Capitalism is an economic system that is dependant on the creation of ever increasing profits irrespective of the human, social and environmental costs. It is critical to the economic health of the capitalist system for new markets to be discovered and developed. Whether these markets satisfy real or manufactured human needs is irrelevant. What is important is that they return dividends to investors, speculators and shareholders.

Over the past two decades, five new markets have rapidly developed and expended. The World Wide Web, mobile telephones and mass air travel to some degree, satisfy real human needs. On the other hand, the commercialisation of childhood and food preparation at home are classic examples of markets that have been created to satisfy manufactured human needs.

The commercialisation of the preparation of meals, that have been traditionally cooked at home, have created a rapidly expanding takeaway food and dine out sector that has transformed social dynamics at home and has contributed to the obesity epidemic and its associated health consequences.

The most disturbing of these new markets is the commercialisation of childhood. Teenagers were targeted as a distinct mass consumer market during the post war years. It is only in the last two decades that children have been viewed as a distinct market. Over the past few years the sexualisation of childhood has reached epidemic proportions. It is ironic in an era when private and State institutions are tackling child sexual abuse, the sexualisation of childhood is viewed as an appropriate strategy to be pursued by commercial interests who are involved in satisfying manufactured needs they have created among children and their parents. It is strange that the same moral and ethical standards that are expected of individuals and the community are not extended to the commercial sector.

For far too long, the business and corporate sector have expected the community and the State to pick up the tab for the negative consequences of their activities. Pocketing the profits and socialising the costs allows corporations, whose activities have negative consequences on the community, to continue to make profits at the expense of the community. Corporate welfare takes many guises - from direct government grants to corporations, to special tax incentives, to allowing corporations to generate profits from activities that have negative consequences on society - without these corporations having to factor these costs into their production costs.

Whether it is litter from takeaway outlets, greenhouse emissions from industry, childhood and adult problems associated with the gambling, alcohol and tobacco sector, or the very real social problems created by the commercialisation and sexualisation of childhood if companies were forced to pay the real costs for their activities, the manufactured markets that currently play such a critical role in society would not be able to generate profits and would in some cases be forced to cease trading.

The health infrastructure future fund, like the higher education future fund, is a giant government slush fund that will be used to carry political favour in marginal electorates. If the Howard government was serious about improving the public health sector, they could stop directing $4 billion per year of taxpayers money to help subsidise the health care insurance costs of the 40% of Australians who can afford to take out private insurance, and use these resources to improve the public health system.

If they are so concerned about the ability of people on low incomes to afford private health insurance, they could pay the private health care costs of old age pensioners, single parents on benefits and disability support pensioners. These Australians have the greatest health care needs, but do not have the ability to buy private health insurance.

Access to health care in Australia should be a right, not a charity or a luxury. Public funds should be used to support and extend the public health sector, not subsidise the private health sector. Any government that is serious about public health should allocate funds on the basis of need, not ideological peccadilloes.

Setting up a health infrastructure future fund that is not managed by an independent Board, who are directed to allocate funds on the basis of need, is little more than cynical pork barrelling. Australians deserve more than Abbott’s and Costello’s shabby con trick.

When ‘Defend and Extend Medicare’ - a group that was involved in peaceful legitimate political activity before the 2004 Federal election - was having a significant impact on the government’s re-election strategy, Tony Abbott whilst the Health Minister had a dossier that had been compiled by government security agencies on members of the group passed onto News Limited. The dossier was used by News Limited to launch a series of scurrilous attacks on prominent members of the ‘Defend and Extend Medicare’ group in an attempt to neutralise them as a political force.

The Victorian Trades Hall Council passed a resolution condemning the attacks; questions were asked by the ALP in Federal Parliament about the use of security agencies in preparing dossiers on people involved in peaceful legitimate political activity, and a number of investigations were commenced into whether the Health Minister had overstepped the mark.

Three years later, it is laughable Abbott the muckraker is positioning himself on the high moral ground - when it comes to the ‘dark arts of politics’, Abbott has few peers in Federal Parliament. His political career has been built on innuendo, intimidation and deceit. When it comes to hypocrisy, Abbott has a thing or two to teach Machiavelli.

It is interesting how News Limited has once again been used by the Federal government to pedal its propaganda. The incestuous relationship that exists between News Limited and the Coalition tarnishes the reputation of both Parliament and News Limited. The sooner News Limited stops acting as Howard’s propaganda arm, the sooner Australians will begin believing what they read in Murdoch’s extensive Australian newspaper empire.

The Commonwealth government gives $4,419 funding for every child in a private school, while only giving $937 funding per year to each public school child. When you add State funding to the equation, public schools receive $9,262 per student per year, while private school receive $6,054 per student per year. When you add the $40,000 per year parents who send their children to the more ‘prestigious’ private schools pay in fees, you can see the huge difference in the amount of money that is allocated to educate students in private schools in comparison to State schools. For every $1 spent on public education $5 are spent private education - $4 from fee paying parents and $1 from the taxpayer.

The $5 billion ‘saved’ by the taxpayer because 30% of children in Australia attend private school, is illusory. The billions of taxpayers dollars pumped into private education by Commonwealth and State governments is taking money away from the public sector, not saving the taxpayer money. Those parents, who want to send their children to private schools, should pay for the privilege. Why should some of the richest families in this country be subsidised, while the poorest are denied government funding for public education?

It is tragic that such skewed interpretations of the data are given so much prominence. The facts are simple – the 30% of Australian children whose parents can afford to buy them private education are being subsidised by the 70% of Australian children who cannot afford a private education. No wonder the Association of Independent Schools of Victoria is so concerned about the inequity in these figures that they have been forced to massage reality by putting the spin on a situation that cannot be justified.

Instead of riding off into the sunset, Terry Lane would have had some impact if he had spent his time promoting parliamentary reform. Two reforms that can make parliamentary representatives accountable to the people are ‘the power of recall’ and ‘citizens initiated referendums’. If 20% of the electorate were not happy with the performance of their parliamentary representative in between elections, a fresh election would be triggered to see if the current representative still enjoyed the support of the electorate. Giving the electorate ‘the power of recall’ would make parliamentary representatives more accountable to the electorate than to their Party, the media or business interests.

In Australia only Parliament has the power to call referendums. The current constitutional logjam could be broken if the people had the power to call referendums. In Switzerland, if 10% of the electorate signs a petition demanding a referendum on a particular issue, that issue must be put to the people in a referendum. There is no reason why ‘citizen initiated referendums’ could not become a feature of the Australian democratic system. Giving the people the power to call referendums puts a brake on the power those elements in society who own the means of production, distribution and exchange can exercise in society, and makes politicians more accountable to the electorate.

A well educated public, and recent technological innovations, makes it possible for the electorate to make decisions and appoint recallable delegates to coordinate decisions at a regional and national level. Electors no longer need to give their representatives a signed blank cheque to make decisions for them for the next 3 years. It is disappointing that a man of Lane’s proven intelligence and ability was unable or unwilling to take up the struggle for democratic reform. If he had done so, he may not find himself in the difficult position he finds himself in today.

The satisfaction of real human needs, sustainability and community benefits outstripping community costs are the main criteria new technological innovations will be assessed against. The gap between the development of ideas and their implementation can only be bridged through community discussion and the community’s decision to support that innovation. In a society where wealth is held in common, how resources are developed, is a community decision.

In a capitalist society, as long as you have access to capital and new technological innovation can make a profit - sustainability, real human needs and the social, human and environmental consequences of developing that technological innovation are of little or no consequence. Profits tend to go into private hands while the costs are borne by the community.

Anarchists are luddites in the sense they are only interested in developing technology that benefits the community as a whole. In an anarchist society, people decide what they produce and how they produce it. They are not mere consumers. They determine what is best for them and the communities they live and work in.

Two reforms that could make parliamentary representatives accountable directly to the people, not the political Party they belong to, and which could break the constitutional log jam are:

• Recallable parliamentary representatives and

• Citizens Initiated Referendums.

Both these reforms have been resisted by successive Australian governments. Conducting campaigns round these 2 issues expands people’s perception of what democracy is. ‘Democracy – rule of the people, by the people, for the people’ – has as little to do with democracy, as the AFL has to do with promoting soccer in Australia. Giving the people the option to recall non-performing or poorly performing parliamentarians in between elections increases a parliamentary representative’s accountability to the electorate. If 20% of the electorate call for fresh elections in a parliamentary seat, then that representative would be forced to go back to the people in a fresh election. To prevent an organised opposition from manipulating the system, the ability to call a fresh election in a particular electorate could be limited to once every electoral cycle. If 10% of the population signed a petition to call a referendum about a particular issue, a referendum would have to be called within 6 months of the petition being presented to Parliament. Allowing the people as well as Parliament, to call referendums increases the democratic nature of society.

Elections give us the opportunity to raise radical alternatives to the parliamentary system, as well as reforms. A parliamentary system is a representative system. Every 3 years, electors give their representatives a signed blank cheque to make decisions on their behalf – they cannot do anything till the next election if their representative does not honour their promises. At the next election, they are forced to go through the same process again.

Direct democracy is based on a delegate system – people make decisions directly, and give a delegate a mandate to coordinate decisions at a regional and national level. If decisions are modified at a Delegates Assembly, that decision is taken back to the local level for ratification. What may at first seem a cumbersome system of making and coordinating decisions, is a much more effective method of making decisions because everybody is involved in the decision making process. Once a decision is made, people tend to support, not oppose that decision.

Do you want to give a representative a signed blank cheque to make decisions on your behalf? Or do you want to give a delegate a signed cheque with the name of the person you are going to pay the cheque to? I know which one I would prefer!!

Interested in Direct Democracy - the power of recall and Citizens Initiated Referendums? – Then you are invited to become involved in a growing Australian movement to introduce parliamentary reforms and radical change to a process that is democratic in name only.

- download an application form from

rulebythepeople.org

or if you don’t use the internet, don’t despair, write to:

Direct Democracy Not Parliamentary Rule,

P.O. 5035 Alphington
Melbourne 3078 AUSTRALIA.

Left to their own devices, they tended to gravitate to the Westernport region where Thomas, the Assistant Protector for the Melbourne region, had been sent to set up a Blacks camp - to distribute rations to encourage the hundreds of blacks that were camped round the settlement in Melbourne to move away from Melbourne. It is known that Isaac, one of the 16 Van Diemens Land blacks, was in early 1841 going around the Westernport region telling the settlers to arm themselves as 5 ‘black fellows’ were coming down to cause mischief. On the pretence that they were going to join Thomas’ camp - Tunnerminnerwait, Maulboyheenner, Pyterruner, Truganini and Planobeena - 5 of the original party of 16, vanished into the Westernport bush by August 1841. Planobeena was Tunnerminnerwait’s wife; Maulboyheenner was involved in a relationship with Truganini.

William Thomas, the Assistant Protector’s oldest son, wrote in his private journal:-

“He (Jack of Cape Grim) talked about what they had suffered at the hands of the white man, how many of their tribe had been slain, how they had been hunted down in Tasmania – now was a time for revenge, they were not couped up in an Island (Flinders), they had unlimited bush to roam over at their will”.

This little band of 2 men and 3 women were familiar with the white man’s ways. They knew how to use firearms; they knew how to survive in the bush. It was 6 years since Melbourne was formed - over 8,000 whites lived in the new town. The local Aborigines had to a large degree been subdued and posed little threat to the settlers in Melbourne. In October 1841, fear and trepidation swept through the town as the exploits of the Tasmanian blacks became known. Many of the settlers had come to Melbourne from Tasmania, they were aghast their old foes – the Tasmanian Aborigines who were only defeated after a 33 year brutal and bitter struggle when Aborigines were legally shot on sight – were mounting a determined resistance to white settlement on the outskirts of Melbourne in Dandenong and the Westernport region.

NEXT WEEK: ‘From Little Things, Big Things Grow’

World War One wetted people’s appetite for knowledge about the world. The 6 bob a day soldiers that fought for the British Empire came from all corners of the globe. Intrigued by what they saw, working men who in their wildest dreams couldn’t imagine leaving their native country, rubbed shoulders with people they had never heard of. When I was given 3 tattered volumes of ‘Peoples Of All Nations’ and asked what I thought, I hesitated, not knowing how to tackle these books. Published at the end of WWI, this encyclopaedia gave ordinary people the opportunity to gawk at the extraordinary. It is no accident the editor boasts the volumes are illustrated with more than 5,000 photographs, numerous colour plates and 150 maps.

‘Our Ancestral Black’ screams the article on ‘How New Races Are Produced’. “Our Ancestral Black’ – the existing Warra munga of Australia represent the original stock from which the three great modern races have developed as suggested in the above grouping Australoid – Negroid, Caucasoid, Mongoloid”.

The best way to enjoy this encyclopaedia, just in case you come across a copy in the forgotten library of a long deceased relative, is to look at the pictures. Don’t read the blurb under the pictures or the articles if you don’t want to be upset. Eugenics was all the rage in the 1920’s – the Nazis built the 1,000 Year Reich on the back of bad science. These books are bad science, they tend to reinforce the prejudices of the authors, but the pictures are extraordinary. They show people, cultures and lifestyles that disappeared ages ago.

Some of the more memorable captions include – ‘Dancing Sirens of the Ouled Mail’. Sometimes you come across captions that are both banal and profound – ‘Like This Jolly, Swaggering Negro, Many Of The Blacks Of Algeria Are Happy, Self Satisfied Fellows, There Is No Colour Line In Islam’. Other photographs are little more than soft porn. About the only time British men could legitimately ogle photographs of naked and semi-naked girls and women was in anthropological books. The authors tend to have a preoccupation with naked women. “Adorned For Marriage – This Is No Dusky Malvolio With Wand And Cap Of Office, But A Nigerian Maiden In Her Ornate, Though Scanty Wedding Finery”. One of the British greatest Colonial legacies was making native women ashamed of their nakedness.

The Mother Hubbard (neck to ankle dress) which is still worn in Australia’s Torres Strait by many of the older women and some of the younger women is one of the continuing legacies of the colonisation process.

The more pictures I look at in ‘Peoples Of All Nations’ the more I’m convinced its popularity as a Reference book had more to do with the displaying of naked flesh than anything written in the thousands of pages that make up this encyclopaedia.

Would I recommend you get hold of a copy? – NO! Would I recommend you open the pages and have a look at the pictures if you stumble across a copy in your great uncle’s forgotten dusty library? – Definitely!

THANKS TO KLAUS FOR SAVING THESE BOOKS FROM THE TRASH AND GIVING THEM TO ME TO REVIEW.

The children played and ran in and out of the temple’s main entrance, while the funeral ceremony droned on. Tables at the entrance to the temple groaned with the weight of the food they had to carry. Mourners helped themselves to the food and tea and coffee. Condensed milk sweetened their drinks and their sorrow.

The ceremony which had been going on since 9.00 that morning, finished 4 hours later. The mourners lined up next to the coffin. Immediate family first, in groups of two or threes - they had their pictures taken with the deceased. His body covered by the coffin, his head exposed. 5 to 6 Europeans mingled with a few hundred Khmer mourners. A young European man squeezed into a black suit stood uncomfortably next to his Khmer girlfriend, looking everywhere but at the body as they had their picture taken.

Suddenly the saffroned monks let out a piece of white string and walked the casket to the hearse outside - the mourners following in tight clusters. Children streamed into the temple for classes, the remnants of the funeral feast were packed away; the children had come to learn Khmer. A place of mourning and sadness was suddenly transformed into a place of learning.

No, I wasn’t watching a TV documentary or had gone to Cambodia to attend a funeral. I was standing in a Khmer temple in Springvale in Melbourne, paying my respects to one of Pol Pots victims, forced to leave the country to survive; doing what he could to survive in Australia. He died suddenly and unexpectedly before he turned 60. His children, like all migrant children, will slowly be absorbed into mainstream Australia culture. The Western whitegoods culture overwhelming their Khmer culture as they and their children grow older, and Cambodia becomes just another distant memory.

18 months later – Donna, Adele, Bryan and Jim – faced the Supreme Court in Alice Springs. They were charged under a 1952 law created to protect nuclear testing at Mara Linga and Monte Bello. The charge carried a 7 years maximum penalty for trespass. The Attorney General Philip Ruddock had to give permission for the charges to be laid. During a 3 week trial, where the defendants defended themselves, they crossed swords with 6 Commonwealth barristers, including 2 Queens Counsels. Despite not being able to fully conduct their case because the $5,000 a day QCs made it plain to the Judge that although witnesses had sworn an oath tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, they were prevented from answering many questions asked by the defendants because their questions in a court of law threatened ‘national security’.

The jury took 5 hours to reach a verdict – ‘All the jury had their heads hung down, and one or two may have been crying, as the verdicts of guilty all round, were read by the Foreman’. The Prosecutor immediately asked for prison sentences for their peaceful entry into Pine Gap. The Supreme Court Judge Sally Thomas thought otherwise, and fined Donna and Adele $450, Jim $1,000 and Bryan $1,300. They were also ordered to pay $2,500 each for a few holes they had made in the perimeter fence to get in. All in all, not much joy for a government that uses the threat of ‘terror’ as one of their major electoral planks.

A few weeks ago, the Commonwealth, keen to extract a little bit of political mileage from the case, has appealed the leniency of the sentence. The Full Bench of the Northern Territory Supreme Court will be hearing the Commonwealth’s appeal in Darwin in the near future.

Just in case you think Pine Gap is a joint Australian / US facility, you are wrong. The Head of the base is always an American. Almost 500 Americans work at Pine Gap. Pine Gap is a US military facility on Australian soil, run by the US. It is an indispensable part of the US war machine.

Thanks to Jim Dowling – one of the 4 defendants - for providing the material for this article. Further information about the ‘Christians Against All Terrorism’ case can be obtained from www.pinegap6.org

ROJO Y NEGRO No.204 JULY / AUG 2007, CGT, C/-Sagunto 15, 10 Madrid 28010, SPAIN,
Tel: 914470572
Email : presna@rojonegro.info

UMANITA NOVA Vol.87, No.23 22nd JULY ’07, Settimenale Anarchico, C/-Federazione Anarchico Torinese, C.50 Palermo 46, Torino, ITALY,
T el/Fax : 011 857850
Mobile : 3386594361
Email : fat@increte.it

• 4.00am - Dawn ceremony - Eureka Park at the Eureka Memorial

• 6.00am - Breakfast Eureka Park (bring your own food and drinks)

• 10.00am - March from Eureka Park to Bakery Hill to reaffirm the Eureka oath

• 10.30am - Presentation of Eureka Aust Day Medal at Bakery Hill

• 11.30am - Walk to Old Ballarat cemetery to pay our respects to all those who died in the Eureka battle who are buried at the cemetery

• 12.30pm - Walk back to Eureka Park through the centre of Ballarat

• 1.30pm - Late lunch and conversation at Eureka Park - (bring your own food and drinks)

• The name of the person nominated

• A few sentences outlining why they should receive the award

• A contact address for the nominee (We need to contact them if they wish to receive the award)

• The person you nominate can be a public figure or somebody only known to a few people

SIGN THE SEDITION CHARTER ONLINE - www.seditioncharter.org

If you’re computer literate and many of us are not, write to us for a copy of the Sedition Charter, at :

P.O. BOX 5035,
ALPHINGTON 3078,
MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA

Terrible things happen when good people do nothing. Openly defy this government’s attempts to muzzle and intimidate opposition to their neo conservative authoritarian agenda – SIGN the ‘Sedition Charter’ TODAY!

THE POWER OF RECALL – Electors having the constitutional right to recall parliamentary representatives in between elections

CITIZENS INITIATED REFERENDUMS – The people having the power to initiate constitutional change through referendums

DIRECT DEMOCRACY – Electing delegates with limited mandates, to co-ordinate decisions that have been made by the people, not electing representatives to make decisions for us.

JOIN US THIS WEEK ON :

Wednesday 11.30am – 29th August 2007
233 William Street, Melbourne

DIRECT DEMOCRACY NOT PARLIAMENTARY RULE - www.rulebythepeople.org

An anarchist analysis of local, national & international events. Tune into your local community radio station to listen to the Anarchist World This Week. If they don’t broadcast it, ask them why not! If they’re one of the 150 community radio stations around Australia that are affiliated to the National Community Radio Satellite, they are able to broadcast the Anarchist World This Week.

2BAY, 2BBB, 2BLU, 2DRY, 2HOT, 2OCB, 2WOW, 2XX, 3CH, 3CR, 36CR, 3MGB, 3REG, 4NAG, 4RRR, 5BBB, 5RRR, 6YCR

MULTI-COLOURED GLOSSY A3 POSTER AVAILABLE FOR 20 50c STAMPS.
(Price includes packaging, poster in secure cylinder and postage anywhere in Australia)

‘LIFE WASN’T MEANT TO BE EASY’

Tel: 0408 307 722 Email: afterg20@gmail.com
Mailing List: afterG20announce-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.au