Undulating Ungulate

The earthquake has come at a convenient time for the National government, eclipsing the release of the Welfare Working Group’s report.

The proposed welfare reform is fundamentally about getting people actively looking for work. Collapsing all benefits into one “jobseekers” benefit, defined in essence by the criteria to be actively seeking work, punishing the long term unemployed, and those who have children (in quasi-eugenic policy).

This criteria, as demonstrated in In A Land of Plenty, is purely a piece of economic theory in action. An unemployed underclass actively looking for work keeps wages down, which, according to the dominant economic theory – the one that doesn’t work and has led to the ongoing global economic crisis – will keep inflation down, and if only inflation can be kept down, sunshine and bunnies will reign in the land. That is the whole of the faith.

Being forced to actively look for work, in this light, has nothing to do with actually getting a job that isn’t there. Jobseekers are the stick keeping wages down and workers willing to put up with crap conditions because at least they have a job. This is fine as a purely numeric theory if you disregard that actual humans are involved.

The proposed reform refuses to acknowledge the wider economic situation. Jobs aren’t there because the economy is broken. The government isn’t doing anything to create jobs. They have no ideas and no plan but sticking to a failed ideology that requires treating people like shit. The proposed welfare reform is like a game of musical chairs, except there are many thousands less chairs than players, and the losers get screwed.

Also, in the wake of the Christchurch disaster, there are going to be many people in our second biggest centre whose livelihoods are gone. Just in time to queue up for some dehumanisation.

Last word taken from Gordon Campbell’s summary:

In sum, welfare reform on this scale will not only punish and marginalise the poor – with all the health/law and order costs that will create in its wake. It will also present employers with a golden opportunity to permanently undercut the wages and conditions of all but the elite and skilled members of the New Zealand work force. Obviously, New Zealanders can vote for this package or reject it – but we need to very clear what sort of society we would be endorsing in November by supporting it. IMO, the welfare gulag envisaged by the WWG and (apparently) endorsed in large part by the Key government, is foreign to the country that most of us have known.

Filed by billy at 2:30 pm under new zealand,no mercy for john key,politics
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Heh. Has been a while. Trawling the mutants list, we find:

* Josh Harris (of We Live in Public fame) makes a bid to head the MIT media lab

“If I become director of the MIT Media Lab, the institution’s primary focus will be to build a working singularities effect of the future, now, in order to understand how it all works.”

* Psychedelic sequence removed from Avatar would probably have made it more interesting.

The ritual consists of the initiate having to eat a worm as well as endure the sting of a scorpion-like creature.  The worm is significant as it eats from the “sacred tree,” presumably the Tree of Souls, and contains a psychoactive alkaloid.  The scorpion provides a potent neuro-toxin that brings the Na’vi close to death.  When combined together, the two compounds unleash a powerful psychedelic experience that allows for the initiate to go on a “dreamhunt” and attempt to contact their “spirit animal.”

* The Big Deal. Heavy think pieces from Vinay Gupta, who is way out ahead of the curve, about what the hell is going on.

I’ve recently written four essays, The Big Deal (#thebigdeal) which combine to paint a new picture of the current state of the world and a future picture showing how grass roots political power can achieve what current models of governance, including government, cannot do alone. This work is partly a critique and expansion on the British government’s Big Society concept, but it also draws heavily on my own experience in futures, complexity science and engineering for the bottom billion. It is an attempt to model the world in a new way; a way which reveals otherwise hidden paths to achieve change.

Yet to read them but flag them necessary.

* Ten myths about welfare. Actually not via the mutants, but this is getting around. If you are in NZ you probably need to read this as we roll into election year.

* Uncontacted Amazon Indians face annihilation Kind of amazing that this sort of thing is still happening. Also amazing that it can still happen, that there is anyone left out there.

* According to this fun sliding tool, all income growth in America in the past three decades has gone to the top 10% of the population. Thus income has declined for the bottom 90% of people. (Yay for unfettered capitalism!) The same sort of trend is probably at work here, as these things go.

Filed by billy at 1:08 am under consciousness,culture,new zealand,politics,the world
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Come along to the off-paddock premiere screening of Combust in Unity, the documentary about Kiwiburn that Paul and I have been making for the last short eternity. (Yes. It is finally done and out in the world.) Screenings in other centres may or may not follow. DVD release is in the works.

Saturday, February 19 · 5:00pm – 6:30pm at the NZ Film Archive.

(Corner of Ghuznee St and Taranaki St)

This will likely be your only chance to see it on the big screen in Wellington. If you know someone who needs to be there, tell them!

If you haven’t yet seen the trailer, it is here http://www.youtube.com/wat ch?v=yE9H4wf2Obc

(Also also, if you’ve never been to the Film Archive before, tickets are only $8,or $6 concession!)

Filed by billy at 11:36 am under culture,new zealand,the moose
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Back from the paddock. Have mostly caught up on sleep.

Once again, Kiwiburn was amazing, awesome, wonderful, intense, powerful, challenging, etc. And full of people who are amazing, awesome, wonderful, etc.

It’s funny, I was particularly ambivalent about going this year – mostly I went to screen the doco, in situ – but I came away wanting to still be in the paddock way more than any previous year. The quality of the people, the quality of the interactions, and the energy of the place, is just flat out better. Strangers from all over the country and the world come together in spontaneous community. It is a strange and beautiful phenomenon. All these people are still in my heart and mind.

The doco screened twice, in appropriately DIY paddock conditions, once in a torrential downpour, and once after the temple burn. It was fascinating to observe the audience responding to the film, as the screenings were very different. It seemed to go down pretty well, which was nice.

Filed by billy at 4:02 pm under culture,new zealand,the moose,utopia
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unexpectedly bailing to kiwiburn, as of now. better late than never.

Filed by billy at 2:58 pm under new zealand,the moose
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An interesting artifact:

On October 15th, 2007 an estimated 300 police raided houses all over Aotearoa New Zealand and arrested people based on warrants issued under the Terrorism Suppression Act. Lives were turned upside down as the police searched for evidence of ‘terrorism.’ This book is a collection of oral history interviews of people affected by those raids and the aftermath: defendants, friends, family, supporters and other people subject to the state’s coercive powers on that day.

Free PDF download (right click that link to download; you can also buy it) from Rebel Press.

Filed by billy at 11:09 am under new zealand,politics
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Went along to see a play the other day, the method of which was reviewed a decade ago as an “insult to the conventions of theatre.”

It was pretty interesting.

The play was by Tao Wells, who has launched to some local notoriety for getting funded while unemployed to make a conceptual art installation of a PR company advocating unemployment, and was sort of directly related to that project.

The method was, he got some people to hang out and have conversations (with no guidance as to what they should be about), where they had to write down anything they said, starting each thing on a new line, and write down anything they thought felt or did in brackets.

Wells then took the transcripts, transcribed them, arranged them into what seemed like order; the play consisted of inviting the participants to come along and play themselves in any way they wanted, being given a script on the night, while also projecting the script onto the wall behind the stage so the audience could see the text.

The content of the text meandered, often incomprehensibly, talked about the project, and how odd the thing they were doing was, how unnatural the process was, and random stuff.

The experience was damn weird for the players – it wasn’t quite acting, or improvisation. Two of the participants weren’t there, so their scenes were just paged through on the projection.

The fact of the text was surreal. My brain was in a kind of overdrive. The level of engagement was oddly intense at times. Though it also fell over completely at times.

On reaching the end of the script, he paged back up to the top and they started going through again. The performance frayed even further. People stopped playing their roles, and started reading random lines. Much of the audience left. Some who remained starting participating in the text, taking the part of players. This seemed entirely natural.

Eventually Wells caved, acknowledging we had broken him (the handful who remained) and that he had intended to go until everyone left. (In fact, even one of the players, Campbell Walker, left midway through the second run through, without a word.)

Anyway. This felt like art should, as an event and an experience. Immersive, alive, challenging. The way I ended up engaging with the piece was fascinating; a suspension of thought, plus all sorts of meta-textual awareness, veering from hilarity to disbelief to other things. Unusual, and probably not for everyone.

Apparently it will be on again next Monday at Freds. May well be quite different.

Filed by billy at 2:23 am under culture,new zealand
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Fuck yeah! No more Prenderghastly!

I have encountered Celia Wade-Brown a few times in activist/environmentalist circles. While she is genuine, committed, and her heart is in the right place, it will be fascinating to see her step up to the challenges of mayoralty.

All in all, this should be an interesting term of local government. But a hopeful one

Filed by billy at 10:46 pm under new zealand
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Current listing on trademe jobs: executive director of the world bank. Conceivably legit, but not less amusing.

Meanwhile, Parliament, under the guise of earthquake recovery, just voted Gerry Brownlee
actual powers of dictatorship until April 2012. The technical details (see link) are fairly alarming. So we are left hoping the Dark Side of the force doesn’t speak too sweetly in his ear between now and then.

Filed by billy at 12:44 pm under new zealand
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Seemed like there should have been more people there to dance it out in an old stamping ground. Hadn’t been there for aaages, and a flood of impressions and memories came back. End of an era. Something amazing happened there a decade back. At least it seemed that way. Long gone, long gone. Everything changes. And now. And now?

Filed by billy at 2:03 pm under new zealand,the moose
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