Picture Says It All

Hard thing for me to say but on his blog our Bomber Bradbury (borrowed the pic from Bomber) has made a call to overseas activists to Boycott New Zealand Goods on the back of John Key and our flash new government's decision to set a greenhouse gas emissions reduction target of only 10 to 20 per cent below 1990 levels at climate change negotiations in Bonn, Germany, rather than the forty percent that so many Kiwis have called for. And apparently even this is only conditional. We can only wonder to what new depths they can find plummet.

Bomber Bradbury:
"National are purposely misrepresenting the costs because they are the party of the farmers and big business, they refuse to make those industries pay for the pollution they create and National gutted the agricultural tax rebate for research necessary to create the technology to cut emissions. ACT have polluted National’s climate change because ACT are taking huge sums of cash from climate deniers like Alan Gibbs. The whole thing stinks to high heaven and we are losing our clean green image."

Gareth Renowden:
"It is now transparently obvious that this National-led government simply does not understand the real challenges presented by climate change. They do not appreciate the full seriousness of the situation that confronts the planet, they underestimate the need to act, and they have completely failed to make any coherent assessment of what could be done. That amounts to gross incompetence, and they should be held to account for it, both at the ballot box and in the court of public opinion."

Our flash Government, who seem to inhabit a different world from the rest of us, are claiming this ridiculously low emissions reduction target has gone down well at the UN Climate Change talks in Bonn. Not so, states one Geoff Keey, who is actually there. Instead, "at the beginning of day two of the negotiations, the NGOs at the talks put out their daily bulletin - ECO - with a focus on New Zealand. The newsletter is a daily tradition dating back years. It's a good light-hearted view of a deadly serious topic. The content speaks for itself," writes Geoff.

You can view the newsletter yourself by clicking here. It is a pdf file.

Geoff Keey:
"It’d be fair to say that some developed country delegates were relieved that the target wasn’t as low as they thought it was going to be. Expectations of New Zealand around here aren’t great at present. But overall I think it's seen as nothing more than a low opening offer. I also got the impression that negotiators and observers thought New Zealand’s conditional demands were over the top. One long-standing observer said to me, it seems that what New Zealand is doing with its demands is saying: “if the rest of the world is really nice to us and is willing to work really hard to reduce emissions, we’ll condescend to do something inadequate.” He also noted that “Kevin Rudd got a standing ovation in Bali, New Zealand didn’t get a single clap at Bonn.” Given that Rudd’s no climate hero, that’s not very promising."

Actions people can take

So, to people overseas, the only way to hurt this government and make them listen is to hit them in the purse strings, especially with our agricultural products, beef and lamb and dairy. Because the producers of these products are easily identifiable as the lobbyists behind this low emissions target. These are the people who are petrified that they will be forced to clean up their act in order to cut our greenhouse gas emissions.

Also people (no pressure, just a suggestion) might like to send our Prime Minister John Key a friendly little email telling him how you plan to boycott our goods due to our pathetic greenhouse gas emissions reduction target. Overseas public opinion may well go far to change this government's stance.

This is John Key's email address - john.key@parliament.govt.nz

New Zealand The Way It Was,
before this new lot took over; a country we could be proud of. I'd like to be proud of it again one day.

The Maori Jesus And The Holocaust

"The Maori Jesus came on shore
And picked out his twelve disciples.
One cleaned toilets in the railway station;
His hands were scrubbed red to get the shit out of the pores.
One was a call-girl who turned it up for nothing.
One was a housewife who had forgotten the Pill
And stuck her TV set in the rubbish can.
One was a little office clerk
Who'd tried to set fire to the Government Buldings.
Yes, and there were several others;
One was a sad old quean;
One was an alcoholic priest
Going slowly mad in a respectable parish."

From James Keir Baxter's poem
The Maori Jesus (Dunedin Poems, 1966 -68)

This picture of Jesus wearing a Maori Cloak is from a church window in Rotorua. Intriguingly he even looks as though he is walking on the water of the lake outside.

To me this is not a religious poem, this is an entirely political poem. I realised this as I was typing the poem, (click here for the full version) on New Zealand Poetry Day. Typing means you take in every word, it slows down your thoughts, sometimes you might find meanings you never noticed before.

And I realised that -

Baxter's Maori Jesus is placed firmly into the working class. He wears workingmen's clothing (blue dungarees/overalls), he eats the traditional kai and colonial bread (mussels and paraoa) of working class Maori. And tellingly he chooses his disciples from the lowest rung of the Maori working/non-working? (it's all about perspective) classes - the railway toilet cleaner, the call girl (Mary Magdalene equivalent perhaps?), the mad housewife, the office clerk (resonant of the British Guy Fawkes even?), the alcoholic priest, the sad old quean. All these people are the disenfranchised, the losers in Pakeha society eyes.

The Maori Jesus comes from a land occupied by another race - the English. They brought their religion as a tool of oppression, they brought their laws which remade most Maori into landless peasantry of Aotearoa/ New Zealand. The story is repeated throughout the colonised/occupied world.

If our James K Baxter had been white Australian, his Jesus could have been an Aboriginal Jesus;
If Baxter was American then Baxter could have written his poem about a Native American Jesus -
By way of diversion Jesus could have even been African American;
in the historical British-occupied India, Baxter could have created his Jesus as an Indian Jesus,
Moreover, if Baxter identified as English, his Jesus could have been a Saxon in the Roman-occupied English Isles -
In similar time-frame Baxter's Jesus might have been Jewish in Roman-occupied Jerusalem.

Oh he was ...

These days he could even be written (in complete reversal) as a Palestinian in Israeli-occupied Palestine.

It's all the same story.

But on the 29th of August in the year 2000 when Tariana Turia (then a NZ Labour MP) gave an
address to the New Zealand Psychological Society Conference which took place at the Waikato University, Hamilton, in which she likened the colonisation/occupation/home invasion of Aotearoa/New Zealand (the Land of The Long White Cloud) to a Maori Holocaust Pakeha (white) New Zealanders were outraged! No one wants to be likened to a Nazi after all - many people even insisted Tariana was showing symptoms of grandiosity to liken the effect of colonisation on Maori to the slaughter of the innocent Jewish people by the evil Nazis.

About the grandiosity, we hadn't met Clayton Weatherston back then, the man who has brought home to all Kiwis the true meaning of grandiosity.

The poem goes on to tell us that:

"The first day he was arrested
For having no lawful means of support.
The second day he was beaten up by the cops
For telling a dee his house was not in order.
The third day he was charged with being a Maori
And given a month in Mt Crawford.
The fourth day he was sent to Porirua
For telling a screw the sun would stop rising.
The fifth day lasted seven years
While he worked in the Asylum laundry
Never out of the steam.
The sixth day he told the head doctor,
'I am the Light in the Void;
I am who I am.'
The seventh day he was lobotomised;
The brain of God was cut in half."

Tariana said:

"I seek not personal attention. I just want us to consider our history as a country and consider how this history has affected the indigenous people, how this history has impacted on Maori whanau, hapu and iwi.

I really do believe that mature, intelligent New Zealanders of all races are capable of the analysis of the trauma of one group of people suffering from the behaviour of another.

I can see the connections between 'home invasions' which concern many of us, to the invasion of the 'home lands' of indigenous people by a people from another land.

What I have difficulty in reconciling is how 'home invasions' emits such outpourings of concern for the victims and an intense despising of the invaders while the invasion of the 'home lands' of Maori does not engender the same level of emotion and concern for the Maori victims.

I wonder why that is?" (Turia, 2000)

The Future is Here: Climate Change in the Pacific

This winter has really been quite brutally cold with way more rain than we in Canterbury are used to, coupled with fierce frosts and ice that sits there all day under grey cloudy days. The weather people tell us this has been the coldest winter in a decade and I find that quite believable.

But over the last couple of days (1st and 2nd of August - gosh it is the 4th and I still haven't posted this lol - better do it today) the weather has become suddenly quite springlike. A northwest airflow bringing strongish winds at times but also warmer temperatures has coaxed me outdoors into the garden, hooray, and there is so much heat in the sun that yesterday I even got a touch of sunburn.

At least that's how it is in Canterbury.

All of this is very odd because traditionally August (along with July) are usually the New Zealand winter's coldest months. Spring shouldn't be here until September or even October, however the last few years have found me gardening earlier and earlier. In 2007 I noted I was busy outside around the 15th August and I forgot to pay attention last year but for me to be out there cleaning up gardens (mowing even) at the beginning of August is unheard of.

Gareth Renowden, (local Cantabrian science writer and author) in his book, Hot Topic: Global Warming and the Future of New Zealand (2007) mentioned that spring arriving earlier and earlier (nice as it might be for me), is a sign that Global Climate Change is upon us now. Right now. We are in it.





This month Oxfam has brought out a report pertinent to the Pacific region The Future is here: Climate Change in the Pacific, click here to read.





The report details the effects of Global Climate Change that are already being experienced by many of our island neighbours in the Pacific region. Many of the island nations are already being affected by tidal surges, coastal erosion, and flooding from the heavy rainfall following more and more frequent cyclones. Fresh water wells are threatened by salt water intrusion, vulnerable homes and gardens need to be re-sited further from the eroding coastlines. Salt water intrusion affects the growing of plants, vegetables, trees. Many (probably most) islands have the main road between communities running around the coastlines; therefore any kind of flooding or storm surges can break communications and help between island communities immediately.

Some small islands may have to be abandoned because of rising sea levels in favour of the bigger islands, perhaps very soon. Some island nations have no islands with higher ground, Kiribati for example. President Tong speaks of the need to up-skill the Kiribati population in readiness for the day when all 100,000 of them will have to move elsewhere and participate in labour markets.

Where Will The People All Go?

Do you know how many people live in the Pacific? By about 2050, 75 million people may have been forced to leave their homes in the Asia-Pacific region due to climate change. This is real.

One thing that needs to be done now is for both Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand to reduce our carbon emissions by 40% by the year 2020 and by at least a whopping 95% by the year 2050. And we need to start now, should have started yesterday or last month or something ...

right: Coastal erosion in Saoluafata, Upolu, Samoa, 2005

BUT here in New Zealand our super flash and utterly selfish new government wants to limit our global emissions target (post-Kyoto) to something in the range of only 15%. To help avoid catastrophic climate change New Zealand needs to be signing on to a 40% by 2020 emissions reduction target at the United Nations climate talks in Copenhagen this December.

What you can do ...

Please sign the Feel The Heat Petition here even if you don't live down in Aotearoa/New Zealand or in the Pacific. Our Prime Minister John Key and his coalition buddy Act leader Rodney Hide need to hear what the voters think, but also to know that the eyes of the world are upon them.

Or you can click on the banner below or the similar one on the right rail for more information. Thank you. Arohanui.