Samson and Delilah

This is not the traditional Biblical tale. Samson and Delilah are two Aborigine teenagers, and the film is their story.

The film is funded by a number of Australian organisations, including Central Australia Aborigine Media Association (CAAMA).

To say that I enjoyed this would not be true. It is very definitely not entertainment.

The film opens at dawn in an aborigine village. Samson wakes, cuddles his small tin of petrol, gets out of bed, walks outside and plays (very non-musically) with his brother’s electric guitar, gets hit by his brother… The same scene is repeated perhaps ten or fifteen times. Delilah wakes, takes medicine to her grandmother, feeds her, takes her to the health clinic, sits with her as she paints… The same scene is repeated several times. The repetition is modified slightly, the communal phone rings and no one answers it. The art gallery agent arrives to collect the grandmother’s latest painting, pays her bill of $25 at the store in return. Samson’s brothers wake, start playing drums and guitars; the same tune every day, the same tune endlessly.

As an introduction to the story it could not be bettered. It creates exactly the sense of boredom and hopelessness of life in a very remote Aborigine community. And that, really, is the film. It presents a portrait of Aborigine life, as it really is.

The prevalence and impact of illiteracy, petrol sniffing addiction, teenage pregnancy, rejection by “white” Australian society, unemployment, homelessness, crime – real, cultural, and imaginary – and rejection by the family is all there.

The painting collected by the agent is seen in an art gallery window priced at $22,000.

No, not enjoyable. It is a film that the likes of MK should have as compulsory viewing.

I give it a 9; most of all for not shirking the truth.

State (of) Health

I have been through this debate before, many times, and it has nothing to do with justifying the “nanny state” criticism of state welfare or public health services.

I live in a “collective” society, that is if you accept the epithetic nomenclature of the far right. NZ used to describe it as “cradle to grave” welfare and one (very brave Christian) Prime Minister called it “Applied Christianity”, but that came to a grinding and bankrupt halt in the 1970’s. We still have extensive welfare and health systems and I for one am fairly glad that we do.

I have health insurance, have had for some 25 years.

When I took out that insurance, one of the conditions that I had to sign on the application gave the insurer the right to access to my (existing) health records. Those records confirmed (because I had disclosed them on the application) that I had a (fairly serious) heart murmur and varicose veins. I was given a choice. Normal insurance at $1500 annually and the heart and varicose excluded from cover, or $2,100 and a $1,000 excess on all surgery. About 22 years later, the State provided me with free surgery and a good job well done to replace the mitral valve.

Now into my 60’s, I am very fortunate that for the moment my health insurance is provided by my employer. The annual cost is now $2500 annually. It will increase to close to $3,000 by the time I retire and at that point I will need to make some serious decisions.

But that is only part of the story.

Recent news in this country has a dispute of some considerable heat developing between all of the health insurance providers (there are 2 major and 4 minor) and most specifically the largest, and their customers.

The dispute has arisen over what the insurance provides, and what it does not. It is important to emphasise right from the beginning that there is no governmental intervention in the services provided by the insurers, or the cover that is provided.

Central to the argument is a new drug from the US (not herceptin this time) for the treatment of some cancers. It has been approved for use in this country but the government health bureaucracy has not yet purchased the drug for use in the state health system, primarily on the grounds of cost. This means that your doctor can prescribe it, you can get it readily from the pharmacist, provided that you pay the full price for it. There is no government subsidy.

So, buy the drug. Use it. Claim the cost from your insurer. Simple!

NOT!!

Turns out that the insurer has the contractual right to exclude (no reason required) any treatment not “approved”. Their general rule apparently starts with “not subsidised by the government”.

So, I have to ask, why am I paying for insurance?

UPDATE.

This clip is pertinent, or so I am informed. If it is not, then I apologise. I have not looked because I spend enough time on the dial-up as it is without dragging in video. Broadband? Waddat?

Lunchtime!

This appeared in the Herald about a week ago. Brett Phibbs took this amazing shot.

The "flying fish" is an eagle ray, one which did not become lunch!

The little black triangle is not a shark. It is an orca. They like rays. Interestingly they are sufficiently skilled that they can catch the ray and extract the liver, leaving the rest...

LUNCHTIME!!

Atamira

This year was the second Atamira - the first was two years ago, the next will be 2011 to coincide with the Rugby World Cup. It is a "cultural presentation" of urban Maori and is funded by Auckland City and Manukau City. Confused yet?

Admission is free - how "collective" is that!! But then, I refuse, point blank, to pay to attend similar "shows" where 90% of the content is commercial and advertorial.

Anyhoos, it was most enjoyable. There was plenty of people, but not the crammed-in-shoulder-to-shoulder crowds of the Easter Show of past years (the commercial and advertorial referred to, and which cost $25 per head last time we went 30 years back).






I enjoy faces - and I hate formal and posed photography. So, what is set out below are all hand-held, natural light, shutterspeed as slow as 1/4s.


This lady is stripping flax to remove the "plant" from the fibres. Traditionally a pipi (like a cockle) shell is used. The strips she is working on will end up as "lilys" like those in the foreground.








It is a long time since last saw this being done. The panel is tukutuku, thin wood laths bound over raupo (you can see that in the gaps as light fawn vertical bits). The panels were used as lining in important houses and there are many traditional patterns used as decoration. This panel was about 4m long and 1.5m high - large! The binding is done in pairs, one each side of the panel, and when there are three or four "teams" singing as they work it is great to sit and watch (if you are allowed).







Also performing (two 20 minute stints) was Whirimako Black.





The "theatre" is no more than 8m across, and about 3m from stage front to back. Truly, "intimate" theatre!

It was good to hear her sing, in person, and with no "backing" other than Kevin Kereama doing the percussion and bone flute bits reasonably well.

Oh, one last thing. The woman pictured above, peeking out from behind the white and blue needs explanation. The white and blue is the back and head (hoodie and balaclava) of her son(?) who is a quadraplegic and is a mouth-painter. I thought her face was quite dramatic and wore the cares of looking after her (30ish) son.

A good "boil-up" for lunch, $10 per head. Mutton, kumera, potato, watercress boiled (hence the name) for quite some time. The hangi was $15, but I haven't had a decent boil-up since I was a kid so there was no contest. We were there for a good 5 hours.

Time well spent on a wet and cold winter Saturday.

Essentially, what Watts (what? Only three wots? That’s not very bright!) should be arguing is that the global financial system got to the point where:

• It is self-sustaining and self-replicating.
• Self-referential and circular functions had become undetectable and unmeasurable.
• Responses of the system to external stimuli were becoming increasingly chaotic as a result.

Then it is not a case of individual companies being “too big to fail”. That is a political crock, reasoned to justify governmental intervention of a particular kind and for equally political purposes. At the political level, that kind of intervention can be justified provided that the rationale is honest – it is for political reasons that A is too big to fail. The cause of the failure might well be unforeseen circumstances arising from the global financial system. That is accepted. That is not the reason for the intervention; that is political, whoever does it.

Intervention, at its best, can do no more than try to hold the system in its current form of “equilibrium” whatever that might be. Any action that might disturb that equilibrium runs the risk of the global system going haywire or imploding. No one can point at any part of the global financial system as say “There is the initial cause – the tree that fell on the powerline”, as Watts has pointed out. However, his attempt at divining the cause to Lehmans’ door is as correct and effective as blaming the Pharoahs.

What must be considered here is that if the US government allowed Lehmans (or any of the other “too big to fail” financial companies) to fail (and similarly in Britain, in Japan, in Europe) then the consequential catastrophic failure of the global financial system would have been laid squarely (and fairly) at the respective government’s doorstep. To not recognise that as a primary political motive is shortsighted and just plain wrong. If the catastrophic failure had occurred (as it may still) the outcome for the likes of the US and other western nations would be bleak indeed. The main beneficiaries would be those economies with little to lose and the resources to take charge – led by China and India, perhaps Russia and South Africa if they could get their political houses in order.

The second consideration is that China currently owns some USD4 trillion of the US in the form of US Government Bonds. Add to that the likely indirect investment in the US private sector (by investment in banks that have on-lent the funds) and a very large part of the US is “owned” by (mortgaged to) China. And it must be said that the current Administration would be responsible for only a small part of that debt. The best part of it has gone up in smoke (literally) “in defence of freedom and the American Way” in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So, to all those who want to criticise their governments for their actions and reactions to prevent the potential collapse of the global financial system I want to propose the following –

1. If the present system is allowed to collapse, then there has to be some way of rebuilding it with the safeguards that are missing from the present system. As there has been very little in the way of commentary on what form it may take, it is useless to try and impose this or that political outlook on the future.
2. If the present system is allowed to collapse, the “owners” of the new system are likely to be those who have the resources – natural and/or economic – that will give them the power to control the system. As I have said, that could well lead to the present “masters” being overturned with totally unpredictable results.
3. The difficulty with the present system stems from size, rather than individual elements. I have posted on that aspect previously, and it requires no repeating here. It is the comprehension of the size that is the problem.

In the first episode I compared the global financial system with a Persian Carpet.
We can see the pattern, the inter-relationships, made by the thousands of individual tufts. We can even estimate the total number of tufts that there might be in the whole carpet.

But what happens if we examine one tuft. Enlarge it many many times – holy Mandelbrot!! It looks almost like the original carpet! This time around though, instead of looking at the whole carpet we have a small group – perhaps a nation, a city, perhaps a commodity market, perhaps an international company. It interacts with neighbouring tufts, with the “tufts” from which it is made, and via the carpet backing with other more distant tufts.

Now, repeat the same exercise. This time instead of organisations as the basis, consider the idea of information. The Persian carpet is the “summary” of the global financial markets. Think of it as a financial report. The individual tuft is the financial report set of an individual organisation. It presents information that is based upon a large number of individual transactions. Each of the threads within that tuft could be a category of income or expense, or transactions with another tuft. One has to know the rules for the tuft (how it works, what it contains) before it makes sense. In the context of the total carpet that tuft means very little. Removal of the tuft does change the carpet, it diminishes it.

Now, if you want to chage the pattern of that carpet, where do you start? Which tuft is the first to be moved, or removed? If you come across a tuft that is particularly worn, how do you go about replacing it so that the pattern is maintained, the integrity of the carpet remains?