaders decided that the consumerism and Christianity of the ceremony was a problem, so instead there was a winter celebration without presents. When they got home their parents gave them presents, and told them not to tell anyone. Years later they learned that every single one of their friends' parents had done the same thing.

The most heart-breaking memoir was from Bettina Aptheker. I'd heard of her, she was involved in the Berkley Free Speech Movement. When the right accused her of being a communist, she wrote a letter back saying "Yes, I am a communist, and I'm proud to be a communist." She's one of the many figures of the 1960s that I admired, without knowing too much about.

When I am in my late twenties an older comrade whom I dearly love confides in me. She tells me that in the early 1950s she had been instructed by the party leadership to question women in the Party about their sexuality. In particular she was to ask them if they'd ever had a homosexual liaison. If the answer was yes she was instructed to ask them to voluntarily resign from the Party of face expulsion. "Even if it was only once," the comrade says to me. "Even if they had since married." She goes on, explaining "It was to protect the Party from potential informers. If they were desperate enough to hide their sexual encounters, the FBI could force them into becoming informers." There is a silence into which I say nothing. "I'm so ashamed of myself," She tells me. "It was wrong." Now as I remember this comrade's confession I think that I must have known of this as a child. I must have heard these discussion around me known the consequences of my feelings for women as I reached adolescence: to be made an FBI informer or be expelled from the party/my family, to be cast out.

I am going to read her memoir, I want to know more about her story.

Bettina Aptheker, is not the exception, most of the contributors are still fighting for a better world, in their different ways. Communists have largely been written out of American history, and their legacy ignored. Few people mention that the almost all the young northern white people involved in the Civil Rights Movements were red diaper babies. Carl Bernstein, who contributed to the book, is rarely placed within his radical, fighting legacy. Many of the writers gain real strength from their heritage. The sense that we are all part of a long chain of resistance has particular meaning when the link is so intimate. It gives them direct access to the strength and hope we can all draw from the history of those who fought back.

Review: The Long Way Home, Part IV

I don't expect from Joss's openings, they're not as strong as his endings. Every Season (except possibly Season 6 where Joss wrote neither the first episode or the last) the first episode has been much weaker than the last, and less satisfying than many of the episodes in between.

Now I've read all of it, I'm not that impressed with The Long Way Home. I'd say it was about on par with Lessons, possibly slightly better than the season openers not j. But much worse than Anne, When She Was Bad or Sunday, which were more concerned with letting us see where the characters were, than setting up a whole bunch of new plot. Because setting up plot is often boring, and should be done really slowly.

A lot of the on-going ideas I really like I'm really looking forward to more Giant Dawn, and the army hating them. But there's too much that is just a little bit off. Amy and Warren bear only the most superficial resemblence to the people they were on the show. Dawn's 'she's like a Mom to me' about Willow doesn't reflect the relationship we saw, and certainly not the events of Season 6.

I'm really unsatisfied with what had happened between Willow, Xander & Buffy. Even if we don't know now what happened to Willow (and there's no reason we shouldn't, except contrivance, because surely Willow would tell Buffy & Xander as soon as battling stopped), we should at least know what happened from Buffy's point of view (remember number one rule, we should go through what the characters go through).

I hope that the writers who wrote on the show soon get tired of the thrill of an unlimited budget. Just because you can now have battles of hundreds doesn't mean that two battles (and a practice fight of dozens) are that interesting. Likewise the five spirits added less than nothing to the comic as a whole.

I'll buy the next one, and I'll probably buy the Faith arc. But so far the story has been more about the cool things they can do than people, and that's not Joss at his best.

Bring Back Joss

My grandmother died on the weekend. I'm going to try and write something about her life at some point.

In the meantime all I've got energy to write about is TV. They aired the season finale of Heroes* in NZ yesterday. My main reaction was to miss Joss Whedon. I know that he could never have kept as many threads going as the creators of Heroes did, but the season finale would have been much better if he'd written it:

1. The ending of Hiro's story for this season wouldn't have been him leaving Ando to go kill Sylar alone. I have no time for individualistic superhero crap.

2. The female characters would have occasionally talked to each other, this may even have lead to them developing relationships with each other.

3. The two characters with the most central arcs in the season wouldn't be the rich, powerful, white guys.

Although we are spared yet another crazy, very skinny female character.

* A show I've only just started watching. It's enjoyable to watch, and has its moments - but the virgin/whore complex is a problem and I'm not loving the existance of a mystical black man without a name.

Aren't they generous?

From Scoop

Top established Wellington fashion designers Robyn Mathieson, Ashley Fogel, and Voon will join some of the city’s most promising up-and-coming new design talent to raise money for Wellington Women’s Refuge, on Thursday June 7.

Fashion HQ will showcase Wellington fashion talent at an All-Star fashion auction on June 7. Organised by a team of Massey University public relations students, the auction will feature garments donated by deNada, Paris House and Haley Smith NZ, as well as renowned Wellington designers Fin, Robyn Mathieson, Ashley Fogel and Voon. All proceeds will be donated to Wellington Women’s Refuge.

IThe designers who are so generously donating their garments to a good cause, live off the labour of garment workers. In New Zealand those women would be paid near the minimum wage of $11.25, and when the garments are made off-shore, the women workers are paid much less than that. The people who made the clothes that were donated to Refuge, wouldn't be able to afford to leave an abusive relationship.

I don't want to simplify the dynamics of violent relationships; I don't think pay equity alone would end abuse, but it would make it easier for women to leave. So until they pay the women who make their clothes enough money so that the women would have no financial problems if they needed to leave a violent relationship, those designers are full of shit.

PS - I have lots more I want to write about, but am quite distracted, so I may not be posting much till the end of the week.

Wow

ATTENTION: ANGELA DAVIS IS COMING TO AOTEAROA!!!

Supported by Amokura, Nga Pae O Te Maramatanga, Va'aomanū Pasifika: Samoan Studies and Pacific Studies, Te Kawa a Maui: Maori Studies, the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Victoria University.

Professor Angela Davis will present at TWO PUBLIC SPEAKING EVENTS.

AUCKLAND
25 JUNE 2007
MAIDMENT THEATRE
(8 Alfred St, Auckland University Campus)
7pm - 8:30pm


WELLINGTON
26 JUNE 2007
RUTHERFORD HOUSE,
LECTURE THEATRE 1
(23 Lambton Quay - Nth end)
7pm - 8:30pm

FREE ADMISSION

Born in Alabama in 1944, Angela Davis is an African- American philosopher who was associated with the Black Panther Party in the 1960s and 1970's, as well as the Communist Party of the United States of America. She first achieved nationwide notoriety when she was linked to the murder of the judge Harold Haley during an attempted Black Panther prison break; she fled underground, and was subject to
an intense manhunt. After 18 months as a fugitive, she was captured arrested, tried, and eventually acquitted in one of the most famous trials of recent U.S. history.

Angela Davis is currently Professor of History of Consciousness at the University of California and Presidential Chair at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Professor Davis' research interests include: feminism, African American studies, critical theory, popular music culture and social consciousness and the philosophy of punishment (women's prisons).

NAU MAI HAERE MAI

Support hospital workers

As I mentioned a few days ago DHBs and contractors are in negotiations with the Service and Food Workers Union for a Multi-Employer Collective Agreement for service work within hospitals. The parties were on talks on Thursday and Friday and the union was prepared to continued negotiations over the long-weekend, but the employers refused. Now the employers are threatening to lock-out four thousand workers from midnight Monday night (ie Tuesday morning). From the union:

Four contracting companies, Spotless, OCS, ISS and Compass dominate the provision of key services in our public hospitals. They have launched a vicious and abusive attack on some of the lowest paid workers in the public health system.

If the companies go ahead with their threats to lock workers out I will post hte ways you can support locked-out workers. But the first, and most important, step will be to make your way down to a picket line. Sub-contracting by the hospitals has driven down the pay of cleaners, orderlies and hospital workers, support them in fighting back.

Shut up you self-involved twit

I've been meaning to write about the utter stupidity of the 'natural' medicine people for a while, and haven't got round to it. There is still a longer post about that coming up, but in the meantime take a minute to comprehend the self-involved stupidity of the group health freedom:

I cannot believe that Helen Clark fails to see the connection between a corporation cutting off power to an oxygen machine with an Australian corporation cutting off supply of safe essential nutrients that many New Zealanders, including myself, depend on.

It is very rarely that I speak for Helen Clark, but I'm fairly sure she can't see the connection, neither can I or anyone else, because there is no connection.

To try and draw a comparison between a woman's power actually being cut off, and her dying a few hours later, and the unproven fears that some people may not have access to their preferred brand of snake oil is insulting and disrespectful.