Katipo Books has just received a new order of books including this beautiful free radical graphics books from Softskull Press.

Here’s two of my fav’s but then there’s so many more I like that I’ll try and stick more up on here over the next few weeks…

The first one make’s a great colouring-in picture for the Loo.

There is no black and white, or exactly right and wrong but a million shades of gray and many more multicoloured rainbows of people, cultures, languages and ways.

And now a word from a wise and wonderful three year old person…

And anything doesn’t just mean anything a man can do, but anything she wants and however she wants to without unnecessary scrutiny or judgement.

Reflect this.

Nina Hagen..she’s so crazy and wild…styley dress too.

Over at The HandMirror Ex-ExPat incites flames from readers over “those who choose not to immunise”..think I’ll leave them to stew in their juices. Here’s my response and I’ve further examined this… “okay so you almost made a link between terrible living conditions and the spread of infectious diseases but then you dropped it in favour of the more popular, “lets bash other parents who do things differently from us” approach. If you can admit that the reason so many people have and die from the flu (and lot’s of them just the standard one that we all get every year too here) because of health, poverty, lack of healthy food etc etc. and then say VACCINES are the reason we don’t have all those nasties here, well I simply can’t agree..The ‘victory over epidemics’ was not won by medical science or by doctors and certainly not by vaccines. The decline has been the result of technical, social and hygienic improvements and especially of improved nutrition.
There is no immediate danger to any of us of getting any of the things that the vaccines carry because of the health standards we generally enjoy in this country. If I intended to take my children to countries where these vaccines are necessary (because the illnesses are in circulation) of course they would have to be vaccinated. There is no immediate danger here in NZ but except what the vaccines themselves may pose, and there IS evidence to show that they are dangerous to some people, and possibly also to all of us in ways we may be yet to discover.”

So the first world* unnecessarily immunises whilst globally the poorest of us struggle to have access to vaccines that would be life saving.
Simply put, realise that your privileged status makes you and your children far less susceptible to getting the kind of illnesses you are protecting yourselves against and which could be put to much better use elsewhere. Like many things such as food, housing and comforts the wealthy amongst us believe that their rights succeed the rights of everyone else.
If vaccines are only accessible to those who don’t desperately need them they are being wasted.
Globally, children and others who are vulnerable and poor are dying unnecessarily at (again) the greed and decadence of the healthy, wealthy western world.
Of course the pharmaceutical industry, with ethics to match that of the arms industry, doesn’t care as long as we keep over paying them. And as long as we keep buying into the hype they use in marketing their product they have no need to make them affordable to the poorest of us without the privilege of good health.
The focus of health in NZ needs to be about providing better housing and heating for everyone, greater access to affordable quality food with greater rights for those effected by poverty and the promotion of whole-person health within the wider community..Immunisations should be distributed more freely in countries where they are most needed because of the immediate threat of circulation of illness. Well that’s about all I have to say on this for the mean time but I might think of something else later.

*increasingly find myself steering away from using such terms, lets not pretend there are different worlds when we all share the same planet.

Thought I’d share a few things you can learn from the internet about the H1N1 virus or Swine flu.

90% of us are going to die.

Swine flu, along with Bird flu and Sar’s has been invented by evil eugenics scientists  hell bent on depopulating the world.

Jews (according to a facebook post) are immune though because it’s spread from pigs. Hmmm.

Tamiflu and nasal sprays have been purposefully infected with the H1N1 virus.

It’s not spread from pigs but genetically mutated from birds.

Swine flu makes you drown internally in your own blood.

Feeling scared yet? A little confused? Is there a scratch at the back of your throat?

Well you’ll be relieved, one thing that is possibly (not) true is that Donald Rumsfeld, his mate Osama Bin Laden and one bad-ass Jew are making massive profits from the Tamiflu drugs because of all this Swine Flu hype. Hmmm nothing like a dose of fear to induce spending …

So in an effort to quell my paranoia I nipped into the local health food shop to hand over my cash and take the edge off, for a couple of jars of Vit C tabs because the very best thing you can do for a flu (any flu) is to take a good dose of Vitamin C… which incidently, if you know how to forage, comes free in parsley, oranges and blackcurrant juice.

Where human rights are violated on a day to day basis… the following post is an extract from a single parent diary (my own) it was written around 6 years ago, when the minimum wage in NZ was $9 hr and that was what I was on. Things haven’t changed much, the minimum wage is now $12.50 hr but the price of living has increased far more. Winter is on its way in NZ and many people are going to find themselves struggling, with more job cuts in Christchurch announced yesterday as corporate businesses grasp for higher profit margins by out-sourcing and exploiting people in other countries far from where they can see their poverty.

“Okay today crunched me, hurt just a small amount but imagining myself in a different place is scarey. Today Empower cut my eletricity. Before they will restore it I have to pay - $60 disconnection fee, $90 reconnection fee, $250 bill, $100 bond to service reconnection.  I have $80 in my bank. Yesterday I was paid one weeks wages $350. I pay $220 in rent per week, this went out last night. Luckily my dad helped me out, and the electricity will be back on in 2 hours.

I could live without power myself (really?) ’survive’ would be a more realistic term. Getting ‘ahead’ (as we are all supposed to do apparently) would be impossible. Free market capitalism ensures that the company who “owns” the water, who “owns” the power that I have to pay for won’t ever be affected by what happens to me, or the other families whose eletricity they cut, because the company exists nowhere near where I live but in an altogether different country.  They won’t see the poverty they inflict or my childs cold face and we don’t see theirs..

If I had no-one who could bail me out (yet again) it could take me 2 weeks or up to one month to restore my electricity. My child and myself would be living in a condition of subjective poverty within an supposedly affluent society.

I have no desire to be a part of this world that exploits the environment, living things and people. I am a creative person who believes in a different type of world but there is no room for the world that I envision because it has been destroyed by greed.

Whilst the gap between the have not’s and the have all’s widens, I wonder where it will stop and how.

Money consumes, it attacks communities, drives people apart, forces us to work more and more for comparatively less and less.  People who have so much are caught in an endless grasping for more, for wanting and desiring more.

People who have so little, they are also grasping, grasping to hold onto whatever small amount of dignity they have, for whatever small rewards they can afford.

I want to leave this behind, I want out. But the bank owns all my money plus more- caught in the death grip, I am full of fear and nightmares.

Caught in the materialistic western society. There is no escape. But I am a creative person so I must think how to escape, how… (any suggestions would be mostly appreciated.)”

Welly-town fem’s are organising a CLITFEST for September and they’ve started a clit blog up too.

“CLITFEST (Combating Latent Inequality Together) is about self-knowledge, self-expression, and self-empowerment. Our aim is to create space outside the mainstream patriarchically approved self-expression. CLITFEST aims to stimulate conversation between people of all ages, abilities, ethnicities and all genders to encourage an awareness of the many levels of privilege and oppression. We aim to create an all inclusive community so that everyone can thrive.”

Also added a link to  DIY feminist blog Coathangers Revolt!

Teee heee hee…we really are everywhere.

Peace, dreams and wild flowers.

A few months ago my mum sent us an excessively large t.v as she had up-graded to (I’m supposing) an even larger and flasher model and thought the grand-kids might like her old one.

At first I was very suspicous of it’s presence and I was describing it to friends as our pet alien monster robot. I was also embarassed of its size and tried to hide it behind cushions and books and a large patchwork turtle.

Since its arrival it has gradually been suckling at our brains more and more everyday - and it’s hunger knows no end. I’m sure it will not be satisfied until we are all drained of any capacity to think outside of its narrow little box.

Luckily for all of us there is something inside of me which is stronger than it (unlike my partner, who is in a deep state of hypnosis every night) and I can see it now for what it is and what I always suspected it to be, a trojan horse. Inside it hides the enemy of us all~ capitalism, state propaganda, power, lies and fear.

Should it just be destroyed or should I sell it on Trade Me?