Sunday, March 29, 2009

Paul Henry’s Mo-chismo (the blind leading the deaf)


A lot of righteous criticism has been heaped on Paul and his decision to mock Stephanie Mills on Breakfast last week. Stephanie had been on the show to discuss the death of a French agent who had been involved in the Rainbow Warrior bombing and ended up being mocked by Paul for having facial hair. How base, how ugly, how very NZ, we seemed to have forgotten being under Labour for 9 years that there is a garden variety bigotry that stalks these fair isles, the out of town drunk Uncle who you have to put up with at Christmas once a year with their ‘bloody maaaaaaaaaaaoris get too much’ dinner table speeches is not only alive and doing well, but is currently the Government. The resentment of education is back and Political Correctness book burning is the new fad. The rednecks have been in full bloom on talkback on this facial hair issue (very much in the same vein their sickening attacks on Helen Clark’s UN appointment) that remind us that the view has narrowed with National and ACT in power. The white males who under FPP were never challenged for cultural power have felt that under MMP their cultural power had been rubbed raw, other people get to have a say in the decision making process meaning their voice wasn’t the only one, that really rips the nighties of the Paul Henry’s of this world. That perception and insecurity of a loss of male power has been the driving backlash against ‘political correctness’ and has given our redneck friends the talkback justification to cry about how hard done by they’ve all been for just being blokes. Well sadly that backlash has found political voice and for all the Paul Henry’s out there who have felt alienated at those Christmas dinners, it’s all their dream Christmas dinners come at once – they and their ilk are in power now and the facial hair of a woman is much more important than what that woman has to say. Paul Henry represents more than just Paul Henry, he represents all well to do old white males who feel the same ‘social engineering’ resentments and who now think under their Government being in power that they can go back to the racist jokes and sexist crap with the sly winks and devil may care smirks that give them the self esteem boost their Viagra pills can’t seem to match.

I leave the last word to a much more dignified Stephanie Mills
"It's trademark Paul Henry and there are bigger issues in the world to worry about - like people dying of leukaemia from French [nuclear] testing. I think he likes being controversial - that's a polite way to put it. This is who I am and people make choices about who they are. "I have a really wonderful family, three gorgeous kids, a loving husband, great friends, really challenging job that I do part-time around all the other things I do in my life, and I love my life. "I'm secure with myself and I feel sorry that these people are so insecure about either their own appearance or mine. This is not about me, it's about them."

Monday, March 23, 2009

Turtle Pizza Cadillacs

Aleks Sakowski Presents
The Parallel Dance Ensemble
Coco Solid and Bobbi Soxx
In Turtle Pizza Cadillacs
www.cocosolid.co.nz - www.youtube.com/alkom



Be sure to watch this in 'High Quality"
Thanks to everyone who contributed to this,
your hard work and amazing talent is much appreciated.

The making of video coming soon.

Monday, March 16, 2009

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Carol Brown

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Meet your new Prison Company


The despicable move to privatize prisons, a move I am 1000% opposed to, grinds on as this Government is forced to live up to their raw meat election campaign promises of public floggings and neon orange jumpsuited chain ganged prisoners singing Negro spirituals alongside motorways while a mirrored glass wearing Simon ‘bossman’ Powers stands over them with a shotgun resting on his hip.

The problem of promising such ridiculous over the top lynch mob justice is that it costs a bloody arm and a leg, so what’s a big tough hard on crime Government to do? Why privatize the entire industry and get someone else to worry about overcrowded and beatily violent prisons, so who are our new Private Prisons going to be? GEO, who are GEO, well Frogblog has some pretty disturbing things to say about them…

The GEO Group, Inc. is part of the The Wackenhut Corporation, the owner of 13 correctional facilities, 11 of which are operated by GEO. They have immigrant detention centres, youth facilities and adult prisons. GEO’s value now apparently exceeds a billion dollars. This from CorpWatch

• settled a case where they placed a woman in a cellblock with male inmates who raped and beat her, she later took her life;
• had 125 inmates removed from a prison by state authorities for inadequate staff training and inadequate health care;
• served rotten food;
• knowing made false and misleading statements to state officials;
• failed to complete criminal record checks on at least 100 guards;
• violated domestic and international laws on due process and humane treatment;


And this is the company that the Sensible Sentencing Trust has been accused of taking money from. I don’t know about you, but having a private prison company fund victims rights groups to manipulate an angry electorate into voting for harsher sentences so that the private prison company can more people in more prisons for longer an abomination of the entire justice system.

The Lynch mob may have won, and we may have a homophobic drunk MP trying to change our bill of rights to allow this, but rational NZers can’t let this go on. We’ve got an election in 2 and a half years.

The Push-me-Pull-me John-key


Help me out here folks, here is John Key our blessed saviour in blue telling the Wall Street Journal that he doesn’t believe in all this bullshit lefty crap about spending your way out of a recession (the article is called, “You can’t spend your way out of a recession”), and yet only last month this very same National Party were bleating (lying as it turns out) that they had put together the 3rd best stimulus package in the world.

WTF? So at home National are trying to pretend that they are spending the 3rd largest stimulus package in the world, yet as soon as John has an overseas audience, he’s telling them that spending your way out is the last thing that should be done because it doesn’t work

Do we have a Prime Minister or a push-me-pull-me donkey that talks out of both sides of his mouth.

The Mysterious Explorations of Jasper Morello

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

The N Word




The word nigger has always been associated with overt racism, but a provocative documentary is about to show the rest of the world that Australian Government will happily endorse its use on a public building

Stephen Hagan began his campaign back in 1999, and even then he thought it was an open and shut case. He couldn’t have been more wrong. Nine years on and he is still pursuing the Toowoomba Sports Ground Trust, owners of the local Athletic Oval, to have a sign removed that included the word ‘Nigger’ (the ES ‘Nigger’ Brown Stand). Edward Stanley Brown, Toowoomba’s first rugby league international, who died in 1972 aged 74, was actually a white Australian - not an Aborigine - and was believed to have earned the nickname because of his extremely fair complexion.

Arguing that the sign was offensive and racist, Hagan’s case failed to move Australia’s domestic judiciaries including the Supreme Court and finally went all the way up to the United Nations, where in 2003 the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination found the term offensive and insulting and recommended the federal government remove the word; but the Howard government refused to act against it.

DID YOU KNOW?

Little Nigger Creek (between Townsville and Tully in Queensland) was successfully renamed in 2000 to Little Gin Creek.

Stephen Hagan's house need to be controlled by police due to threats.

"The Brown family is happy to take [the sign] down." - personal comment of the son of Edward Stanley Brown to Stephen Hagan.

Stephen Hagan wrote a book called 'The N Word' about his fight.

Mr Hagan also spearheaded an unsuccessful legal challenge against an Australian brand of cheese called Coon. The cheese was named after Edward William Coon who developed it in the 1920s. The name has been retained since despite its racist connotations.

Edward Stanley 'Nigger' Brown died in 1972 at the age of 74.

In 2007 the Toowoomba Sportsground Trust decided to tear down the stand due to safety concerns. However, it also decided to erect a statue to 'Nigger Brown' at the site.

Daniel Clowes



One of my favourite comic book creators of all time

Monday, March 9, 2009

www.walkingisoverrated.com



This is from the website www.walkingisoverrated.com the dopest site about disability culture, stereotypes, problems, jokes and everyday Aotearoa life for the sites creator Red Nicholson. I met Red last year and he is a total babe and charmer.

The prison nightmare begins


Inmates faced with two in a cell
Prison inmates could soon find themselves forced to share a room, as the Corrections Department talks with staff about putting two beds into every standard prison cell. Corrections Association president Beven Hanlon said the move would add an extra 950 beds to the jail system, covering expected growth in prisoner numbers in the next 18 months.
He said the move - known as double-bunking - would be on top of new prisons, and would be permanent. The extra beds would be added in the four new jails opened in the past four years. Putting two prisoners in each cell has previously been rejected by the Corrections Department as it believed the standard 6.5sq m cell was not suitable for two people. Such close-quarter living had the potential to cause "issues of inmate compatibility and tensions", the department has said. The proposal has horrified criminologist Greg Newbold, who himself spent time in prison. He said the plan would be "disastrous", and lead to increased violence towards inmates and staff. "When you're locked up with someone you can't get away from [or] with someone you may detest, people will explode in that type of environment," Dr Newbold said. "It's the worst thing they can possibly do. It leads to homosexual rape and bullying in cells, and dehumanises the inmate. "Any inmate doing a long term knows the hour you look forward to is lock-up time - time on your own without hindrance from another inmate." Dr Newbold has researched prisons in the US and Australia, where cell-sharing is common. In Louisiana, he observed five-bunk stacking, as well as dormitory-style rooms with 100 to 200 people inside. As well as rapes, stabbings were also common in such environments, he said. "It is a cheap and nasty solution. The beginning of the decline of Corrections in this country."


And the nightmare begins, Simon Powers has baited a frightened and furious electorate by painting prison out to be some sort of plasma TV, underfloor heated adult Disneyland and now has to manage a social policy of hate with a drunk homophobe from ACT who wants to mess around with your bill of rights so he can pass his $30 billion medieval law and order 3 strikes and you’re locked up forever policy. To manage this Simon will import Dick Cheney’s profit driven private prison industrial complex but will still need to double bunk prisoners in a situation horrified criminologist Greg Newbold describes as “disastrous”.

How will prison rape make any prisoner a better human being? How will the demands on an underfunded, corrupt and violent prison system mange to provide any rehabilitation in a public debate now deafened by the shrill scream for vengeance. This prison system will only create more offenders, it will bear a bitter and dreadful harvest.

When social policy becomes warped by hatred, then that system merely exacerbates the damage, If a human being is dehumanized by their experiences inside prison, then that dehumanized human being will only go on to create more damage once they are released.

Reason has failed here, the lynch mob has won.

Nikki Patin plays NZ this week



Go to her cheese on toast interview to see her tour dates

The Coen Brothers vs. Reality



This is an advertisement directed by award-winning directors The Coen Brothers and their take on clean coal for thisisreality.org

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Fungi

Paul Stamets has been a dedicated mycologist for over thirty years. Over this time, he has discovered and coauthored four new species of mushrooms, and pioneered countless mind blowing world saving techniques in the field of shroomology.

Monday, March 2, 2009

From medieval law and order policy to changing your bill of Rights



Remember that drunk on Eye to Eye who started a despicable slur against gay people by comparing them with paedophiles?

“Paedophiles, like homosexuals, 30 years ago homosexuals had, according to experts, a disease and they needed to be cured and it was a spectacular failure because homosexuality is a sexual orientation, so we decided that because there were 10 per cent of people who were homosexual it was no longer a disease.

"Paedophiles cannot be cured any better than…," he continued, before being interrupted by other panel members.


Yeah well that drunk is Sensible Sentencing hangman and ACT party MP David Garrett. Currently Garrett is pretending that his 3 strikes and you’re screwed won’t cost $30billion because second time offenders will get a maximum sentence (he hopes they will die before they re-offend for the 25 year 3rd strike) and because they will go overseas. Firstly the second offence can be for something as low as a 5 year sentence so maximizing the second crime may be for as little as 5 years, that won’t kill off the prison population and the idea that these prisoners will then leave overseas with their criminal convictions is just a bloody joke. So now our favorite jumped up little Reservoir Dog, David 'Mr Pink' Garrett not only wants to initiate law and order policy that National’s own Attorney-General describes as such ” severe punishment it would breach fundamental human rights of New Zealanders”, yeah well surprise surprise, Mr Pink wants to change the NZ Bill of Rights

His direct quote when told his brutal new law would breach the NZ Bill of Rights – wait for it “So what?”

His words now "Alter the Bill of Rights Act. We've got too hung up on people's rights."

We are too hung up on people’s rights??????? – his words, not mine. Start feeling very frightened now. Would anyone want a drunk homophobe who is promoting law and order legislation that would be so severe it would breach our bill of rights fucking around with our bill of rights in anyway shape or form?

It took a couple of months, but the real right wing are now starting to peep out from under the veneer of moderation, his opinion of our rights and his desire to circumvent them for only groups David deems as okay is an influence in Parliament that no free citizen would want to continue.