Fiji Interim Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama. Credit: ABC.

By Alex Schlotzer:

An Australian and New Zealand union delegation heads to Fiji next week to investigate first hand abuses of workplace rights within the island nation. The delegation comes on the back of moves this week by the International Labour Organisation to intervene to safeguard human and labour rights in Fiji.

The delegation will meet with workers and union leaders to discuss the deteriorating situation. But repeated requests to meet with Commodore Bainimarama have gone unanswered, and his regime continues to ignore mounting international pressure to return labour rights to workers.

The pressure against Bainimarama’s oppressive regime stepped up this week, with an unprecedented resolution at the ILO’s regional meeting in Kyoto this week, condemning the actions of the Fijian Government to persecute union leaders and restrict fundamental labour rights. The resolution was backed by union, Government and employer representatives, including the ACTU and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

The situation in Fiji is not a recent development. The dismantling of workers’ rights began when the military came to power in a coup in 2006.

While ignoring an invitation to meet with the delegation next week, the regime’s Attorney General claims the country is open and free. He even went so far as to suggest the Australian Council of Trade Unions’ concerns about workers’ and human rights were based on fantasy and the ravings of biased people intent on bringing Fiji to its knees.

Yet we know that since the regime staged their coup under the leadership of Commodore Frank Bainimarama, human and workers’ rights abuses have increased. Fiji is not quite the idyllic paradise it appears in tourist brochures, not for its workers anyway. Every day workers are threatened with intimidation, bullying, harassment and threats of violence, including rape.

This is the price they pay when they stand up for their basic rights everyone is entitled to, no matter where they live.

Perhaps we need to refresh the Attorney General’s memory and look at the human and workers’ rights abuses of the military regime.

Here’s a brief timeline of reported abuses:
2006
December The Military, led by Commodore Bainimarama, stages a coup
2007
January Commodore Bainimarama is installed as interim Prime Minister
March Regime announces 5% cut in wages for civil servants. Employers in the private sector take advantage of this and deny wage increases. Wages remain frozen.
July Fiji Nurses Association goes on strike in response to the wage decision and is supported by affiliates of the Fiji Islands Council of Trade Union (FICTU). In the aftermath of the strike, Taniela Tabu (a FICTU spokesperson) is arrested claiming he was forced to strip to his underwear and threatened in detention. Prior to the FNA strike, the President and General Secretary of FNA are harassed near their workplace by members of the security forces.
Attar Singh, General Secretary of FICTU is taken to army barracks where he is assaulted by the military and threats are made to kill him.
2008
December Tevita Koroi, President of the Fijian Teachers’ Association and a member of the Council of Pacific Education, is suspended from his position as principal by the Fiji Public Service Commission. He is later fired from the public service (April 2009). The Commission criticised Mr Koroi for speaking out publicly against the military coup.
2009
April Fiji Court of Appeal finds coup and interim regime to be illegal.
Fiji constitution abrogated so Bainimarama can re-appoint himself as Prime Minister.
All judicial appointments are sacked and a decree is introduced that prevents any court action that questions the validity of any decree promulgated by regime.
Public Emergency Regulation (PER) is enacted. The powers under the PER include:
Prohibition of and powers to disperse assemblies of more than 3 persons
Severe censorship of all Fiji media
Detaining persons without charge for up to 10 days
‘Control of persons’, namely the power to place them under house arrest or similar restrictions
Imposition of curfews and restrictions on movements around the country
The right of police officers/military personnel to search any person, building or vehicle
Administration of Justice Decree (No. 9) enacted allowing the Courts to make unchallengeable decisions
Journalist, Pita Ligailua, is detained by authorities for writing a piece that appeared in The Australian that was not vetted by the regime. Detentions and threats against other journalists are made in the following weeks. Amnesty International reports that in the month following the introduction of the PER, approximately 40 people are arrested and detained.
May Administration of Justice Decree (No. 10) enacted and prevents any proceedings that seek to review or appeal the legality of decrees made by the regime.
Reverend Manasa Lasaro, former president of the Methodist Church of Fiji, is arrested by police following statements he made denouncing the abrogation of the constitution and the introduction of the PER.
June Military regime announces it has cancelled the annual Methodist Church Conference.
November Commodore Bainimarama expels Australian and New Zealand High Commissioners from Fiji. Peceli Kinivuwai, leader of a political party, is detained and harassed for commenting to overseas media about the expulsion of diplomats.
Dr Brij Lal, a prominent Fijian historian, is forced to leave Fiji after the military threatens to kill him. Lal criticised the regime’s decision to expel Australian and New Zealand diplomats.
2010
January Pramond Raie, a trade unionist, is approached by army officers at his home and is warned against organising a strike by members of his union by the Bank of Baroda.
Commodore Bainimarama announces the regime will stop pension payments of pensioners that are ‘dissenters and critics’ of the regime.
Regime announces a ban on the Methodist Church from holding their annual conference until 2014 accusing church ministers of spying on the regime for the government ousted in the 2006 coup.
June Regime establishes the Fiji Media Industry Development Authority. It’s responsible for ensuring local media outlets do not publish material against the regime.
August A journalist is detained and threatened by security forces and forced to reveal sources after publishing an article alleging that the Commissioner of Police had been sacked by the regime.
October Mahendra Chaudhry, General Secretary of the National Farmers Union and former Prime Minister, is arrested along with five associates and detained for four days. Chaudhry is accused of not requesting authorisation to organise a public meeting, a violation of the PER. A journalist that reported the arrest and detention of Chaudhry is detained and threatened with prosecution under the PER.
2011
February Felix Anthony (Secretary General, Fiji Trades Union Congress) is detained and assaulted and while being transported, the officers threaten him and his family.
Sam Speight, a government critic and former Cabinet Minister in the deposed government, is detained at military barracks. Reports indicate he was beaten until losing consciousness.
Felix Anthony and two union representatives are beaten and verbally abused in Ba for approximately 2 hours. They are assaulted again at Namaka barracks by military personnel.
June Two army officers assault Mohammed Khalil, President of the Fiji Sugar and General Workers Union. Officers accuse him of being a union strongman. He is made to wallow in the mud, is stomped on and dragged along the ground in full view of colleagues and onlookers. Officers demand his resignation from the union by 3pm the following day with threats of similar treatment if he fails to comply.
August Daniel Urai (FTUC President) and Nitin Gounder (organiser) are arrested and charged with unlawful assembly under the PER for apparently having met with and advised union members regarding collective bargaining negotiations with a hotel.
Regime prohibits automatic union dues deductions for all public service workers. This cripples unions in the public sector.
FTUC meeting to discuss impacts of the regime’s Decrees is disrupted by police and the permit to hold the meeting is revoked. In response, FTUC makes an application to hold a future meeting, which is rejected.
Regime denies application by Fiji Sugar and General Workers Union to hold a meeting with its members.
September Essential National Industries Decree introduced
October Shaland Scott, Secretary of the Fiji Pilots’ Association and employee of Air Pacific (nearly half owned by Qantas) is arrested and charged with unauthorised release of documents.
World Bank survey on ‘ease of doing business’ finds that the ease of doing business in Fiji has deteriorated under the regime.
Daniel Urai is detained and questioned by police after returning to Fiji from Australia where he was participating in the side events to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. Urai is held for 10 days before being charged.
November Felix Anthony is arrested and detained without being charged.
Daniel Urai is charged, after being held for 10 days, with sedition for allegedly urging political violence to overthrow the regime.
Essential National Industries Decree comes into full effect, denying workers many fundamental rights, including to freely organise and bargain collectively.

Clearly the Attorney General’s memory is quite poor if he failed to remember those abuses.

If there is any damage to credibility being done it is being done by Bainimarama’s regime. By denying that regular and repeated abuses of human and workers’ rights occur, the regime only continues to damage itself and hurt the Fijian people.

The Australian Council of Trade Unions is determined to investigate the situation in Fiji, regardless of what the Attorney General claims. Next week the delegation flies into Fiji and they remain hopeful of meeting with Commodore Bainimarama and other leaders of the regime.

If Fiji is to develop and restore its standing in the international community, the regime must restore human and workers’ rights and put an end to the intimidation, bullying and violence.

By Dr Tim Themi:

Fresh from a solid live-to-air on 3CR, local guitar-artist Nicholas Ogburn launched his new album – a fifth – with great aplomb last Friday night at the Acoustic Café in Collingwood.

Surrounded by vintage guitars for sale, mounted on the walls – and ably supported by the beautiful vocal-piano sounds of Sarah Giufre, who opened up proceedings – Ogburn traced the songs spanning his decade-long recording career and showcased the unique, touch-sensitive melodic timings that all his listeners have come to adore.

The introductory soliloquies were, as always, a great feature of the performance: offering cryptic clues as to what, originally, may have stirred him to the heights that each song demanded of his fingering hands as they structured-up and danced across the fretboard.

Switching between an acoustic and various forms of electric – from a Fender Strat and Tele to an amazing looking Flying V – Ogburn meted out the kind of delay-pedal ambiances that lovers of such albums as Neil Young’s Dead Man, Mick Turner’s Moth, and Papa M’s Live From A Shark Cage would also appreciate to the core.

I was fortunate enough many years ago to have Nicholas Ogburn share the bill when I was launching a third album of my own under the name “The Resonance” – and was very pleased, along with all in attendance, to see him again kicking-on to produce more great songs for all of us who have since been flung to various distant shores.

Nicholas Ogburn is consistently able to summon moments in the free-play of time-space and sound that make him, perhaps, equal to anyone who has ever endeavoured to combine rhythm and melody in complex guitar configurations. My new favourite song from the new album, Ilk Drift Vol. 2, is called “Wet Roads” for just such reasons – namely, a descending melody draped across a finger-picking waltz with just the amount of echo to evoke the beyond.

Time will tell whether it, or any other song, will ever displace from the throne the patient crescendo of “This is how it was always going to be” from his very first album of 1999.

Tim Themi is a PhD in Philosophy & Psychoanalysis from Deakin. He also holds honours degrees in Philosophy from La Trobe and the Engineering Sciences from Melbourne. Between 1998 and 2002 he launched 3 albums of original music and published numerous live reviews in Inpress magazine. He is also a committed activist at large and in the social media.

By John O’ Driscoll

Each night a small contingent doggedly remain under constant police surveillance. A disparate group – pensioners, students, bushies, Koories from the tent embassies, the odd other longtime activist, and some new-minted. Early in the evening there are more of us, the busker on his motor-wheely treating us to Neil Diamond covers, a Kevin Rudd lookalike with an obsessive’s knowledge of corruption and financial crimes. For a minute I thought it WAS Kevin Rudd, taking the piss, like he does with Hilary Clinton. It couldn’t be: wasn’t he at APEC? A congenial crowd, gathered in the square, discussing, illustrating and attempting to define the big problems we face, stripped of ideology.

Later, we thin out to the eight or so doing the graveyard shift. The (non-riot squad) police themselves are generally good-humoured, if a bit wooden. They’re ‘just following orders’. When asked if they know why we are here, one rolls his eyes, ‘oh yeah’. Their area commander knows all about it too, and has ‘an intent’ for them to be here, making sure we don’t get comfortable. And the Area commander has been hearing a lot about it from on high. They’d seen surveillance of us sleeping. We’d have to move any sleeping gear, no ifs, no buts.

And of course they’re under surveillance too, in this financial panopticon between Westpac and the Reserve bank (who have their own supersized security team). In the courtyard between the twin temples of plutocracy, the cops wander over every half hour or so, on the lookout for people asleep, or lying with a blanket. They are under instruction to hand a move-on order, and arrest on failure to comply. Arrest carries the risk of bail conditions that forbid being in Martin Place.

Sydney is full of people sleeping on the streets. Homeless people are asleep on stairs and in nooks all over the city. Clover Moore’s city council has decreed that the police should not move people sleeping rough along. Our legals have launched an action to stop this particular harassment on that basis. We should “play the game, just like we are”, say the cops, and until that time, no sleeping. We should play the game but we are ‘wasting our time’. They are also wasting their time then, it is suggested. But we are paid to waste our time says one, and then , thoughtfully, we’re not paid very much. They are in the jaws of the vice, like the rest of us(He goes on to say that if he won “that 30 million dollar lotto”, he’d go on working as a cop, because he just loves meeting people).

It seems there is a global policy of not allowing Occupy Wall Street protesters to form permanent camps, from the US to South Africa to Martin Place. Police tonight have swept Zuccotti Park in New York, trampling tents, and impounding gear, because “the storage of these materials at this location is not allowed”. This follows similar actions in Portland and Oakland. They can stay as long as they have no means of being warm, resting or organising. The message is you can protest provided you do no harm – ie no effect beyond theatrics. Protesters are messy and dirty, and … irrelevant

The powers that be are nevertheless rattled. The city of London and Wall Street are too busy with their attack on the Euro (in defence of their own pyramid scheme) to deign to notice. But their captives and cheerleaders in the governments have terror laws and militarised police forces at the ready, and strategies tested against the Arab Spring. We now see a concerted reaction. What they had dreamed as China’s nightmare has become their own: social network led revolution(And yet for the most part, people want to reform democracy – like ban paid lobbying, and curb the financial bubble-sphere)

We saw a glimpse of that paranoid paramilitary approach the other day in Castlereagh St. A group of Occupy protesters with a mind to direct action squatted a long-empty office building and readied themselves by painting banners and securing the entrance. As they were discovered a week later, they unfurled the banners highlighting the huge number of vacant houses in Sydney(120000 it is claimed). The response was incredible. The riot squad and the bomb squad were called in to storm the building(while Occupy Sydney Website

You can follow Occupy Sydney on twitter at @occupySYDNEY

By John O’Driscoll

The small group who gathered on (2 Nov) at my first Occupy Sydney GA (General Assembly) at Town Hall, maybe 50 people, was dwarfed by the attendance at the Noam Chomsky screening inside, let alone the crush of commuters and shoppers. The local expression of the Occupy Wall Street seemed at a low ebb, having been summarily booted from the Martin Place camp by the NSW police.

Speakers get two minutes each. The main item on the agenda was whether to accede to police demands about the re-occupy protest route on Saturday. The outcome seemed a forgone conclusion: not bloody likely. The process is procedure heavy(what formal meeting isn’t?) in an effort to give everyone the ability to have their say in a finite period. It takes a while. A small number can block a proposal to put objections or amendments. Most of the real work is done in discussion groups.

There’s also some danger at this early stage is of a takeover by low-credibility groups like Socialist Alternative.

But this is a distributed movement and low attendance at a meeting is not enough to write its epitaph. The demonstration on Saturday will give a better indication of how many people it can currently pull onto the streets locally. But even public indifference and utter failure then, won’t necessarily mean the end, depending on developments in OWS internationally and in the financial crash. On the Internet, here is palpable excitement about developments, both among the left commentariat and the progressive public, and palpable fear and loathing in some other sectors.

OWS has been criticised for lack of a coherent agenda. But then many governments also seem to have no idea what they are doing. OWS at least has a clear rallying cry (“we are the 99%”) and the unifying theme of opposition to inequality, cronyism and finance capitalism.

On a first glance at the>Occupy Sydney site I don’t see any discussion of the wider economic and social mechanisms that feed the machine. (eg Consumer individualism), or the effects of the drive for profit in accelerating climate change(eg the oil tar sands and the fracking rush) let alone ways to cure the illness.

Perhaps that’s to be expected at this stage. After a long period of propaganda- and consumerism-induced torpor the financial debacle and the West’s multiple crises of legitimacy(in foreign policy, corporate disregard for the law and capture of the political sphere) have changed of lot of people’s consciousness, but they are only beginning to find their voice. Discussion, and a feeling of a common groundswell (here and internationally)may liberate us to discuss topics previously taboo. Also Australia has been relatively insulated from the economic havoc devastating US and European communities. Even in the States, it took 3 years of economic disaster in an already highly stressed and economically divided country to break the deathly silence, except of course for the Tea Party, that conduit Fox and so on built to harness public anger for the benefit of the 1 percent.

Nevertheless the cronyism of the globalised economy is hardly absent here, land of the cartel The contempt shown for the public by the Qantas board and management recently illustrates this. Alan Joyce is no doubt guaranteed a golden parachute however the dispute unfolds. The public haven’t fallen in with the usual union bashing line.

For me finance capitalism is the key driver of climate change. So an overdue public examination of how it works might open the door for the world’s people to demand a meaningful say in their future: not to be economic slaves, and neither to be hostages to fortune in a climate catastrophe, that only the mega-rich can dream of ‘ameliorating’. Freed from the dead hand of finance and the rhetoric that “There is no alternative” (Maggie Thatcher), perhaps we can re-imagine a less exploitative, more humane, and survivable future.

We the people have to imagine new ways of being ‘wealthy’ which don’t cost the earth.

John O’Driscoll is an Australian artist with an interest in reality, history and politics. He studied modern European history at Sydney University and first worked and exhibited at the Gunnery in Sydney’s Woolloomooloo. More of his cartoons and opinions can be seen at this blog

By Dr Tim Themi:

Myths about the benevolence of Anglo-American foreign policy were utterly exploded last Friday night in Melbourne, as Professor Noam Chomsky thundered out his latest critique of the changing contours of global order.

Invited out for the second time by Deakin for only his second ever appearance in Melbourne, Professor Chomsky began the analysis with a United States at the peak of its imperialist powers and ambitions following the catastrophes of WWII.

But then a “double decline” set in, Chomsky explained, firstly without and then within. Outside their borders China was “lost,” it became “independent,” and others were keen to follow suit. While deep inside, America underwent a de-industrialisation period, outsourcing its labour to the many slave trades it had created around the world, and eventually handed over control of its economy to speculative financial hustlers.

The facts were grisly and oft-recounted with masterful detail: the stagnating wages in the face of record CEO profits; the lack of health care; the smashing of unions; the Republican race-to-the-bottom with the politics of fear and stupidity; the invasion of Vietnam and Indochina; the terrorist assaults on Latin America; the installing of a fascist dictatorship in a freshly liberated Greece; subversions in Italy; and the illegal wars on Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan – the latter which continues with bi-partisan Australian Government, and therefore media, support.

Myths about America’s noble deeds and intentions in these incursions fell away as Chomsky cited from the internal records of Washington planners and their declassified documents, revealing an elite obsessed with controlling all the world’s material resources, regardless of any human toll.

Right up till today, Chomsky remarked, where the Occupy movement just went global in an unprecedented wave of popular resistance. His praise of this was unreserved. “Keep doing what you are doing,” he told one Australian Occupy group. “It’s very important.”

Tim Themi is a PhD in Philosophy & Psychoanalysis from the School of International & Political Studies at Deakin. He also holds honours degrees in Philosophy from La Trobe and the Engineering Sciences from Melbourne. His doctoral dissertation enjoined the psychoanalysis of Lacan and the philosophy of Nietzsche on the question of desire and ethics. He is also a committed activist at large and in the social media. See his Facebook Page here.

By Rich Bowden:

Wind turbines have, in recent times, attracted negative publicity in Australia with a number of people living near wind farms reporting health problems as a result of the constant low level noise emitted by the three-bladed turbines. Consequently a number of anti-wind farm groups have been formed to oppose their construction. See here for a report in The Australian over an ongoing court case, which details typical allegations raised over this divisive issue.

However a radically new Australian design called the Eco Whisper Turbine has been developed with increased efficiency and reduced noise in mind. Rated at a 20kW capacity, the turbine is 23 metres high with 30 blades extending out from a 6.5 metre radius from the hub.

The company Eco Whisper Turbines is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Renewable Energy Solutions Australia Holdings Ltd. (RESA). Designed and manufactured in Australia, the innovative turbine is “…virtually silent,” said the company’s Business Development Manager Michael Le Messurier. “When standing underneath the turbine you cannot hear any noise even at high wind speeds,” he told EcoDirectory in an email exchange.

“The outer cowling/ring around the end of the blades prevents air from spilling off the tip of the blades,” explained Le Messurier adding that this was a “… major cause of noise of comparable three-bladed small wind turbines.”

Capable of generating enough power to service three or four homes or a small factory, the Eco Whisper Turbine has an ingenious slew drive mechanism which relays data to the control system and automatically points the turbine in the direction of the wind to increase efficiency.

Le Messurier was enthusiastic when asked if the Eco Whisper Turbine’s recent launch in Geelong, Victoria (as part of a collaborative effort with the City of Greater Geelong) could serve as a template for future co-operative deals.

“Yes definitely. Renewable Energy Solutions Australia Holdings Ltd (RESA) as the owner of Eco Whisper Turbines has received great support from The City of Greater Geelong for the launch. Council involvement is imperative for future installations of The Eco Whisper Turbine.”

He added that Austeng Engineering, the Geelong-based contractor which manufactured the Eco Whisper Turbine, had been “instrumental” in the development of the turbine.

The collaborative venture points to the small-scale target market aimed at by RESA for the Eco Whisper Turbines. “The Eco Whisper Turbine is suited for deployment in small scale wind farms, however not to the scale of the large wind farms you see in the country side,” he explained. He added the “prime target markets for the Eco Whisper Turbine are in smaller development sites” such as:

- Commercial, manufacturing and industrial sites

– Airports, Ports, Council sites and industrial parks and development sites

- Urban development sites – Shopping Centres, Industrial parks, Schools and Universities

- Remote sites – Mining Resource facilities, remote communities, off grid sites, farms

- Community ownership models

While operating in a different market than traditional three-bladed turbine designs, the company believe the Eco Whisper Turbine will be popular as it had overcome recurring concerns over wind turbines noise.

“To say it will replace traditional wind turbines is a bit far off the mark. We believe it will make a big impact in the market and change the way people perceive wind turbines in general as it addresses one of the key issues/concerns of councils, clients and consumers in operating virtually silently,” said Le Messurier. For further information, including technical specifications, see the RESA website here.

Rich is a writer and editor specialising in writing and posting social media for the green business sector. He is also founder/editor of theangle.org.

This article was originally published in EcoDirectory.

By Dr Tim Themi:

The IPA’s Tim Wilson was allowed to dominate on a Q&A panel including the Green’s Adam Bandt, shaming the Humanities & Social Sciences department of Melbourne relative to the intellectual standards properly required of the Tertiary sector.

On a night which saw police outside launch violent assaults on Occupy Melbourne protestors, the Greens member for Melbourne, Adam Bandt, battled vainly for some progressive view point, having recently attended and endorsed the Occupy protest and strongly condemned, in the social media, the police’s sudden regress to barbarism.

But despite a panel littered with academics trained in critical thinking – including lecturers in politics and policy from Melbourne and Monash – there was on display a massive failure to deconstruct the spin offered by Tim Wilson, who was allowed to bind the terms of the debate to the standpoint of the IPA think-tank which pays him to say precisely what he says.

The IPA, or Institute of Public Affairs, is funded by narrow and extreme concentrations of private power, what Occupy protestors are globally referring to as the 1% who not only own and run the world and the policies that direct it – but are also running it into the ground.1

Sadly this was scheduled to remain uncriticised, apparently, while panellists waxed lyrically about the low quality of our general polity, as if this were a causeless phenomenon that somehow just descended upon us one day from beyond the stars.

Then, as is usually the way with such performance pieces dressed-up, marketed as academic events, one panellist thought to mention that maybe it was “we” the apathetic, fragmented public that was to blame. The question thence was put to the audience, and it was left to me to grab the mike on behalf of the screams outside of a freshly bashed protest.

It’s the Corporation which perverts our democracy. They own the media. They are the media. But apart from some valiant efforts by Adam Bandt, the Graduate School of Humanities & Social Sciences of the University of Melbourne seemed utterly afraid to name it.

To let a willing audience suffer the spin and sophistry of an IPA lightweight and corporate valet like Tim Wilson – who often appears on that ABC News 24 channel that no social activist could ever take seriously – was to commit to the flames the very analytic skills that academics are meant to develop and impart to help us defend the public good against private tyrannies.

Tim Themi is a PhD in Philosophy & Psychoanalytic Studies from the School of International & Political Studies of Deakin University, Burwood and Geelong. He also holds honours degrees in Philosophy from La Trobe and the Engineering Sciences from Melbourne. His doctoral dissertation brought together the psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan and the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche on the question of desire and ethics. He is also a committed activist at large and in the social media (https://www.facebook.com/people/Tim-Themi/100000389779622)

By Alex Schlotzer:

The Occupy Melbourne movement is pretty much dead in my opinion. Though it really didn’t come alive as was promised.

On Friday morning the police moved in to remove the Occupy Melbourne protesters that had been occupying Melbourne’s Town Square. Unfortunately as those assembled at Town Square quickly found out, no-one was really paying much attention in the first place. That can be the only description given the calls for support fell on mostly deaf ears.

The problem here wasn’t necessarily the sentiment but more the execution.

From the beginning the Occupy Melbourne movement didn’t seem to have any particular focus other than ‘smashing capitalism’ or ‘smashing the state’. The effort to organise in solidarity with those occupying the streets of cities and towns around the US and the world is commendable. However this was never going to be enough to get people to come out in the numbers required to maintain Occupy Melbourne.

And it was the fact that there was no coherent message that prevented more people supporting Occupy Melbourne. I’m sure it also didn’t help that over the course of the last week more and more of those protesting seemed to be from various Socialist organisations. Many of the flyers and posters that were plastered around Town Square were all in the formats and styles used extensively by the various Socialist factions. It also became obvious that there was a lot more talk going on then any kind of action to redress local and global injustices.

There was nothing being said about the issues affecting Australians, like insecure work, unaffordable housing, the Northern Territory Intervention, the treatment of asylum seekers, or the failing public transport system in Melbourne. And to make matters worse for the ‘movement’ there was not much being proposed about what to do about the global situation and shopping list of issues raised.

Just read the minutes of their General Assemblies.

There was little coverage of Occupy Melbourne in the mainstream media and even those purporting to be at the action failed to tell their stories through social media, though there were a lot of calls for people to support Occupy Melbourne. It was essentially a non-event. Indeed as I walked around Occupy Melbourne last week no-one approached me to discuss what was going on and no-one handed me an informational flyer. Other than my own attempts to speak with different individuals, it felt as though no-one was interested in building up the Occupy Melbourne ‘movement’.

Truth be known it seemed to me that the Occupy Melbourne action wasn’t gaining any new support and would’ve naturally wound up and desolved.

But then in a show of almost complete ignorance Melbourne’s Lord Mayor and the Premier of Victoria decided to start making threats to remove protesters. Sure the Occupy Melbourne protesters were breaking local laws pertaining to structures erected at Town Square but it certainly didn’t warrant the rhetoric used.

Then in a rush of blood to the head Robert Doyle, conservative Lord Mayor of Melbourne, decided to send in the riot police after issuing eviction notices to the protesters. If there is one way of bolstering something like Occupy Melbourne, a benign demonstration, it’s by sending in the riot police.

But the decision to send in riot police to break up a peaceful demonstration clearly reveals what Doyle and Baillieu think of democracy. Instead of going down and speaking with the Occupy Melbourne protesters, things were made worse and ensured that something that was dying away was reinvigorated. If it had been the desire of Doyle and Baillieu to break up the protests, not just move them on, then the strategy failed.

While I don’t actively support Occupy Melbourne because of its incoherent demands and no clear position for which it stands, I cannot stand for the kind of idiotic and dangerous approach taken by Robert Doyle.

These actions suggests that the Lord Mayor doesn’t have the ability to deal with democracy and prefers an autocratic approach.

Robert Doyle can bleat on as much as he likes in the Herald Sun and The Age that what he did was right but he is clearly deluded. By sending in the riot police Doyle sends a clear signal he is for physical confrontation instead of discussion and understanding.

Occupy Melbourne Update

The latest news from @OccupyMelbourne is the occupation will apparently continue at Treasury Gardens.

Alex Schlotzer is a straight talker when it comes to politics and loves to vent his spleen. Actively involved in Australian and international politics with a keen understanding of the dynamics of the political machine, Alex has a prolific online presence and has been a cyber activist for over 15 years. Co- editor of theangle.org, he can also be found at his blog and his exciting online project Australian Politics TV.

By Rich Bowden

The debate over water reform has received less scrutiny of late with the drought broken in much of the country and national attention turning to matters such as the carbon tax debate, the bankrupted Malaysian refugee solution and of course the coverage of the footy finals.

However a report released last week by the National Water Commission has brought the issue of water reform to the fore by delivering the equivalent of a “mixed bag” on Australia’s water management. The third biennial assessment following the establishment of the 2004 National Water Initiative (NWI), the study warned the states against complacency, stating that many reforms remain to be implemented.

The Commission has delivered 12 recommendations and called on governments to address the problems of water extraction particularly in relation to such issues as coal gas mining and water stewardship.

Commission chairwoman Chloe Munro said the study sounded a warning to state governments, saying much more needed to be done.

“Although the planning processes are there and progress is gradually being made, governments have not clearly stated which of their water systems require some adjustment in order to bring them to a sustainable level of extraction or they haven’t described a pathway by which that will be achieved,” she said.

Launching the report Ms Munro said the NWI had delivered some improvements but that key goals, such as that of sustainable water management, remained elusive.

“This independent report shows that actions under the National Water Initiative have made water use more efficient, sustainable and secure – and this helped Australians weather the worst drought on record.”

“However, the goal of sustainable water management has not been reached,” she pointed out.

An Australian Conservation Foundation media release said the report underlines the key problem of over extraction of water.

“The National Water Commission has sent a clear message to decision makers at state and federal levels that the underlying problem of water reform in Australia – over-extraction – remains a problems and needs to be addressed,” said ACF healthy rivers campaigner, Dr Arlene Harriss-Buchan.

“Dealing with the problem of over-extraction is the great unfinished business of water reform in Australia,” she said.

The report highlights the precariousness of water reform in the country, coming as it does ahead of the key Draft Murray Darling Basin Plan, due to be delivered next month where the issue of irrigators and over extraction will be addressed.

This article originally published in EcoDirectory, Australia’s guide to sustainable living.

By Dr Tim Themi:

US hegemony, hypocrisy, and capitalist imperialism in the Middle East finally came under fire last night on the ABC’s Q&A. Filmed as part of the Sydney Festival of Dangerous Ideas, and featuring the radical Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, late capitalism was spoken of as the fantastical ideology, befitted with a utopian-delusional core, that it really is.

“Capitalism is structured like a religion; it’s metaphysical. It’s not simply natural egotism,” Žižek said, throwing his full weight behind the Arab Spring. He was ably backed by Mona Eltahawy, the Egyptian born democracy activist, who managed to squeeze in an endorsement of the Occupy Wall Street protests now springing up across a declining Western world.

In what was at times a torrid affair, where concision in the media was always going to be a problem, highlights included the pronouncement that capitalism rewards psychopathic behaviour. This touches on the thesis of the Canadian Professor of Law, Joel Bakan, whose film and book The Corporation found that because of some perverted judicial activism in recent times, corporations were granted rights of legal persons with very ugly profiles indeed.

The lowlights were also many, not least because of the inclusion on the panel of a Greg Sheridan, one of Murdoch’s editorial henchmen, again, who really should have been saved for a show on the dangerous absence of any ideas. But the other panellists, including the host, Tony Jones, weren’t that far behind at times in the lowlight stakes – showing that they were yet to fully come to terms with the US’s wholly malevolent praxis in the Middle East, which props up dictatorships, and thwarts democracy, to exploit their oil and other resources.

Such miserable blind spots would not go unchallenged tonight, with Žižek on hand, whose very presence demanded the inclusion of “the communist hypothesis” – apropos of which he remarked that liberal, democratic capitalism has left us with an ecological crisis that now threatens survival, and is as likely to get us out of it as a tumour is to cure us of cancer.1

Whether or not we accept the communist hypothesis as our most plausible alternative, we should be thankful that this complex body of thought could show its head and raise key questions on an ABC that is owned by the State and thus increasingly comingled with the Corporate sector to the point of an incredibly banal complicity – for such questions would presumably be much to the chagrin of the insipid Murdoch clones and other ABC ego, self-censoring types that usually dot the panel.

Tim Themi is a PhD in Philosophy & Psychoanalytic Studies from the School of International & Political Studies of Deakin University, Burwood and Geelong. He also holds honours degrees in Philosophy from La Trobe and the Engineering Sciences from Melbourne. His doctoral dissertation brought together the psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan and the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche on the question of desire and ethics. He is also a committed activist at large and in the social media.

1.  Žižek’s thoughts on this are fleshed out further in section 1 of his 2009 work First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, which begins with a blistering critique of the capitalist status quo ante entitled, “It’s Ideology, Stupid!” Section 2 is called “The Communist Hypothesis.”