Author: Anita

A Wellington feminist wondering how to make politics something real people can do.
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Women are agents of their own political and military destinies

Yesterday morning I read Maia’s excellent post about the “women and children” rhetoric being used about Gaza in which she reminds us it’s not just the innocent who deserve protection. Later I walked past a pro-Israel rally outside Parliament in which someone held a banner saying “Hamas uses women and children for terror!”

The point about the phrase “women and children” is that they’re implicitly helpless. Women and children are people things happen to, bombs fall on them, soldiers shoot them, men rape them – they are powerless in the face of others.

In reality there are many women in the world who choose to engage in political or military struggle. There are women fighting for both Palestine and Israel, then there’s Rwanda, Eritrea and Iraq. There are women politically involved in determining their own destiny in every corner of the world. 

I take no pleasure, no pride, no secret feminist joy in reading those articles or watching those videos. But my horror is not because they are women, it is because they are human. When I see stories of women killed in bombings, women raped in ethnic cleansing and women forced to be soldiers my horror is because they are human – nobody of any gender or age should have those lives. 

Women, like men, can be victims of violence, and women, like men, can be be agents of their own destiny: they can fight for armies and they can struggle for peace. We are not the epitome of helpless, powerless vulnerability.

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Quoting: better or worse?

In response to some questions about quoting, and some pretty hard to read comments, I’ve just installed the clickquote plugin and would like some feedback about whether it’s made things better or worse.

Now if you click on a paragraph in a post or comment it will magically appear in your comment box all wrapped up in a blockquote. You will still need to type in who you’re quoting and add some of your own words too :)

So, is that better or worse? Anything else you’d like?

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Act says: solve everything by privatising everything

Roger Douglas was on Morning Report this morning, once again banging on about how we should privatise more stuff to save ourselves. I was interested to hear him complaining that National led government isn’t doing what he said they should, given that they clearly are. They have plans for

  • privatising more health provision
  • private prisons
  • increased funding to private schools
  • private competition in work accident insurance
  • privatisation of many local government services
  • private provision of social welfare services

Exactly what is Douglas concerned National is unwilling to privatise?

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“You don’t throw a cup at your brother!”

Last week I was standing in a cafe queue in front of some mums talking about their children, one said “I told him ‘I don’t care who started it, you don’t throw a cup at your brother!'”

With that rather heavy-handed allegory I start another post about Gaza: I don’t care who started it; it’s not ok to bomb civilians, fire missiles into towns, or invade and start killing innocents.

Every time someone criticises Israel’s actions they get slammed for being anti-Semitic, pro-Palestinian and/or for standing up for terrorists. When someone criticises Hamas’ actions they get attacked for being blindly pro-Israel, a lapdog of the US and/or for standing up for terrorists.

I don’t know whose fault the current situation is, I don’t know the ins and outs of all the wars, the politics, the negotiations, the ceasefires and truces and the breaches, the overt ties, the covert ties and the financial ties.

But I know that I don’t care who started it and that it’s not ok to use the lives of innocents as leverage in a political power game.

P.S. Maia has and interesting post about why innocence should not be required for us to care.

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I do not mourn the passing of the 5th Labour government

The fifth Labour government was a disappointment, an embarrassment, and a litany of opportunities lost. Many good things were done, even the occasional great thing – but right now I can only look back with disappointment.

For nine years with had a “left wing” government, a Labour government, which:

  • put a refugee in solitary confinement for 10 months, despite never telling him what he was accused of
  • employed a senior police officer for nearly four years despite him admitting to the sexual exploitation of vulnerable teenagers and publicly supporting convicted rapists
  • put in place financial support for the children of workers, but ignored the plight of our poorest and most vulnerable children
  • drove a 50% increase in the prison population
  • failed to bring stability to our abortion rules; leaving our bodies to the whim of the next government
  • did not give workers back the right to strike
  • drafted and passed amendments to the Immigration Act removing rights of appeal and allowing the use of secret evidence
  • drafted and passed the Terrorism Suppression Act, a piece of legislation which cuts deeply into our fundamental rights
  • condoned and supported the October 15 raids in which the Police invaded and harassed innocent communities
  • passed legislation preventing courts deciding who should own the seabed and foreshore
  • put NZ troops into Afghanistan and Iraq
  • released an wonderful disability strategy, and completely failed to implement it
  • failed to address climate change in any meaningful way

Don’t misunderstand me, that Labour government was hugely better than its predecessor (and has every sign of being better than its successor) but it could have been so much more; we deserved so much better.

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Tonight I will light a candle for a journalist

Last Friday Lasantha Wickrematunge – an outspoken Sri Lankan journalist, husband and father – was stabbed and shot to death, his state-sanctioned killing will never be prosecuted.

I could write a list of journalists who have been killed, tortured, arrested or deported by governments around the world, but the list would be too long. I could write a list of all the courageous journalists out there still speaking truth to power. I could try to explain why journalists matter, but instead I will light a candle by water and be thankful.

Instead I will leave it to him, to the piece titled And then they came for me published in his paper on Sunday

No other profession calls on its practitioners to lay down their lives for their art save the armed forces and, in Sri Lanka, journalism. In the course of the past few years, the independent media have increasingly come under attack. Electronic and print-media institutions have been burnt, bombed, sealed and coerced. Countless journalists have been harassed, threatened and killed. It has been my honour to belong to all those categories and now especially the last.

…

People often ask me why I take such risks and tell me it is a matter of time before I am bumped off. Of course I know that: it is inevitable. But if we do not speak out now, there will be no one left to speak for those who cannot, whether they be ethnic minorities, the disadvantaged or the persecuted. 

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Make a difference: Give blood!

You may have seen in the media the the blood supplies are going through their summer dip as regular donors are on holiday and collections drop.

So if you can give blood, or you’re not sure please ring the Blood Service and do it!

NZ Blood Service contact details

They take lots of people who think they may not be able to give blood (they take me, my chronic health condition and all my meds), blood is so precious and it’s a real chance to save a life.

P.S. If you are a regular donor at work but think that summer may have meant you’ve missed a donation get in touch and do it!

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The case against legalising marriage

During the Civil Unions debate I kept arguing, in private settings, that we shouldn’t legalise same-sex marriage; that it was the fourth best option and we should actually be aiming to delegalise all marriage. Anjum’s post at the Hand Mirror about why the 2 year separation period is nonsensical reminded me of why we shouldn’t let the Crown be in charge of our marriages.

Marriage is a family, societal or religious bond. It belongs to the people who get married, and their family, their friends, their communities, their congregations and their God(s). Why should any of us be required to ask the Queen for permission (or Anand Satyanand, or Lockwood Smith, or John Key, or Brendan Boyle depending on your view of the constitutionality)? Isn’t it a marriage when we get married, not when we send a form to the Queen (etc etc)? Isn’t it up to us, our friends and families, our communities and churches to decide what marriage means, not 80 people in 1955?

If I ever chose to get married, I would do so in a ceremony appropriate to my culture, community and faith. We would stand before our family, friends and community and ask them to bless and care for our marriage. We would make promises of marriage to each other, and the people around us would witness and support that. Isn’t that what it takes to make a marriage?

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Why Gaza not Sri Lanka?

The fighting in Sri Lanka’s civil war has intensified again. This is the war that has killed 70,000 and displaced hundreds of thousands. The war with the ceasefire that failed in 2007-2008. The war in a Commonwealth country. The war with its roots in the British legacy. The war with the internationally brokered ceasefires and peacekeepers and observers.  The war with the complex confusing history and only shades of grey.

The war that we don’t see on the news.

New Zealand has more than 7,000 people who identified as Sri Lankan in the 2006 census, while only 1,599 identified as “Israeli/Jewish/Hebrew” and 2,607 who identified as Arab (and not a subset – we don’t ask for Palestinian).

We exported NZ$168 million of goods to Sri Lanka in the 2004-5 year. To Israel the value was NZ$16.85 million in 2007.

Sri Lanka is closer, more people in New Zealand identify their cultural heritage as Sri Lankan, and we have more trade ties with it. Yet Gaza dominates the news and the bombing and shooting and civilian deaths in Sri Lanka go unremarked.

I happened to be in Sri Lanka when the the war stepped up in 2007. I was check pointed and searched and patted down more times than I can count, I had conversations with Sinhalese and Tamil, with parents, grandparents, children, soldiers and police. I saw guns and fighter planes and armoured vehicles and sandbags – and vegetable gardens and elephants and children playing in the sea.

I write about Sri Lanka because I know about its war, but there are others we are ignoring too. What is it about their victims that make them not worth our time?

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Domestic Violence (Enhancing Safety) Bill

As part of fulfilling their election promises the government has put forward changes to the domestic violence legislation. The proposal will see Police able to issue an order banning the perpetrator of domestic violence from the home for five days to protect the victim and any children, those orders will not be subject to any kind of judicial review or oversight.

The first part is a reasonable approach to the issue, the second is clearly wrongheaded – why should these orders be without judicial review or oversight? Where are the checks and balances?

The problem the Police face is what to do in the middle of the night in the face of a case of the less serious end of the spectrum of domestic violence (in the more serious cases they simply arrest the abuser). At the moment in cases which don’t quite warrant that they have three options: leave the abuser at large and hope nothing worse happens, tell the victim to go to a refuge or a friend’s place, or lock the abuser up anyhow. The ability to issue an order banning the abuser from the house would be a sensible tool to add to this.

Idiot/Savant has called for the Bill to be rejected but that doesn’t improve the current situation which probably sees both unnecessary imprisonment and victims being driven out of their homes. Deborah suggests reducing the period to 72 hours, but I’m not sure it’s the period that’s the problem as long as there’s an opportunity to review inappropriate exclusions.

I think that the Police should have the ability to ban the abuser immediately from the house for five days. The first day that courts are open the Police should then go before the court and have the order reconfirmed with everyone involved able to be heard. The court can then either confirm the order, reject the order or, potentially, issue a normal protection order. The order itself should be subject to the normal review process.

That way victims of domestic violence are protected, abusers are not unnecessarily arrested, and the standard judicial processes and reviews are available to all involved.

What do you all think? We have until late February to get submissions in, so we have time to figure out a solution which would really work.