War | Issue 7

Vol. 78 Issue 07 Be not afraid / 12 Why uncritically venerating the ANZACs scars our national psyche.

Lest we remember / 16 The New Zealand Wars took place on our own soil. So where are the commemorations?

Two birds flipped at the West / 20 One of the world’s most neglected nations has found itself at the centre of global politics, and it’s all thanks to cocaine.

Full circle / 26 A nation’s doomed struggle to escape its autocratic past.

War

20 April

Contents 04-11

12-26

News

05

“Fucked cunts” apprehended

09

David Seymour still relevant as ever

12

Regular Content

Feature Writer Charlotte Doyle

Design and Illustration Ella Bates-Hermans Lily Paris West

Distributor Beckie Wilson

Senior News Editor Sophie Boot News Editor Nicola Braid Chief Sub Editor Kimaya McIntosh

News Interns Emma Hurley Charlie Prout Francesca Shepard Beckie Wilson Elea Yule

Section Editors Ruth Corkill (Science) Sharon Lam (Visual Arts) Baz Macdonald (Gaming) Jayne Mulligan (Books) Alice Reid (Music) Fairooz Samy (Film) Other Contributors Lucy Wardle, Matt Walker, Brittany Mackie, Joe Cruden, George Block, Tom and Luke, Lydia and Mitch, Jess Knipping, Kari Schmidt, Stephen Hay, Jack Young, Cassie Richard, Kate Robertson, Harriet Riley, Patrick Savill, Bridget Pyć, Raimona Tapiata, Rick Zwaan, Rory Lenihan-Ikin

Be not afraid

Why uncritically venerating the ANZACs scars our national psyche.

By Philip McSweeney.

16

Lest we remember

20

03 Editorial 10 PUZZLES, YEAH THAT’S RIGHT WE CAVED 31 The Week in Feminism 32 Loosely Inspired (by The Bachelor) 33 The Moan Zone 33 We Drank This So You Wouldn’t Have To 34 Film 36 Games 37 Books 38 Music 40 Visual Arts 41 Food 42 Science 44 Maori Matters 45 VUWSA 46 Letters and Notices

Editor Sam McChesney

Features

26

The New Zealand Wars took place on our own soil. So where are the commemorations?

By Charlotte Doyle.

Two birds flipped at the West

One of the world’s most neglected nations has found itself at the centre of global politics, and it’s all thanks to cocaine.

By Sam McChesney.

Full circle

A nation’s doomed struggle to escape its autocratic past.

By Matt Walker.

Contact Level 2, Student Union Building Victoria University P.O. Box 600, Wellington Phone: 04 463 6766 Editor: editor@salient.org.nz News Editor: news@salient. org.nz Website: salient.org.nz Twitter: @salientmagazine Facebook: facebook.com/ salientmagazine Advertising Email: sales@vuwsa.org.nz Phone: 04 463 6982

Printed By Guardian Print, Ashburton

About Us Salient is published by, but is editorially independent from, the Victoria University of Wellington Students’ Association (VUWSA).

Salient is a member of the Aotearoa Student Press Association (ASPA) and the New Zealand Press Council.

Salient is funded in part by Victoria University of Wellington students through the Student Services Levy.

The views expressed in Salient do not necessarily reflect those of the Editor, VUWSA, or the University.

Complaints People with a complaint against the magazine should first complain in writing to the Editor and then, if not satisfied with the response, complain to the Press Council. See presscouncil.org.nz/complain.php for more information.

Editorial Sam McChesney

The actual worst thing about VSM, OMG you guys Sitting through a relentlessly cordial Executive meeting last Tuesday, I couldn’t help casting my mind back to the halcyon days before VSM. Voluntary Student Membership (VSM) happened a few years ago. Older students will wearily roll their eyes at hearing that fucking acronym (sorry, initialism) for the billionth fucking time; younger students will appreciate my double use of the word “fucking” but won’t really know what this sentence is about; and first-years probably don’t read the editorial anyway because I’m old and I spell words out in full and I don’t twerk or write about Dora the Explorer.

Basically, before VSM, everybody had to be a member of VUWSA, even the ones who really hated VUWSA. And if a large proportion of the student body didn’t want anything to do with VUWSA, VUWSA didn’t really have to care because, well, see above.

It was the constitutional equivalent of locking a bunch of aggressive howler monkeys in a small room together and watching them splatter each other with shit. It was fucking marvellous. Between 2009 (when I first started paying attention to student politics) and 2011 (when VSM passed) I ate so much goddamn popcorn.

I was at Otago, and as recently as 2010 some of the policies on OUSA’s books included:

all conversations in 2011 ended in personal abuse.

—“That OUSA put pressure on the Government to oppose all European immigration into NZ until the governments of Europe and Northern America stomp on their Neo-Nazi fascist groups.”

Recently David Seymour declared how great it was that VSM passed. I found this ironic.

The reality is that though ACT won that battle, it may have lost the war.

—“That this SGM recommends that OUSA spend $250,000 on its own penis-shaped skytower, design to be commissioned by Stephen La Roche and built by IGM.” [Later amended to specify that the tower instead be vulva shaped.]

I can’t speak to similar things happening at VUWSA, but I understand the 2008 VUWSA president used to openly campaign for the Workers’ Party in his official capacity as President. There was also, of course, The One With the Psychic Hotline and The One With The Pimped Out Van. Best of all was the constant presence (but only because they were forced, they were FORCED) of ACT On Campus. Aside from an unfortunate tendency to use rape analogies to try and win Facebook arguments, ACT On Campus were a reliably game, entertaining bunch of swivel-eyed batshit loons.

Almost every student president was either a member of Young Labour or an outright commie. Those that didn’t openly shill for the revolution of the proletariat, the forcible redistribution of wealth, and collective ownership over the means of production were instantly labelled crypto-fascist ACT sympathisers by said commies.

God how I hated them at the time. God how I miss them now. Getting into 50-comment arguments over the finer points of the right to freedom of association, or whether altruism is all a sham (OMG, cos, like, helping orphans made Mother Theresa feel good, so she was actually being selfish all along!), were some of the most satisfying stretches of self-righteous rage I have ever experienced.

It was an era of Olympian levels of entitlement from the beardies and weirdies.

Associations still carried out most of their voting through village-hall style general meetings, and left-wing groups would habitually stack the meetings to vote in a set of (often extremely bizarre) external policies.

The debate over VSM was especially great.

One student president got drunk and called Sir Roger Douglas a “dinosaur” and a “cunt” on Facebook. The same president was also physically assaulted by an ACT On Campus member, who had been waving a sign saying “I love liberty”. A good third of

ACT has always relied on a hearty wedge of youthful arrogance and naïveté, which is needed to keep blood pumping to the party’s shrivelled patrician heart. Without ACT On Campus, the party is basically a vegetable. Pre-VSM, ACT On Campus had the ultimate stage on which to play the pantomime villain of student politics, a role it fulfilled to near perfection. Now, its vituperative message has no place: why bitch if you can just leave; and if you have left, why enter the discussion at all?

What I’m portraying as great (because it was hilarious and helped to fill column inches by the truckload) is now anathema to VUWSA. Ideology is a dirty word; nobody at VUWSA gives away their beliefs for fear of plunging the organisation back to the “bad old days”.

Rick Zwaan would probably be really pissed off if I told you that he’s actually a massive Greenie, so I won’t. VUWSA is financially somewhat poorer, but objectively better in every other way than it was before VSM. ACT On Campus have crawled back to the Fourth Circle of Hell, or wherever it is they hang out. Facebook is civilised.

God, it’s just. So. Fucking. Boring.

04

Person of the Week:

salient

By the Numbers 2000 When Alabama became the last state to overturn a law banning interracial marriage.

40 per cent of Alabamans voted to keep the ban.

90% The amount by which a young American CEO, Dan Price, cut his salary. He will now earn US$70,000—the same as his employees.

269 The number of zoomed-in photos of women’s breasts and buttocks Errol Standeven took in Hagley Park in Christchurch. His conviction for offensive behaviour has been quashed. Fucking creep.

Hillary Clinton Clinton announced her intention to run for United States President on April 12, after years of speculation. If elected, she would be the first female president in the US’ 226 years of electing presidents. With the presidential election still over 550 days away, get ready to see a lot more of Hillary.

0 Restaurant Brands has scrapped zero hour contracts, meaning employees at KFC, Starbucks and Pizza Hutt are guaranteed work.

10 Years your passport will be likely be valid in the future.

Current NZ passports are valid for five years, and cost $135 to renew.

www.salient.org.nz

issue 7

05

NEWS. KEE N EYE FOR NEWS? S END ANY T IPS , LEADS OR GOSSIP TO NE WS @S ALIENT.ORG.NZ

“Fucked cunts” apprehended Watch out m8, Philippe is coming 4 u Emma Hurley Wellington Police have arrested two men in relation to a spate of burglaries in Aro Valley, Thorndon and Kelburn.

Erahi Ripohau, 31, and Ricky Moeke, 28, appeared in Wellington District Court on April 11 on charges of burglary and receiving stolen property.

Wellington acting prevention manager Steve Dearns said the pair were involved in several recent burglaries in innercity Wellington, but “there may be other offenders or groups of offenders at work”.

There has been increased activity in “an inner-city corridor stretching from Thorndon to Aro Valley”, yet overall the number of burglaries in the Wellington region is equal to previous years.

True to Mr Bradfield’s claim, in almost every case the offenders accessed properties through open windows or unlocked doors. Police said some of these properties were flats where occupants left doors open for other flatmates returning home.

“Police ask that in these cases, occupiers and house owners are cautious and lock doors and windows even if someone is planning to return home later.”

He said police would prefer someone to have their sleep interrupted by a flatmate returning home, than to report a break-in the next morning.

Police would also like residents to be mindful of where things are situated on their property.

Student Facebook page Vic Deals had been busy with comments on the burglaries after one member posted about his flat getting burgled.

If items such as outdoor furniture or ladders have been moved, particularly to against a building wall, this could be a sign that an uninvited person has been on your property.

Member Philippe Bradfield warned the group that “Some fucked cunt is going around Aro Valley robbing houses at night. Lock your doors cus they’re only going into open doors. And if it’s you, watch out m8 in coming 4 u [sic]”.

If anyone has information regarding suspicious behaviour in Thorndon, Kelburn or Aro Valley they can contact Wellington Police on (04) 381 2198, or do so anonymously via Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.

editor@salient.org.nz

06

Feejoa card may be rotten Charlie Prout

News

Alcohol awareness groups have criticised a new loyalty card that aims to assist student loan holders.

The Feejoa card—created in conjunction with the IRD—rebates five per cent of members’ purchases as student loan repayments.

On Feejoa’s website, it claims that the loyalty card is helping with “a deeply unloved aspect of modern life”—working with the Inland Revenue Department.

Currently a few bars, primarily in Auckland, and Warehouse Stationery stores have accepted the use of these loyalty cards.

Some alcohol-awareness groups are worried that the adoption of Feejoa cards by bars will promote binge drinking.

Rebecca Williams, a spokesperson for Alcohol Healthwatch, said that young people do not need encouragement to drink more.

salient

we’re encouraging them to drink more just so they can get some kind of outcome or reward on their student loan,” Williams told reporters.

Feejoa also charges a service fee of 5.75 per cent, which is deducted off merchant contributions prior to passing to the IRD. Auckland University Students’ Association President Paul Smith said he saw the card as highlighting deeper issues with our student loan system, a view shared by VUWSA President Rick Zwaan.

“It will be interesting to see where it goes.

Hopefully it expands within Wellington to help reduce the overwhelming debt that students and graduates face.”

Feejoa claims that 1000 people have already signed up to the card. Currently the eight bars involved in the scheme are situated in Christchurch and Auckland, with AUT’s student bar, Vesbar, also adopting the scheme.

“[Young people] have the highest prevalence of heavy drinking in our population, and

Headline disappoints after Salient runs out of housingrelated puns Nicola Braid

The Wellington City Council will lobby the Government to introduce mandatory standards for rental housing in 2015.

Over the last year the WCC has been trying to establish a rental house Warrant of Fitness programme along with local councils from around New Zealand.

The Council commissioned a field test that found that only six per cent of the 144 houses surveyed passed Warrant of Fitness standards. Further trials were conducted by

www.salient.org.nz

Housing New Zealand, which saw similarly high failure rates.

According to the WCC, the body is reliant on central Government support before any of its Warrant of Fitness initiatives can go ahead.

Despite the Government’s claims in 2013 that it would work to implement a Warrant of Fitness programme, little progress has been made.

Housing Minister Nick Smith told Salient that the Government “remains open-minded about changes in standards [for rental homes] but is taking time to get the detail right” so as to not exacerbate the current housing crisis.

When asked if any alternative plans to raise housing standards were under consideration, Smith’s office did not reply.

Labour’s associate spokesperson for housing Poto Williams said that although her party supported moves by the WCC to implement minimum standards for rental housing, “it shouldn’t be up to local councils to make up for the Government’s lack of action.”

Williams criticised National for “dragging its heels” when it came to tackling the quality of rental housing in New Zealand.

Wellington Mayor Celia Wade-Brown told Salient that “only the Government can make it mandatory, we hope they do but if they don’t then we’re in a good position to introduce a voluntary programme.”

Labour MP Phil Twyford’s Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill (2015) was recently defeated in Parliament. The Bill proposed measures that would have ensured rental houses in New Zealand had minimum standards of warmth and insulation.

New Zealand Union of Students’Associations President Rory McCourt claims that NZ First leader Winston Peters’ victory in the Northland by-election would now provide a Parliamentary majority in favour of the bill, which was voted down 60-60.

According to the latest census over one third of New Zealanders are are living in rental houses, with 23.8 per cent of households in the Wellington region paying some form of rent.

News

issue 7

07

Eye On Exec This week Salient is needlessly bitchy, but it’s nothing $1800 of holographic stickers won’t cure

Sam McChesney As is his wont, President Rick conducted the majority of 30 March’s Executive meeting in a closed session. In fairness to Rick, though, the Exec were passing the budget, and if there’s one thing that students shouldn’t know about it’s how and why VUWSA spends their money.

The Exec also pulled its shroud of secrecy over another matter, which Salient is going to report on anyway because it’s about us— we’re bringing back Salient TV, and we needed some startup funds to tide us over until HBO buys us out for millions of dollars and we all retire to a tropical beach to hang with John Campbell.

So for the 14 April meeting, there would surely be none of that highly classified shit left to discuss. Salient infiltrated the VUWSA lair, bright-eyed and armed with a Red Bull, eager to sit through two hours’ worth of crap too boring to bother putting into committee. But when we arrived, it appeared half the Exec were still on holiday.

“Don’t worry, we’ve got quorum,” Rick assured the room. “Jonathan’s just in the toilet.”

When Jonathan returned from his poo, he had brought some baking. It looked delicious, but in the spirit of journalistic integrity Salient declined.

The first order of business was Planning Day. The Exec’s Planning Day is (or by the time you read this, was) on Friday. They had planned to plan the Planning Day at the meeting, but after ten minutes or so of planning they planned to finalise the plans for Planning Day by email. Or perhaps they didn’t; Salient was a bit confused.

At the Planning Day, the Exec will draft a new five-year plan for the organisation.

They’ve lacked a proper five-year plan for a while: the existing plan was drafted before Voluntary Student Membership, which as we all know fundamentally transformed VUWSA from a moderately well-funded organisation with a really nice van into a gaggle of vanless losers. The new five-year will better reflect current realities.

Rick then did his favourite thing, and moved the Exec into committee to discuss plans to overhaul the VUWSA website, which is a piece of shit. Before doing so, he did reveal that “a few grand” had been allocated to the redesign (to be frank, “a few” probably won’t cut it), and that currently VUWSA doesn’t even have full admin access to its own site.

Worst of all, the homepage’s link to the Salient website is wrong (it’s .org.nz, you fuckers).

The VUWSA credit card receipts were then tabled. These need to be approved by the Exec as a whole because the card is under Rick’s name. David Seymour might want to take note of the fact that the Exec apparently spent $1840 on holographic stickers, as well as $683.71 on something that just said “Direct Debit Payment—Thank You”.

(You’re welcome?)

“Can I just say one thing?” asked SecretaryTreasurer Jacinta. “I would like to know what these are?” Um, duh—they’re holographic stickers and seven-hundred-dollar thankyou notes. Jeez Jacinta, keep up.

To avoid further awkwardness, the Exec delegated the responsibility for approving future credit card statements to the Audit and Finance Committee—but don’t

worry, readers. We will track down those holographic stickers. This ain’t over.

Jacinta then presented the Exec’s work reports. Most of the Exec have worked at least 20 hours above their required number since the start of the year. The exceptions were Equity Officer Chennoah, who was 0.2 hours behind (the students demand those 12 minutes, Chennoah), and Clubs and Activities Rory, who was 26.95 hours behind. The latter will henceforth be known as “naughty Rory” to distinguish him from Wellbeing and Sustainability Rory (aka “good Rory”), who was 52.3 hours ahead.

Rick (117.2 hours ahead) and Campaigns Officer Nathaniel (112.05 hours ahead) are leading the having-no-lives competition.

Jacinta encouraged the Exec to take some time off during exams (to which Salient would add, also remember to eat and sleep and go poos).

During his President’s report, Rick declared he had had a “lovely week off ” during which he stayed away from all forms of communication. “I know,” Chennoah said. “I ended up leaving a message with your dad.”

Rick then gloated about the recent IGM, which achieved quorum in record time. This is possibly because the meeting was held in the Hub, and VUWSA considered anybody looking at them in confusion, or even just sitting down in the general vicinity, to be “attending” the meeting. During the meeting VUWSA also trended on Twitter, because if there’s one thing that screams “student engagement” as opposed to just “beltway crowd slapping each other on the back”, it’s Twitter.

editor@salient.org.nz

08

salient

News

DebSocking it to them Nicktoria is Nicktorious yet again Elea Yule

Victoria DebSoc’s reign of glory continues, after their 17th consecutive win at the New Zealand University Impromptu Debating Championships (“Easters”).

board. “It was really exciting to have had such great performances by our new speakers, right through to Vic 6, this tournament, as well as from the veterans.”

Over the course of the tournament, which ran from 3-6 April in Auckland, Victoria 1— comprising Nick Cross and Nick Gavey— amassed a total of seven wins and 1,538 speaker points.

Maddy Nash was named Most Promising Speaker while both Liam Dennis and Harrison Fookes achieved Promising Speaker awards. James Gavey achieved accreditation as a judge.

Vic 1 broke first, meaning they were the top ranked team going into the finals. The went on to conquer Auckland 1 in the final, where they negated the motion “This House believes that comedians should not use racist, sexist or homophobic language, even for the purposes of satire.”

Savill is optimistic that DebSoc’s epic era of victory may yet continue. “It’s been a great achievement over several generations of debaters to make it to 17 years, and this Easters bodes well for the next generation chasing an 18th.”

Both Cross and Gavey made it into the New Zealand Impromptu team, with Gavey also awarded Best Speaker.

Easters 2016 will include debaters who were not alive the last time Victoria failed to win the tournament.

DebSoc President Kimberley Savill said Victoria performed exceptionally across the

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www.salient.org.nz

issue 7

David Seymour still relevant as ever

News

09

MPs who were student politicians

LABOUR

Tim Grgec

GREEN

Metiria Turei Co-leader —Tumuaki, Te Iwi Maori Rawakore o Aotearoa, 1989-91 James Shaw List MP —VUWSA Executive Officer, 1992-93

ACT Party leader and alleged hologram David Seymour has lashed out against the New Zealand Union of Students’ Associations (NZUSA) amid claims the organisation is on the decline.

NZUSA—a membership body of students’ associations that advocates on behalf of students—will have only 10 members left by the end of the year, after VUWSA and OUSA last year notified their intention to withdraw.

Andrew Little Leader of the Opposition —VUWSA President, 1987 —NZUSA President, 1988-89

Jan Logie List MP —NZUSA Women’s Coordinator, 1993-96

This exodus prompted concerns from Labour Tertiary Education Minister David Cunliffe, who said that “despite representing 400,000 tertiary students, the union established in 1929 [NZUSA] may have to fold.”

Grant Robertson Deputy Leader of the Opposition —OUSA President, 1993 —NZUSA Co-President, 1996.

Seymour, however, welcomed the decline. “The decline of student unionism proves what we’ve always suspected: students never wanted to join unions and now it seems the unions themselves don’t want to join NZUSA.”

Chris Hipkins MP for Rimutaka —VUWSA President, 2000-01

Paula Bennett Cabinet Minister —MUSA Welfare Officer, 1995 —MUSA President, 1996

The Epsom MP and voice of oppressed students across New Zealand discussed the futility of student unions.

Ian Lees-Galloway MP for Palmerston North —MUSA President, 2005

Hekia Parata Cabinet Minister —WSU President, 1980

“The union has typically lobbied as though students never graduate. They consistently argue for subsidies and price controls that will lower the quality of education while whacking taxpaying graduates. This is likely because many student politicians themselves never graduate.”

Seymour went on to explain ACT’s involvement in NZUSA’s downfall.

“Thanks to ACT’s Voluntary Student Membership (VSM) bill”—which, when passed in 2011, sparked scenes of exultation and jubilance across universities nationwide—“tertiary students are no longer forced to fund breeding grounds for aspiring socialist politicians.”

Having successfully graduated with a Bachelor of Engineering and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Auckland, Seymour himself was clearly above engaging in student politics.

Trevor Mallard MP for Hutt South —Wellington Teachers’ College Student President, 1976 Jenny Salesa MP for Manukau East —Founding President, Auckland Pacific Island Law Students’ Association, 1993-95

NATIONAL

Todd Muller MP for Bay of Plenty —WSU President, 1992

UNITED FUTURE Peter Dunne Leader of United Future, Minister of Internal Affairs —UCSA Vice President,1974 —UCSA President, 1975 —UCSA Executive, 1976 editor@salient.org.nz

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PUZZLES! You asked for puzzles, so we delivered: Salient is proud to present the world’s first meta-puzzle! Only one of these Sudokus is possible—but which one???

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News

issue 7

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Biting the hand that weeds A blind man has told a French court it was he, not his guide dog, who bit a weed dealer who tried to sell him everyday grass instead of cannabis. The man was reportedly involved in an altercation with the dealer, dubbed the “lawn seller”, after the dealer took €100 from the blind man for a bag of plain lawn grass.

Ouest France quoted the unnamed man as testifying in court, “I bit him. My dog didn’t do it. Guide dogs are not attack dogs.” The blind man was sentenced to four months’ home detention for the incident.

What not to do when your boss is a dick Russian in to stop some memes Roskomnadzor—the Russian Federal executive body for overseeing media—has banned all internet memes that feature photographs of Russian celebrities. The decision follows an earlier court ruling that a meme depicting Russian singer Valery Syutkin violated his privacy. The media watchdog posted the statement on its VK account (Russia’s version of Facebook): “Violation of legislation on personal data in relation to public figures includes use of the photo of a public person to impersonate popular Internet memes, unrelated to the identity of the ‘celebrity’.” Hopefully this means no more Vladimir Putin memes clogging your FB newsfeed.

Prize jizz stolen Approximately NZ$90,000 of frozen bull semen was recently stolen from a Minnesota farm. According to state police, the thieves had specifically targeted the prized bulls’ sperm, as it was the only thing stolen from the unlocked barn.

Chief Deputy of Mower County Sheriff ’s Department, Mark May, said, “this semen was frozen in a canister, kind of like a milk jug.” Artificial insemination to increase genetic diversity within herds is a common practice in cattle farming.

Chimp 1; Drone 0 A chimpanzee of the Royal Burgers’ Zoo in Arnhem, the Netherlands, was reportedly caught on camera knocking a drone to the ground by hitting it with a stick. The drone was filming the chimpanzee enclosure for a television programme. A statement from the zoo said: “The intelligent primates immediately discovered the spying little plane and right away armed themselves with long sticks against this inquisitive intruder.” With a direct hit the animal knocked the drone to the ground, where the group of primates quickly overpowered the “prey”.

A Perth woman recently lost a claim before Australia’s industrial tribunal that she was unfairly dismissed, after she accidentally texted her boss calling him a “complete dick”. Ms. Nisbett, an office bookkeeper, mistakenly sent the text to her employer instead of her daughter’s boyfriend, who had been contracted for plumbing work at the office. She was subsequently fired. In court, Nisbett appealed the dismissal, claiming the text was characteristic of her sense of humour. However, Fair Work Commissioner Danny Cloghan helpfully explained that “a ‘dick’ is a derogatory term to describe an idiot or fool. The word ‘complete’ is used to convey the message that the person is, without exception, an idiot or a fool—they are nothing less that a ‘dick’.”

“I’d bottom for Hillary” In support of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential candidacy bid, a group of homosexual men in San Francisco have launched the “I’d bottom for Hillary” campaign. The campaign’s founder, Ryan, had been a supporter of Clinton ever since she first ran for candidacy in 2008. In regard to his t-shirt based campaign, he explained, “gay men who understand the joke have responded well. It is amazing watching people read the shirt and seeing it register.” According to the Urban Dictionary, bottoming is: “a homosexual male who either a) enjoys receiving anal penetration or b) is actively involved in being anally penetrated.”

editor@salient.org.nz

Be Not Afraid Phillip McSweeney

issue 7

13

has it shaped—how does it perpetuate—our national identity today?

•

It was early morning on 25 April, 1915. A convoy of Australian and New Zealand soldiers had just sighted Gallipoli, a beach in the Dardanelles where the lucky would reside for years. Ellis Silas noted in his diary “the weather this morning is beautiful; what will it be tonight?”

But I’m getting ahead of myself: for the purposes of my article, let’s propel ourselves forward half a century, to a swampy hamlet in Vietnam. It’s 15 March, 1968. It was in the light of early morning when a squadron of American soldiers entered the sub-hamlet of Xom Lang, expecting a heated standoff with Viet Cong soldiers. They found instead a group of civilians, preparing for a typical day of trading their wares. They were massacred, unceremoniously, their bodies thrown in ditches and shallow graves. Women were raped, gang-raped and murdered. Children, infants and even foetuses were not left unaccosted. One soldier, upon seeing a heavily pregnant villager, garotted her stomach, threw her in a makeshift mass grave and left her to die in unimaginable agony, which she accordingly did. A group of sixty were killed, screaming, while praying at a temple. A soldier asked the eldest woman in the village to come with him; she laughed, refused, and spat in his face. She was shot at pointblank range once, and the rest of the clip was devoted to riddling her dead body with gun-shots. Those that survived pretended to be dead and hid underneath the carcasses of their families. Speaking of families: twentyfour familial lines, comprising of three or four generations, were entirely obliterated.

The total death toll reached 504; countless more were wounded, tortured or raped.

The massacre now goes by the name of My Lai. It has been described as “America’s National Shame”.

• On Wellington’s Lambton Quay, one of the ubiquitous ATM machines looks a bit different. ANZ, fresh of the back of its GAYTM campaign (I ain’t sayin’ she emblematic of the commercialisation of the Gay community, but she ain’t messin’ with no other marginalised sub-cultures, UHH) has launched an ATM emblazoned with red flowers—poppies—set against a black background. It’s either sponsored or co-signed by the RSA, and on top of the machine there’s a slogan: “together we’re honouring a century of the ANZAC spirit”.

I’m not sure what this means but it feels like it represents the peak of something: the only way the corporation’s ideology and the events of ANZAC Day overlap is, perhaps, that both characterise machinations of control that most people are unaware of. The frankly insulting integration of “together”, a supplication and a guilt trip that says “if you don’t use this ATM or bank with ANZ UR DISRESPECTING OUR TROOPS”. That the bank has the gall to capitalise on the loss of troops for the sake of generating custom is telling. There is as much reprehensible manipulation going on here as an ersatz claim to support “queer culture” while systemically mis-gendering and mis-naming its trans clientèle. But what caught my interest was the use of “ANZAC spirit”: what is the ANZAC spirit, and how

The origins of World War One are more difficult to pinpoint than those of its sequel. The path to World War Two can be tidily plotted in a neat line of causeand-effect, escalation and appeasement.

World War One, conversely, was the result of a conglomeration of festering tensions, territorial disputes, combatting imperial ambitions, makeshift alliances and concerns over spheres of influence. It was the bullet plugged into Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s head that ricocheted not just out of his cranium but into the series of events that comprised “The Great War”, but this was in many ways a pretext for the two divided alliances of Europe to commence hostilities.

Many historians continue to lay the blame firmly at Germany’s door, notably Max Hastings, who claims that Germany planned to enslave the rest of Europe because of a national feeling of inadequacy regarding their lateness to the expansionist game. As your Granddad might put it, the bloody sour krauts were bloody wrong twice in thirty years.

• Twelve years before World War One broke out, the British armed forces fought in the second Boer war. They were fighting not against the South African natives but the Dutch for dominion of a land that wasn’t theirs to begin with. I mention this trifling detail only to point out that Germany was hardly the only European power to crave expansion. It’s a pretty rich irony that New Zealand, an occupied and ruthlessly colonised country, was involved in World War One only because of the same ideologies that Britain purported to fight against.

• Regardless of whether or not Britain’s motives were entering the war were noble or ig-, the propaganda that induced New Zealanders to enter the fight didn’t exactly outline a set of ethical persuasions. “The Empire needs men: helped by the young lions, the old lion defeats its foe”; “Where she goes, we go”; “Britain needs you at once”; “What will you answer be when your boy asks: ‘Father, what did YOU do when Britain fought for freedom in 1915?’”; “Stop HIM— and the job’s done”, captioned over the top of a snarling Asian visage with grotesque facial features and squinting eyes. Presumably, this is an artist’s rendering of a Turk. The portrait looks inhuman.

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• I, like many New Zealanders, have an ancestor who died at Gallipoli. He would have been my Grandfather’s uncle. I have known this since I was young, for as long as I can remember. His name was Piers, and his story has been passed down since, like an heirloom or intimate bequeathment.

Apparently it tore apart his family; his mother was, said my Granddad on the rare occasions he could be coerced into discussing it, never the same. His father grew taciturn and took to tending gardens. It was only in the course of researching this article that I discovered he was not the only family member who perished during the course of the war. My Grandfather’s aunt and Piers’ sister, whom I had never heard of, is listed as living in New Zealand as a 16-year-old. Her name was Jessie.

• On 25 April troops from New Zealand and Australia landed at Gallipoli. In 1914, the Ottoman Empire had signed a covert treaty unifying them with Germany. Famously, the officers in charge of the Gallipoli invasion based some of their strategy on the word of Egyptian tour guides, and their sense of superiority over the Turkish people led them to believe that immediate Turkish surrender would be the likely outcome.

Their intelligence was incorrect. A Turkish General correctly calculated where the Allies would land. You know the rest.

• When we talk about “ANZAC spirit”, what do we mean? What attributes shown in the battle do we choose and which do we discard? Our soldiers are portrayed as brave in the face of slaughter, industrious, patriotic, principled. The diary of Ellis Silas encapsulates the mindset we treasure: “I do not feel the least fear, only a sincere hope we do not fail at the critical moment”. He is referring to his fears that he might, horror of horrors, fail Britain, a country he had never visited, based only on a tenuous link forged by morally indefensible colonialism.

Another famous passage: “We were scared stiff—I know I was—but keyed up and eager to be on our way”. Why do we focus on the accounts of the fearless, of those in www.salient.org.nz

possession of a “stiff upper lip”? Why do we consign entries like these to locked rooms in national libraries, relegated to afterthought or anomaly: “Oh Mummy I am so scared”; “This is hell, let it be over by Christmas”; “I have never been more alone”; “it’s just hell here now”; “please, I beg you merciful God, take me home”?

• The debate about whether commemorating ANZAC Day glorifies war is tired. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. We’ve all encountered the kind of tripe that overtly glamorises fighting, most recently in a film directed by a man who lost an argument against an empty chair. Or that kind of novel, we were just sitting in our army-issued SUV when a rocket hissed past us and all hell broke loose I grabbed my rifle. If you don’t feel comfortable with the militaristic associations of the red poppy, you can purchase a white one and only the most conservative of military drones will rag on you for it. A more fruitful line of enquiry is acknowledging that the events at Gallipoli have been reified into our national psyche, that our national identity was to some extent hewn by the events that occurred 100 years ago. The government focus became a selffulfilling prophecy. What now?

• It’s estimated that approximately 120,000 New Zealanders fought in World War One, with 100,000 of them “seeing action”. Less known is that of these vast numbers, just over a quarter were conscripted, which is to say that they weren’t there of their own volition.

On a more insidiously coercive note, God knows how many men were lost because of what basically amounted to peer pressure and fear of public humiliation. In 1916 the New Zealand Government passed the Military Service Act, which made serving in the Army, if you were able, compulsory. If you didn’t you were either fined, imprisoned or, if you were on the front lines already and were having doubts, tortured. The Act, originally encompassing only Pākehā, was extended to Māori in 1917, despite doubts about their competency on the battlefield.

• ANZAC Day is remembered in New Zealand history for being a watershed moment of race relations. Māori fought alongside Pākehā at Gallipoli, though not immediately.

Despite Alexander Godley’s claim that “although they are a coloured race I think it would be apparent on their arrival that they are different to the ordinary coloured

race”, there were fears about arming Māori people to fight Europeans. Their contingent only landed in Gallipoli after New Zealand had haemorrhaged enough troops. It was in this moment that, according to one historian, Māori were seen as “full New Zealanders”.

That is to say: the Māori people’s worth to the Empire was conditioned on whether they were willing to die for it in lieu of their own emancipation.

• There is a sub-genre of historical fiction, alternate history, that explores questions of “what if ”: “what if president Kennedy had survived his assassination?”; “what if Kurt Cobain was still alive and making music?”.

Perhaps we should ask ourselves: what would have happened if the Gallipoli siege had been successful, and New Zealand troops were involved in carving up and decimating Turkey for the good of the Empire? I don’t mean to disrespect our troops by saying that something on the scale of Mai Lai would have occurred, especially when they are not here to defend themselves. Truly. But at the same time: we know what happens when people go without adequate food and sleep.

In the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, 24 fit, psychologically resilient individuals were rationed to 1800 calories per day—about what soldiers on the front line consumed.

They became hostile, depressed, irrational.

Researchers noted the participants “show no partiality… the starving are are ready to argue on little provocation”. Loud noises triggered furious outbursts. Some participants selfharmed. One experimentee chopped off three of his fingers with an axe and couldn’t remember whether he did it accidentally or on purpose.

The ill effects of sleeplessness are even better known—hallucinations, irritability, fluctuating moods, despondence. At Gallipoli, scores of men recounted in their diaries that “for days [we have] had little or no sleep… little winks”, and there was no adequate nourishment. “No sleep and nothing to eat,” lamented one. Here’s the thing about My Lai—it wasn’t an aberration, it’s a synecdoche. It is one village of many in Vietnam where unspeakable atrocities took place. Please don’t mistake me—in my heart of hearts I, maybe naïvely, believe that people are inherently good, compassionate, kind. I also know that when you put humans in sustained inhumane conditions, horrid things happen. Had New Zealand troops breached the confines of Gallipoli, would acts of savagery have occurred? I think you know.

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• Isn’t it strange that our fondness for commemorating ANZAC Day emerges from abject failure, from military stupidity, from soldiers suffering under dubious pretenses? The ubiquity of ANZAC Day in our national psyche was dependent on the mission’s failure. Say we’d immolated Turkish villages and enslaved some of its populace, as was the plan. Would Mustafa Kemal have said of the perished New Zealand soldiers “wipe away your tears. Your sons are now lying in the bosom, and are at peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.” Would we consider our troops worthy of those beautiful, heartwrenching words?

It seems that after the hostilities concluded, our government wanted nothing more than to forget. The vast majority of war memorials erected in the interwar period were financed by community leaders, bereaved mothers, charitable organisations. There was scant state involvement. It is only when a suitable amount of time passed that governments began praising our troops’ valour and constructed them as heroes. Enough time passes and suddenly they’re paragons of virtue, New Zealanders whose attributes we should look up to. Walter Benjamin, subtweeting Freud, insisted that we ought to cling to our melancholia, our anger, our sorrow or we risk erasing the past. As a society this is what we have done. We say “lest we forget” but we do not remember.

•

abrogate our duty. In ignoring the fact that many soldiers did not want to be there: we abrogate our duty. In claiming attributes of loyalty, bravery, honour, strength as endemic based on our ANZAC performance, we deny arguments that the qualities were perhaps imperialism, acquiescence, xenophobia, thoughtlessness. This is an abrogation of our duty.

Consider the correlation between our deification of “bravery”, of not complaining, and how we treat those who admit they are vulnerable, the openly aggrieved, today.

Consider the whole “in suffering comes nobility” bullshit that permeates our cultural ideals. We ignored the generation of soldiers who came back shell-shocked, who screamed in the night and shook their babies and drunk themselves to early graves. We ignore them still. The die-hard defenders of ANZAC day insist our boys died for our rights; I’m going to invoke one of those rights and criticise not the campaign but the way it’s been uncritically folded into our cultural consciousness.

When you wake up, maybe hungover/still drunk on ANZAC Day this year, whether you attend the biting cold dawn service or whether you rise at noon to stagger to the supermarket to buy some nurofen, spare a thought or a prayer for the soldiers. But spare a thought for those that lived and died unsung, and maybe most importantly spare a thought for those who live and die unsung today. And spare a thought about which bits of our history are selectively shared and to what end. Lest we forget.

After finding out about my great-greataunt Jessie’s existence, I did some research, contacted family members. No-one knew anything, but they filled in some missing pieces for me. I think she died of an illness during the war. Since then, her existence has been erased completely, as though someone snipped her out of every photograph and omitted her from every tale. Proof that she ever spent time on Earth can only be found on an obscure ancestry forum and in the anguish in my great-grandparents’ eyes. Piers is my brother’s middle name. I did not know hers.

• Let’s talk duty. In our parochial focus on a specific kind of soldier we ignore those that were scared, that wanted nothing more than to go home and hug their families, who dared show vulnerability as though bravery precludes wanting to stay alive: we editor@salient.org.nz

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Lest We Remember Charlotte Doyle

Kim and Khloe Kardashian’s visit to Armenia this month is important. On the 24th of April this year the country will remember the 100th anniversary of the 1.5 million Armenians killed by the Ottomans during World War One, a genocide that Turkey continues to deny.

Images of the sisters laying red tulips at the Armenian Genocide Memorial on Instagram has inevitably attracted global attention. It’s important because their carefully planned trip to pay homage to their heritage reflects a world wide spirit of remembrance this year and the implications of what we choose to remember.

In the grand scheme of things, 100 years isn’t a very long time.

Tortoises can live longer than that. But it is also the dawning of a new age. For the contemporary “Kiwi”, the royal family have become celebrities featured in Woman’s Day rather than glorified political figureheads. War is protested and the idea of reducing millions of men’s lives to a trench in the ground of some country they don’t belong to is no longer glorified as heroic. We have new allies. New threats are triggering new battles with new weapons.

The idea of an empire, let alone two battling each other, no longer applies to us. Instead our interaction with the royals is through Instagram accounts dedicated to the outfits of Prince George. A century is almost beyond living memory.

Yet we also know that our history is important. We remember historical events such as war to locate ourselves within a particular context, to reflect upon our identity and pay respect to lives sacrificed for shared values. Successes or obscene mistakes made in the past, such as Gallipoli, teach us lessons about the directions we should be going in now and in the future—say, a cautious approach towards involving Kiwi soldiers in another foreign war.

How we remember is often collectively, through national days of remembrance and memorials. But what we choose to give historical importance is also a political choice.

World War One is frequently described as the event that forged our identity as a nation. With our national population at just over one million at the time, of the 100,000 soldiers who served 18,000 were killed and nearly 41,000 wounded. It was the biggest loss of lives per capita in the Commonwealth. The events that took place from 1914-18 had an effect on nearly every New Zealand family and community. A photo emerged on Facebook a while ago of a chubbier 12-year-old me sitting amongst a group of girls all dressed in tartan at Tamaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum.

Nearly everyone in my class had some form of ancestral connection to a soldier who died in World War One. The Government has invested $17 million through the Lottery Grants Fund into a four-year initiative called WW100, which commemorates the impact of the war upon New Zealand. $10 million is for large-scale commemoration projects. The remaining $7 million is for “activities and events which will bring New Zealand communities together”, like an art exhibition and a snazzy website.

The Auckland Museum re-created the 1915 Gallipoli landscape using Minecraft (downloadable after 25 April), 24 Kiwi youth ambassadors will travel to Gallipoli for Anzac Day with the New Zealand Defence Force, and the world’s biggest poppy is being created in the Auckland Domain. 25 April is a nationally condoned opportunity to remember, reflect on and learn about your history.

The same could not be said for the 150th anniversary of the destructive campaigns that raged on our own soil. The New Zealand Wars are what Danny Keenan, Associate Professor at Massey University, describes as a “difficult memory”. Anzac Day remembers a war we heroically fought for an Empire against a remote enemy on the other side of the world. The New Zealand Wars were fought for reasons to which it is easier to stay blind; the conflicts erupted over Māori land and sovereignty and ended with the destruction of many Māori communities. Acknowledging the mistakes made in the Wars means subverting the legitimacy of the current status quo.

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There is a well-known battle raging between the year 13 History subjects. Henry VIII’s sex life versus Hone Heke chopping down the New Zealand flag. The reign of the Tudor-Stewarts 500 years ago or the contentious establishment of the bicultural nation we live in today. Henry and his mistresses tend to win, attracting two-thirds of history students nationwide.

For those who might have missed out here’s a short, hopefully informative but in no way conclusive history lesson. It’s complicated.

Even settling on a name that reflects the nature of the wars has been difficult. Various names used in the past included the “Māori Wars” (the British have a tendency to name wars after their enemies), the “Land Wars”, the “Sovereignty Wars” and the “Anglo-Māori Wars”.

The “New Zealand Wars” was settled on as the most historically accurate representation of the balance of power between British and Māori at the time, after historian James Belich found most battles were military draws.

The campaigns lasted 27 years from 1845 to 1872 and by the end one million hectares of Māori land had been seized by the British.

Around 1800 Māori and 800 European lives were lost during the Taranaki and Waikato campaigns alone. 2500 Māori were killed in total with the Māori population just exceeding 33,000 at the time.

More Māori died per capita in the New Zealand Wars than New Zealand soldiers in World War One. The Waikato experienced the largest military campaign. The Māori had formed the Kingitanga Movement in the 1850s with the belief that Pākehā would recognwise their mana if they had a Māori monarch to rival that of the British Crown. The Europeans interpreted this move as a direct challenge and the Governor at the time, Sir George Grey, was determined to stamp out the threat to British authority.

The invasion of Waikato commenced in 1863 to combat the Kingitanga forces. The British had 20,000 men at their disposal; the Kingitanga 5000. Transporting these troops into the region to fight Māori is the genesis of the Great South Road in Auckland. After www.salient.org.nz

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various armed engagements across the region the Waikato War ended at Orakau on 2 April 1864. This war alone was responsible for 1000 Māori and 700 European deaths. Māori lost 1.3 million hectares of land.

To somehow better acknowledge the bitter fight between Māori and British forces on a national scale Keenan has called for either more recognition of the wars during Waitangi Day celebrations or a New Zealand Wars Day. The best date would be 11 March, when Māori and British forces first fired on each other at Kororareka.

But Attorney-General Chris Finlayson doesn’t believe one is “really necessary” and points out that “we could spend all of our lives commemorating things, so we have to focus on what’s very important”. John Key commented that a national holiday is “not impossible but it’s not something that is on the agenda”.

To remember the “forging of our nation” in the aftermath of the Treaty of Waitangi, of which the New Zealand Wars is a key part, threatens the idea of our “national unity”. Yet greater unity would be achieved by greater mutual understanding.

17 March is locally remembered in Taranaki as the day the British first fired upon the Māori. Commemorations for the New Zealand Wars are held locally, close to the battle sites where Māori and British clashed. At Te Ranga more than 100 Māori and 13 British soldiers died in the final skirmish in the Waikato and Tauranga campaigns.

In June last year various commemorations for the event were held at Orakau. The event drew large crowds with Key, Finlayson and the Governor-General attending. Key acknowledged the importance of the New Zealand Wars as part of our history, commenting that the confiscation of thousands of hectares of land had left generations of Māori impoverished economically, socially and culturally. In spite of the acknowledgement, the financial burden of the events was left to local iwi, with none of the $250,000 dedicated by the Government to the 150th anniversary coming their way. Our Prime Minister also admitted that little of the country would know where Orakau even is.

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“In memory of the brave men belonging to the Imperial and colonial forces and the friendly Māoris who gave their lives for the country ... Through war they won the peace we know.”

It would be unusual to visit a New Zealand small town bereft of a world war memorial. Their ubiquity reflects the deep and harsh effect of the war on so many communities. They also reflect a sense of pride. There are over 500 public World War One memorials on New Zealand’s memorial register, and countless more church and school windows, plaques and honours boards dedicated to remembering. In 2014, a new war memorial valued at $300,000 was opened in Katikati, built as part of the tangible commitment requested by the RSA for WW100.

together, including in Afghanistan. This work and the park generally acknowledges tikanga Māori. Three granite panels created by New Zealand artist Jacob Manu Scott are embedded within the columns representing wairuatanga (the embedded spirit), whanaungatanga (ancestral and spiritual connections) and kaitiakitanga (guardianship). There is no direct acknowledgement of the New Zealand Wars, despite the park being intended to remember our country’s military history as a whole. A tiny statue dedicated to Parihaka sits inconspicuously in the corner.

Only 60 memorials are dedicated to the New Zealand Wars and not all of them are public. The Wars are an event Pākehā have preferred to forget. For the memorials that do exist, many are now either dilapidated or highly contentious. One, the Zealandia War Memorial, sits inconspicuously on Symonds Street in Auckland with an inscription saying “in memory of the brave men belonging to the Imperial and colonial forces and the friendly Māoris who gave their lives for the country ... Through war they won the peace we know.” “Friendly Māoris” refers to those who fought for the British. There is no recognition of those who dared challenge the Empire.

In 1864 the Kingitanga Māori serving under Rewi Maniapoto were fighting two thousand British troops at Orakau. After being shot at for three days and with no water left the general asked them to surrender. The Māori warrior’s reply was “Ka whahai tonu ake! Ake! Ake! [We will fight on forever, forever, forever].” The battles have continued today, indirectly, in the form of land tribunals, Treaty claims and court cases. The millions of dollars spent on Treaty claims and their documentation intrinsically recognises historical grievances (although the media is somehow obsessed with the potential threat to “taxpayers’ dollars”). The problem is that the process is often difficult for the public to understand. A memorial or national day of remembrance is not.

Another memorial sits on Te Puni Street in Petone, Lower Hutt.

In 1845 tensions were rising in the Wellington area between Māori tribes over the increasing arrival of European settlers. The memorial commemorates Honiana Te Puni, leader of the hapū Te Ātiawa.

Te Puni supported the new settlers and even helped the Europeans defeat a raid at Boulcott’s Farm. This ultimately protected the Hutt Valley from further conflict. Today the memorial is hard to identify, run down and covered in moss. Those who fought on the other side remain forgotten.

The Government’s main World War One memorial project has been the $120 million Pukehau National War Memorial Park.

I still frequently waste five minutes trying to re-navigate after remembering too late that turning right at the end of Tory Street is no longer an option. The park is heralded as “the national place for New Zealanders to remember and reflect on this country’s experience of war, military conflict and peacekeeping, and how that experience shapes our ideals and sense of national identity”.

For inner city Wellington, it is a serene and beautiful space.

Designed by Australian architects Tonkin Zulaikha Greer, an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art design studio, the tall red sandstone columns are a memorial to our military relationship with Australia. Each column is inscribed with the names of the operations in which New Zealanders and Australians fought

In most people’s minds, the Waikato is now a frankly depressing chunk of motorway. Many push through it to get somewhere else, somewhere more inspiring and more relatable. Maybe stop for some decent doughnuts in Huntly. A reliable meal can be found at a McDonald’s in every small town. And thank God you can avoid Hamilton. Which is a shame since the Waikato hosts many historic battle sites from the Government’s biggest campaign against Māori.

Meremere, which acted as a Māori defence post in 1863, now boasts the country’s only permanent drag racing track. Pas and battle sites are bypassed for the sake of a speedy road trip.

Driving through Huntly and Ngaruawahia a few weeks ago, on the way to somewhere else (guilty), giant poppies filled many fields. Banners on street lights declaring “We remember them” were endless, in every small town we passed through. Seeing the spirit of Anzac Day so proudly represented in the heart of the area where hundreds of Māori, and British, lost their lives felt tragic.

Chief historian for the Ministry for Culture and Heritage Neill Atkinson justifies the scale of the WW100 commemorations by saying “history is a responsibility we carry with us now and into the future.” Surely this responsibility extends to the New Zealand Wars too.

editor@salient.org.nz

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Two Birds Flipped at the West Sam McChesney

Guinea-Bissau has been referred to as the world’s first and only true “narco-state”—a country in which drug traffickers have almost completely taken over the machinery of government. But is the country really a victim of the trade—or is it biting back against the racist policies of the West?

Last June, New York court sources let slip that a 64-year-old West African man, José Américo Bubo Na Tchuto, had pleaded guilty in a secret hearing in Manhattan. The exact charges were unknown and the court transcript was immediately sealed—sure signs of a politically sensitive plea deal. Na Tchuto’s current whereabouts are unknown.

Na Tchuto had been arrested in April 2013.

He was picked up in international waters and taken to the United States to face charges under American drug trafficking law. The move had been brewing for years—over the better part of the last decade Na Tchuto, sometime-head of the Guinea-Bissau navy, had been considered one of the country’s leading drug kingpins.

That the US should concern itself with the drug trade in this tiny West African country might come as a surprise. More surprising yet were the sheer stakes involved. Na Tchuto’s arrest followed the negotiation of a highlevel arms-for-drugs deal struck between top Bissau-Guinean military officials, representatives from South American cartels, Colombian wannabe guerrillas—and, as it happened, the Drug Enforcement Agency.

The deal was to involve huge shipments of cocaine from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), brought into Guinea-Bissau on its way to the US. Local officials would ensure the safe storage of the shipments, and would act as FARC’s agents in purchasing and sending back weapons for

the group’s decades-long Marxist struggle. In exchange, the locals would receive a 13 per cent slice of the cocaine’s wholesale value. Na Tchuto himself was to pocket US$1 million for every metric ton of cocaine that arrived on his shores. He planned to stash the money in a specially constructed underground bunker.

Unfortunately for Na Tchuto, the FARC representatives were actually DEA informants. He agreed to join them on their luxury yacht to celebrate the deal while his right-hand man, army chief António Indjai, cautiously elected to remain onshore. Once the yacht had strayed 22 kilometres from shore, out of the country’s territorial waters, the DEA made its move.

Guinea-Bissau’s population is about the size of Auckland, its area that of Otago. It’s named for its capital, the Wellington-sized Bissau, in order to distinguish it from the “other” Guineas, Guinea-Conakry and Equatorial Guinea. The names are a confusing legacy of competing colonial powers: Equatorial Guinea was a Spanish colony, Conakry was French and Bissau Portuguese. Bissau was the last of the three to gain independence, in 1973-74; Na Tchuto was one of the movement’s leading heroes.

After two decades under a one-party state, the country’s first free elections were held in 1994. On paper, the country is a multiparty presidential democracy; in reality, the

largest party, the PAIGC, has had only four years out of power since independence, and thanks to a combination of civil wars, coups and assassinations, no president has served a full five-year term.

It is one of the world’s poorest countries, ranking 177th out of 187 on the Human Development Index. The capital is an almost clichéd picture of crumbling postcolonial Africa, the kind of place you’d expect to see in a Bond film in one of those casually racist scenes in which 007 demolishes some tattered local bazaar. The few cars that travel the city’s optimistically wide boulevards have to dodge the frequent potholes. The streets are lined with handsome trees, behind which lie decaying colonial buildings. There is no mains electricity—the whole country is pitched into near total darkness at sunset— and running water is limited to a wealthy few. Outside Bissau the picture is even worse; many communities are isolated and suffer brutal food shortages.

But Guinea-Bissau has a secret. Off the coast lies the Bijagós, an archipelago with a bewildering number of mostly uninhabited islands, many with abandoned airstrips built during the civil war in the 1990s. Virtually unpoliceable, it’s the perfect place to sneak things in and out undetected.

Guinea-Bissau’s unique geography has made it one of the primary transit ports for cocaine headed from South America to Europe. In 2008, an estimated ton of pure editor@salient.org.nz

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Colombian cocaine left Guinea-Bissau every day. Increasingly, the country is also part of the cocaine route into the US (Mexico is too dangerous and expensive; the Caribbean well-policed), and a hub for Afghan heroin crossing the Atlantic.

A fisherman with access to a large boat capable of carrying 50 or more people could net around US$40,000 for a single trip into neighbouring Senegal. As the money washed in, so it trickled down. Maybe the Chicago School was right after all.

Traffickers use large, specially modified fishing motherships, as well as small chartered planes. The planes can leave Colombia or Venezuela with around 600700 kilograms of cocaine on board, refuel in Brazil, and cross the Atlantic in the space of a day. The cocaine is then transported to Europe by air, using mules; by sea, using small vessels such as fishing boats or canoes; or by land, via Morocco on the old “cannabis trail”.

Being a drug mule is dangerous work—most employ the condom-swallowing technique, and if the condom bursts the results are usually fatal. But for a country in which the average weekly wage is around twenty dollars, it’s hugely lucrative work: a single mule carrying multiple packages can collect several thousand dollars per trip. In 2006, Dutch police caught 32 mules from GuineaBissau on a single flight into Amsterdam.

Drug money first started to pour into the country around 2003-04. Under the rule of President João Bernardo Vieira (2005-09), the trade quickly saturated every facet of public life. The army now provides traffickers with logistical support, protection and storage facilities. A significant portion of army wages is paid directly from trafficking profits, and soldiers are often paid in cocaine.

When one of the country’s 63 police officers does catch a drug trafficker, the suspect is often released by judges or freed by the army with no explanation given. In any case, springing an inmate isn’t exactly difficult: the capital has no prison, and detainees are simply locked in the basements of various abandoned colonial villas.

When packets of cocaine first began to drift ashore in the mid-2000s, local fishermen didn’t realise what they’d found. They tried using the powder to decorate themselves, paint their houses, fertilise their crops and, in one case, even mark out a football pitch.

Before long, though, traffickers arrived offering lucrative buybacks for washed-up cocaine.

Locals used to inconsistent income and a hand-to-mouth existence suddenly found they could build new homes and buy cars.

Many gave up fishing and agriculture to join the traffickers, using their knowledge of the area to help smuggle drugs and people. www.salient.org.nz

The federal court documents produced for Na Tchuto’s prosecution described a truly brazen degree of official cooperation with the traffickers. Government officials arranged a fake shipment of military uniforms to conceal the cocaine, accepted upfront payments of tens of thousands of euros from the traffickers, and created a front company to store the drugs.

The illicit nature of the drug trade makes it difficult to assess just how much money is involved. 93 per cent of the country’s official exports come from cash crops (cashew nuts, Brazil nuts and coconuts), and its US$100 million trade deficit is only just patched up by foreign aid. Despite this, Guinea-Bissau’s foreign currency reserves went from US$33 million in 2003 to US$169 million in 2009.

With an estimated US$4.29 billion of cocaine travelling through the country every year, drug money is the obvious source.

Since the mid-nineteenth century, when the Quakers in England first popularised the idea of addiction as a “disease of the soul”, Western views on drugs have taken on a permanent edge of moral hysteria. With the rise of eugenics in the early nineteenth century scientific community, drug use came to be associated with genetic theories of race, class and sexuality.

In the early to mid-twentieth century, US attitudes toward a range of drugs were formed, often at an official level, by tapping into political fears and social and racial prejudices. The American Pharmaceutical Association’s Committee on the Acquirement of the Drug Habit, reporting on a study conducted from 18881902, found that blacks and “unfortunate women” were “made madly wild by cocaine”.

A 1920 report by the American Medical Association found that without treatment, an addict could become “organised and vocal”, warning that “society awakens to the fact that he is an I.W.W., a Bolshevik, or what not.” In 1934, two years before the release of Reefer Madness (watch it, it’s fantastic), the American Psychiatric Association opined that marijuana is “a primary stimulus to the impulsive life” that “acts as a sexual stimulant for overt homosexuals”.

The illicit drug trade has always been fed by Western demand. For most of the twentieth century, this awkward reality was explained away by blaming drug use on undesirable others within the West. In the US, drugs have variously been the domain

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of “non-American” immigrant minorities (in the early twentieth century), subversive communist sympathisers (during the midtwentieth century), and inner-city blacks (in the eighties and nineties).

But the rising popularity of cocaine among affluent whites in the 70s and 80s forced a partial rethink. Painting this group as unAmerican was hardly an option, for obvious reasons; the focus instead turned to FARC and other leftwing insurgencies. Drugs became not just a threat to society’s moral fabric, but a national security concern— culminating in President Bush’s 1989 declaration of the war on drugs.

That the war has been a failure hardly needs repeating. In foreign policy terms alone, it has succeeded only in bringing together drug producers and political radicals, from the Colombian cartels and FARC to poppy farmers and the Taliban. By joining forces, the producers have gained a vicious paramilitary wing, and the insurgents a huge source of revenue. Meanwhile, enforcement measures from the US and EU have succeeded only in driving up global prices, without affecting actual rates of drug consumption—the upshot is that more money in total is flowing into the illicit drug market, with much of the extra revenue going toward funding the associated violence.

Guinea-Bissau stands in contrast to Colombia, Mexico and Afghanistan because its problems are not caused by the mere illegality of drugs. Commentators often point out that if the US and EU—or even just the US—were to legalise cocaine and heroin, the war in Mexico would end almost overnight, while the insurgencies in Colombia and Afghanistan would lose billions of dollars of income.

Guinea-Bissau is different because its drug trade wouldn’t even exist were the product not illegal. It’s precisely the country’s obscurity that makes it attractive to traffickers. Were the traffickers able to operate in the open, the country would no longer be needed, and would in all likelihood go back to being yet another forgotten African backwater.

The EU suspended political ties with Bissau in 2010, a move it disingenuously claimed would not affect humanitarian efforts in the country. The ties were restored last month after the newly elected President, José Mário Vaz, dismissed Indjai as the army’s chief of staff and promised to crack down on the drug trade. The day after the EU restored ties, it pledged over €160 million in additional aid to the country, part of a ten-year package totalling over €1 billion.

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That Guinea-Bissau—a country for so long on the arse-end of globalisation—should have to apologise for cashing in on the West’s self-destructive domestic drug policies is obscene.

That Guinea-Bissau—a country for so long on the arse-end of globalisation—should have to apologise for cashing in on the West’s selfdestructive domestic drug policies is obscene.

That in doing so it should have to dance for a slice of the development pie is even worse. In many respects, its lucrative complicity in the drug trade has been a thrilling jibe at both the racist global economy and the racist war on drugs—a bird flipped in each hand.

In 2008, as naval commander, Na Tchuto staged a foiled coup attempt that saw him exiled to the Gambia. Late the following year, he snuck back into the country on a fishing boat. When his presence in the capital became known, he took refuge in Bissau’s UN headquarters, demanding political asylum on humanitarian grounds. For months, he slept on a mattress on the floor of one of the offices and ate at the canteen.

On 1 April, 2010, soldiers stormed the UN building and escorted Na Tchuto away. The soldiers, however, were loyal to Na Tchuto’s ally Indjai, who that same day had staged a mutiny-cum-coup, seizing the Prime Minister and the army chief and placing himself in charge. That one of Indjai’s first acts had been to free Na Tchuto stoked suspicions that Na Tchuto had been the mastermind all along. Now Bissau belonged to him.

Like Na Tchuto, President Vieira himself was considered a drug kingpin. He was assassinated by renegade soldiers in March 2009, a suspected reprisal attack after a bomb blast just hours earlier that had killed his direct rival, army chief Batista Tagme Na Waie.

region. The Executive Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Antonio Maria Costa, compared the effects of the drug trade to those of slavery: “In the 19th century, Europe’s hunger for slaves devastated West Africa. Two hundred years later, its growing appetite for cocaine could do the same.”

The perversity of that comparison aside, the dramatic claims seem largely unfounded.

Despite the political intrigue, the coups, the drug money, there’s a notable lack of hard evidence that Guinea-Bissau has been destabilised in any real way by the drug trade—there’s barely even evidence of violence. Nonetheless, Western governments and media outlets seem quick to ascribe to the country a set of clichéd ills based solely on assumption and guesswork.

In 2009, TIME reported that drug-related violence in the country is rife, but offered few details; in 2008, The Guardian claimed that the country “suffers from a proliferation of addiction” but said the addicts are “hidden away in villages”, relying on a second-hand interview with a single addict.

By contrast, Der Spiegel reported in 2013 that the state apparatus had created a “secure environment” for drug lords: “Guinea-Bissau seems rather peaceful, even sleepy at times.

There are no junkies here and no beheaded traitors on the roadside. The daily drug trade is conducted virtually without violence.”

Indeed, the ability to operate with virtual impunity and the lack of any local market for the goods means there’s no need for violent competition. Quite simply, there’s enough to go around.

A 2008 Washington Post article described Bissau as a city “full of jarring signs of incongruous wealth—the exclusive restaurant selling jumbo shrimp for more than $50, the grocery store selling Johnny Walker Green Label whiskey for $132.” Both WaPo and The Guardian lingered on the lurid displays of Colombian wealth—the luxury hacienda villas, the swimming pools, the black-tinted four-wheel drives. People were employed to build those villas and man those bars, but this was, they assured us, a Very Serious Problem.

Because God forbid anyone actually invest in Africa.

In 2007, the UN told donor countries that the drug trade in Guinea-Bissau was an existential threat to both the country and the editor@salient.org.nz

Lucy Wardle lucywardle.tumblr.com

Full Circle Matt Walker

I first visited Egypt in 2009, two years before the Revolution Hosni Mubarak’s steely-eyed strong man portrait was everywhere. He looked down on the Egyptian people from billboards, public spaces, government buildings, shop fronts, café walls and hotel lobbies. His age varied in these portraits—a testament to his 30 years in power— but his expression did not. He was always depicted as a powerful and intimidating man—one who made good on his threats—as if to ensure that the millions of eyes that gazed up at him every day dare not think about challenging his rule.

One afternoon I was enjoying a tea and shisha at a café in downtown Cairo when a middle-aged man sat down beside me. After a few routine pleasantries the tone of his voice changed. “It is very bad in Egypt now, there is no freedom, no opportunity, the situation is dire.”

He shielded his mouth and nervously glanced around the room when

speaking. My response coincided with a lull in noise at the café. He immediately grabbed my arm, his eyes wide and alert. “You must be quiet,” he said, panicking, “government spies are everywhere, if they hear me, I will go to jail or worse.” He drew his fingers across his throat.

He was the only person I met during my first visit to Egypt who had instigated a conversation about domestic politics. I had attempted to engage several Egyptians on the subject with little success. The common refrain in the usually brief conversations that followed went something like: “All politicians around the world are corrupt, governments help themselves not the people, that is the way it is and always has been, but what can you do about it?” Just under two years later, mass protests would force Mubarak from power.

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On 25 January 2011, inspired by events in Tunisia, thousands of protesters converged on Tahrir Square in central Cairo, demanding the downfall of the regime. While secular youth movements and labour unions comprised the vanguard of the movement, a broad cross-section of Egyptian society soon joined them. The regime’s violent response—which ultimately led to 900 deaths and thousands of injuries—was met with defiance, and served only to further swell the protesters’ ranks.

Two weeks of sustained protests later, Mubarak stepped down.

The Egyptian people had achieved what, mere weeks beforehand, seemed an impossible feat. Scenes of uncontained ecstasy throughout the country were beamed around the world to a captive international audience.

The initial success of the Egyptian Revolution represented the climactic moment of the so-called Arab Spring. The armed uprising and NATO military intervention to oust Muammar Gaddafi in Libya had not yet begun, nor had the brutal sectarian crackdown on protesters in Bahrain, nor Syria’s tragic descent into the abyss.

Those early days were tinged with hope and optimism for local and international observers alike. The Arab Spring was presented as a geopolitical fairy tale, an irresistible story of people power overcoming tyranny. The mantras of the Revolution—freedom, democracy, social justice, dignity—were simple and secular and resonated with most observers’ basic sense of humanity. But the hard part of any revolution, as evidenced throughout history, is the job of actually building a better society. The real struggle, of turning buzzwords into reality, had only just begun.

• My next trip spanned December 2011 to January 2012. I was curious to see what had changed in Egypt since the Revolution, and how ordinary Egyptians felt about the transition. Mubarak’s face was nowhere to be seen, replaced by stencil portraits of the young Egyptians who had died fighting his regime. The man himself was now languishing in prison and suffering from ill health, charged with ordering the use of live ammunition on protesters.

The previously ubiquitous police presence throughout much of Cairo was noticeably reduced, and those at their posts looked uneasy. The widespread hatred of the police prior to Mubarak’s downfall was compounded by the fact that they were responsible for most of the fatalities during the Revolution. A good friend of mine, Omar, told me that after decades of living in fear, the tables had turned and the police were now “terrified of the people”, resulting in a general atmosphere of lawlessness.

It had been almost one year since Mubarak was ousted and while the euphoria had subsided, it was far from gone. After spending decades relegated to the periphery of regional and global affairs—a far cry from the 1950s and 60s when Egypt was the undisputed champion of the Arab World—many people spoke to me with a resurgent nationalism about restoring Egypt to its former glory.

The hopelessness of life under Mubarak had bred apathy out of necessity; now everyone had an opinion. Cairo’s cafés, bars, streets and bazaars had become the scenes of endless animated political debate—a freedom that until the Revolution had been completely alien to successive generations of Egyptians.

After the downfall of Mubarak, a military junta called the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) assumed power and

“You must be quiet.

Government spies are everywhere, if they hear me, I will go to jail or worse.” was tasked with overseeing the transition to democratic government.

The military is a revered institution in Egyptian society and is widely considered to be a guarantor of order and stability. Unlike the police, the military did not intervene in the protests during the Revolution.

It was only when Mubarak realised the military would not intervene on his behalf that he finally conceded defeat.

But after one year in power new grievances were emerging among segments of Egyptian society, sparking a fresh wave of civil unrest.

Two massacres of unarmed protesters in October and November had tarnished the military’s image in the eyes of many Egyptians, particularly among organised youth groups. A close friend of mine, Ahmed, was present at the latter demonstration and had watched a childhood friend die in his arms after being shot in the face. Criticism of the military had hitherto been taboo in Egypt, and although it could still count on majority support, major divisions in opinion were appearing, often along generational lines. I vividly recall watching a backwards baseball cap wearing teenager spray-paint “FUCK SCAF” in large black letters on a wall adjacent to the entrance of my hotel.

The Egyptian military controls a vast economic empire, forty percent of the Egyptian economy by some estimates. This is a major facet of what is referred to as the “deep state”. The deep state has five main components: the military, the intelligence services, the police, the judiciary, and the state-owned media. These separate branches of government have a symbiotic relationship, reinforcing each other’s power and acting in unity toward a common objective. A creation of the Mubarak era, the “deep state” operates under layers of bureaucracy to preserve the status quo. The “deep state” was the real challenge of the Egyptian Revolution. editor@salient.org.nz

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A man with a bloodied forehead and adrenaline surging through his veins came up to me.

“Don’t go up there,” he yelled, “thugs are everywhere.”

I encountered an unexpected example of how varied the military’s economic interests are on my second night in Cairo. While I was out with a few friends they proposed that we go bowling. As we pulled up to the building, I noticed the place was swarming with armed soldiers.

There were more soldiers inside. Confused about the need for such an overwhelming security presence at a dilapidated, residential bowling alley, I asked my friends about it. “Oh, they are not here for security, they own and operate this place,” one said. I suppose there are worse ways to spend your mandatory service.

Violent clashes between young revolutionaries and pro-military thugs had become commonplace in Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the Revolution. The police, who had mostly retreated to the safety of their stations, were too afraid to intervene, while the military only did so if hundreds turned into thousands. One night, upon arriving at Nasser Station on the Cairo Metro, which is located beneath the square, a man with a bloodied forehead and adrenaline surging through his veins came up to me. “Don’t go up there,” he yelled, “thugs are everywhere.” People nursing their injuries, wailing women, and large groups of men shouting at one another had overrun the station. I looked at my friends—“don’t worry, we will take care of you,” they told me—and with that we headed up to the square.

The scenes outside were not as bad as I had anticipated. Small mobs of five to ten men were dotted throughout the area throwing projectiles—brick fragments, bottles and fireworks—at each other.

We took refuge in a KFC located on the square’s edge, ordered a family pack, and watched the clashes play out.

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My tea was cut short when a mob formed around me and a heated argument broke out. It was obvious that I was the subject of debate.

Things escalated when an elderly man pulled out a machete and began waving it in the air. He then started to approach me, holding the weapon as if he was going to use it. The young man who I was with quickly grabbed me and dragged me through the crowd, fending off attempts to obstruct my path. After a dash to safety, he apologised profusely and I returned to my hotel.

The following day when I told my friends about what had happened there was a unanimous explanation: the military was spreading rumors that many foreigners were spies working to undermine the Revolution. By doing this, the theory went, it would provoke incidents, and therefore justify the continuation of their rule under the pretext of “national security”. Conspiracy theories are the main currency of Egyptian conversation—partly a consequence of the country’s horrifically inept media—and they should never be taken at face value, but after consulting several reliable news outlets and encountering similar information, it’s entirely possible their theory was correct.

A few days later I was caught up in another incident. I was catching a flight to Europe to meet a friend for a week before returning to Egypt to attend the anniversary of the Revolution. With three hours until I had to be at the airport, I decided to go to a café in the Square to pass the time. Out of nowhere, a large group of men, maybe two or three hundred strong, wielding sticks and metal bars, gathered outside the café and began chanting in unison. Another armed mob was assembling on the other side of the road. Just as I was about to leave the two groups clashed, and the café owner—as I’m sure he had done many times before—pulled down the shutters, trapping me and twenty or so Egyptians inside.

Projectiles began to smash into the shutters with nerve-shattering frequency as the unsettling sounds of extreme violence filled the café.

After half an hour the carnage outside showed no signs of abating. A group of men started to lobby the owner to let them leave. Anxious about my flight I reasoned that my best chance was to leave with the group. The owner ensured we were all close to the shutter before quickly pulling it up just far enough for a grown man to roll under.

The streets were a warzone. We made a frenzied run across the Square to safety, navigating the pitched battle and its many bloodied combatants on the way.

Eventually I parted with my friends and headed back to the hotel.

On the way I met a young man who was based in the square. An Occupy-esque encampment had remained in the grassed center of the area since the Revolution. By now the clashes had subsided, so I started walking with him.

At the far side of the Square a crowd had gathered to watch the spectacle unfold. Street clashes had become the newest spectator sport in Cairo. As I stood watching, allowing my nerves to calm down, a large, imposing, almost Mubarak-like man came up to me.

He was wearing a jet-black trench coat and what appeared to be a very expensive suit. “These animals are ruining Egypt,” he said, with a detectable sadness in his voice. His name was Mostafa. He was a senior officer in an elite military unit on leave to visit his dying mother. After voicing his disgust at the scene, he invited me for a beer and to personally drive me to the airport.

After a brief tour we sat down for tea. The majority of the camp’s occupants were young men, but many women were also present.

Several people were brandishing eye-patches and slings, casualties of the ongoing clashes. I got a sense that most of those present were not the ideologues who spearheaded the Revolution. They were street kids, the homeless—those who existed on the margins of Egyptian society. Tahrir Square gave them a purpose, a mission, an escape from the struggles of daily life. It was a medium to vent a lifetime’s worth of pent-up anger and frustration.

Mostafa’s position in society and his views on recent events in Egypt were the binary opposite of the liberals and Islamists with whom I had spent most of my time. He represented the “deep state”. Because I was foreign and a stranger, combined with his heightened emotional state and the assistance of a few beers, he opened up to me. He shared his war stories, his experiences of ending human life, and how he’s never recovered from these events. But there was a disturbing quality to Mostafa. I was not in danger, but he was obviously a dangerous man, the kind of man that does well in the upper echelons of the

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Egyptian military establishment. Later on in our conversation he told me that he would not hesitate to kill a baby if those were his orders.

a blind man crosses a busy road and gets killed, it’s Morsi’s fault according to the media.”

He paid for the drinks and drove me to the airport in his brand new BMW. As I said goodbye, he placed his hand on my shoulder.

“The next time you come to Egypt it will be better, we will get rid of all these trouble-makers, and we will do it soon,” he said, with a menacing twinkle in his eye.

On 13 June 2013, 14 million Egyptians took to the streets demanding Morsi step down in demonstrations that exceeded the size of those during the Revolution. The army intervened and Morsi was forced from power and placed under arrest, while the Brotherhood was promptly designated a terrorist organisation. As a result of the coup (or revolution, depending on who you talk to), SCAF, under the leadership of General Abdel Sisi, returned to power.

• On 25 January hundreds of thousands of people poured into Tahrir Square to mark the one-year anniversary of the Revolution. Escorted by a mixture of Muslim Brotherhood members and youth activists, I travelled to the square to assess the mood. Rumors had circulated over the prior weeks that the anniversary would turn into another bloodbath; thankfully, those rumors never materialised.

What I saw was part celebration, part-protest. Scenes of jubilation and laughter were juxtaposed with scenes of anger, mourning— even rage. A mosaic of political parties and organisations were on display—from socialists to Salafists—each with their own stage and accompanying supporters. It was obvious that the Islamist parties, and the Muslim Brotherhood in particular, were the most organised, foreshadowing the short-term trajectory of Egyptian politics.

On 30 June, the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate Mohammed Morsi won the presidential election, the first person outside of the establishment to hold Egypt’s highest office since 1952. It was a stunning turnaround for the Muslim Brotherhood, the oldest opposition party in Egypt, which had spent its entire existence being viciously repressed by the state. Ironically, the Brotherhood largely did not participate in the Revolution yet claimed its ultimate prize.

In the presidential run-off Egyptians had been given two choices: Ahmed Shafik, who was closely associated with the Mubarak regime, or Morsi and the Brotherhood. Morsi won narrowly and the reasonably low voter turnout was indicative of how demoralising many Egyptians found these options.

I encountered plenty of casual Brotherhood supporters on my trip; many professed their support to me while holding a cold beer in one hand and large hash joint in the other. Much of the Brotherhood’s support stemmed from poor communities, where they provided social services in the place of an absentee state. But running social services in opposition and governing the most populous country in the Arab world are two very different things.

Opposition to Morsi quickly snowballed. In an effort to circumvent Mubarak-era power structures he had controversially granted himself the ability to rule by decree. Mobs of plain-clothes Muslim Brotherhood supporters had also started to regularly attack peaceful protesters, and a spate of attacks on Egypt’s substantial Christian community left them feeling increasingly uneasy. The draft constitution Morsi attempted to enact was denounced as an “Islamist coup”. Opposition was aggravated by economic factors; under Morsi economic conditions were the worst they had been in Egypt since the Great Depression.

While Morsi made great strides toward digging his own political grave, the virulently hostile deep state played its part. By using the web of legal instruments available to them, the Mubarak-era establishment severely undermined Morsi’s ability to actually govern.

In addition, the full wrath of the state and quasi-private media was unleashed. I recall a Brotherhood friend telling me at the time, “If

Several weeks later, Sisi ordered the police to disperse protesters in two areas that Brotherhood supporters had occupied since Morsi was ousted. 1000-3000 people were massacred in a single day, the worst act of political violence in Egypt’s modern history. In the following weeks up to 40,000 Brotherhood supporters were arrested and paraded around in mass show trials in which the death penalty was liberally applied. In the space of one year, the Brotherhood had fulfilled its wildest dreams only to suffer the most cataclysmic event in its long and tortured history.

The following June, having relinquished his military title to run for the presidency, Sisi swept to power in an overwhelming landslide, ostensibly winning 96.6 per cent of the vote. Egypt had come full circle; the deep state had won.

• My most recent trip to Egypt was last week. Driving into downtown Cairo I did not see a single remnant of the revolutionary graffiti that had littered the landscape during my last visit. The police were again out in force, large convoys of armed vehicles a regular sight. Police officers in the streets looked calm and relaxed, if a little intimidating.

They were no longer afraid of the people.

Mubarak and his sons are now free, while Morsi and thousands of Brotherhood supporters are in prison. A close friend, Karim, informed me that the prior day Mubarak’s sons had attended a funeral at a Mosque in Tahrir Square with minimal security. “The

In the space of one year, the Brotherhood had fulfilled its wildest dreams only to suffer the most cataclysmic event in its long and tortured history. editor@salient.org.nz

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During my interactions on this visit, a profound sadness was lurking just beneath the surface. fact that they feel comfortable coming to the Square shows you how badly the Revolution has failed,” he said. “Things are worse now than in the Mubarak days, there is even less freedom,” he added.

The political fatalism I encountered during my first visit has reappeared with a vengeance. The desire for security and jobs has taken precedence over luxuries like freedom and democracy. As a political system, democracy is only as good as the set of institutions it operates within, and Egypt’s are rotten to the core. Overcoming the destructive legacy of a dictatorial regime is a long, arduous and uncertain process. Sometimes people understandably stick with the devil they know.

I am privileged to have a wonderful and diverse group of friends in Egypt. I am always impressed at how much they laugh. Humour is the glue that binds Egyptian society together. It is often dark and frequently self-deprecating, but it acts as a sort of coping mechanism: no matter what, the government cannot take away your sense of humour. I was sitting with a group of friends last week and the joke was on Waleed, the only member of the Brotherhood in the room.

The joke was that Waleed was a “terrorist”—which under Egyptian law he was—and that if he did not stop winning at FIFA on the PlayStation his friends would call the authorities and have him arrested out of spite. Variations on this joke played out ad nauseam for several hours.

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But during my interactions on this visit, although the humor was still constant, a profound sadness was lurking just beneath the surface. This group of people in particular had been so energised and alive when we last met—now they were defeated. Some of them confided in me that they would have committed suicide were it not haram. When I asked about the prospects for another revolution in the future, the mood was bleak. “Maybe one day, but not for a long time,” Waleed replied.

On my last day in Egypt I went to a café in a residential area of Cairo with my friend Karim. While sipping on my tea I noticed a brand new portrait of Sisi in full military dress, proudly displayed on the main wall of the otherwise bland establishment. I asked Karim about it. He lent in, head down, shielding his mouth: “We shouldn’t talk about politics in public, it’s dangerous for me, the spies are everywhere again.”

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The Week in Feminism

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T

his April is international Red My Lips month, a campaign designed to raise awareness about the prevalence of sexual violence while simultaneously combating victim-blaming attitudes within society. The idea of wearing red lipstick throughout April (also Sexual Assault Awareness Month) to give visibility about the realities of sexual assault simultaneously opens up a dialogue to contradict rape myths still prevalent in society. The idea of sexual assault survivors’ sexuality, sexual identity and sexual expression being the cause of their assault is still widely believed today. This is an extremely harmful idea that has endless consequences—victims’ reluctance to come forward out of fear they will be asked “but what were you wearing?”, the idea that the way a woman dresses or acts should influence her safety, and fear to embrace our femininity in case it will be interpreted as “asking for it”.

Red My Lips founder, Danielle Tansino, experienced sexual assault in her late twenties and was shocked by her friends and family members’ reactions. She experienced a whole lot of victim blaming, not just from her peers but also the female district attorney in charge of her case. Tansino was told that “Jurors don’t like girls that drink”. Her personal experience, along with an understanding of the fundamentally flawed society in which these attitudes are cultivated, caused her to start a non-profit organisation that provides solidarity and support for sexual assault survivors.

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ive Chinese feminists have been released from a Beijing prison where they were held for 32 days after being arrested for publicly campaigning against sexual harassment and spousal abuse. They were arrested on the grounds of “picking quarrels and provoking troubles”. The group, dubbed the “Beijing Five” by the Chinese media, is led by Wu Rongrong, the founder and director of Weizhiming Women’s Centre in Hangzhou.

The feminist group has previously taken part in cities across China, including parading in blood-stained wedding dresses in protest of domestic abuse to occupying men’s public restrooms to demand more women’s facilities in Beijing’s central city.

The targeting of these women’s demonstrations by Chinese authorities reflects the Chinese Communist Party’s desire to crack down on various forms of protesting and activism.

The women were detained unlawfully for their last two days after the arresting officers failed to follow a legal deadline which states those held longer than 30 days must be given a formal charge. However, their release may have more to do with the fact that some women’s rights groups vowed to boycott the UN women’s summit, held later this year by Chinese President Xi Jinping, if the women were not released. The women’s release appears to simply be a tactical public relations move. All five women are still being investigated and the initial charges haven’t been dropped. Chinese police have completely limited their movements and each woman must continually check in with a bail officer, effectively preventing them from any more protests or public demonstrations.

Five things to do this Sexual Assault Awareness Month (SAAM):

1

. Check out and share Laci Green’s “Consent 101” vlog on YouTube—basically the essential foundation to consent and very useful if you know anyone a little confused as to what consent actually looks like. . Check in with your girls—take five minutes to remind the ladies in your life that you support them and are around for chats.

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3

.

Volunteer at your local rape crisis centre— Women’s Refuge is always looking for volunteers for their crisis phone lines.

Take five to look at the relationships in your life . (not just romantic) and ensure you feel heard, supported and empowered!

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Educate, educate, educate—even if it’s just . sharing something you find interesting on your Facebook or RT something that stirred you up, you never know what will strike a chord with someone else.

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editor@salient.org.nz

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Loosely Inspired (by The Bachelor)

Give Me a Rose Now George Block and Joe Cruden We’re going to be honest with you here, readers. When we conceived of this whole thing we had some near-great ideas.

“It’s inherently funny to treat such a vulgar cultural product with sincerity,” Joe said, as Obikwa crept out the corner of his mouth.

“I just want it to be cine-literate,” George replied, prostrate on the floor, well into his second bottle of Whale Point.

One thing we agreed upon was that our tone would be self-consciously Marxist.

We had the young Hegelians in our sights.

After agonising for ~3 hours, we fired off what seemed at the time a brilliant email to our long-suffering editor. When our friends assured us that we had written something completely unintelligible (but succinct, they admitted) we settled back into our own filth and waited. Sam was obviously scraping the bottom of the barrel because we received a tentative “if you want” and we were away.

Unfortunately, our eyes were bigger than our stomachs. Ten minutes into the odious opening special, we were already regretting our decision. The enormity of our task began to dawn on us. We sobered up quickly.

Our silly narrative fiddling required the existence of a narrative, and Puru made it abundantly clear that plot would be hard to come by. “What are we going to do with this neoliberal filth?” sneered George, red-eyed the following day. “We www.salient.org.nz

could take a couple of those English teaching jobs in Nepal,” replied Joe, nursing a Gregg’s. But we’re nothing if not stubborn. And here we are with our first installment: “Loosely Inspired (by The Bachelor)”.

We like to imagine we’ll drift slowly and serenely away from The Bachelor, like a lily on a mill pond, but for now here’s what happened: On Tuesday, Puru flew Art and someone down to Blenheim I guess, there was a group date at one of those trampoline nightmare places, and Art was double-bouncing everyone like a drunken uncle. One of the contestants was lucky enough not to get a rose and was returned to her family.

Wednesday showed us that Puru was fast running out of ideas (you’re not the only one Mike), as this time the gang simply went to the pool and watched a guffawing Art do clumsy bombs and splash about in the shallow end. It was a rare pleasure to see how underwhelmed Natalie was on her individual date aboard Michael Hill’s ridiculous yacht HMS Wealth.

“Did you ever think you’d get to go on a date on a super-yacht?” stammered our bumbling hero.

“The cogs in this hell-ship’s engine room are oiled with the blood of the workers,” declared comrade Natalia, revealing a refreshing commitment to socialism. “All property is theft.”

After poor Natalie’s excursion, another

lucky contestant went home. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief as the credits rolled. Six days of sweet, sweet freedom until we have to do it all over again.

One thing we never expected The Bachelor to give us was transgressive post-modern poetry, but boy were we wrong! Because, dear readers, it emerged this week that Matilda is an exceptionally gifted lyricist. We have a bard in our midst!

After a clearly impatient Matilda was finally able to explain to Art the concept of a Haiku, she gave us this: This tropical storm Makes my heart go boom for you Give me a rose now “What?” George looked up from his cold Mi Goreng, grubby fork halfway to his mouth. Joe stood transfixed, fiddling absent-mindedly with the ratty cord of his dressing gown. We weren’t ready for this. If you’ll allow us a moment of honesty, we missed the rest of the episode as Joe scrambled about for a pen, and George put the kettle on. It was time for an exegesis!

We came up cold. It’s been a long time since Joe’s Merit in “Unfamiliar Texts” at Level 2. And even then Mrs Cumming and a series of tutors had to hold his hand all the way through. George had been silent for the better part of two hours and all he’d produced was a runny nose.

Maybe we’ll go better next week. We really are trying.

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Welcome Back By now you have probably realised that when writing the Moan Zone, we aim for it to be most appealing to First Years. (Or “Freshers”— that’s what they’re called this year aren’t they?)

This is because First Years are yet to become so mature and self-righteous that they couldn’t dare be seen picking up a copy of Salient outside Vic Books.

This week we would like to revisit the holiday that you just had, but didn’t deserve, because we don’t know how less than five weeks of class justifies a two-week break.

If you managed to study during the break, you probably did more work than in the first five weeks combined. This is due to “home guilt”: it’s easy to justify skipping a lecture when it’s down the road from you. But when you are back in your awful hometown, you will suddenly feel motivated to actually do some work. Because you have just come back from the supermarket where all of the dropkicks from high school have now gone full time.

When you first get home you will be dying to see all of your friends who you haven’t seen in “ages!” You will have a classic high school party and will be continuously checking the time to see when the RAs are going to come and kick you out. You will all boast about your new mates, and those people in your year who stayed at home will feel like they have friends again. This happens once. The next time you come home, no one will care that you are home.

You will definitely be looking forward to home cooked meals, after the gruel they serve in your hostel—that food you are still paying for, by the way. However, the sad truth is your tummy can now only handle a Shmuel meal, and your mum’s cooking is way too rich for you.

Tip of the week: Make the most of the time you have in your hostel. Coming back from the holidays makes you realise how great it is to live under the same roof as all of your friends.

It will all be over soon, and you will be living in a flat that makes Vic House look nice.

If you’ve given up on uni already, please don’t give up on us, Luke and Tom P.S. Blame the Windows 8 Skype App for this issue.

At long last, tonight was the night. Loyal readers will long remember the ever-present tensions that exist between the reviewers about one of New Zealand’s finest exports, Lindauer. Less of a review and more of a fight, our friendship almost ended the evening we decided to opine about Lindauer. So, let us present Lindauer: A Reviewing Partnership Divided.

We Drank This So You Didn’t Have To Lydia and Mitch Lindauer Brut Cuvée Cost: $10 (750ml) Alcohol volume: 12 per cent (7.1 standards)

Pairing: Apple martinis, a

BBQ Bacon Rodeo Burger, debilitating heartburn.

Mitch I don’t really have a bad thing to say about Lindauer. It doesn’t rate with that bottle of Moët that your parents guilt-gifted you that one Christmas, or that bottle of Veuve you knocked back (from the bottle) on Chow #datenight, but it’s okay. Other reviewers will try to lie to you by saying that this is one of New Zealand’s finest exports or suitable for any occasion. Dear readers, I am asking you to ignore this (admittedly optimistic) lie.

My first impression of Lindauer was that it just tasted like shitty sparkling white wine, which, by definition, is almost exactly what it is. While I must commend Lindauer for its ability to pair well with a BBQ Bacon Rodeo Cheeseburger*, it should forever be referred to as the Fat Bird of sparkling wines. In summary, if you, like me, can’t afford fancy French champagne on occasions where it’s not given to you out of pity, Lindauer is an okay alternative. * Author's note: BK, we’re still waiting to hear from you

Lydia Lindauer is the tits and if you disagree you’re classist and probably hate New Zealand.

I want to be clear here that Lindauer is objectively a bloody nice drop, my otherwise low standards aside. It even comes in fraise/ strawberry (thanks, inexplicable French minor!) and I have never been presented with a compelling argument as to why that is a negative.

One of the most appealing attributes of ol’ Lindy is its ability to transcend imaginary party castes. Horrendous engagement party for Christian friends? Lindauer is appropriate. Regrettable flat party in Brooklyn that was so not worth the Uber?

Lindauer is appropriate. Tough Tuesday?

Lindauer is appropriate. With a flavour profile of “nice and good”, Lindauer deserves every award it has ever received including “Lydia’s Fave”. When everyone is ready to come around to the fact that human achievement peaked with this drink, I will be here waiting. Bottoms up. editor@salient.org.nz

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Film

salient

The Salt of the Earth Directed by Juliano Ribeiro Salgado and Wim Wenders

Insurgent Kari Schmidt The Salt of the Earth is a documentary on the life and work of Brazilian-born photographer Sebãstio Salgado. Salgado, originally an economist, made the professional transition to photographer in his early 30s. The film is dominated by his photographic series—gold mines and the indigenous people of the Awá tribe in Brazil, the natural wonders of the world, the victims of various famine ridden conflict zones in Africa such as the Congo, Ethiopia, Sudan and Rwanda.

On the one hand I was genuinely overwhelmed by the beauty of the photography and inspired by Salgado’s art and his environmental activism. For example, he and his wife started the Instituto Terra, a project revitalising barren land in Brazil which has become a model for environmental revitalization throughout the world, as well as a National Park. However, in the lead up to seeing the film I honestly couldn’t be fucked seeing yet another movie of the white-male-genius variety. Seeing it in full substantiated this feeling; the film takes an overwhelmingly celebratory approach to its protagonist, its idolatry probably due in part to the fact that it was co-directed by Salgado’s son.

For instance, The Salt of the Earth is heavy on images of indigenous people, as well as the dead and dying, and crucial questions remain unanswered—did Salgado establish genuine communication with these people? Was he not using them to his own ends, or did his photography help them in some genuine way? Did they/could they even have understood that some white Wellingtonian would see them on a movie screen across the world where something as normal to them as nudity has a completely different connotation? The way that Salgado makes suffering aesthetic is also problematic, reminiscent of a statement once related to South African photographer Santu Mofokeng: “There is nothing as beautiful as black skin and blood! It makes beautiful contrast.” In this way suffering is captured and commodified.

Similarly, I would have liked to hear way more about Lélia’s involvement and contribution to Salgado’s photography, given that they collaborated on much of his work and that she supported the family throughout his career transition from economist to artist, as well as taking care of their children during his long and frequent periods of absence. Still, the imagery is stunning, alternately beautiful, curious and utterly tragic, and worth seeing on a big screen. Maybe just take it with a grain of salt.

www.salient.org.nz

Directed by Robert Schwentk

Jess Knipping The Millennial Rat Pack are at it again. Shailene Woodley (and Theo James), with Ansel Elgort and Miles Teller in tow, are back to bring the second Divergent tale to life. “Life”, however, is a bit of a generous word for this instalment.

The film has the right formula to create a solid second chapter: the universe has expanded with the “Factionless” (led by Four’s led-tobelieve-dead-mother); a new device that places the “Divergents” in greater peril than ever before; friends and family members turning their back on our heroes; a load of visually enhanced battle sequences; and a revelation that perfectly sets up the final chapter.

However, Insurgent falls flat. The motivation for the characters feels both conventional and weak. And the cardinal rule of action films has been neglected: I never felt like our heroes would fail to survive the film. As Tris went through every impossible challenge quite comfortably, I sat back and enjoyed the backdrop (the visual effects are mighty impressive).

I can’t pinpoint what was so off in the film. Was it the thin rehashing of the the same “futuristic dystopian world punishing people because they want don’t follow the rules” formula? I don’t think that is it; the first film actually had my complete interest, and it followed the same tropes as this one. It just feels like no action from any character ever makes perfect sense.

There isn’t enough depth in the story or the characters for me to really grab onto. I don’t think I know Tris. Her actions don’t make sense to me because I don’t know why she does what she does.

There is never a moment where I feel like the movie invites me to understand her motives and I think that is Insurgent’s greatest downfall: entertainment.

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Citizenfour Directed by Laura Poitras

Film

Here, we enter into a world of spy movie tropes like meetings in a hotel lobby, carrying certain objects to recognise each other and exchanging passphrases. However, once we are in Snowden’s hotel room and Poitras turns on her camera, we are given one of the most unique and intense spy thrillers in the history of cinema.

Much of the film takes place over eight days in this one room, but these scenes are by far the most engrossing. Anybody who managed to sit through the debacle of Kim Dotcom’s Stephen Hay “Moment of Truth” will know that despite awkward surroundings, Edward Snowden is a very engaging speaker. When he talks “For now, know that every border you cross, about why he is doing this, he come across every purchase you make, every call you dial, as thoughtful, sincere and passionate. His every cell-phone tower you pass, friend you descriptions of what he did for the CIA keep, site you visit and subject line you type and the power and scope of the surveillance is in the hands of a system whose reach is assemblage are both frightening and unlimited but whose safeguards are not.” convincing.

These words were part of the first cryptic message from CIA whistleblower Edward In terms of the narrative this sets up the Snowden, using the handle Citizenfour, that protagonist as a noble little guy standing up filmmaker Laura Poitras received. Such a to a seemly omnipotent governmental force. message could be used to kick off a great spy So when Snowden, Greenwald and later thriller, and that is exactly what they do in another journalist Ewen MacAskill begin Citizenfour. talking about strategies around how the leaks will be released and when and if Snowden Winner of this year’s Academy Award should personally goes public, the stakes feel for Best Documentary, the film has the incredible high. stated aim of exploring surveillance in post 9/11 America. However, this is really the Unexplained phone calls and the fire alarm backdrop to a much more localised and being set off all feel like parts of a conspiracy character-driven film. Poitras starts off with theory closing in on our heroes. When the a brief overview of what was known about anxious Snowden has a break from typing surveillance before the Snowden leaks, on the laptop to take in the view from the then it’s off to Hong Kong with fellow window of tenth floor room, it is easy to investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald. imagine him being suddenly hit by a sniper

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bullet from a CIA rifle. However, despite some similarities this is not a Bourne film.

Instead of gunfights the plot becomes a media conflict as Poitras, Greenwald and MacAskill start publishing and the American Government goes into damage control. Once Snowden himself enters the limelight we witness what it is like to suddenly become the most wanted person, by government and media, in the world. As human rights lawyers whisk Snowden off to a safe house, we see someone who clearly knew where his path was taking him and is both happy and terrified to have finally gotten there.

The final act of the film, which deals with the immediate aftermath of the revelations, is much less engaging. We hear from a bunch of people who are simply not as likeable or interesting as those from the Hong Kong hotel room. Not surprisingly, while journalists all over the world start using this information to expose America’s surveillance in their countries, the Obama administration remains unrepentant. Also deflating is a scene in which the UK government compels The Guardian to physically destroy the flash drive that Snowden gave them. The film does try to end of the positive note that Snowden has inspired new whistleblowers, but this positivity is somewhat undercut by the fact that the information they are passing on paints and even more dystopian picture.

Citizenfour is a good film if you want to get angry at powerful governments, which is not much of a accomplishment in today’s world, but its real achievement is telling the personal story of someone who went beyond anger and tried to change things. editor@salient.org.nz

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Helldivers Developer: Arrowhead Game Studios Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, PlayStation 3

Jack Young Helldivers is PS4’s latest, a brutal top-down twin-stick shooter that places you in the role of a space marine serving the mighty Super Earth! Super Earth, obnoxiously bigger in grandeur and populace than, say, “Earth”, finds itself fighting three different wars. On different galactic fronts you will fight bugs, cyborgs and illuminates (which are like robot thing-ys). And there is a reason the game is called Helldivers… Rapture awaits.

The game looks like Destiny and Dead Nation had a lovechild (hopefully it doesn’t inherit Peter Dinklage’s voice). Environments look passable to pretty at best. The character and creature animations are generally better, but the illuminate fall into the category of halfarsed generic robots. The soldier you guide, however, has a really sexy sci fi aesthetic. You really do “look the part”. In addition to this, all helldivers wear capes. Capes are dope.

But thankfully “looking the part” isn’t Helldivers’ sole focus. Gameplay is king. www.salient.org.nz

Games

And the gameplay is a sophisticated mess of coordinated co-op and fast paced twitch action. You can play Helldivers alone, but it is really meant to be played with a team. I say team because not just any rabble is going to be sufficient to fight the oncoming space swarm. Working together to play specific roles and avoid friendly fire is integral. A shotgunner with a large spread should target hosts of smaller enemies, leaving the heavily armoured to friends with focussed rifle bursts, and at the same time anticipate his fire and avoid taking the head off his brothers in arms.

In any given scenario you are tasked with a bevy of different objectives: escort civilians from point A to point B, capture a flag, blow up an alien nest. These campaigns work in perfect unison with what makes Helldivers stand out: the innovative progression/ inventory system “stratagems”. A stratagem is basically a tool you call down from orbit to assist you. These are unlocked by completing all missions on a given planet. Everything from turrets to jetpacks are available. You will need to punch in a button prompted code with your radio (which is harder than it sounds on a bullet-hell battlefield). If you need to make something explode, call in an airstrike. If your task is to protect a hangar, drop in some automated turrets (which can also kill you) to complement your already overzealously equipped foursome. The possibilities for dynamic gameplay solutions are endless. My favorite stratagems ended up being the mech suit and the four seating, turreted, four wheel drive vehicle.

Besides a short Starship Troopers-esque animation that plays at the game’s introduction screen, and a tutorial that sees you trained in a recruitment camp,

salient

Helldivers doesn’t try to offer an in-depth storyline. The narrative it does tell highlights community participation. When a planet is cleared, “community influence” is awarded.

Community influence simultaneously brings Super Earth closer to invading alien homeworlds and slows alien expansion upon our own homeworld. You can see the members of the community who have contributed the most to saving Super Earth.

In this sense, leaderboards are cooperative with a competitive element.

Though the stated goal in Helldivers is to reach level 25 and to unlock and fully upgrade everything, there is a sort of communal endgame. When your marines or the enemy aliens finally invade a homeworld, you are tasked with attacking or protecting that world. This mixes up gameplay, which might otherwise be too repetitive. The less alien environments of Super Earth are fun to navigate, and a sense of urgency will always drive you in these more desperate campaigns. If the community fails to win enough scenarios in the invasion, the war is over. The process then repeats itself as a new war begins—a circle of life.

Helldivers, in my mind, is the definitive installment in the twin-stick genre for the rising category of gamers who love to be punished. Without coordination, you will often die. With coordination, you will often die (albeit less). Stratagems make the battlefield feel alive as your Helldivers must adapt to the conditions and hopefully live on. The lack of narrative or AAA graphics, though a slight factor, does little to detract from the overall experience. Much like the PacMans and Galagas of old, Helldivers has exceptional core gameplay and style to spare.

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Books

So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed

Bad Feminist

Jon Ronson

Roxane Gay

Riverhead Books (Penguin Group)

HarperCollins

Cassie Richards

Jayne Mulligan

The majority of us have some kind of online presence, whether on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Tinder, or a cocktail of them all. Social media is everywhere, and being present online is a weird passport confirming our existence. But what happens when social media turns against us? Jon Ronson’s latest pop-psychology offering, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, explores the sinister phenomenon of public shaming on the internet, and how transgressions online can become all too real.

Roxane Gay’s voice has been steadily growing louder over the last year. As a regular contributor for The Guardian and various websites, with two books out in 2014, she is also a professor, writer, editor, and commentator; her opinions are worth listening to, and make a refreshing change to the dominant strand of criticism. This lady knows what she is talking about.

Some of you will remember the saga of Justine Sacco, the woman who tweeted an (admittedly terrible) AIDS-related joke before getting on a flight from London to South Africa. While Justine was in transit, her misguided but seemingly harmless tweet exploded beyond the sphere of her small number of Twitter followers to the wider online world. She became the numberone worldwide trending topic, a clickbait headline, the face of privileged white racism. Her flight path was hungrily followed by people all over the world, anxious for her to touch down and the show to begin. All this in the space of mere hours; all the while she remained completely unaware. She lost her job, her dignity, her relationship with her family suffered. As Ronson puts it, Justine had been “labouring under the misapprehension […] that Twitter was a safe-place to tell the truth about yourself to strangers.” Twitter was not a safe place for Justine anymore, and following death and rape threats from strangers online, the real world didn’t seem that safe either.

This is just one of the scandalously compelling stories featured in the book. Ronson has explored the fallout from internet catastrophes such as Justine’s, and he does so by talking to the people who have experienced first-hand the descent of the online horde, those who have been vilified and demonised and suffered the very real impact on their lives. He also explores the other side—people who have come out the victors after a public shaming, such as Max Mosley, the Formula One boss whose kinky sex antics were plastered over News of the World. Ronson tries to answer the question of what separates these people from those who have fallen so shamefully from grace.

So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed may not sound like an uplifting read, and perhaps it isn’t, but it is compulsively readable, and might make you a little bit cautious of the internet and its omnipotent powers of destruction—and the part that you might be playing in it.

Bad Feminist is a collection of Gay’s essays, some having been previously published online, but collected under her coined phrase “bad feminist”. In adopting such a label, she honestly admits the flawed nature of feminism and those who occupy that term; feminist figures are unfairly placed on a pedestal and subsequently torn down when their imperfections are revealed.

It’s a safe move on her part—admitting flaws from the outset allows Gay to explore the flaws rather than be limited by them.

She embraces the term Bad Feminist; like all of us, she enjoys dancing to certain songs, even when they know they’re bad for women (I’m looking at you, Beyonce and Jay Z).

The subjects of her essays range from The Hunger Games, to sexual assault, to politics, to Chris Brown, to competitive Scrabble, and back again. While some of the references feel dated, stretching back to the “legitimate rape” debacle, Gay’s sound criticisms illustrate her insight into the cultural climate. I read somewhere it’s like she’s always looking around the corner, and I couldn’t agree more; Gay presents each new topic with an honest and candid insight. For her it can be as simple as wanting to watch a TV show where she sees herself—a dark-skinned intelligent lady—at the centre of a TV show or movie, who isn’t playing the role of the sassy best friend, whose identity as an African American isn’t tokenistic.

While I devoured the book whole, I think reading the collection in intervals of essays could have benefits, as the essays can come to feel repetitive and formulaic. Yet within seemingly disconnected essays lies the heart, Roxane, who gives the book its emotional underpinning by weaving in her own traumatic personal narrative.

Gay writes in the introduction that “Feminism has certainly helped me find my voice. Feminism has helped me believe my voice matters, even in this world where there are so many voices demanding to be heard.” We hear you Roxane, and I know my voice felt stronger at the end. editor@salient.org.nz

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Music

Strangers To Ourselves Modest Mouse

Kate Robertson Modest Mouse have released their first album in eight years and the alternative music scene has lost its mind.

Whether for the right reasons or not, this really is the kind of album you need to listen to for yourself and decide.

If you’re already a fan of the band, chances are you’ll find the album a little underwhelming. Despite this overarching anti-climatic feel, diehards will still be happy because the album at its core carries with it the classic Modest Mouse sound that we’ve had to live the past eight years without.

If this is the first you’re hearing of the band, then the title track “Lampshades On Fire” will definitely be the most palatable. It’s a catchy tune that epitomises the band’s altrock style and has proven pretty popular in the mainstream markets. “Coyotes” is another standout worth listening to, bearing similarities to one of the band’s biggest hits, “The World At Large”. It has a cool melancholy about it that just ebbs and flows in all the right places. “Pistol” also deserves a special mention, if only to draw your attention to just how great such a manic, disjointed piece of music can be. It’s exactly what you would expect from frontman Isaac Brock, and is an arrangement that will perplex you, while simultaneously blowing your mind.

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On a not-so-positive note, the struggles the band faced creating the album are at times apparent. Every now and then, the “effortless cool” of it all feels a little stunted and forced. The labour that went into it was confirmed in a recent interview where Brock told media that the eightyear ordeal just about drove him to bankruptcy, a hefty price to pay for that just right sound.

Modest Mouse may never release anything better than The Moon and Antarctica or The Lonesome Crowded West, but Strangers to Ourselves is certainly a step in the right direction. If you’ve been with the band for years, you’ll be happy to hear something fresh. On the contrary, if you’re a first-time listener, I recommend having a flick through their back catalogue to help give the new release a little more context. At the end of the day, it rings true to their sound and will definitely keep fans happy until their next album comes along, which Brock has confirmed will be churned out “as soon as legally possible”.

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Music

Sometimes I Sit and Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit Courtney Barnett

Alice Reid In 2013, Courtney Barnett released an EP Collection titled The Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas. The release featured tracks like “Avant Gardener” and “History Eraser” and was met with critical acclaim. Fast-forward a few years and her debut album is finally here, recorded in the autumn of 2014 in a 10-day session at Head Gap studios in Melbourne. Sometimes I Sit and Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit is now well on its way to being one of the best Australian albums of 2015.

Barnett says “My songs follow me as a normal human with normal emotions. So there are great highs and great lows. They span everything in my life.” This is no understatement; it’s clear that Barnett takes inspiration from everything. She’s an exceptional storyteller. Her lyrics are both witty and relatable. She somehow makes the seemingly mundane interesting and does it brilliantly.

Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune wrote that “She sounds like she’s day-dreaming out loud instead of singing, but she’s deceptively incisive as a lyricist.”

Sometimes I Sit and Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit is simple, fun and really easy to listen to. The album is packed with nineties riffs and the sound is pretty grunge, but it is by

no means limited to simply this. “Pedestrian At Best” is a definite highlight, featuring a frenzied sound paired with rather monotone vocals. The sound works exceptionally well and matches the lyrics nicely, with lines like “Give me all your money, and I’ll make some origami, honey”, “Put me on a pedestal and I’ll only disappoint you / Tell me I’m exceptional, I promise to exploit you” and “I think you’re a joke but I don’t find you very funny”.

“Nobody Really Cares If You Don’t Go To The Party” is another highlight from the album, with the all-toorelatable chorus “I wanna go out but I wanna stay home”.

“Dead Fox” is another song that really exemplifies Barnett’s prowess as a lyricist. She makes roadkill into a discussion of some pretty important issues and she does so in the most seamless way, with lyrics like “More people die on the road than they do in the ocean / Maybe we should mull over culling cars instead of sharks / Or just lock them up in parks where we can go and view them”.

Sometimes I Sit and Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit is an incredible debut album. Barnett is an impressive lyricist and musician to say the least, and definitely one to keep an eye on in the future.

editor@salient.org.nz

Visual Arts

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salient

YOUR GUIDE TO THE RENAISSANCE SUPERSTARS RENAISSANCE, THE ERA BRINGING YOU:

THIS WEEK: 1452 1519

uglyrenaissancebabies.tumblr.

LEONARDO DA VINCI

Italian. Mathematician. Painter. Sculptor. Drawer. Architect.

Musician. Engineer. Inventor. Anatomist. Geologist. Cartographer.

Botanist. Writer. Over Achiever

Key works you need to know by the hand of Leonardo: the Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, The Vitruvian Man, prototype helicopters, and drawings of cut up dead people.

Leonardo is remembered for more than the visual arts column has scope for and is pretty much held to be the ideal Renaissance boss man. Born out of wedlock to a peasant woman and a gentleman in the small town Vinci in Florence, Leo had a pretty chilled out childhood. When he was 14 he went to work and learn to paint from Verrocchio, who was one of the best artists in Florence at the time. Collaborating was all cool in the 1470s, till the day when Leo was working on a painting with Verrocchio and his teacher saw how much more awesome Leo’s work was than his. In a dramatic move, Verrocchio broke his paint brushes and swore to never paint again, which was actually for the best as Verrocchio’s stuff is comparable to Bebo.

So Leonardo was a genius that can hardly be denied.

However, he had a bad case of signing up for too many clubs in clubs week, and barely ever finished what he started. But as art historians we have to work with what we’ve got, and in Leo’s case that is one small unfinished painting of a woman, a terribly damaged painting of Jesus’ last meal and a handful of other unfinished works.

The Mona Lisa If you’re feeling culturally confused because your hungover contiki experience at the Louvre left you disappointed that the universe didn’t explain itself when you set your eyes on the Mona Lisa, then let me clear some things up for you.

Firstly, size isn’t everything. Yeah the Mona Lisa is pretty small by painting standards (77 x 53cm)— but that really isn’t what we are judging the merits

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Harriet Riley of the painting on here. There are a few things that Leo is doing here that had never been done, at least to this standard before. Things like using a landscape background to a portrait with colours that actually recede like they do in real life. Also in the Renaissance, geometry and particularly circles were considered the bee’s knees and the Mona Lisa is loaded with these (and other secret messages to Dan Brown).

Unconventionally, Leo didn’t paint outlines when dealing with the Mona Lisa’s eyes and mouth, which means she looks more lifelike. However, this has caused a lot of concern by viewers about her happiness and well-being. (“Go on love, you’d be much prettier if you smiled.”) It is obviously an atrocity for a woman this famous not to smile and be grateful. I reckon she’s holding herself pretty well considering the shit she has to put up with on the daily. Apparently Leo played music to the model while he painted so she probably was enjoying a cheeky wee smile to herself.

The Mona Lisa wasn’t even that famous outside of the art world until it was stolen from the Louvre in 1911.

The guy just walked out with it under his coat. That painting was 400 years old and he just stuffed it into his coat! Obviously now it ’s covered in bulletproof glass and you would probably be shot before getting a finger to it.

Since being stolen the painting has shot to fame and has become the most parodied and well known piece of artwork in the world. I don’t know what Leo would make of all this, but I hope that he would see cheap imitation as the most sincere form of flattery.

Food

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Cauliflower Pizza Hannah Douglass I’ve told lots of my friends about this recipe, and they’ve all had the same initial reaction—to look at me like I’m nuts and then say, “really? Cauliflower?” Yes, cauliflower. Instead of a traditional flour base, cauliflower is a low-carb, gluten-free, high fibre alternative that basically means you can eat more pizza, and who doesn’t love that?

There are two things to know about this recipe: first, don’t worry, it doesn’t really taste like cauliflower. It’s like when your mum used to sneak extra veggies into your dinners as a kid—you don’t really notice unless you’re looking for it. Second, while this is pizza, it’s not always as structurally sound as your average $5 Pizza Hut Hawaiian—BYO knife and fork. As with normal pizzas, you can pretty much put whatever toppings on you like, in whatever quantity you like. Get creative, or just use whatever is in your fridge that is getting close to its expiry. It also reheats well, so make a bunch and have it for lunch the next day too.

Serves two

Ingredients: Base 1 medium head of cauliflower 1 ½ cups grated mozzarella cheese (or any cheese, really— the stringier it is when melted the better it will hold the base together) 1-2 Tbl dried mixed herbs salt and pepper Toppings Tomato paste Parmesan cheese Spinach Mushrooms Spring onion Chilli, finely diced Shaved ham

1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. In a food processor, blend up the cauliflower florets and mixed herbs until it forms a rice-like consistency.

2. Get yourself a big old microwave-proof bowl and tip the cauliflower in. Microwave for 6-8 minutes, depending on your microwave’s power.

3. Mix through the mozzarella, salt and pepper thoroughly and allow to cool for about 5 minutes.

4. Tip onto a lined baking tray (sometimes the cheese makes it stick if it’s not lined) and press out into a vague pizza-base shape.

5. Bake until the top is entirely golden—don’t worry if the edges are a bit darker, it’s not going to taste burnt.

6. Put your toppings on and bake again until the toppings are cooked and delicious-looking.

7. Let it sit and chill out for a couple of minutes before you try and chop it. The cheese in the base will cool and solidify a bit, making your life a lot easier when serving.

editor@salient.org.nz

42

SCIENCE

Posture affects learning in robots Patrick Savill

So You Wanna be a Martian?

Bridget Pyć

Plans are being developed to establish a permanent human settlement on Mars within the next 20 years. If you’re anything like me (a science nerd trying to maintain a cool image in everyday life) you may have had an initial response along the lines of “wow, cool, I wanna be an astronaut and go live on Mars”. However, upon realisation that the move to Mars involves an eight month one-way trip and a big “catchya c*nt” to all the good food and great people here on Earth, I have come to accept that I am not likely to receive a Martian passport anytime soon.

The two big players in the quest to colonise Mars are NASA (as expected) and an organisation named Mars One. Mars One is currently accepting applications from members of the public wanting to be one of the first settlers on the red planet. If you have just the right combination of heroism, adventure and insanity, and a space adventure sounds like a bit of you, then here Salient provides you with MART101: An Introductory Course to Life as a Martian.

The body posture of both the teacher and student have been found to affect the student’s ability to remember correctly. Linda Smith, of Indiana University, has been studying postures with the aid of robots and children.

To begin this learning experience we outline a number of challenges one should expect to encounter on Mars due to its differences to Planet Earth:

The robots were programmed to map the name of an object to the position it was presented in.

The robot was shown a unique object on its left and told what it was. This was then removed and another object shown to its right. When both objects were put in front of it the robot could distinguish between the objects, even when they moved around. However, if both were presented on the same side the robot could not tell them apart.

1. You will be cold. The average temperature on Earth is a balmy 15°C compared with the -63°C in Mars.

Human infants exhibited the same behaviour for the same tests, which Smith attributes to body positioning. She concludes that the shifting of your body can cause you to forget.

She also plans to study cognition which will be done in a similar fashion, determining whether words and thoughts are represented by bodily movement. However it is yet to be shown that body posture affects learning in adults, as well as in infants. www.salient.org.nz

salient

2. You will be thirsty. The thin atmosphere on Mars means that life-giving water doesn’t stay on the surface long.

3. You will be sunburnt. A lack of ozone layer means astronauts could be exposed to extremely harmful solar ultraviolet radiation.

4. You will be confused trying to arrange a Skype date. A day on Mars lasts 39 minutes and 35 seconds longer than on Earth, so if you wanted to talk to someone at home at 9am, you would have to do so at your 9am one day, 8:20am the next day, 7:41am the following, then 7:01am, 6:22am, 5:42am and so on.

If these don’t scare you off and you still want a new space postcode, then the next step is training. A key factor in the training process is ensuring that you can manage living both in isolation for long periods of time and also living in close confinement with a small number of people. Training is expected to take around eight years, and will involve studies in medicine, electrical engineering, and a range of other disciplines necessary to sustain human life.

NASA and Mars One are taking two very different approaches to colonising the dusty planet. Mars One have claimed that they will fund the mission through stimulating public interest and running the project as a reality TV series; however, the feasibility of this plan has been questioned by a number of scientists.

NASA are taking things slower, and are currently analysing the environment on Mars and the potential to build water using robotics.

In each case, the goal is to unite humankind through space exploration and to gain insight into our solar system and the origins of the universe. NASA’s Curiosity rover has recently discovered that liquid water does exist on Mars, albeit only for a short time before it evaporates, which suggests that Mars and Earth have more similarities than we previously guessed.

Through colonisation of Mars, scientists would be able to gain greater insight to the history of the planet, and hence understand how Mars could have previously housed life, and what this could mean for the future of our planet and others. Mars is a stepping stone in our voyage into the universe, and as with the Apollo Moon landings, this mission will inspire generations to believe that anything is possible.

The task to leave Earth for a foreign planet may sound daunting, and even a little crazy, but remember that at one stage New Zealand was unknown, and it was only through the departure of our first ancestors from their homelands that we have the Aotearoa we do today. Who knows who our next brave explorers will be, and what the Mars could have in store for our ever expanding society.

issue 7

Science

43

Where are all the parallel universes?

Ruth Corkill Some physicists think they may have figured out where the evidence of parallel universes has been hiding—if parallel universes exist, that is. Modal realists will tell you that all possible worlds, including the one in which Sherlock and I ride a dinosaur to the Ministry of Magic each morning, are as real as the actual world. This is the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, where every possibility is actualised, and science steps politely to one side to let philosophy and amazing fan fiction pass. Sadly, the manyworlds theory cannot be tested (unlike the effectiveness of homeopathy). But in a new paper published in Physics Letters B, Ahmed Farag Ali, Mir Faizal, and Mohammed M. Khalil suggest that detecting miniature black holes at a certain energy levels would be the first step towards finding real parallel universes in extra dimensions. Mini black holes are evidence of extra dimensions; finding extra dimensions would support string theory; and string theory predicts parallel universes.

This is not all new. But the paper claims that the reason the search for mini black holes has so far been fruitless is that we were looking in the wrong place. That is, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the largest particle collider

“Modal realists will tell you that all possible worlds, including the one in which Sherlock and I ride a dinosaur to the Ministry of Magic each morning, are as real as the actual world.” in the world, has only searched for mini black holes at energy levels that are far too low. Ali, Faizal, and Khalil suggest that the model of gravity that was used to predict which energy levels were likely to contain black holes did not account for quantum effects and needed to be altered.

Essentially, the more dimensions you have the easier it is to create a black hole. Extra dimensions lower the energy required to produce black holes because the gravity in our universe leaks into the extra dimensions.

However, the new work suggests that more energy is required to produce mini black holes than previously thought, because the geometry of space and time is deformed at mini-black-hole-type scales. To account for

this distortion the team used the relatively new (and charmingly named) theory of “gravity’s rainbow”.

So now we wait and see what happens at the LHC when the energies are adjusted. If mini black holes are found at the predicted energies it will be a great victory for string theorists and friends. If not, it won’t prove much. The extra dimensions may be smaller than expected, or the parameters of gravity’s rainbow may need to be modified. As many a weary anti-string-theorist will tell you, it’s nigh impossible to prove that something doesn’t exist. No matter how silly or Jurassic deer stalker wearing it is.

editor@salient.org.nz

44

salient

Maori Matters

Kei tua o te pae Raimona Tapiata Katahi te ingoa hangai ki te kaupapa o tōna hui ko tera.

Kua rangona whanuitia ngā kupu nei i roto i ngā mihi ki ngā mate. Heoi, he kōrero ano mo ngā wananga, ngā tikanga, ngā mahi a kui mā a koro mā i ngā rā o uki.

Katoa ngā kōrero nei i wanangahia e te hunga whakarongo i ngā ahiahi. Tere tonu tā mātou hono atu ki te rōpu kōrero Māori, kia wanangatia, kia wetewetetia ngā whakaaro,a, ngā kōrero o te rā. I whai wahi ano hoki mātou ki te whakatakoto i o mātou ake whakaaro mo te hui.

Ko te ingoa tenei o te wananga i tū ki Te Whare Wananga o Raukawa ki Otaki i te marama o Poutu-te-rangi. No Ngati Raukawa te reo karanga ki te marea kia rarauhi mai ki te hui nei. He tika ano hoki te tū o te hui ki roto i te whare wananga Māori. I whai wahi mātou ko Te Wehi Wright, ko Te Aonui McKenzie ko Te Po Hawaikirangi ki te haere hei mangai mō Ngāi Tauira, mo Ngā Rangahautira.

Ao ake te rā tuarua, he wananga ano te mahi. Na Veronica Tawhai te ahi i tautau me ōna kōrero mo te ropu rangatahi - Matike Mai Aotearoa. He rōpu i whakaturia ki te whai rautaki hei akiaki i ngā rangatahi ki te whai i ngā kaupapa mo te tuapapa ture o Aotearoa. Ko tā rātou he whakaara ake i te reo o te rangatahi ki ngā ture hangai ki te kawanatanga. I tū ano hoki a Ruakere Hond ki te waha i ōna whakaaro mo te matauranga Māori. E ai ki āna rangahau, ehara te ‘matauranga’ i te kupu tuturu o te iwi Māori. Ko te kura, ko te wananga rānei te kupu i whakamahia e ō tātou tipuna.

E rua ngā kaupapa i wanangatia, ko te rangatiratanga, ko te matauranga Māori hoki. Na mātou ano te whiwhi i ai mātou ki te noho ki te whakarongo ki ngā taniwha hikuroa o te ao matauranga.

Na Moana Jackson matou i whakamohio ki nga whakamarama mo ngā kaikōrero. Ka whakatakotohia ano hoki e ia ngā kōrero whakakapi i te hui. He tirohanga ki te retotanga o ngā kaupapa i wanangatia.

Katahi te hui rangatira ko tēnei. Katoa ngā ahuatanga o te rangatiratanga i whakatinanahia e te hui nei. Ko te reka, ko te hohonu o ngā kōrero hei kai ma ngā taringa.

Ko te manaakitanga o te hau kainga tera e tohu ana i tōna rangatiratanga. Ko te mahi o te rangatira i ea i te raranga mai i te tira whakarongo, ki te timotimo i ngā kai o te kōrero.

Ka tū a Dayle Takitimu ki te whakawhariki i ōna kōrero mo te rangatiratanga. I kōrero ia mo ngā taumahatanga i pā mai ki a ia i āna mahi hei roia mo ngā kereme o te Te Whanau a Apanui ,a, te whawhai i ngā ture mo ngā hinu kei te takutai moana o te rohe rā. Ko tāna, me tū toka tu moana te iwi Maori i ki ngā ngaru whawhati o te Kawanatanga me te ao hurihuri. I reira ano hoki a Wayne Ngata. E ai ki a ia, mā te whakaora me te whai i te matauranga Māori e whakamau ai te iwi Māori ki tōna rangatiranga.

The Americas U SA, C ANADA , C E NTRA L

& S OU T H AMERI C A

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www.salient.org.nz

Kati, me mihi ka tika ki a Toihourewa ngā rangatira i whakaaea hei uru tātou ngā manu taiko ki tēnei wananga hirahira.

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VUWSA

issue 7

Yarn With Zwaan Rick Zwaan

45

Wellbeing and Sustainability Officer Rory Lenihan-Ikin

Welcome back to uni! I hope you’ve had a great break.

$

Introducing the first VUW provided compost bin!

So in case you haven’t hear about this, Wellington City Council has plans in place to extend the airport’s runway by a massive 300 metres at the bargain price of only $1 million per metre. Here are some other things you could get for $300m:

Yup, as of the first week back after the mid tri break, students and staff will no longer be made to squirm as they put their food scraps, compostable plates, and PLA fork (made from plants) into the general waste bins.

—600,000 easter eggs —300 Beyoncé shows in Wellington —Over 1200 flights to space on Virgin Galactic —1.25 million years of phone credit —93,750,000 long blacks from Vic Books (with the VUWSA membership discount)

The new bin will be parked cosily and conveniently in the Kirk courtyard, right next to the Krishna food kiosk, and will be available for use during Krishna opening hours.

$

While long blacks for a few millennia would be pretty sweet, in all seriousness we need to weigh up if it’s worth extending the runway. One of the key benefits being used to push the idea is that it will attract more international students to Wellington. As much as it would be great to be able to fly direct to destinations around the world, I’m not sold on this being the best thing we can do to attract more students to the city. In fact, the economic analysis commissioned by the airport referred to a study that showed that “International connectivity/ease of travel does not come up [as a factor in Chinese students’ choice of institution] but awareness and profile of countries and institutions are important.”

$

In my time working alongside and hanging out with international students, the key issues with life in Wellington that they raise is the shocking standard of flats and the cost of transport. The reputational ramifications of students travelling back home and saying “Vic was great but I lived in a mouldy flat and it costs heaps to get around the city” is far worse, in my view, than “I had to fly through Auckland”. Also, it’s such a trap to make travelling here slightly easier for international students but then do very little to ensure that their welfare while they study here is cared for.

If we seriously want to attract more students to the city and ensure that their time here is worthwhile, here’s a couple other ways we could spend $300m:

$

—Fairer Fares on public transport for tertiary students in Welly for about 100 years —Warm up about 150,000 flats with free insulation (btw there’s less than 10,000 student flats in Welly) I’d far prefer to live in a healthy flat, be able to afford the bus, and earn enough to pay for a flight overseas than to be able to fly there on a slightly bigger plane.

$

This is a very positive step, but before I fall over myself praising this new bin, let us be reminded that for an organisation that promotes itself as a world leader on sustainability Victoria has been awfully late to the party on composting. It is a good start but there is much work to do.

Of a world leader one could expect exemplary systems across all waste streams and progress toward zero waste with game changing initiatives like reinvesting food waste into onsite vegetable gardens, and plastic free campuses.

With this vision in mind, let’s ensure this first bin is a success.

Putting the right things in it is the best way to show the University we are ready for rapid change with regard to food waste collection.

Although what-to-put-in-what-bin can sometimes seem impossibly complicated, this one is not. Everything sold at Krishna can go in apart from glass bottles (food, plate, fork, napkin, cup), along with any other food scraps.

As well as new bins, there have been some other things going on in the wellbeing and sustainability world at Vic. VUWSA submitted on the Greater Wellington Regional Council’s Climate Change Strategy, and a whole lot of happy students have their pantries full of Kapiti honey, organic grains, nuts, seeds and fruit after the VUW Food Co-op’s first order for 2015.

Further afield, the Guardian followed Victoria and other ontoit organisations by removing its investments in fossil fuels, and in case you missed it, the Government opened up more Maui’s dolphin habitats to gas exploration.

Oh, and more bins. VUWSA got separated waste stations ooosh!

Enjoy your first week back, and happy composting

Disclaimers: I’m not anti big planes or runways (in fact I used to fly gliders and wanted to be a pilot before coming to uni), the city council is also supporting cheaper bus fares, these figures are all robust estimates, and I drink flat whites not long blacks. editor@salient.org.nz

46

Notices CAN DO IGM Can Do, the Rep Group for Students with Disabilities at VUW, would like to invite all members, and interested students (with disabilities, friends and family, generally supportive of equal opportunities... anyone!) to our IGM on May 4th, 12-1pm, SU217!

We’ll have yummy food, great company, and a chat about where we want to go for the year! We’ve also got a position open for Treasurer, so there’s a chance to join our awesome and friendly Exec!

Find us on Facebook ‘Can Do at Vic’ for more info!

Hope to see you there!

Careers and Employment 2015-16 Internships and 2016 Graduate Jobs See Recruitment Schedule for details: http://bit.ly/1zGNacY Currently recruiting: Fonterra, Microsoft, Bloomberg LP, ANZ, Assurity, Google, Heinz Watties, Optiver, Pernord Richard NZ, Atlassian, IBM… and many more.

Connect with employers via Recruitment events: http://bit.ly/1DOS0WK Upcoming employer presentations: ANZ (20 Apr), ASB (22 Apr), Atlassian (7 May), Fisher & Paykel (8 May), Intergen (13 May), Xero (14 May), MSD (25 May) Check in with a Careers Consultant during our daily drop-in sessions! http://bit.ly/1A1ORgv Get help with your CV, Cover Letter, Interview skills etc For more info, login to www.victoria.ac.nz/careerhub with your Student Computing login!

Victoria University Toastmasters Club Victoria University Toastmasters Club provides a friendly, fun-filled environment to develop public speaking and leadership skills.

Meetings: Every Wednesday, 12-1pm Kelburn Campus Room 219, Student Union Building Guests are always welcome. www.salient.org.nz

salient

Victoria Abroad– Student Exchange Fair!

Thursday April 30th Content: Why not study overseas as part of your degree?!

Come along to our annual exchange fair and find out more about where you could study on exchange!

Chat with exchange students, partner university staff, Embassy staff and win prizes!

Thursday 30 April, 11-3pm in the Hub & Maclaurin Foyer Study in English, Earn Vic credit, Get Studylink & grants, explore the world!

Website: http://victoria.ac.nz/exchange Visit us: Level 2, Easterfield Building Drop-in hours: Mon-Wed 1-3pm, Thurs & Fri 10-12pm

Letters LETTER OF THE WEEK: Hi, Some months ago we visited Wellington to celebrate our wedding anniversary, falling in love with the city with the exception of one ‘shortcoming’. I recommend avoiding the toilets near Cuba Street, at all cost.

Never having considered myself exceptional, I found that the bowls are so sloped that for a gentleman to avoid resting his pride where many have rested before he must sit to the extreme rear. A sensor apparently monitors one’s presence. Malfunctioning, it flushed with great vigour while business was still very much in progress. My rearward position maximising the effect, my crude exclamation would have carried for some distance. On completion, despite many attempts neither the flush nor the tap functioned.

I resorted to washing my hands in a neighbouring cubicle. The attendant’s interest apparently drawn by my inter-cubicle movements approached at discourteous speed. “What’s going on here!” I politely described what had been ‘going on’. However, the toilet’s electronics having apparently reset, flushed the moment the attendant belligerently waved his hand before the sensor. “There’s nothing wrong with it” he said. “It flushed when I was half way through!”

I exclaimed. “That’s because you moved. There’s a light beam. You shouldn’t have moved.” “So I’m not allowed to move while I’m using a toilet?” I asked, exasperated. “There’s nothing wrong with it. You did it wrong.” A visitor to your city, I decided to do it right and left, stifling further exclamation.

Regards, Owen McMahon

issue 7

47

Student Health says hi

Wasn’t too lazy to write in

Hi Sam,

Dear Ed,

I was concerned to read the letter from Grouchy and happily anti social mongerel (sic) in this weeks edition commenting on an unintended consequence of the “how often do we say hi to the person sitting next to us”. That’s pretty worrying if saying hi to someone leads to them attempting to sexually assault them in a lab and needless to say I would really encourage that person to report this behaviour. In terms of who to report this to within the university either myself or Jackie Anderson the Student Interest and Disputes Advisor are two such people. The university should be a place of safety for students although we know that unwanted sexual advances, sexual harassment and worse sexual assault is sadly too common in student life.

In part we need to do a lot more about raising awareness and educating students about issues of consent for sexual behaviour within relationships.

that was a great article by Wilbur Townsend on the bias towards extroverts. I recommended it to my colleagues and it prompted us to discuss the checks and balances in assessment in our staff meeting. One of the key checks at 100-level, for example, is that students only have a small proportion of their grade determined by the person who tutors them; the marking is shared around.

Your writer is spot on when they say that the wellbeing campaign (of which the say hi poster is a small part) isn’t quite dealing with the issue at hand. Better student wellbeing, improving their sense of engagement and connection and helping students to thrive and to succeed, not just survive an all to often very stressful university experience is one of our most important goals. The wellbeing poster campaign is only part of this. I personally believe that University staff at all levels are genuinely committed to achieving this.

What concerned me at the end of Wilbur’s article was the assumption that academics have the worst motives for asking students to name their work we are lazy, arrogant, or rely on subconscious bias.

Really? Might it not be that we want to know who you are? That we want to be able to personalize the feedback? That treating you as numbers falls straight into the ‘factory’ model of education? That we want a simple, human mechanism for keeping track of and returning your work?

It’s not a perfect system, as Wilbur points out, and it is important for us to reflect on how we mark and the different forces on us while we do that, so thanks for raising them in a useful issue. But university is a social and human enterprise, and I hope my students won’t take offence when I ask for their names.

Kate Hunter History

Gerard Hoffman Manager, Student Counselling Salient letters policy

Sorry, this week you lost (to poo) Dear Salient and to all you procrastinators out there!

I wrote you a poem you can put up your bedroom wall or wherever..

Just do it, do it Don’t complain And there will be no pain Cut the slack Bring yourself back Just do what you gotta do Don’t let distractions get to you Get things done that’ll do!

Salient welcomes, encourages, and thrives on public debate—be it serious or otherwise—through its letters page. Letters must be received before 4pm on Thursday for publication the following week. Letters must be no longer than 250 words. Pseudonyms are fine, but all letters must include your real name, address and telephone number— these will not be printed. Letters will not be corrected for spelling or grammar. The Editor reserves the right to edit, abridge, ordecline any letters without explanation.

Email: editor@salient.org.nz Post: Salient, c/- Victoria University of Wellington Hand-delivered: Salient office, Level 3, Student Union Building (behind the Hunter Lounge)

A time in need is a time indeed.

From lyrical miracle P.S. do I get a free Vic books voucher for posting this by any chance?

editor@salient.org.nz