I'll Keep This Short...ish.

We are a couple of days late, but it was white ribbon day on the 25th. Hope y'all wore a ribbon!

In case y'all didnt know (though im sure you did) the white ones are for supporting the 16 days of Activisim against gender violence (which started on Tuesday 25th). And since we at the Active Collective are all about activism...BUY A RIBBON!!! if you haven't already got one... and wear it for at least the next 14 days because even thought they tell you to only wear it on the 25th, there are 15 days of activism left afterwards and how are people going to know that you're active if you dont show them, yes? i hope theyr still selling...or this would be totally pointless.

the reason i'm telling you this is because the statistics showing violence against women are really scary. Go on, look them up!

Now...i should really go and study for chemistry...

Good luck for the rest of exams!

In deep procrastination,

(>_<)~Noodles

PS: Some other dates you might find interesting:

1st December - World Aids Day

5th December - International Volunteers Day

10 December - International Human Rights Day (go 4th form social studies!)

 

on girly magazines

magazines such as "cosmopolitan" and "girlfriend"- basically the whole yadda- we know they all breed insecurity within females- especially pubescence girls. However, you could argue that such editorials do have their points- undeniably they offer often very important advice to girls, which i believe is true- it is easier to confide in anonymity, and refer to a "non" living thing about certain problems than it is to another "real" person.
However, i often see editorials in these magazines about "10 ways to tell if a guy could be a rapist"- or something as ridiculous as thereof, and: "how to become a natural beauty", "How to get your Perfect Guy" and ecetera.
I get a bit lopsided with this; what are you trying to imply? You can't slip the actions of guys into 10 definitive attributes that can indicate possible rapist- it also incites a kind of fear within the person. In the article "how to become a natural beauty" - of course its fine wanting to look beautiful which would make you happy, but i dont ever really see things that outrightly states "you can be happy without liking how you look" and the way it is placed, it makes one identify as "not being pretty"- which although may not be meant, of course if you end up reading it, you obviously identify yourself with it.

Anyways, i think, magazines can be good for advice and all- but really just certain things placed in the magazines are not acceptable or healthy towards the development of pubescent girls. And yes, i know, Cosmo is not a little girl's mag- but they had the "how to tell if a guy is a rapist" thing. Btw, i HATE with a fervor gossip mags such as NW, HELLO! or whatever crap else. They should burn and turn into carbon atoms and be absorbed into the depths of the sea and be used by phytoplankton to be never reborn as paper again. They exploit the lives of others for money.

p.s. I however, know a very GOOD "magazine" for us all- the Active Collective Zine!

p.s.s. remember to read romana's post, economic crises is very important.

p.s.s.s. i'm sorry for my horrendous grammar, honestly, i can't be bothered.

Romana's take on the global economy sucking

(I have never taken economics. I have struggled to get this far. If I got anything wrong, please tell me, so that I can either correct this post, or delete it before I die of shame)

So, the economy sucks, huh? As far as I can tell, this a result of those wheeler dealers on wall street, and two, large, U.S. government backed corporations by the names of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Both overseen by Congress, Fannie Mae underwrote mortgages on "affordable homes". This was intended to make home loans more accessible for lower-income Americans. Freddie Mac then sold them on to the private sector, as assets. Fannie and Freddie guaranteed most of the mortgages in the U.S.A, and had combined assets of almost $5 trillion. The government backing meant that they were able to take on massive larger amounts of debt than other companies, and in return for this, they were supposed to finance more affordable mortgages.

Around 1999, Fannie Mae started underwriting bad loans - to people without high enough incomes, or without the sufficient capital to normally get a loan. These bad loans were on sold to private companies, who assumed that, as Fannie and Freddie were government affiliated, their debt securities were back by the U.S. treasury. Instead, brokers were just making massive proftis by onselling these loans.The onselling of these loans created massive profits for brokers and the like. Private companies began compiling massive numbers of these loans (assuming that they came with little risk) and putting them in a huge pile, if you like, and just sat there, waitng, as themortgage checks came rolling in each month. As the housing bubble started to collapse, and properties lost their value, mortgage owners began defaulting on their payments. Private Companies, who had taken on massive amounts of debt, began to fail. The U.S. Government decided to bail Fannie and Freddie(and Bear Sterans, and A.I.G.) out, in an attempt to stop the economy fully melting. the companies that didn't get bailed out, who now had massive amounts of debt on their hands, began to fail.

So what? I don't work for one of those failing companies, like the Lehman brothers. heck, I don't even live in the same country. The failing of these corporations is causing a rippling effect. Financial firms are going to be less quick to lend money, and growth of economies everwhere will slow down. Jan Hatzius of Goldman Sachs, predicts that the U.S. economy's G.D.P. will be down 2% in '08 and '09. Consumers, unable to access credit, and fearful of the loomng crisis, are stopping their spending. Retailers and manufacturers are starting to fail - the Big # of car manufacturing, Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler recently flew from Detroit to Washington to beg for a government handout. Jobs will be lost. More mortgage payments will fail to be payed. And people bought these mortgages all over the world - Hungary, Singapore, Brazil. In New Zealand, we're mostly going to be okay, because our banks aren't investment ones, who bought these mortgages - our debt isn't likely to be called in. But the Global economy will slow, and things like exporting, and tourism, some of our biggest earners, will slow. People will lose their jobs, even here, and nobody seems to have come up with the silver bullet that will fix, or at least slow, the meltdown.

(I was going to put a bit of opinion here, but I can't be bothered. Form your own opininon, and tell me in the commets. Am off to study now. Man, this was an ace way to procrastinate.)

Censorship and the AC Blog

There's been quite a lot of talk lately amongst the AC, this time, not about issues around the world but issues within our own blog. Issues about censorship. And I think it's great that these talks are happening because for this blog to be a success we constantly need to self-examine and critically analyse what's going on. Especially if only one person (me) has the privelege on here to determine what does and does not go on this very page.

So I would like to address some of these concerns.

First of all, our school website webpage. Yes, the link to our blog has been taken down. Yes, it was in response to Julia's infamous limerick about Stephen Franks. Yes, it is a shame and we have a right to be annoyed about it. But before everyone gets up in arms about it and starts hurtling abuse towards the WEGC staff, let's take a look back to consider the school's position in this. In response to Helena's blog post, Ms Judge (who helped create the school website and is one of the content administrators) made this position fairly clear.

She said,

"My stance is that I'm proud of what you say on here, but that it is obviously very left-wing and it is a fair point that certain peoples may be offended by your anti-National talk, and it may be seen as a stance of the school, rather than just you expressing your own very articulate and well-reasoned view-points. In theory 50% of the population like National and could be offended by dog-loving-limericks mocking certain politicians from their party. Though, he really brought that on himself.

So for the sake of freedom of speech, rather than ask you to censor what you write on the blog, we reluctantly agreed to take down the link when requested. I personally would much rather take down a link to your blog than request that you edit out or tone down certain things. I think that goes against the spirit of your blog. It certainly caused debate amongst us on a philosophical level. I guess there is always debate around whether a school should visibly connect itself to any kind of politics or views that may offend."

Ms Judge has been a huge supporter of our blog since the early pale-green days, and I know she was very reluctant to do this. We are very lucky to have such a great page on the website, especially one that is placed so prominently. Remember, this blog is aimed at promoting awareness of issues among youths. Our target demographic is the students of WEGC, not their parents. There are plenty of different things we can do next year to make people aware of the blog at school, (posters, business cards, whatever) with no need for consideration of the school's image.

I understand it's still frustrating. But as a left-wing, youth-based activist group with some potentially provocative issues and concerns to bring up, we may have to face instances of censorship like this often. If we didn't, we probably wouldn't be doing our job right.

Now, a response to Jessie's very eloquent blog post about censorship, which you can read just below. Jessie brought up some excellent points about publications censoring swear words. Namely, that deleting words like 'crap' is less about protecting young people than protecting that publication's image. And she is probably entirely right. If it were about protection, they would have given up a long time ago. By the time I was ten, I had heard pretty much the whole spectrum of swear words (and was using the word 'crap' by the time I was about eight.)

Yes, it is all about image, and this applies even to this blog. The policy on this blog for swearing is about the same as a show like The Simpsons. My stance is basically, on the spectrum of swear words (pretty much on a scale of from 'gosh' to 'c***'), you can do pretty much up to a-hole. I've even been pretty lax about enforcing this. I've let a sh*t and a tw*t go past. I understand that sometimes you need to use swear words. However, I have to draw the line somewhere.

The reason for this is that we want to reach the widest audience possible. Though we are an independent group and proud of it, our goal is to get as many young people as we can reading this blog and get them thinking about all sorts of issues and ideas. To do this, we need to provide a welcoming environment where people can read about ideas that may be controversial or different from our own, but presented in a way that doesn't make them offended or upset.

We need to keep in mind that the people who read or who will be reading this blog won't necessarily have the same beliefs or values as the people who write this blog, and may be a different age, gender, ethnicity or religion. While we all might think it's totally acceptable to have lots of swearing on this blog, the Active Collective is made up of pretty much exclusively 16 and 17 year old left-wing women, with fairly similar values. A year 9 girl, for example, might not feel comfortable with reading a blog post full of swearing, and neither might a youth leader interested in finding out more about our group. You never know. I give people this blog's address all the time, to a huge range of people. Last night I gave someone the address half-drunk at a karaoke party. You never know who's going to be reading this, or who we could alienate by the use of swear words.

I'm not asking you to censor your argument or the content of your post for these people, just how you present it. And I know each and every single contributor of this blog is very capable of getting her point across without using swear words. The Simpsons managed to be one of the most biting satires of the 90s (now, not so much), on pretty much the same swearing policy we have. You can do it. I have trust in you.

Onto the final issue. I have just deleted a post (with the author's sort-of permission), for the first time since starting this blog. Now, in fairness to the author and as an example of when censorship WILL be used on this blog, I'll explain why.

The post dealt with, interestingly enough, Stephen Franks, who seems to be turning into a sort of anti-patron saint of the Active Collective. And it was very similar in content to Julia's infamous limerick that led to the removal of the blog link from the school webpage (scroll down to beneath Helen Clark's face to read it). So why did I delete this particular post and not Julia's?

Well, I have to admit that Julia's post was definitely toeing the line of acceptibility. No matter how much we all hate Stephen Franks for his disgusting homophobia and simply being a member of the National Party, calling him a bigot and suggesting a bestialic (?) relationship with his dog is probably not the nicest or eloquent argument Julia could have made (I'm aware it was done very much tongue in cheek). However, it was pretty funny and Julia had obviously put time and thought into writing it so I left it up and thought no more. However, when it was clear the WEGC administration took issue with it and I had a choice whether to take it down or not, I left it up more or less as a symbol of our refusal to submit to the censorship of our content to please the masses. (Gee, I'm starting to look like a really big hypocrite now.)

As I said, the deleted blog post in question was very similar to Julia's in content and in tone. However, it went a step farther in terms of acceptibility. It's one thing to call Stephen Franks a 'bigot' and another thing to call him a 'bigoted, facist d*ckwad'. This directly relates to the swearing and perjorative policy I discussed above. This post wasn't lending at all to this blog's welcoming atmosphere and probably quite a few people would have been offended by this statement, no matter who it was directed at. It made me feel uncomfortable, I have to admit. And boy do I loathe Stephen Franks.

In other circumstances I probably would have asked the author in question to edit out this statement. However, the post was very short and once you took that out there wasn't really much else to it, apart from a reference to the censorship of the blog link and an apology for the content. I thought since both topics (Stephen Franks, blog link), with the same argument, had already been brought up in separate blog posts that there would be nothing new to add to the discussion and decided to delete it entirely. It wasn't a decision I took likely and I hope I don't have to do it again anytime soon. The author in question is an extremely talented writer so I know that she will do a brilliant post sometime soon.

If you have any questions or objections, comment! In the meantime, I'll leave you with a quote from Ms Judge (who possibly quoted it from somewhere else).

"Censorship is a backhanded compliment that acknowledges the potential danger and thus importance of the text."

Censorship and what Dumbledore taught us...

I thought I'd just raise this issue, as not only is it relevant to the issue whether we should have a link on the school page (sort of),  but I have recently been censored by the ministry of education.

I submitted a story to a secondary schools' journal of writing, and it was selected.  However, the Ministry has objected to a particular word I used.  'What word?' I hear you say, intrigued 'It must be really bad.  Was it s***?  Or f***? Or even, shock horror, c***?'  Well, actually, it was a four letter word starting with C, but not the word you're thinking of.  It was, in fact, merely 'crap'.    

This got me a-thinking.

Why can't I use the word crap in my story?  Are the ministry scared that I will sully innocent young minds?  But this journal is a publication of works by teenagers, for teenagers.  Teenagers use words a lot stronger than crap, on a regular basis.   To replace it with 'oh dear' or 'oh no' or even 'blimey' would remove any sense of realism in my story.  I, and I think most of you, would be unable to relate to anyone who said 'blimey' .  We already know that crap things happen in the world, and we don't need to be protected from it. Replacing a word that we already know well and use often with a more innocent word is patronizing.

But I know, and so do you, that the real reason the Ministry cannot allow me to use that particular word is nothing to to with protecting us, and is really the same reason the school doesn't want to be associated with our blog.  It's because it's bad for their image.  People aren't supposed to use those words, much less teenagers, and the Ministry of Education can't be seen to be supporting teenage rebellion.

And then I thought, why does the world persist in hiding from unpleasant words?  Some words I understand - derogatory terms for groups of people, for instance.  But certain words are merely words, and there seems no plausible reason to shy away from them.  In the words of our revered Albus Dumbledore, "fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself".  (pg 216, The Philosopher's Stone) (oh yeah, I am that nerdy) Okay, so I'm not saying that people are scared of swearwords, exactly, but it is only the fact that certain words are considered not polite or obscene which makes them so. There is nothing inherently offensive about and an F or a U or a C or a K by themselves, and really, the word itself is just a (somewhat irreverent) word for the creation of life.   It is our reluctance to use certain words that gives them power.  (Ooer, I like that word.  Power.  You know, I would make such a good evil dictator, far better than that John Key.)  

It just seems kind of pointless to me that words which are often the best at summing up how we feel about the world are considered so bad.  However, I know that this may not be the most important issue surrounding censorship.  I haven't even mentioned freedom of speech.... So, in an effort to gain some relevance, I would just like to say that I would far rather that the school ceased to openly acknowledge our blog then asked us to moderate our language and our ideas.  Censorship smells.  Can we swear properly now Lily?

just pointing this out....

far be it from me to say anything
but um
maybe someone has noticed and just not said anything
but our blog link has GONE!
from the school website
but
if this was just over julias poem? i think a little unfair
free speech people come on!
so what if julia thinks that of stephen franks
yes it may be inaccurate but we're not exactly a media outlet are we?
julia should be able to express her views
as should we all
and people should be able to see what we think
so this post can be deleted if anyone gets annoyed by it
im sorry
but i was just letting people know

The Other Side

Do you, active-collectivite, often feel alienated during discussions? Are you a free market capitalist, with a Sarah Palin pin, who begged their parents to vote for Roger Douglas? Think the U.S. should be drilling for oil, anywhere and everywhere? Well, do I have some day-brighteners for you!

The passage of Proposition 8 has been blamed on:

• Black People
• Old People
• Barack Obama
  

and

• Gay People
  

So when someone says 'Those damn Mormons' you can retaliate, in a really, really statistically* correct fashion.

Can we blame it on minorities? Yes we can!


(Oh, and , here, have some links.)


(Okay, just so everyone knows, about 10% of Voters in California are black. 7 in 10 voted for prop 8, bringing the total black contribution to 7%of the vote. Of the other 9o% of votes, Latino votes (roughly 3x that of African Americans) were about 53% for, and both Asian Americans and uhh...white people? at 49%)

Friday Freaky Sexist Vintage Ads Time

While I was surfing the web on my intended 5-minute-that-somehow-turned-into-30 break from studying, I came across this on http://www.feministing.com/:


Cos' there ain't nothing worse for a lady to have her man be "bored" at dinner! Only Heinz soup for you now, Harry!

Click here for a larger image. And for the truly non-squemish, check out these ads, for Lysol, a brand of um, a vaginal douche, owch (from the 50s so don't worry, no graphic pictures here).

Are they real? Are they fake? Whatever, they made me throw up in my mouth a little bit.

PS Once more I would like to plug http://www.racialicious.com/, this time for their though-provoking opinion pieces on the passing of Prop 8 and its relationship to communities of colour in California.

Helen, We Hardly Knew Ye

Props to our former Prime Minister, a cool lady who lead us through the last nine years, making many mistakes but leaving us relatively unscathed by the end of it. Something tells me she'll be missed a great deal.

It's not all bad!

There once was a party of cranks
and their biggest bigot was Franks
he said "gays can't snog
but it's great with my dog"
so he went down in Wellington, thanks!

Proposition 8 Passes

Once again, congratulations to the 'Bama for Baracking the Vote!

The majority of the American public were able to look past Obama's race to give him a landslide electoral vote. (Interestingly, he only won about 50% of the vote compared with 47% for McCain. Funny how the American voting system works, eh?)

However, this same public has gone a step back for another minority group: lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Unfortunately, Proposition 8 has passed in the state of California. This means that the California Constitution will be amended to define marriage as between a man and a woman, once again making same-sex marriage illegal. Prop 8 passed mainly because of the huge amounts of money poured into anti-gay advertising by the Mormon and Roman-Catholic church. Despite donations and campaigning from such people such as Brad Pitt and Ellen Degeneres, anti-Prop 8 groups such as the Human Rights Campaign simply couldn't compete with that money and power.

This is a huge setback for the gay rights movement, especially considering three other states passed anti-gay measures, including gay marriage bans in Arizona and Florida, and a measure that bans unmarried couples (ie LGBT couples) from adopting or fostering children in Florida. 30 US states have already banned gay marriage, and it is only legal in Connecticut and Massachusetts (maybe they only support gay marriage in states with really long and hard to spell names?).

America proclaims to be a country that values equality. But they've got a long way to go. In American society, coloured people are not equal to whites, women are not equal to men, and LGBT people are certainly not equal to straight people. Electing Obama is certainly a step in the right direction, but the American people need to do more to show us that they can live up to the statement in the Declaration of Independence which says, "All men are created equal."

[On a happier note regarding human rights, here's news from scoop.co.nz: "South Dakota rejected ( for the second time) a proposition to ban abortion - a proposal that had been designed to trigger a subsequent challenge to Roe vs Wade in the US Supreme Court. Thanks to South Dakotans and to the three Supreme Court appointments that President Obama will make during his first term in office, the old theocratic dream of overturning Roe vs Wade is now dead."]

THE OBAMA FOR THE WIN!!!

Thank freakin' fanasmica.

sayonara palin!

Election Erection

Sorry, I had to use that title once. And sorry, all lovely and discerning teacher/parents that have travelled here from our much more decent school website page, for my unheralded vulgarity.

BUT TODAY IS THE DAY! As of 9.26pm NZ time it is 4.26am in New York. Soon, voters will be heading to the polls.

I'm too tired to post any information or opinions (though of course McCain/Palin = epic fail), so I'll point you again in the direction of Gordon Campbell's fantabulous election blog on Scoop. In this post he gives a rundown of what order the results will come in and what states will have the deciding vote.

I'm hoping someone will bring a tv or something to share in the common room... Unfortunately that probably won't be the case. By the time we get back from school it will be 11pm the previous day in NY, so we may find out the winner by then. In any case, ye must watch The Daily Show's election coverage on C4 tomorrow night at 10.30. JON STEWART IS MY HUSBAND!

All we can do now is watch and wait. May the swing states be with you, Barack.

BTW: Photo stolen from http://punditkitchen.com/. Thanks for the link, Maddy C!

on Cultural Pricetag

so...i hear the distant echoes of one bemoaning the use of the Haka (Ka Mate) by foreigners. Even though its quite late news, it just entered the station of registration. So there is some american movie about an- of course- american rugby team (called forever strong), who happens to perform the haka before they play. At first, i was thinking "American...New Zealand Haka...wha...why? I don't really sense a connection..." of course, maybe it is used for its symbolic representations- fearlessness, i will defeat yo'... ect.
Right, and of course, early on this century, there was a maori tribe (Ngati Toa(?) that, thankfully, unsuccesfully tried to TRADEMARK the haka (the man who wrote it was from their tribe). And again, they're trying to place dibs on ownership (They also re-applied for a hearing so they could trademark it recently again...).
I'm actually not too sure what to think on the Americans using the Haka, because apparantly the team was based off a team that actually existed and did the haka at games a long while back, and its kinda like an exspansion of kiwiana in the world...albeit by americans...so...@_@ maybe they should have asked? I'm not too settled on it. But what i think is that is ridiculous that anyone would attempt (and again!) to trademark the haka in which they could reap 1.5 million for its use (like from the all blacks). I mean, what the heck man, the Haka belongs to all New Zealanders, it is a mark, a part of every new zealanders heritage- especially to maoris who does not belong to that iwi. Spokesperson from the tribe said: "All we ask for is some fairness, even a koha or scholarships or something that will come back feasibly to the iwi."
also...that "Maori should be able to use intellectual property rights to protect their culture so they don't have to endure the further bastardisation of their culture. "
IMHO. it makes the people in this iwi come off as greedy people. How can it be "It's just only between us, but if they want it, they can- if they talk to us and give us some money- it'd be fine". I don't think a koha should be given to the iwi of the man who wrote this, cause he's also a "New Zealander".
p.s. also, i don't think the tribe will go anywhere with their trademarking, cause apparantly intellectual copyright expires 50 years after death, and cause its pretty much ridiculous. i think there was also some robbie william thing over how he had some maori tattoo art done, and some Maoris were a bit angry over it...