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AUDIO: Coup in Honduras - eyewitness report

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 04:15:56 PDT

Toni covers the Honduran coup

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AUDIO:Simon Butler on Population Control in Response to Climate Change

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 01:23:31 PDT

Recently a discussion has surfaced about whether population control schemes could feature in the policy aims of the Australian Climate Change movement.

Simon Butler is an analyst and contributor to Green Left Weekly who argues that the proponents of population control schemes completely miss the underlying causes of climate change.

Julia started by asking Simon about the history of such schemes and the lessons we can learn about their previous implementations.

This talk was broadcast on Radio Adelaide on the 10th of June.

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Original audio source (Simon Butler.mp3)

VIDEO:No Sell OFF of Public Assets Rally -- Brisbane July 3, 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 07:26:49 PDT

BRISBANE: Fifteen hundred trade unionists and their supporters marched through the streets of Brisbane on July 3 to oppose the sell off of Queensland public assets. The protest had been called by the Electrical Trades Union and later was supported by the Queensland Council of Unions.Addressing the rally were speakers from the QCU, AFULE, ASU and the Rail Tram and Bus Union.

Mick Carr from the Maritime Union of Australia told the rally that there was no upside for a one off fixing of the debt by selling off public assets. Peter Simpson , state secretary of the Electrical Trades Union, said that his union wont be putting one cent into the ALP coffers at the next election if this legislation is still on the books.

He said it was time to put a line in the sand.

David Matters from the Rail Tram and Bus Union told everyone that his union, with community support, had won their fight against the prisatisation of the Brisbane City Council bus service in the 1990s.To applause he said, that it was time to put Anna Bligh under the control of working people.

But the surprize from among the speakers came from ALP state president and Australian Manufacturing Workers Union Secretary, Andrew Dettmar, who said that his union will not be supporting any politician at the next state election unless they make a no privatsation pledge.

The rally was followed by a march to state parliament .

Formats available: Quicktime (.mov)
Watch Video on YouTube

David and Goliath

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:05:36 PDT

By Peter Boyle

When Rupert Murdoch’s Australian published a racist attack (see here) on Green Left Weekly and particularly its Arabic-language supplement, The Flame, I rang its editor, Soubhi Iskander, with the news.

“Peter, this proves we are doing something good”, he chuckled. This is a sentiment echoed by many readers and supporters of Green Left Weekly. If the Australian lashes out at us in this way we must be an effective voice of dissent. It goes for us because, as the slanderous July 1 article, “A willing ally to Hamas's hatred” by Ilan Grapel explains, we are “Australia's best-known radical-left newspaper”.

As the blogsite “Murdoch’s Propagandists” , explains:

“Murdoch has a massive news and media organisation that is able to reach into every living room throughout the entire Western world – and beyond. Much of its so-called ‘news’ content is carefully designed to induce a particular bias toward a view that would be favourable to the view represented by the Murdoch propagandists.
“Murdoch has a long history of championing Israeli Zionists and their neoconservative supporters around the world providing them with a platform from which to present their propaganda.
“The vast majority of Murdoch’s editorial staff are hard right pro-Zionist individuals who ensure that very little gets through to their audience that is not favourable to their cause.”

Of course it is a David and Goliath type battle to take on opponents like the Murdoch empire. This year, even with the global recession, Murdoch’s News Corp declared a US$2.72 billion profit (compared with $2.69 billion) last year. Murdoch’s new second-in-command, Chase Carey, has been promised $US43.1 million in his first year alone, including $US10 million in cash just for signing on to the job.

Carey won’t have to worry about copping pain from the asset writedowns and restructuring costs that may flow from the meltdown of capitalism’s decades of speculative bubble blowing because his bonus depends on earnings-per-share gains excluding such charges. That’s what you get paid for systematically telling lies on a global scale for big business!

Meanwhile Green Left Weekly gets by with an annual Fighting Fund appeal for A$250,000. A lot of hard work by our supporters goes into raising this each year. Fund raising dinners, jumble sales, etc, are organised as well as the collection of donations. Through this sort of activity we have managed to raise $112,307 so far this year. If you can help us raise the rest, please make a donation today to our fighting fund at: Greenleft, Commonwealth Bank, BSB 062-006, Account No. 00901992. Otherwise, you can send a cheque or money order to PO Box 515, Broadway NSW 2007 or phone in a donation through on the toll-free line at 1800 634 206 (within Australia).

THE UNION SHOW: 1st July - Ambos & 3CR

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:05:52 PDT

On tonights Union Show we look at the ambo’s campaign for longer rest breaks and better pay, which we covered a year ago and we look back over the campaign to find that the state government and Amublance Victoria have not moved forward.

This is even after a leaked email last week from management states that their position is not sustainable.

We also take a look at one of Melbourne’s most progressive radio stations – 3CR and we drop in on the Solidarity Breakfast team of Lisa Farrance and Dan Archer.

Lisa and Dan have a chat about the 3CR, the program and the importance of supporting a true alternative and independant media voice in the face of unrelenting conservative media bias.

New Party Projects and Greens and Qld Privatisation

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 05:00:43 PDT

If you check out the video of the Socialist Alliance organised public forum here on the Qld privatisation , Drew Hutton's argument for the Green's -- and he was in fact the only Greens member I know was there in a gathering of 70 -- engagement with the campaign was very much to the point.That the crime is that there are no Greens in the Qld Parliament.

While the Greens here aren't so sparky anyway what concerns me is that Drew may not be able to deliver labour to enrich the community campaign.

This was different in NSW I gather but here that's a problem for the rest of us.

And that's important I think when we pick through the various examples of alternative partying -- that at least in Qld -- without a Greens member on the parly benches there's not much substance to what the Greens can do as a party (although individual Greens do stuff of course)

And as we negotiate our way through the terrors of climate change I think there's a real challenge for the greens project internationally to deliver more than what they have so far.

In that sense I miss the ideological engagement that existed in their milieu in the nineties and this in stead has defaulted to a sort of argument which runs: "Look at the polls. We're the only real alternative to Labor because that's what the polls say."

And many on the left have played up to that in a sort of depressed state of resignation.

The complication is, as we saw, that in the lead up to the last federal elections, the ACTU et al allowed their ranks to vote Greens (and SA etc for that matter)but this hasn't been followed up by a stronger class allegiance by the Greens. 18 months on The Greens are way away from any campaign orientation to key working class and trade union issues,.. They voted for Gillard ABCC Lite of course...but I didn't see the Greens actually challenging the ABCC in real street or on the grass time.

What is at stake however, I guess, is the possibility of some trade union forays into trade union election campaign mode with Trade Union candidates but with perhaps sharp preference flows. In a sense this was the template offered by No2EU and Arthur Scargill.

When you look at it there's precious little room left for the trade unions to manoevre and for example , here the ETU has left the ALP Left but not the ALP and they are getting abused up hill and down dale while the left that rolled over for Bligh tries to cover its dirty deeds.

In contrast, the meeting last Tuesday was a showcase of unity. Amazing it was. Everyone was saying in effect the same thing: ETU, SA, David Matters, the Greens...and when the audience started up the only argument the far left groupuscules offered were complaints about no strike being a spontaneous response.

But you see, that's all they were: complaints. Where's the DIY?

Its' in situations like this you realize how friggin marginal the socialist left(and Greens too) is because while some 84% of Qlders are on side our resources have to be more than a few selected complaints or abstract options.

You also realize that even the ETU is isolated -- cynically and brutally isolated by the Laborist gang -- and that despite that, we're all in this fight together. And the ETU has stood its ground! Amazingly it has not relented on its commitment to fight these sells offs.

As for the ALP ranks -- "not happy Anna!". So there are wild cards perhaps. As for any everyday passer by -- I've heard it, and the state government is abused and maligned in terms that to my sweet ears are shocking.

Afterthought:
The irony is that the way forward is self evident but no one can see it for the trees. If the Socialist Alliance can bring together such a platform for such a discussion then there exists right there the sort of alliance building that's imperative to do...and the fact is that the SA is, for the moment, the only facilitator that can do it and is unconditionally willing to.

So all the hype and posturing you get about party options and the horrors of the polling day choices is "dealt with" not with angst and maybes but in the real time struggle of coming together. That's a lesson the left has not learnt and so far, in its little enclaves and tribal allegiances, has proven totally incapable of learning.

SLIDESHOW: 2500 march against neoliberal agenda in Jakarta

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:35:48 PDT

Some 2,500 workers, urban poor and students march in Jakarta today against the neoliberalism. PRD/Papernas comrades organised this. You can read about it in
Green Left Weekly soon. Here are some pics:

Made with Slideshow Embed Tool

VIDEO:No Sell Off Public Meeting -- Brisbane June 30th, 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 07:11:33 PDT

Video of a meeting organised by the Socialist Alliance to discuss a community response to the privatization of public assets by the Bligh state Labor government -- Brisbane, Qld Australia.

Formats available: Quicktime (.mov)

What you miss not reading Arabic -- and Green Left Weekly

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 01:53:08 PDT

A willing ally to Hamas's hatred

Article from: The Australian

(But hey, don't ask for any quotes!)

THE Green Left Weekly is probably Australia's best-known radical-left newspaper. While nominally independent, it is affiliated with the Socialist Alliance party and its youth movement Resistance! Like most radical socialist groups, it invariably aligns with the anti-Israel movement.

For some time it has been apparent that an unholy alliance is growing between extreme left-wing groups and Arab and Islamic extremists, despite completely different visions for society. This alliance has been on show in much of the anti-war movement in Britain and other places.

For instance, Britain's "Respect" party is basically an alliance of radical Muslims and old hard-line Marxists such as former Labour MP George Galloway. Galloway was pro-Saddam Hussein before the 2003 Iraq war. Today, he works for the Iranian government mouthpiece television station, Press TV.

But what isn't widely known is that the Green Left Weekly is openly promoting extremism among Arabic speakers in Australia through a monthly Arabic-language insert called The Flame (read issues here). This support is not limited to Green Left Weekly's own far-left agenda. It supports terrorist groups and promotes violence as the solution to the existence of the "Zionist state."

You would think GLW's declared pursuit of the advancement of "anti-racist, feminist, student, trade union, environment, gay and lesbian, civil liberties" would rule out the promotion of radical Islamist groups such as Hamas, which are deeply hostile to all the above.

Yet alongside content promoting the PFLP, a tiny left-wing and currently marginal Palestinian terror group, Hamas is also promoted by GLW as a positive model of "resistance"; that is to say, terrorism. Those killed as a result of the violence Hamas sparks are "martyrs", terminology Flame shares with Hamas. Further, the terminology of the Flame is openly hostile to the more moderate governments of the region and repeatedly demands all-out war on the "Zionist entity".

The January edition of the Flame was devoted to the conflict in Gaza. The cover page is a compilation of statements from various communist parties in the Arab world. Predictably, the communiques incited its Arabic readers with imagery of "slaughter," and a "waterfall of Palestinian blood washing the streets". More surprisingly, there are implicit calls for other Arab states to expand the Gaza war.

In "Hunt of a people", the paper refers to the 1982 Lebanon war, indignant "Arab capitals stood watching, exactly as is happening now."

The paper targets American-allied Arab governments for their moderation in the war, which it terms "collusion". The front-page article from the Iraqi Communist Party rebukes the Saudi government, Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority, which it disparagingly dubs the "Oslo Authority". The Mubarak government is condemned for being "a loyal accomplice to Israel and the Oslo Authority in their attempt to shut Hamas out". It also accuses the Saudi monarchy of having covert dealings with "the Zionists" stretching back decades. Any non-violent interaction with Israel, whether actual or imagined, is scorned.

In the March edition the Flame was aghast at Egypt for co-operating with the US against Hamas. Its expose was titled "Egypt uses American soldiers to prevent weapons smuggling to the resistance!" In the Arabic, "the resistance" is euphemism for terrorist violence and for Hamas itself.

Another article, "A return to principles is necessary after the Israeli aggression", is more virulent. An illustration shows a Palestinian imprisoned behind barbed wire shaped as a partial Jewish star. The article condemns those calling the Gaza war a victory for the "resistance", given the large proportion of "martyrs" from the Palestinian people in comparison to the "slim" number killed among "soldiers of the Israeli occupation army". The rest of the article is critical of the Palestinian factions for their internecine fight.

It criticises Hamas for abandoning its traditional position as the "resistance" against "the enemy" to fight the PA and calls for a "united Palestinian resistance" which will "return the benefit to the Palestinian people". It is clear that this unity will not negotiate peace with Israel, with the paper stating "this unity in battle must not fall into the trap of dialogue that the decrepit Arab regimes of the region are producing." The Flame defines Israel as "the enemy" and demands violent "resistance" while pouring scorn on negotiations or dialogue, It praises the assassination of a "Zionist minister" as "courageous."

The radical anti-Israel stance of Green Left Weekly is no secret. However, the message it pitches to the Arabic-speaking community of Australia is far more inflammatory.

Unbeknown to its English readers, it supports terrorist groups such as Hamas whose goal is to create a state where there would be no place for the gays, lesbians, feminists and trade unionists who read the English-language edition of the paper.

Ilan Grapel is a researcher with the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council.

Tamil History in Sri Lanka

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 06:06:26 PDT

Presentation from a talk given a the June 23 rd Forum at the Brisbane Activist Centre by Marty Gnanananthan

Tamils In Sri Lanka -- by Mathavakrishna(Marty) Gnanananthan

View more presentations from Ratbag Media.

DSP makes major turn towards building the Socialist Alliance

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 01:51:19 PDT

The Democratic Socialist Perspective decided at its June National Committee meeting to make a major turn towards building the Socialist Alliance. .

As Peter Boyle said when he delivered the report to the gathering:

We’ve been held back for far too long already, first, by the hesitations of former Socialist Alliance affiliates and then by the former minority in the DSP. It was the responsible thing to take some time to deal with the destructive factional split in the DSP but that is behind us now and it is time we moved forward to build the Socialist Alliance as a bigger, more influential and more working class-based socialist organisation, than any currently in existence in Australia.

Important opening for the left in Australia
After exploring the current political context Boyle then reviewed the history of the Socialist Alliance and the DSP's engagement with it:

The unprecedented unity of these left groups,[within the Socialist Alliance] which until then had spent lots of energy criticising each other, made a significant impact on the much broader layer of left activists who had not joined any of the pre-existing socialist groups. Hundreds of them joined the Socialist Alliance, quickly becoming the majority of its members. Among those who joined were a number of militant trade unionists – shop-floor delegates as well as a few elected leaders of militant unions, some leading indigenous activists, activists from other social movements and some left-wing intellectuals.

This was an important opening for the left in Australia, which was (and remains) small and relatively isolated in the labour movement. Would the left seize this as a chance to build a multi-tendency socialist party with a significant connection to the labour movement and other key social movements? This was clearly the wish of the large majority of Alliance members who were not members of any of the founding affiliate groups, and the DSP agreed with them. However, all the other affiliated revolutionary socialist groups disagreed. Each thought their own “correct” programs would be liquidated if they built the Alliance as our common party. They could conceive of the Alliance only as a site for their “real” revolutionary parties to intervene in or, at best, as a “united front of a special kind”.

This view is sectarian because it spurned a chance to unite politically with a broader layer of left leadership in the movements. We have learned to treat the question of left unity seriously and not to play with it. Those who play with unity always pay a political price.

By the Socialist Alliance’s May 2005 national conference, it was clear that all the other revolutionary groups affiliated to the Alliance were opposed to taking the Alliance forward. At most, they were willing to participate in the Alliance as a loose electoral front in which a minority retained veto powers by right of their group affiliate status. They began to pull back even the relatively modest resources they had put into the Alliance. By 2007, all the founding affiliates aside from the DSP and Resistance had formally left the Alliance.

The unwillingness of the other affiliates to really build the Socialist Alliance added to the cost on the DSP of keeping the project going – and made it harder for us to see how to move forward.

The DSP then underwent a protracted three-year-long internal faction fight, which took significant energy away from building the Socialist Alliance, Resistance and the DSP. Basically this faction fight was an expression in the DSP of the same sectarian political response of the departing Socialist Alliance affiliates.

But through all this the majority of the non-affiliate group membership of the Socialist Alliance continued to see the Alliance as their party. This resilience of Socialist Alliance is extremely valuable especially in the context of the Australian political landscape (in which it has most often been hard work to recruit and retain serious socialist activists). It is a strong reason why DSP members now need to focus on building the Socialist Alliance as our new party.

The SA today

He then summarized the state of the SA today:

Each one of the small socialist groups outside the Socialist Alliance say they'll be in a new left party if what is on offer is a new mass party. Indeed, they'd be in such a party even if its politics was reformist or liberal. The Socialist Alliance is not a mass party, but it is an opportunity to regroup the willing left around a developing class struggle program. It is already the biggest and most influential socialist organisation in Australia and it continues to regroup the left. Non-DSP members remain a majority of the paid up membership of the Socialist Alliance. So it is a party significantly bigger than the DSP or any other socialist left organisation in Australia today. And with the total efforts of our comrades going into building it, the Socialist Alliance can be even bigger than it is today.

The National Committee meeting unanimously decided that the DSP:

Elects an NE charged with the tasks of investigating and preparing a plan for the merger of the DSP into the Socialist Alliance and to lead a discussion with Socialist Alliance about such a prospective merger.
Opens written and oral pre-Congress discussion from the plenum (ie: national committee meeting).
All DSP branches and districts should attempt to organise as much of their work as possible in the period leading up to the Congress (in January 2010) through the Socialist Alliance branches, districts and caucuses/committees.In this time, the DSP branches and/or districts should meet as needed to facilitate this shift and organise pre-Congress discussion and other preparations for the Congress.
We cease producing the DSP national newsletter and offer to transfer that effort into producing a Socialist Alliance national newsletter.
The DSP NC in October 2009 should re-assess these arrangements and make proposals for the Congress.

Boyle then concluded:

These measures will leave the January 2010 Congress with the full option of altering or reversing these perspectives. It also reserves to the Congress the question of what form, if any, the DSP should continue to take after that Congress. The October National Committee plenum should make proposals on these matters.

Read the full report: Party-building perspectives report (June 2009 National Committee plenum) delivered by Peter Boyle on behalf of the DSP National Executive and adopted unanimously by the DSP National Committee (NC) on June 7.

The ABC(C) of Utegate

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 04:28:03 PDT

Utes, the exchange and discussion thereof, could not be more Australian. Any Woza, Bluey or Macca will tell you that simply anything to do with utility vehicles is real men’s business.

So it should come as no surprise that so much of our interest recently has been drawn to whether our prime minister Kevin Rudd, or his dedicated treasurer Wayne Swann, are ute-friendly.

Utes also function to sustain the national society of blokeness as indicated by such odes as “She’s My Ute”, “Scrubbabashin”, “Baptise the Ute” and “Love Shack”.

At stake, it seems, is the federal government’s true blue-ness.

So the whole OzCar finance supplement scheme brought in by the Rudd Labor government should be viewed as a generous attempt by a few everyday blokes to save a national icon from what may be a totally unnecessary failure on the part of the locals to visit a car yard.

It’s mateship at its best.

Or is it? As one online ute chat forum raged: “Who would of thought the big political up roar would be over a ute and not only a ute but a ute that would win a feral ute comp at that.” And: “Bloody Ruddy probably hasn’t even driven the damn ute.” And finally: “id like to see them hit a roo at 110 see what bloody happens ay? mind you a polly in the bush that’ll be the day.”

So, to then have our beloved two-door automobile (with integrated cargo bed on a light-duty unibody platform) associated with political corruption is a national scandal. It has given the ute a bad name.

And those headlines!: “Utegate: police chief to shed light on fake email”. “Utegate: The private life of Mr Grech”. “Utegate: PM calls in police”. “Utegate email: Turnbull quizzed on Grech link”. “Utegate debate heats up”. And finally, as national resentment boils over: “Vandals attack: Godwin Grech’s house egged”.

This is obviously very serious stuff. Much newsprint has been dedicated and television programs interrupted so that the nation’s presumed need to know is satisfied.

Forget such headline grabbing acronyms as the ABCC (Australian Building and Construction Commission) — all you are going to be fed are stories on utes.

While Utegate was upon us column-inch-by-column-inch, the Senate was working itself up to reject any change to the coercive powers of the construction industry watchdog.

Nick Xenophon and Steve Fielding lined up with the Coalition to stop even purely cosmetic changes being proposed by industrial relations minister Julia Gillard. What was supposed to be Rudd’s ABCC lite remains old ABCC heavy.

It wasn’t that the ALP was going to change much of what the ABCC gets up to or the way it persecuted workers on building sites.

Now that the Senate has rejected any change to the governing legislation, the trade union movement faces a conundrum — it must fight or surrender.

This is tad more significant than a fake email. As any building worker will tell you, many lives are at stake if the ABCC regime prevails. Australia’s building workers need a struggle against this law even more powerful than some blokes’ love of utes.

Green Left Weekly turns 800!

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 03:58:11 PDT

Green Left Weekly received dozens of solidarity messages for its 800th birthday from Australia and from around the world:

Those of us at Monthly Review would like to reach out our hands in solidarity with our comrades at Green Left Weekly in celebration of its 800th issue. In addition to being Australia's leading radical paper, the GLW has become a global voice for 21st century socialism: Marxist, ecological, anti-imperialist, anti-racist, feminist, and in solidarity with revolutionary struggles throughout the world.
John Bellamy Foster
editor, Monthly Review, on behalf of all those at Monthly Review

As so much of the corporate media becomes a parody of itself, the agents of power not of people, we need the view from ground more than ever and Green Left Weekly more than ever.
John Pilger
journalist and documentary maker

Congratulations on reaching the 800th issue. It is not easy these days for independent left journals to sustain themselves, when they are so badly needed. Look forward to hearing about the 1000th.
Noam Chomsky
radical US activist, writer and intellectual

Many more messages of support here.

What Web Conferencing platforms for political organising?

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 22:06:05 PDT

I'm researching web conferencing options for the Socialist Alliance. We've always used hookups to meet and discuss what we're doing across the great distances of Australia and after using landlines for some time moved to web based systems like PalTalk.

But after a succession of dropouts over many meetings I think we need to broaden our options. But when shopping for a platform the complication is that you need people to shop with. A key requirement is to have a number over 10 and maybe no more than 20 online at the same time with all participants experiencing good audio.

That's the marker: good audio x 20 with no (if possible) drop outs.

So register..and join us:

The platform we're exploring is DimDim -- and it's free for 20 people online and open sourced.

Introduction to Dim Dim.

Webinar Opening Slide

View more documents from kevinbrace.

Anti-privatisation : campaigning regardless of who governs Qld

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 04:40:34 PDT

By Dave Riley

After Labor Premier Anna Bligh announced on June 2 that Queensland would be selling off $15.4 billion of the state’s assets, a June 17-18 Galaxy Poll conducted for the Brisbane Courier Mail found that 84% of people opposed the move.

The same poll revealed that, three months after the recent state election, support for the Labor government had collapsed and it would now be easily voted out of office.

The June 7 ALP state conference backed Bligh’s sell-off plans. Since then, only the Electrical Trades Union (ETU) has mounted a public campaign against the privatisation and has committed, regardless of who governed Queensland, to oppose the sale of public assets.

The ETU’s statewide Light on the Hill campaign against privatisation kicked off in Cairns on June 22. Since then it has been working its way down the coast, before a mass rally in Brisbane on July 3.

The campaign includes workplace meetings, rallies, public meetings in regional cities, radio, as well as newspaper advertising and literature drops.

It was only after the ETU’s campaign began that the Queensland Council of Unions (QCU) decided to support the July 3 rally.

Socialist Alliance state co-convenor Paul Benedek told Green Left Weekly that the ETU’s strong position against privatisation had shamed other trade unions and the QCU into supporting the July 3 action.

“That indicates that the pressure is there”, Benedek said, “not only from the ETU but also from the community, because the community is overwhelmingly opposed to this.

“So the potential for a strong campaign is there and the anger is there in the community. But those at the top in the trade union movement, who are also tied into the Labor Party, have tried to water down that potential.”

Benedek said the main challenge was to bring the combined force of the community, the ETU and the broad union movement to bear on the issue.

“The ETU has something like 80% of the population supporting what it is standing for”, he said. “The rest of the trade union movement will be isolated if it does not adopt a strong anti-privatisation position.”

But Benedek also sees a trap if the campaign doesn’t adopt a clear, across-the-board “no privatisation” position.

“We do not want to fight this on a case-by-case basis”, he said. “We do not want to fight in just one union against one particular privatisation, then have another one thrust upon us. We want to be opposed to the general principle of handing over public assets to the private sector and actually start to put the case for more public assets, for nationalisations, for bringing enterprises into the public domain for the social good rather than the bottom line. We want to deal rationally rather than gambling everything on the market only to watch the economic debacle we’re seeing now.”

Drew Hutton, a leader of the Queensland Greens, told GLW: “There needs to be a solid anti-privatisation coalition between the key unions and other organisations, including the Greens, which have a clear anti-privatisation agenda.”

Hutton said that, in state parliament, there was no political party opposed to privatisation. The Greens will be part of the community campaign against the privatisation plan.

Like the unions, the Greens are opposed to the privatisation of public assets on the grounds that “public assets are better structured to serve the public interest rather than private profit”, Hutton said.

“But we particularly emphasise that it is far easier to make a relatively painless and just shift to a low-carbon or zero-carbon economy when you’ve got your key assets like water, energy, transport and communications in public hands.”

David White, the Socialist Alliance’s national environment coordinator, told GLW that climate change was the biggest battle the world was facing at the moment and privatisation was going in the wrong direction. He agrees that the campaign to defend public assets should concern all environmentalists.

“The environment movement insists that the government take immediate and necessary measures to keep the environment under control”, he said. “It loses the power to do that by handing control over to corporations.”

[The “No Sell-Off” Light on the Hill rally will be held at noon on July 3, Emma Miller Place, cnr of Roma and Turbott Streets, Brisbane.]

VIDEO: Agent Orange: The war that continues against the people of Vietnam

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 01:41:37 PDT

Many thousands of Vietnamese people continue to suffer birth defects and cancers as a result of the US military's use of the dioxin-based Agent Orange defoliant during its war on Vietnam but the victims of this unended war continue to be denied compensation by US courts.

Socialist Alliance Statement:Stand With Free Iran!

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 23:41:27 PDT

The Socialist Alliance stands in solidarity with the millions of Iranians who are bravely demanding their rights in the streets despite huge state-sanctioned repression. These are the biggest protests in Iran since the 1979 protests in which the US-backed Shah was deposed.

Millions of people, old and young, ethnic and religious minorities, have taken to the streets, day in and day out since the disputed election on June 12.

They have bravely defied the repressive regime of Mahmoud Ahmedinejad to demand the most basic of rights: the right to freely and transparently elect their representatives.

At least 27 people, including a young woman Neda Agha-Soltan whose death was captured on video, have been killed in the crackdown on protests.

Several hundred have been injured, and a leading student activist is in a coma. Government officials on June 24 announced that there had been a total of 645 arrests in Tehran since June 13. Activists say that several hundred more, including journalists, editors, students, professors, party officials and unionists have also disappeared.

Iran’s unelected Guardian Council, while admitting electoral irregularities, has ruled out a recount or a fresh election.

The regime’s response is no surprise: it uses its repressive apparatus – including the National Guard and the basji – to violently repress trade unions, curb the rights of women, gays and lesbians, national minorities and other oppressed sectors.

What started as a protest in support of opposition candidate and former prime minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who claims to have been defrauded, has become a rallying point for Iranians from many sectors fed up with their lack of rights.

On June 20, the Autobus Workers Union of Iran (Sendikaye Sherkat Vahed) declared its support for the protests and protestors, and condemned the state-sponsored repression.

“Iranian society is facing a deep political and economic crisis”, the union, many of whose leaders have been imprisoned and disappeared, said.

“Million-strong protests, which have manifested themselves with a silence that is replete with meaning, have become a pattern that is growing in area and dimension, a growth that demands a response from any responsible person and organization.”

The union demanded that workers’ and democratic rights, in particular the freedom to organise and the freedom to elect, be respected, or “any talk of social freedom and labor union rights will be a farce”.

The autoworkers union has also joined the protestors.

Socialist Alliance salutes those millions of Iranians who are determined not to let this latest attack on democratic freedoms pass by.

The Iranian people are reminding the world that their struggle for democracy and rights is not over. The apparent split in the Islamic ruling elite may assist them in this struggle – and our international solidarity will also be a critical factor. To that end, we commit our support the Iranian community in Australia in their efforts to organise international solidarity.

In addition, we want the Australian government to take a stand in support of democracy in Iran.

FIFTH COLUMNIST: Extreme left ALP candidate promotes rival party

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 23:35:22 PDT

Wow! And I thought the SA comrades (and me too!) were just committed to another Australia...

Colleen Gibbs who is running against diminutive but highly regarded Socialist Lefty Liz Beattie for ALP preselection for the state seat of Yuroke has been caught promoting a rival political party, the Socialist Alliance party and is believed to be a secret member of that virulently leftist and anti-semitic organisation.

Left insiders suspect she is a member of the Socialist Alliance Party’s Geelong branch. We understand this branch is connected with local bikie groups and others involved in crimes of violence at workplaces and elsewhere.

VIDEO: Union Show 24th June - Clara Weekes project, May Day in Cuba, Finance Sector, Climate Rally & Cleaners

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 21:31:40 PDT

This week we go to school with Danielle Archer, from the Young Unionists' Network. The Clara Weekes project takes her to schools around Victoria talking about the roe of unions. >>Young Unionist Network The MUA sent a delegation to Cuba for May Day 2009 - they made this video of their trip for us.In the wrap up - the Finance Sector Union has done a deal with ANZ to ensure the security of any worker who has lost their job through a retrenchment. We bring you the highlights of the Climate Emergency Rally, and the celebrations of the Cleaners over their Cleanstart campaign.

Whither Iran?

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 20:14:37 PDT

This analysis by Babak Zahraie is comprehensive and enriched by a considered historiography. Book mark the site and study it at leisure.

Whither Iran? by Babak Zahraie
Babak Zahraie was editor of the weekly Kargar (Worker) published from 1979 to 1982 in Tehran for which he was incarcerated from 1983 to 1989 in Iran. On April 11, 1979, debated Abol Hassan Bani-Sadr (first president of the Islamic Republic) before a live TV audience on the topic of Islamic economics vs. socialist economics. The debate was viewed by 22 million people. Spoke at meetings which were attended by many thousands during the first years of the Iranian Revolution explaining proposals of the independent working class & socialist politics for various social, economic, political, and cultural problems faced by the country.

VIDEO:John Pilger - Sydney Ferries Privatisation

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:59:26 PDT

Award winning author, journalist and documentary film maker John Pilger gives a candid account of the perils of privatisation threatening Sydney's Ferry Service.

Produced by Jamie McMechan Maritime Union of Australia Film Unit

QLD: Build the July 3 No Sell Off Rally

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 04:57:08 PDT

We finally have a venue for Brisbane. 12.00 noon, Emma Miller Place (Formerly known as the Roma Street Forum) for the QCU Queensland is not for Sale/Light on the Hill rally. A meeting of QCU Affiliates has been called for this Friday to plan a possible march etc. Please let everyone on your network know of the time and new venue for this.

Friday 3rd July
12 Noon
Roma Street Forum/Emma Miller Place

NO to Privatisation now

The Flyer argues:The Electrical Trades Union (ETU) is sponsoring a Statewide community campaign against the sale of public assets, including most of Queensland Rail, by the Bligh Labor Government.

The Light on the Hill campaign gives ETU members and their fellow Queenslanders a chance to speak out against the privatisation of State Government assets.

During the last State election campaign the ETU warned the Liberal National Party it would campaign against them when they announced, “a LNP government would not oppose privatisation of public assets”. The announcement was made in the LNP’s economic platform: Addressing our Economic Objectives.

Well the same applies to the Labor Party, which has now embarked on a massive program of privatisation – and we do not believe it will stop at Queensland Rail if they get away with it.

Electricity and water might be ruled out at the moment, but they will be next if Queenslanders don’t say NO to Privatisation now.

Queensland electricity prices have already jumped signiicantly since the privatisation of the retail electricity market. Actually 17 per cent in two years and in December another 14 per cent rise was announced by the Queensland Competition Authority.

This is what happens all the time with privatisation. The community is spun a line about the virtues of private ownership and competition, most of which never eventuates.The big winners in privatisation are over-paid executives and brokerage irms, while consumers are left to ind the extra money for rising bills. Hasn’t the global inancial crisis taught us anything about this type of behaviour?

We are continually being told the global financial crisis will end at some time and that economic growth will return. So there is no need to panic and start selling off things to fund a temporary problem.

The State Government should hold its nerve and not respond to conservative economic pressures to balance the books in the short term at the expense of the State’s long-term interests.

Haven’t governments, especially Labor governments, learnt the lesson of the 1930s, which is to put the needs of people and the community ahead of the socially-destructive expectations of conservative inanciers and economists.

Putting the black into film noir

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 22:21:13 PDT

Devil in a Blue Dress
Tristar Pictures
Written and directed by Carl Franklin
Based on the novel by Walter Mosley
Starring Denzel Washington, Jennifer Beal and Don Cheadle
Released nationally on February 8

Reviewed by Norm Dixon -- 7 February 1996

Devil in a Blue Dress is a taught, gripping, atmospheric gumshoe thriller set in segregated Los Angeles circa 1948. The film has its quota of corpses, gun fights, crooked politicians, dirty coppers, red herrings, the mandatory femme fatale, and a hero with dry wit and wry observation. But there much more to this film than your average tough, hard-bitten private dick pic. Devil is a parable of 20th century African American urban history in a noir wrapping. It's the context that makes the film so compelling and, it should be noted, the novels of Walter Mosley compulsory reading.

Director Carl Franklin consulted left activist Mike Davis' social history of LA, City of Quartz, to get the racist structure of '40s LA down pat. He meticulously reconstructed the barber shops, record stores and clubs that lined Central Avenue, once the "West Coast Harlem", although Walter Mosley's mum complained there were too many cars in the film, and I would add that they were too new and shiny.

The soundtrack full of great '40s r&b, criminally pushed far into the background, is spellbinding. With millions of other African Americans, soon after the second world war, Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins (Denzel Washington) joined the "great migration" from the south to the cities to find work. It was a time of great hope. The US had won a war for democracy in Europe, and blacks were going to share in the prosperity and liberty so loudly promised by their rulers. Easy believed the promises. He moved to LA, found a job in an aircraft factory, borrowed enough to buy a neat little house with a lawn, fruit trees and a front verandah.

But Easy's stake in the new order, like that of most blacks, is tenuous and at the whim of the white powers that be. Easy loses his job when he refuses to grovel to the cracker boss. He's behind in his house payments, and his precious home is on the line. It's then that Easy is confronted with an almost Faustian choice when a shady white carpetbagger offers him $100 to find Daphne Monet (Jennifer Beals), who has gone missing in the black part of town.

Easy knows there has to be a catch, but to maintain his little patch of America he decides to do a deal with this white devil. Easy is convinced he can maintain his dignity, his sense of right and his commitment to his community despite it all. Remarkably, by and large, he succeeds. By the end of the film, Easy's illusions in democracy and prosperity are severely tested. The irony is that he survives only because of the loyalty of his best friend, Mouse (Don Cheadle). Mouse is everything that Easy is fighting to avoid becoming: a person without a shred of morality, who can kill and injure without the blink of an eye, whose only goal in life is to survive. It is a paradox that perplexes Easy throughout the film and into Walter Mosley's next three novels.

The release of Devil in a Blue Dress casts a brilliant spotlight on the work of Walter Mosley, whose novels follow in the tradition of the great African American crime writer Chester Himes. During a recent visit to Sydney, Watts-born Mosley explained in a newspaper interview, "I'm interested primarily in poor black people. That's my roots. I write about us -- our lives, our history and the issues which even in today's so-called enlightened society are still murky."

Mosley's novels -- beginning with Devil, then A Red Death, White Butterfly, and finally Black Betty -- are set between 1948 and 1961. As time passes, reflecting the mood of the black population as a whole, Rawlins becomes increasingly conscious and militant. Mouse becomes increasingly desperate and dangerous. See the film, read the books.

This article was posted from Green Left Weekly --7 February 1996

Is Facebook politically useful or a disease?

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 20:25:23 PDT

Facebook can become addictive on many separate levels. As a handy only online networking tool it is second to none.

But the friggin groups! What a pain they are! There are so many causes being platformed as Facebook groups that it has long ago reached saturation point for the likes of moi.

Spare me the invitations. Spare me the angst of having to say no thankyou to a cause that in most cases is ridgy didge and kosher.

But I do have a tip: While I am not a group junkie on Facebook --- I do note that some groups work where others are simply a proverbial pain. The best of these send what are almost personal messages and updates that draw the group membership into a for real community.

In most instances political type groups adopt the very standard cultural approach of sending memos to the masses-- or at least portions of these masses -- alerting them of some significant fast approaching event.

Rent a Crowd:Just click SEND

And that's' it. Be there or be square. It's a bums on seats approach.

Now I'm not saying that we cut back and do much less of the event creation thing or that we should abhor bums on seats or drop the call for more foot soldiers at rallies or demonstrations.

"Rent a Crowd" is for real -- it is a political imperative.

This calendar fetish is unfortunately a standard across the left I am most familiar with. If T. S Elliot once wrote, "I have measured out my life in coffee spoons." I have measured out mine in event invitations. Not just on Facebook but on egroups and with hard copy flyers.

And I'm drowning. I doubt that a practising CEO could match my in box of invitations.

The problem is that when you focus on the approaching occasion you ... focus on the approaching occasion. It's organising by tick boxes. My whole life on the left has been rooted to honing just that. From paste ups, to leaflet drops, to phone calls, to word-of-mouth badgering...it is a primary collective organising resource. But now in the digital age the ascent of new technologies has obscured our aspirational prize because the weaponry are so easy to deploy -- just click SEND.

And bad habits have become ingrained like a disease.

Let's not be shy and not recognise that there's a personal angst and social comfort issue at stake here. It is so much easier to protect one's personal space by emailing or Facebooking your options. But to actually engage with someone -- even on the telephone -- isn't so easy. We aren't all born with the personality of real estate agents and we all don't have the gift of the political gab.

And I'm definitely no different. So I'm not trying to be smug.

What people don't realize is that in my current of political existence on the left -- within that current which produced, publishes and sells Green Left Weekly -- you so often are out there and on show for the whole world to relate to and you to it. You gotta talk the talk or that sale to what may be the next Che Guevera is missed. So there's a drive to force you to engage.

Oh the thrills of point of sale politics!

Similarly the American socialist leader, James P. Cannon, once argued that the activist's core political activity is to "talk socialism on the job."

Get that: talk. And by talk we mean -- and he meant -- dialogue. It's a FAQ challenge.

There's a penchant on the left , even among Marxists, to forget that the ruling principle of all existence is dialectics. Ideas and actions are to and fro entities that spiral around our noggins by touching upon our experiences and exchanges.

It is not a simple case of didactics. Note that that's a different word: it means instruction. As the late Paolo Freire insisted, didactics is like making a deposit in the same way, I guess, as one would send an email or may run a Facebook group. There's no core attempt to promote an exchange, to generate a two way process which, as he argued, fostered a very different and potent pedagogy.

Showing by example

But is a Facebook group an example of pedagogy? Sure. It can be. But you gotta make it more personal, and, if you like, less alien. What I mean is that the challenge is seeming to be "less digital" .

Here's an example: The Union Show on Facebook. This is run mainly by Debra Weddall -- its creator, and the on screen anchor for this excellent community and web television program -- and it's a fresh source of updates which are nuanced to be informational. As well as that the Union Show runs a multimedia enriched blog.

The impetus for a lot of this was to generate a campaign to sustain funding for the project but the practice of spamming, a Facebook group standard, is not part of the mix.

This makes such good sense. Here we have a group that is self evidently run by a human being not formatted by anonymity. It's fresh, it updates, it goes two ways...and I guess its also very anecdotal. The other core feature of this group is that it is not premised by a single event . which will approach with frenzied digitalising before becoming past tense.

What struck me on a recent visit to Scotland I(my first and so far only escapade over there anywhere ) was how well the Scottish socialists I mixed with related to their working periphery. The business was certainly task driven but the main energy spent was involving others in the discussing and the doing of it. It was not just about bums on seats.

These same Scots are no slouches when it comes to the web. In fact they're blog and Facebook addicts -- they are very web savvy: YouTube, even (for Crissake!) Second Life! But the whole online community thing is embedded in a very rich offline life of , that's right, toing and froing. I mean they take social networking seriously. But not so that they are distracted by the hardware they use.

In this sense the very logic of social networking is enhanced by the fact that it is indeed concretely "social" and assiduously "networked" albeit with a core political agenda.

I think a cause of this penchant I'm exploring is that the left of which Iascribe has for so long been treated as political pariahs by the bourgeois principals that it takes a bit of adjustment to recognise that they-- ie: we -- have no longer just flown in from Mars. We live here among the same community that is looking for the sort of crossroads solutions we have been advocating. Our problem is that we have internalised a distrust of our own motivations and agenda as through it is outside normal every day discourse -- that politics, especially our politics, is foreign.

Balderdash!

HISTORY: Communism in Australia

noreply@blogger.com (Dave Riley) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 07:15:48 PDT

By Dave Holmes

[This talk was presented at the A Century of Struggle — Laborism and the radical alternative: Lessons for today conference, held in Melbourne, Australia, on May 30, 2009. It was organised by Socialist Alliance and sponsored by Green Left Weekly, Australia’s leading socialist newspaper. To read other talks presented at the conference, click HERE.]

The original Communist Party of Australia ceased to exist in 1991*. So it is a long while gone. Many comrades here would have had no experience of it. Yet for most of its 70-year history the CPA was Australia’s major left party. At times the party had a significant impact on Australian politics — especially in the grim years of the Great Depression, during World War II and during the Cold War. Cynics used to make cracks about the “party” of ex-members of the CPA being the biggest political formation in the country but what is true is that over these seven decades probably scores of thousands of people saw the party as the vehicle with which to fight for a better world.

For decades the CPA was a strong militant force in the trade union movement. It played a key role in supporting various national liberation struggles (Indonesia in its independence struggle against the Dutch after World War II and much later East Timor in its fight); it fought hard for civil liberties (we can mention the Egon Kisch case in the 1930s and the fight against Menzies push to ban the party in the early 1950s). In the field of culture the CPA — through writers such as Jean Devanny, Frank Hardy, Dorothy Hewett and Katherine Susannah Prichard — developed a strong influence.

However, despite the many undeniably positive chapters in the CPA’s history there was another side. The CPA was created to fight for socialism and it recruited on that basis. But a gross contradiction developed. At the end of the 1920s the party became Stalinised. This meant that on all fundamental questions its politics were subordinated to those of the privileged conservative bureaucracy which had usurped power in the Soviet Union.

Read more....