News / Profiles
recent News/Profiles
by | 3:17 am, 17/10/2011
John Stansfield worked for a number of non-profit organisations including the Problem Gambling Foundation and sustainability projects on Waiheke Island, he even founded and headed a Department of Non-Profit Studies at Massey for a number of years, before picking up his position at Oxfam New Zealand. An international relief and development programme, Oxfam takes a regional approach to hunger and political rights. The New Zealand office is heavily involved in development and sustainability projects around the Pacific, for example. Georgie Fenwicke talked to John about the response to the drought currently plaguing several Pacific populations and his favourite Oxfam Christmas gift.
by | 4:39 am, 10/10/2011
by Georgie Fenwicke | 3:43 am, 03/10/2011
Dai Henwood is a man of stock, stocky. His now familiar face and 5”5 frame are common to our television sets streaming in as they do every Friday night on 7 Days. Henwood is a member of the “new wave” of New Zealand comedy. He started out in Wellington before migrating to the big smoke and then overseas where he cut his teeth with the big boys in Melbourne, Edinburgh, Montreal and Tokyo. Having returned to these shores a few years ago, he is being kept busy by a number of interesting projects, acting included. But ,as he tells Georgie Fenwicke, he just needs to find time for that final episode of Entourage.
by | 3:25 am, 12/09/2011
by Georgie Fenwicke | 5:05 am, 11/08/2011
The population of sheep in New Zealand currently sits at around 43.1 million. They double the number of cows and yet have a better environmental reputation. What springs to mind when you hear natterings of a fart tax? Yes, Dairy farms. Sheep, on the other hand, are a bit overlooked by the general population, but not to those at AgResearch Invermay, just outside of Mosgiel. In fact, for the past two years, Dr John McEwan and his colleagues have been investigating the production of Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) such as methane in ruminant ovine (sheep) populations with funding from the Pastoral Greenhouse gas Research Consortium and the New Zealand Agricultural Greenhouse gas Research Centre. Georgie Fenwicke talked to him about his research, past and present, in the area.
Profile: Dr. Paul Oestreicher
by Georgie Fenwicke | 8:31 pm 11/07/2010
Dr. Paul Oestreicher is the visiting fellow for Peace and Conflict studies and is in Dunedin working on a project concerning the abolition of armed violence in the world. A former editor of Critic, Oestreicher grew up in Dunedin after escaping Nazi Germany with his parents in 1939. After studying in England and Europe, Oestreicher became one of the founding members of Amnesty International in the 1960s and went on to chair the organisation in Britain for a number of years. I sat down with him last week to talk about his role there and the research he is involved in at the moment.
You are working on a project with Professor Kevin Clements on the abolition of war. As it is such a wide-ranging subject, how are you going about constructing your argument?
My research project is not concerned with any particular conflict, it is concerned with the social psychology of human beings. Can we turn around people's consciousness [to the belief] that armed violence is wrong? There will always be conflict as long as there are human beings. In private life, we generally manage to live together in spite of our conflicts. But collectively, that is not what we do. Collectively, as nations, as tribes, as religions, we still think it's okay, if the cause is good enough, to kill each other.
You seem to divide your argument between conflict on a large and small scale. What is it about collectivism that leads to such violence?
I am basically saying that we have to apply the micro to the macro. In other words, we have to learn to do collectively what we have already more or less learnt to do individually. We have to be at war with all those things that glorify killing, including the kind of patriotism that is still deeply embedded in every nation.
Are there any current developments that you view as promising in terms of challenging this perception of war?
Steps are now being taken to see that you can begin to see armies as a way to actually stop war and stop one from breaking out. In other words, peacekeeping operations are now a part of the international agenda. This is a completely new development in human society and is a step in the road to what I am aiming at, where we no longer have national armies at all.
Which conflicts concern you at the moment?
My own political heart is in the conflict between Jews and Palestinians. I have a Jewish background, I have a vested interest – as I think all human beings should have – that the Jewish people should survive. But at the same time, I think the state of Israel is aggressive; it is inexcusably occupying land that does not belong to it.
Are you aware of the present situation in the Mediterranean where a flotilla of humanitarian aid vessels are being blocked by Israel as they want to get supplies into Gaza?
Yes, this is just one example of Israeli politics which is inhumane and damnable. Israel is pursuing policies that in the long run will only hurt Israel, it is creating so much emnity and hatred and anti-semitism around the world. I belong to an organisation called Jews for Justice for Palestinians, it is quite a strong organisation in Britain.
You are a founding member of Amnesty International. How did you become involved in the movement?
Well, we were a little group who met in Peter Benenson's office. It was born in his mind and he gathered people around him, and I was one of those people. We began to campaign for the ready release of people in prison around the world who should not be in prison. It was a very humble beginning to what is the biggest human rights organisation in the world, and I was there in Britain in the outset, stayed with it, and became its chair in Britain in the 1970s.
What did this role entail?
Administratively, it meant I was the chairman of the committee that employed the staff. The reality is that as I happened to be gifted as a journalist I could make Amnesty more known. I was on television every week, I was writing newspaper articles – that was my contribution to Amnesty.
