One for the matriarchy…

I had the pleasure of attending two distinctly different Solstice celebrations this weekend, both involving food, fire and friends, one private & incorporating birthdays as well, and one very public.

I’ll review the public one, as it covers a few aspects of life dear to my heart.

There’s a fantastic group of people called the Phoenix Astronomical Society, who grew out of staff of the now-defunct Carter Observatory, where I was priviledged to work part-time a few years ago. They decided to set up a stone circle in the southern hemisphere, for the purposes of teaching star-lore to the inhabitants of Aotearoa/New Zealand, as well as visitors.

This is the now well-travelled locus of Solstice and Equinox festivals in New Zealand, and is a locus for Pagan groups (Druidic and Wiccan) from all over the North Island.
I’ve been invited many times, (including the historic Autumn Equinox of 2007, with the High Druid of Britain, Phillip Carr-Gomm, in attendance) but for one reason or another not made the trek – so this time, I thought I’d have a go.
There was a bus from Wellington, a dinner afterwards in Carterton, how hard could it be?

Having been advised to ‘rug up warm’, I layered on as much merino clothing as I could find, under my woolen dress, and got off the bus to find a damp afternoon in the Wairarapa, clouds threatening more rain; and a lot of people in cloaks of many colours under umbrellas, being watched by an even bigger crowd of sensibly dressed locals who’d come to observe the pagans. This was going to be interesting!

I joined with my hosts, members of the Grove of the Summer Stars of Wellington, and was duly offered a citronella torch to bear for the procession. Suitably equipped, I followed our leader and processed to the Henge, circling widdershins once before we entered the Henge to ‘hold’ the Southern placement during the ritual. There was an ‘order of service’, celebrants had parts scripted to play, and a flow of serious proclamations of our commitment to peace and care of the earth followed. I didn’t take as many photo’s as I thought I would, as I became caught up in the meaning of the ceremony.
(For a better explanation than I’m fit to give, see the Woolshed, home of the Grove.)

Grove of the Summer Stars banner

The ceremony began around 4.30pm, and continued through the dusk to true solstice about 6pm, when despite the overcast sky and inability to actually see the sun set directly over the sunstone, there was a very eery sense of power having been raised and then released in the course of the ritual.

Closing ritual - Druids Pamela and Tom

As this photo shows, it was quite dark and cold at the end!

Afterwards, we all piled back into the bus & various cars, and headed back to Carterton, where a dinner for about 200 pagans and sympathisers was held at the RSA. After-dinner entertainment came from Richard Hall, one of the Henge creators, who gave a sound presentation about the origins of modern pagan practice, assisted by Pamela from Wellington and Chris from Auckland.
This has to be the best midwinter feast I’ve ever attended, and I’ll certainly sign up for the next one.
More info (and better pictures) about the Henge here.

Supercities, Sow Crates, Families Commission: Back Benches

MP's Robertson, Dunne, Kedgley, Gilmore

Back Benches on Wednesday was a change to the normal routine – Wallace Chapman was MIA, rumoured to be presenting evidence to the Bain Trial in High Court, and was replaced by Damian Christie, who made a reasonable fist of representing the formula Chapman has been running as a template.

The panel comprised Grant Robertson (L), Sue Kedgley (G), Peter Dunne (UF) and Aaron Gilmore (N), and answered questions on the rapid passage of the Auckland Supercity legislation – both Robertson and Kedgley slating the process under urgency, Kedgley calling it ‘abuse of process’, both criticising the lack of consultation.

Then the topic moved to the pork industry, with Mike King’s video footage of the pig-farmers’ sow crates getting another once-over; again, both Robertson & Kedgley were condemnatory of the status quo that allows such practices, with Kedgley adding that it stretches credulity for the Minister of Agriculture to say he ‘did not know of’ the practice of intensive pig-farming using sow crates; Peter Dunne waded in to say he thought this practice was probably illegal, to the amusement of the crowd, and was swiftly corrected by Kedgley, who informed him that it was precisely the legality of the practice that was so unsavoury, and chastised the MinAg and previous Labour Government for not removing the right for farmers to continue to use sow crates (previously, much had been made of her experiences campaigning against such practices since 1999). After a sally by Aaron Gilmore in defense of his Minister, Dunne suggested that all this publicity would ‘damage our pork exports’, to which the rejoinder was ‘we are net importers of pork, and all our production is consumed here, not exported …’, another own-goal to the member for Ohariu.

Further topics included the costs of jury trials, and the windfalls to lawyers that these represent, which scored another few goals against Dunn, and lawyers in general; and the ubiquitous Christine Rankin – vox pops in Auckland were in favour of keeping her on the Families Commission (sample size = 10), but the mood in the Bar was more judgmental, especially in light of her media behaviour in past days – Kedgley calling her ‘divisive and partisan’, Robertson saying John Key must take responsibility for her appointment to the Commission, and Dunne very much against her, saying her personality made her unsuitable, and her tendency to comment, ad nausea, to the media on any topic made her a liability to the Commission.

The final question – Is the honeymoon over for the National Government? – led to to a stirring statement that ‘our PM is the most popular PM we’ve had in a generation’ from Aaron Gilmore, which was lost in catcalls from the assembled audience members.

Full footage of the show here.

A nite at the pub with Cath.

This week’s episode of BB was a hoot, with a panel comprising MP’s Charles Chauvel from Labour, David Garrett from Act, Louise Upston, Taupo from National, and our own Cath Delahunty.

Up for comment was the Supercity Bill, being rushed through Parliament on urgency tonight; Gun licensing control, & should the Police be armed for day-to-day patrols; and a final (squib) question about the National Anthem.
Many supporters for each of the panel were in evidence, and very vocal.

Cath relaxing after the show with supporters

Info about the programme this week here, which should also actually have the episode up once TVNZ7 have finished tidying it up …

Stoner alert: J-day review

After a week of rainy, blustery weather, J-day 2009 dawned fair, and the members of NORML who have been organising the event for a coupla months breathed a huge sigh of relief. Tents were raised, PA’s set in series, and the music and good times began to flow at around high noon on the 2nd May at Frank Kitts’ Park, Wellington, as well as at other venues around the country.

Banner with slightly out-of-date details ...

DJ’s Thief and Funkdamunk entertained the relaxed and cheerful crowd, who also created some of their own entertainment with juggling, poi twirlers and hacky sack being in evidence. The amphitheatre of the park was well filled by mid-afternoon, and despite the sky clouding over and the wind increasing slightly, there was a good crowd for the 4.20 smoke up.

Norml are making an attempt to get some more action on changing the legislation around marijuana possession, specifically in terms of the Misuse of Drugs Act, with the support of MP’s Tim Barnett, Meteria Turei, and former MP Nandor Tancos.

For more information about the campaign, see their website here.

Unite! Campaign for $15/hour minimum wage launched

On Friday, which was Mayday, I went to a cheery Campaign launch in Wellington for the latest Unite! minimum wage increase call – to raise the minimum to $15/hour.

We gathered at the Southern Cross in Abel Smith St, to be welcomed by Don Franks MC-ing, and a warm-up performance by the Union Choir, who sang stirringly and melodically.

Union Choir at Unite! Campaign launch

There were a few more speeches after the intro, then a time of social chitchat and networking was enjoyed by all.

Details of the new campaign can be found at Unite! website.

Student workers addressed by unionists in panel discussion, VUW

Despite the rainy night and the presence of a significant crowd in the Bar on campus, a good turnout showed to the panel discussion organised by Vuwsa and NZUSA on the topic of “The importance of students being collectively organised when the global economy carks it”.

Sue B, Peter Conway, Andrew Little speaking, Jordan King, MC.

The panel comprised Jordan King of NZUSA, MC-ing, with Sue Bradford MP, Green party spokesperson on employment and union issues; Andrew Little, President of the Labour Party and National Secretary of the EPMU; and Peter Conway, Secretary of the CTU.

Each speaker in turn gave some insights into their years as students – Sue in the 60’s & early 70’s at Auckland Uni, then again in the 80’s doing her MA, was involved in some of the great student activism efforts, against Vietnam War, Springbok Tours, and Anti-nuclear demos; Andrew and Peter were both at VUW, Andrew as President of Vuwsa for some of his time, Peter admitting to involvement in campus Folk Music and Communist clubs (…a heady combination!)

All three stressed the changes they’d seen, for the worse, in the amount of time students have to engage in clubs and politics on campus, due to the onerous requirements of work necessary to keep fed and housed, since the removal of universal student bursaries when the student loan scheme came into force in the early 90’s.

There was a lot of general discussion about the impact of the recession – which Sue B likened to a ‘phony war’ over the last 18 months to two years – which may this year begin to be felt by students, as job retrenchment begins to hit families who have been supporting their children at university, and as part-time positions dry up in the workplaces traditionally supplying casualised jobs to students.

Whereas factories and industrial sites have been gradually laying off workers as demand for consumption has eased over the past year, which has seen many unions negotiating better terms for staff, student jobs haven’t been as much affected yet; although the VC’s committees and TEC have been bracing for a roll-on effect as redundant employees register for tertiary education, to make the best of a shrinking job market by taking the opportunity to upskill during the downturn – a pattern of behaviour that is repeating the experiences of workers made redundant around the time of the ‘87 crash; to which there are many parallels in the current recessionary period.

All of the speakers stressed that the Government needs to be made accountable for the quality of the decisions that are being made around where ‘recession relief’ spending is to be done, and questioning whether big ticket projects such as roading or buildings should be balanced by investment in upskilling workers via tertiary institution funding, with suggestions that 2009 may be our “Winter of Discontent”.

A short but lively discussion concluded the evening, which carried on for about half an hour longer than the event had been advertised, resulting in some time-pressed individuals leaving during the question time.

Not such a Pacific Paradise.

Ethnically diverse groups of Fijian residents are a concern for social justice activists, following reports of foreign journalists being expelled and censorship of local news in the Fiji Times, after the latest round of crackdowns by coup leader Voreqe Bainimarama. Social networking website sotiacentral.com was taken off the net, and while Fiji residents are still able to use MSN to contact relatives outside Fiji, communication is difficult.

Property and business owners in the main islands, who are not ethnically Melanesian Fijians, may be the next target for Bainimarama’s high-handed tactics.
Questions should be asked about how New Zealand will support non-melanesian Fijian citizens, and ex-patriate residents, should the worst possible outcome happen. This is not even counting the possibilities of harm to any foreign tourists currently holidaying in the ‘Pacific Island paradise’.

Today’s Dominion Post editorial says what many have thought, but not voiced in the past four months since the coup – that Bainimarama has styled himself on Robert Mugabe, the arch-totalitarian of Zimbabwe, known now as a genocidal megalomaniac. Our New Zealand Defense Forces, who trained the Fiji Army leaders at Burnham Military Camp, must now take stock of what their protégée’s have done with the skills and tactics so learned.

Ecological Economics for beginners.

Friday 13th March saw me whipping back into town to catch a conference-opening lecture by Dr Robert Costanza, from the Gund Institute of Ecological Economics at The University of Vermont, who is here in NZ on a secondment to the New Zealand Centre for Ecological Economics (NZCEE), based at Massey University’s home campus in Palmerston North.

After the requisite time spent on the pre-lecture refreshments and Green membership gossip, I found myself a seat in the auditorium of Rutherford House LT1, and waited for the rest of the SPC attendees to catch on and copy. Twiddle, twiddle, watching the crew setting up tech gear & checking the powerpoints were working; then finally, all 300 pre-allocated seats were filled, and the talks got underway.

First up, our Green Co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons greeted the assembled members, and thanked Dr Costanza and members of the NZCEE for coming to Wellington to make presentations on Ecological Economics. Then Dr Costanza made his presentation, which was stimulating and challenging; to the point where my notes became a list of publications to look up, and websites to browse later.

Links: the presentation is here,
which also gives the handy list of Dr Costanza’s published works, in far tidier format than my hasty notes.
The panel was then constructed of Jeanette, Bob, and members of the academic and research staff of NZCEE; Vicky Forgie, Marjan van der Belt, and Ida Kubiszewski. A quick overview of the work done by NZCEE was given, which can be viewed in greater depth here:
along with publications by the Centre here.

The panel: Jeanette, Bob, Vicky, Marjan, Ida

I’ll admit right now that some serious reading is going to happen in my home study time, to get myself up-to-date on this area – my last efforts at understanding economics were for a feminist-perspective paper, which looked at green economies as part of a holistic, sustainable economic policy development paradigm. What I heard certainly stimulated me to see the upside to the Global Recession, and to take heart from the Green New Deal economics that is being developed and applied in the USA, and many other administrations around the world at present.

Having made a decision some weeks ago not to attend the SPC held at Silverstream over the weekend, I wistfully set off home on another bus, as many old friends and fellow campaigners headed out for the conference opening dinner, charged up with enthusiasm for Green economic policies after this stimulating and enriching lecture and presentations.

Associated links:
The Encyclopedia of Earth
Friends of the commons See Capitalism 3.0, by Peter Barnes, available as a free download from this site – a guide to reclaiming the commons.

Dancing for the revolution ..

Thanks to paying attention to the VUW Orientation guide, I had the opportunity on Thursday last week to meet Darin McFayden, aka DJ Freq Nasty, during an on-campus seminar of wanna-be DJ’s and electronic music producers. This turned out to be about a dozen keen musical types, John from Vuwsa, and me (the token journo).

Bryce Mason from Sandwiches carefully shepherding his international star aside, it was an amazing amount of access to get with someone who has a regular gig at Fabric in London, and splits his time between home in LA, gigs in the UK, and a family in Auckland, NZ.

Darin left Auckland for Sydney in the early 90’s, arriving in London in time for the big wave of rave and techno/electronic music production that powered the big club scene through that decade. Of that period, he said new genres were popping up all the time, taking about 3-4 years to mature, then the scene moved on to the next thing – now, new scenes go global much more quickly, there’s no time lag; producing your own work & getting it out to radio stations and club DJ’s is much more of a track to professional fame (and full-time employment), than just playing other acts’ tunes in a club.

The other big shifts he’s seen involve technology – the rise of social networking sites like myspace, YouTube, etc, where new bands and producers can get huge exposure very quickly; and the advent of software that lets music produced on a laptop have production studio quality – so the initial investment in moving form DJ to Producer is becoming less of a barrier. “As soon as you knock out a tune (you’ve produced yourself), you’re ahead of 90% of the competition” – prime advice to the young players in the room.

The industry bogey of downloads vs album sales was raised – Darin emphasized the value of collaborating with other up-and-coming producers on work, and used his own experience with web-published tracks to illustrate that it’s no longer an ‘either-or’ issue for most artists in the frontline, but a strategic use of media to gain maximum exposure. The other great tip from this was ‘cultivate a tech geek, to do your website stuff, so you can focus on producing tunes’. This man is very switched on! We did touch on techy stuff like software to use, bit-torrent download sites and the like, but they were very specific questions that only music producers need-to-know, so I won’t go into all that here.

So, fortified by this rare discussion, I joined the line shaking DJ Freq Nasty’s hand on the way out the door, Bryce whisked him away, and I bought my ticket to the gig.

Rolling into Sandwiches at 11.30pm-ish, I was surprised to see only a few peeps in the bar, and not a lot on the dance floor as the warm-up valiantly tried to fill the concrete box that is the main room. Walked smack into Darin, who smiled & said “So, you made it”, chatted for a minute, then excused himself to prepare for the beginning of his set, up in a few minutes.

The room began to fill as soon as he appeared in the DJ booth, just standing alongside P-Vans, and the 3-hour set that ensued was a mash-up of dubstep, breakbeat, old-school rave, and a bunch of Lee Perry classics. It was all that a good nite on dub should be, sweaty, smokey, amazing light-show (yeah, the lighting guy looked after my handbag; big props to him for the excellent flicks and shades) and a mad collection of dub fans jumping and bumping through the set.

When Dunsta took over at 3am, there was a general move to the bar, and a collective slump as we realised it was now raining heavily outside. I managed a quick last word to Darin after the floor cleared – he hadn’t known what to expect of a Welli Ori crowd, was pleased the floor filled up minutes before he started, and bemusedly said “Come along next time, we’ll bring a bigger show back & do this again”. Yeah, Darin, I will, and I’ll get a few more friends along with me, too…

Samurai’s on Willis Street if you’re interested in picking up his latest production, Fabriclive.42, and I’m reliably informed that they’re stocking a lot of dubstep, if you want more of the genre.

Check out the links below, Darin has made waves by setting up Giveback.net to allow artists to support causes with their musical talents. Great free download to support Tibetan Bhuddists, and see the article on his myspace blog about his efforts to support social justice while still running kickass dubstep parties.

links: freqnasty.com, tribe.net/freqnasty, giveback.net, myspace page.

Tamils protest, media goes off to lunch.

In contrast to the media frenzy I witnessed over the S92a Petition being presented at lunchtime yesterday, only a couple of media representatives were on hand to record this. At least Scoop posted something vaguely accurate – although there were more like 200-plus Tamils, including children in the count, which I confirmed by asking one of the organisers.

The combined Tamil communities of Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Palmerston North gathered in Wellington on Thursday (19th February 2009) to march through town and around to the British and Indian High Commissions, and the American Embassy, before arriving at Parliament to entreat the Government to issue a statement condemning the actions of the Indian Government in their military actions in Northern Sri Lanka against the Tamil peoples.

After waiting patiently while another group of petitioners were addressed on Parliament steps, the crowd stood waving banners and chanting “Free Tamil Eelam”, and “Help Us”.
Green Party MP Keith Locke came to address the crowd from the forecourt.

A dvd of footage taken during recent military actions against Tamil communities in northern Sri Lanka was being distributed to interested media, in order to show the kind of warfare occurring, and conditions in which the wounded and dying were being managed.
The hand-held, shaky images, with voiceover by the cameraperson, are powerful and ultimately very disturbing. There are no UN or Red Cross personnel allowed in Tamil-held parts of Sri Lanka, so there are few medical supplies, no adequate water or sterile situations for examining wounded and dying civilians brought to treatment stations.
The footage shows children screaming hysterically at the feet of sheet-wrapped corpses, traumatised by the bombing they have just survived, as much as the violent death of a parent just witnessed.
Children found by a camera operator, sitting in a dirt trench behind a collapsed house, the most minimal bomb shelter you can imagine, crying with fear and traumatised, waiting for older siblings or parents to return. Not leaving, because they have been trained to stay until they are told to come out …

More information about actions taking place in other countries at the links below.

Tamilnet
British Tamils Forum
Canadian Tamils site