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Migrant voices – WORD Christchurch

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Migrant Voices was yet another epic, stimulating event at this year’s WORD Christchurch Writers and Readers Festival.

Chaired by journalist Donna Miles-Mojab, the citizens of Christchurch and others from abroad sat and listened closely to first hand accounts from individuals who have made perilous and nerve shattering journeys away from conflict zones, to what is now their home – New Zealand.

It was a treat to be listening to such compelling narratives while sitting within The Chamber of the newly and beautifully designed  The Piano.

Donna Miles-Mojab. Image supplied.
Donna Miles-Mojab. Image supplied.

Somalian national Dr Hassam Ibrahim, and Afghan national Abbas Nazari spoke of their manifold hardships leaving the places their families knew, to eventually arrive via boats, planes, trucks and on foot, to New Zealand’s shores, to be faced with radically different surroundings and cultural sensibilities.

They spoke of their New Zealand experience with great gratitude but also lamented leaving their homelands for a place where they may not always be understood as people. It’s not every day that you get the privilege of hearing first hand accounts such as these. It’s staggering to think that RIGHT NOW over 3.2 million desperate humans are seeking asylum throughout the earth! Forced to leave homes, friends and familiar environments to make huge transitions abroad.

“Double the Quota” campaigner Murdoch Stephens made the case for New Zealand to lift its refugee quota, and discussed the many positive economic and cultural impacts of resettling refugees in New Zealand. It was a compelling case – given that “NZ’s refugee quota has not grown since 1987”, which is pretty lame in contrast to our Australian cousins who “currently take more than three times as many quota refugees and asylum seekers as NZ per capita”.

Murdoch Stephen. Image supplied.
Murdoch Stephen. Image supplied.

 

WORD Christchurch

The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal

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CoverAmericans love the idea that an ordinary individual can achieve the extra-ordinary – the American Dream! So it’s no surprise that American youth were enthralled with the Facebook story when details of its gnarly conception started to emerge. Author Ben Mezrich did well to cater to this interest and capitalize on it early on. In The Accidental Billionaires, he attempts to reveal the behind the scenes creation of Facebook starting at the start – Harvard University. Mezrich was a Harvard student himself, so he has insight into Ivy League culture.

The narrative basically begins around 2003 with brilliant Harvard students Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg – supposed social outsiders – were excommunicated from the perfect and polished cliques of Harvard. Eduardo and Mark are depicted as being obsessed with social acceptance (most importantly with girls), which they try to achieve by either getting accepted into exclusive fraternities, or via devious computer creations.

Cover of Think like ZuckDespite Eduardo having fraternity ambitions, Mark seemed to find it much more thrilling creating contentious computer platforms to allow Harvard students to compare the school’s female students against each other and decide who are the most beautiful – a platform known as Facemash, which almost got Zuckerburg kicked out of Harvard due to the rage it provoked among the female student population. And then there was the wee issue of Facemash crashing the Harvard computer interface due to its popularity. Whoops.

Facemash, however, earned Mark a degree of notoriety, upon which two esteemed Harvard athletes approached him for help in building an exclusive Harvard dating site. However, upon working on the dating site, Mark’s ideas around social networking evolved, with Saverin helping out with the business side of things. It was all moving toward what would initially become “The Facebook”. But, TheFacebook was allegedly an adaptation of the athlete’s dating site idea. Upsetting the two 6’5 athletic giants greatly.

From here on in there were significant divisions and sneaky tactics, undermining and brinkmanship, all of which makes for very interesting reading. How could it not be, with such a cocktail of competitive individuals vying to control a burgeoning social networking site: venture capitalists, lawyers, sports people, fellow IT geeks and beautiful girls – all trying to get theirs.

What follows is a sad story of legal wrangles and friendship fall-outs which are a bit eye watering. The way the narrative goes has echoes of the Great Gatsby, except the subjects aren’t the Nouveau Riche but supposedly the Nouveau Popular. And eventually very Rich. The book has a raciness about it, and this thrusts the reader into the glamorous and clamorous environment of the Harvard fraternity culture.

This book is a bit speculative. One of the primary subjects, Mark Zuckerberg, wasn’t interested in talking to the author. So were left to read between the lines about what really happened. But we don’t like that, do we. As a society we expect people to be more forthcoming with mouth-watering portions of slanderous and scandalous material. So by default, there’s lots of scope for Mr Zuckerberg to be vilified. Which he is. In the absence of his side of the story.

There are some genuine messages to be taken from this read: fickle human nature, success changing people, or bringing out the worst in them. Don’t trust your counterparts upon entering a business relationship with them etc etc. So the story goes …

The Accidental Billionaires gives insight into competitive American college and business culture. Give it a go.  We have the book, eAudiobook, as well as the movie The Social Network which was based on the book.

Undercover in North Korea with Suki Kim

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Cover of Without you, there is no usNew York resident Suki Kim is a very clever essayist and novelist who wrote the award winning work The Interpreter. However, it was her impressions of life in North Korea as an undercover journalist which were the subject of her discussion On North Korea: Inventing the Truth at WORD Christchurch’s Shifting Points of View session at the Christchurch Arts Festival.

The Democratic Republic of North Korea (DPRK) is one of the most misleading titles for anything, ever, as they kind of forgot to add the Oppressive, Centralized, Totalitarian, Cult-like, Single Party parts to the title. Human Rights Watch refers to the DPRK as one of the most “harshly oppressive countries in the world”.

North Korea is described by Suki Kim as basically the world’s biggest cult. At the centre of this cult is the “eternal, supreme leader” Kim Jong-un, who rules with an iron fist.   The myth of the supreme leader goes on despite persecution and the millions that go hungry due to food shortages. There is no contact with the outside world as borders and lines of communication are sealed, and government agents watch everyone who might seek enlightenment.

Author and South Korean American Suki went to North Korea to teach English to the sons of the elite as part of a special international programme at a university titled “The Pyongyang University of Science and Technology” (which was quite unscientific, and devoid of technology). Without You, There Is No Us is her memoir of this experience, which beautifully infuses impressions and emotions into the issues of world politics and international relations. Political material can be achingly dry and hard to relate to; this most definitely isn’t.

Hearing her speak was timely. The entertainment industry is producing lots of young adult dystopian fiction (think The Giver, Hunger Games). Spookily, her depictions of life in the DPRK had me thinking such fictions are somehow based on these North Korean facts.

Suki Kim and Paula Morris

Suki Kim and Paula Morris, Flickr 2015-08-30-IMG_8988

Every aspect of daily life is monitored within the Institute she taught at, and everything – from the articulation to the architecture – is geared towards control. The university is intentionally designed with sterile, glazed spaces – privacy is at a premium. The idea “there is no I in team” is taken to an illogical extreme as Western notions of individualism are staunchly repressed and this was manifested in the language of her students. The words “I” or “Me” are almost never utilized by the students, who robotically state “We” and “Our” in a true spirit of collectivization and group identity. There is no place for individual ambition, it’s all servitude to the State. She did her best to teach them. And what she encountered was classes of bright, eager young men who have been lied to their whole lives, not only about the greatness of their country and its leaders, but about everything. They believe they have the internet, but it’s actually an intranet. To make it even more painful, in a show of nutty nationalism they think their “internet” is the best in the world.

Suki Kim
Suki Kim, Flickr 2015-08-30-IMG_8991

Suki developed a fondness for this innocent bunch of kids, who almost never get to see their parents (but pretend this is normal so not to incur the wrath of their overseers) and are in many ways hopelessly lost – with only the guidance of a regime which lies to them.

Over time, Suki sneakily and quietly attempted to inject the smallest of radical ideas into their naive minds. Like the idea of choice, for example, when shes is asked pointedly by the students “how many TV channels does [“wicked capitalist”] America has”!? She gingerly answers “thousands”, trying not to appear boastful in light of North Korea’s one channel which presents shows full of propaganda about the Great Leader. She endured many Q&A sessions regarding details of our lives in the West, but she could not be completely honest with her inquisitive class, as most subjects were off limits. A knowledge of the truth hurt!

I did manage to ask Suki during our own Q and A time if North Korea had any allies these days, and she said they don’t, not after the fall of the Soviet Union – “North Korea are all on their own”, much like the kids in her class whom she grieves for deeply…..

“Without you there is no us” is a beautifully written memoir detailing daily life in a closed society, and which is laced with stories of her own family history detailing the separation of loved-ones who may never meet again as they are spread across the two Koreas.

Personally, I don’t think I’ve ever read such well written personalized account of political and international relations.

Margaret Wilson and the Struggle for New Zealand Sovereignty

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Cover of The Struggle for SovereigntyWORD Christchurch Shifting Points of View events at the Christchurch Arts Festival was awesome enough to have Margaret Wilson speak out of her accumulated legal and political wisdom on Sunday 30 August. Bronwyn Hawyard, author and political scientist at the University of Canterbury, ably chaired the session.

It’s not often that, in your own town, you get a highly accessible ex-Speaker of the House coming to give an intimate talk about critical political issues. And listening to someone with her background had me in awe given that she’s the Former Attorney-General, Minister of the Crown, current Professor of Law. Nothing too serious …
UBS Bookstand

Shifting points of view sessions. WORD Christchurch events at the Christchurch Arts Festival. Sunday 30 August 2015. Flickr 2015-08-30-IMG_9004

Her exposition at the festival was related to her nifty little book The Struggle for Sovereignty: New Zealand and Twenty first Century State. We have a paper copies and eBooks in the library. This short work provides a concise perspective on how – since the economic reforms of the 1980s – the core parts of the sovereign New Zealand state have been eroded and compromised by globalization and the neoliberal, free-market ideology – basically the deregulation, privatization and legislation which seems to give large business entities powers which don’t keep them accountable to citizens.

Mrs Wilson argues that the NZ State: the public service, the legal system and New Zealand’s constitution, are (often by default) providing a fertile ground for deregulation which affects society in all sorts of detrimental ways. Over recent years, Government policy has re-ordered the New Zealand economic environment in keeping with the neoliberal philosophy, and this is exemplified in insecure work and the trend towards free trade deals like the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA).

Insecure work – In another basic example of how things are going, Mrs Wilson points out that around 30% (over 600,00 humans) of the NZ work force is employed in “insecure/precarious” working conditions – meaning that such roles are “casual”, “fixed term”, “zero hours” etc. Which gives employees minimal bargaining rights for better pay and conditions and no certainty with regard to secure hours for the future. She claims this is due to the global neoliberal trend which NZ has adopted and favours “contract work” over “wages”, as keeping people on contract keeps them working more efficiently, whereas “on wages” people take too long – so the neoliberal (in)sensibility goes.

The TPPA could potentially enable large multi-national businesses the right to sue the NZ Government if our Government enacts laws which hinder their ability to make money – say if we had legislation which made plain packaging on cigarette packs mandatory – a business may have legal recourse if the courts deemed plain packaging affected their ability to make a profit.

Margaret Wilson and Bronwyn Hayward
Margaret Wilson and Bronwyn Hayward. Shifting points of view sessions. WORD Christchurch events at the Christchurch Arts Festival. Sunday 30 August 2015. Flickr 2015-08-30-IMG_8959

It seems our wonderful Pacific democracy is somewhat undermined – as policy can be rushed or hushed through Parliament without the public knowing or debating the nature of its contents. The Select Committee process can be circumvented due to the policy process being carried out “under urgency” – Parliament can rush through policy faster than normal because of some special “urgent” circumstances. All this basically means it’s very hard for the public to make submissions regarding certain policy initiatives. Which is what the Select Committee process is often for.

Margaret Wilson points out that it might be time for Kiwis to really get hold of our State and demand some changes to our Constitution, for example, which could usher in a more robust regulatory regime and pull back the neoliberal economic steam roller so as to make NZ a fairer, more equitable society – maybe resulting in some better contractual conditions and pay for workers somewhere down the line.

However, I asked her if New Zealand even has a “constitutional culture”, and she said one of the things which came out of the most recent constitutional inquiry was that Kiwis generally don’t have a basic understanding of what a constitution even is because its not taught in schools or referred to and celebrated as a crucial part of our history. Unlike the Americans, who have a very staunch constitutional culture. Just think gun control!

Maybe time to teach politics in schools.

Her book “The Struggle for Sovereignty: New Zealand and Twenty first Century State”, is a great tool – a short and to the point read about these technical political issues.

Here’s some quotes from her session: