The system is broken

Last week I had the privilege of meeting Jenny Salesa, the Associate Minister of Education, who struck me as a very perceptive woman, a good listener who asked searching questions. What I found particularly interesting, however, is what she said about her electorate, Otara, largely Pacifica. She talked about poverty, people, whole families sleeping in their cars because they can't afford to rent in Auckland even in a low decile neighbourhood. These are not bludgers, not addicts, not people on welfare for whatever reason, but people whom National Party politicians would describe as hard-working New Zealanders, couples who work in two jobs for minimum wages. With the free market we imported not only cars, gadgets, cheap gizmos from third world countries, we also imported poverty. Whatever happened to the New Zealand dream of my father's generation, when everyone could get a job and buy a house for three to four times his annual salary? The greedies took over. The way to get ahead is to buy a piece of dirt, limit the land available, so that the piece of dirt would appreciate in value, then leverage the value of that piece of dirt to buy more land, more property, control the availability of land, encourage building monopolies, sit back and watch the value of the assets appreciate. People who prosper on the strength of their assets don't need to worry about the impoverished sleeping in their cars, they can afford to put labels on them, those are improvident, spend their money or drink or gamble their money away. They can be swept under the carpet, ignored. Today's newspaper writes about loan sharks who lend money to the needy at unimaginably usurious rates. There is nothing new about this, colonial New Zealand was built on land speculation. If you had a little capital you signed up for a tracts of land, knowing that the land to be developed was artificially restricted, and watch your money grow. But there was a time when some idealists took over the government and forged a fairer society, riding rough shod over ideas of free market and capitalism. It is time dreamers and idealists unite to forge a fairer society in which people can live in well built, well insulated homes, even if that means entertaining unfashionable economic ideas and taxing unearned wealth more rigorously.

Freedom of speech and related questions

All sorts of 'right minded' people, people whose opinions I thought I would usually respect get their knickers in knots over the question of 'Free speech'. Two speakers whose opinions were considered inflammatory, Stefan Molineux, described as a Canadian journalist, and Lauren Southern, a knock you dead, glamorous 23 year old young woman were refused the use of Auckland City Council owned premises for their address. Some high profile people were up in arms about this, claiming that they were denied their right to say what they wanted to say. Hang on a minute! Who are these speakers and what is their message. We know that they galavant around the world disseminating false and repugnant ideas. Why were they stopped from speaking in the UK, in Australia? Who funds their travel? Whose cause are they promoting? Would anyone argue that everyone has the right to disseminate lies, or would they argue that one person's truth is another's lie. I believe that there is such a thing as fact based truth, and disseminating lies and half-truths to destabilise society is unacceptable. Would the champions of free speech grant the right to people with dissenting opinions to question and comment? I would imagine that such questions and comments would be ruled out of order, or if the person asking the questions persists, he or she would be manhandled and thrown out. But then such rumpus would give the promoters of the event further publicity. For the promoters of extreme causes freedom of speech is a one way street, something they demand for themselves, but as history shows, they answer those who dissent with violence. 

Music of conflict

A group of students taking the Music of Conflict course are visiting the Holocaust Centre on Friday. I will need to talk to them about the Holocaust, but what can I say that is relevant to budding musicians? What is there in my past, in my life that is meaningful. Perhaps I should talk about my mother-in-law listening the Hungarian national anthem with tears in her eyes, or my mother celebrating Horthy riding into Kassa (Kosice) on his beautiful white horse when that part of Slovakia was re-incorporated into Hungary, (white horse for an Admiral of the Fleet? but those were topsy-turvy times), or should I talk about Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra, in which in the Intermezzo he introduces the theme of the Hungarian folk song, 'I set out from my beautiful country', after all these are music students. Or should I talk about patriotism? Orban, the Hungarian Prime Minister, said to Benyamin Netanyahu when he visited Israel, that the thing they have in common is that they are both patriots. Patriots, patriotism are dangerous, pernicious terms. No one can question Bartok's love of his country, his patriotism, but his patriotism was inclusive. It included the music, the dances of all the various ethnic minorities that lived on the land that Bartok called his homeland. The Hungary of the Austro-Hungarian Empire defined Hungarians as people who spoke Magyar, the language of the country. This is very different from Orban's patriotism, which sees Hungary as the outpost of European Christianity, that has to build fences, create separations, the patriotism of exclusion. It dwells on the differences, "us" and "them", and if you are not one of "us" you have no share in whatever defines your nationality. So my mother and us, and all Jews, though we spoke beautiful literary Hungarian, were excluded as Jews. We were the 'them'. Once you were excluded you had no claim on patriotism, no claim on your country, no claim on your society, and finally no claim as a human being that is part of the community of the nation. Such Nazi racist ideology lead to conundrums that would be laughable were they not tragic. Modern physics was deemed Jewish science, the art of Jewish artists, musicians was considered 'degenerate'.

The music of such decidedly not Jewish musicians as Stravinsky, Hindemith and many others had the honour of being lumped in with degenerate musicians such as Mendelssohn. The example of the absurdity of this is Vom Judische Schiksal, the work of Richard Fuchs, German Jewish composer, who lived the final years of his life in New Zealand. The four movements of this large symphonic choral work  includes one movement that is a true German marching songs, another that sounds like a Lutheran chorale. Not surprisingly, the German authorities stopped the performance of this work. How could you tell that this was Jewish, not German music. Even they must have seen the absurdity of the concept of 'Jewish' music. The Soviets put other limitations on music. Good music was the Alexandrov Army Ensemble with its faux rousing folk songs on cossack dances, the degenerate music was the music of Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Khachaturian and a long list of the foremost Russian composers, all because Stalin went to the Opera, watched Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsenks and didn't like it. At least, the thing that can be said for Hitler and Stalin is that they cared. Art mattered to them. Donald Trump caring about John Adams, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, or even Aaron Copland, is beyond imagination. I can't see Winston Peters, or for that matter John Key getting very bothered about Ross Harris, John Psathas or Gareth Farr. So talking about the Holocaust and music, perhaps even the music of conflict, I should talk about music, patriotism, inclusion and exclusion.

My father-in law's Yahr-Zeit (Anniversary of his death)

I have been busy working on my stories, revising them, putting them in a collection, so I have not written any blogs for a while, but now, that my last story is finished, there are a few things I will get off my chest.

 

My father-in-law, George Vamos (Vamos Gyuri) was a wonderful man, a dedicated engineer who pioneered some plumbing techniques in New 

Zealand and became one of the most successful heating and ventilating engineers, specializing in hospital buildings. He was also a devoted father to his three daughters, a devoted loving husband and a loving son and brother. He also had a son, Stephen, who died at a young age, whom he mourned deeply and silently, inwardly. When Gyuri was still a teenager, his father died. Gyuri, living in Budapest, Hungary, said Kaddish (memorial prayer) for his father every day for eleven months. When he emigrated to New Zealand in 1939, he didn't know what to expect, but the one thing he did expect is that Jews will face problems that they always faced wherever they lived and he gave up on his Judaism. From a largely non-practising Jew he turned into a militant atheist, deliberately flaunting every Jewish observance. Like many Jewish immigrants fleeing from European antisemitism, he wanted to blend into New Zealand society. Fat chance! He didn't drink, he didn't watch football, didn't enjoy raucus parties. His close friends were all self-denying Jews like himself. This is the reality of emigration, trying to pretend that you are someone you are not, trying to assimilate. Then when his son, Stephen died, a first, born, a terrible tragedy, he said something odd for an atheist. He said 'Who will say Kaddish for me?' Well, I, another Steven, Pista, Istvan, said Kaddish for him today, thought about him, thought about the terrible decisions he had to make in his life, and how he made the most of his life. He was a man respected by all, his professional associates, engineers, architects, and by his small circle of friends, who appreciated the life he had left behind and the new life he created for himself by dint of single-minded effort and hard work, in face of some humiliation and many obstacles. I also thought that it is not that easy to become a true atheist. When the chips are down you look for some comfort, a consolation that your life was not in vein, that you will be remembered.