How NZ youth will riot using social networking

"If the young are not initiated into the village, they will burn it down just to feel its warmth".
African Proverb

We like everything casual in NZ, from our racism to domestic violence, we are a casual laid back, sleepy hobbit, kinda nation. Even our fascism is casual, as the smile and wave of our Optimist Prime can attest to with policy that sees the 150 wealthiest families gain $7 billion in a year while quarter of all NZ children live in poverty with all the negative health impacts that poverty brings...

Child health and poverty linked: study
Elizabeth Craig As the economic downturn progresses in New Zealand, hospital admissions for children with poverty-related conditions such as asthma, pneumonia and skin infections has increased, Dr Elizabeth Craig, of the University of Otago, says. "We've got to really look at the impact our economic environment has on our kids," the head of the university's Children and Youth Epidemiology Service said yesterday.

...on those groups who are already in weakened positions of power in the first place through race...

NZ's brown poverty 'a timebomb'
A child advocate says New Zealand is sitting on a Polynesian timebomb if it does nothing about Maori and Pacific poverty levels. Lobby group Every Child Counts has commissioned a report which says the country is "developing a brown social underclass". It says of the 200,000 New Zealand children living below the poverty line, more than half are Maori or Pacific.

...and economic vulnerability...

Children in poorer areas more prone to abuse
Children in poorer neighbourhoods are being admitted to hospital as victims of assault, neglect or maltreatment at a rate more than five times that of children in wealthier neighbourhoods, a report has found. The Children's Social Health Monitor's 2011 findings show hospital admissions arising from "assault, neglect or maltreatment" were 5.6 times higher for those in the most deprived areas, Otago University child and youth epidemiology service director Dr Elizabeth Craig said.

...while food parcel hand outs surge...

Our hungry kids: Huge leap in foodbank use
The families of more than 50,000 children have received food parcels from two charities in the past year, roughly double pre-recession numbers.

And what is the Government's response to all of this? Military boot camps that do not work and banning 16 and 17 year olds from buying ciggies and booze while quietly privatizing welfare by sub contracting their social obligations out to corporations who gain a bonus by cutting beneficiaries off the benefit?

Forcing solo mothers, the sick, the mentally unwell and the handicapped back to work when there are no jobs isn't a solution, it's state sanctioned cruelty. The electorate of poverty can't be dealt to by punitive measures, this is counter-productive knee jerk reactionary policy at it's most redneck.

Our child poverty rates are a hemorrhaging national obscenity being utterly ignored while Paula Bennett bennie bashing hysteria justifies even more repressive measures which effectively criminalize being in poverty.

So how will our youth respond? Will NZ youth facing the same destructive forces of unemployment break into recreational rioting using the same social networking zeitgeist inspired by the Arab Spring?

Like I said, we like to do everything casual in NZ, and so to will our youth when rioting. It won't be externalized rioting, it will be internalized, laid back and casual like.

NZ youth will respond to the pressures facing them, just as youth everywhere have, except ours will use social media to commit their uniquely casual self inflicted rioting...

Mass teen suicide pact fears in Wairarapa
Wairarapa authorities and community groups are in crisis mode after four teenagers died in a suspected mass-suicide pact.

Three teenagers from Masterton and one teenager from Pahiatua have died suddenly since June, the last reported a 17-year-old Masterton girl on Thursday.

One was a pupil at Chanel College in Masterton, another an ex-pupil of Makoura College in Masterton.

Makoura College will hold a meeting tonight to identify danger signs, and to offer help on how to support children as rumours of more deaths continue to ripple through the community.

The community is now monitoring social media messages which talk of a pact among some teenagers to end their lives.

Our suicide rates tripled to the shameful OECD highs they are today in the last great pruning of the State in the 90's. We can not pretend to know that there is a social carnage that comes from the removal and cessation of state funded community safety nets and cutting back on public services when those services are in more demand than ever is merely repeating the exact same mistakes of the past.

NZs casual fascism will bring a bitter harvest that no amount of smiling and waving will excuse.

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