The booklet launched by the Federal Immigration Minister Mr. Andrews on the possible questions that future citizenship applicants will have to answer to become Australian citizens, is a one dimensional interpretation of Australian history. Putting aside the question about whether answering 20 questions about the material in the booklet has anything to do with whether people wanting to become citizens will contribute to the welfare of the country, it is important that people who want to be citizens be given the full story about this country, not just one side.

Where are the questions about the traditional owners of this country - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders? Where are the questions about how they were violently dispossessed of their lands in the most brutal manner imaginable? Where are the questions about how successive Australian governments continued to deny how this country was really establish? Where are the questions about the ticket of leave men and women (ex-convicts) who did the back breaking work of clearing the land to establish Australia’s pastoral and agricultural industries?

Where are the questions about the pivotal role of the trade union movement played in winning the wages and conditions that the Howard government is trying to strip away through the WorkChoices legislation? Where are the questions about the countless men and women who through their courageous action on the streets have forced successive Australian governments to establish pensions, a universal health care system, a universal free secular education system and prevented the introduction of conscription during World War One preventing a further 60,000 young Australian men being unnecessarily sacrificed on the European killing fields for the glory of God, King and Country?

The Howard government’s citizenship test is an insult to the spirits of those men and women whose courageous actions created the very conditions that people from all over the world leave everything behind and immigrate to Australia to enjoy.

Justice Philip Cummins’ comment about the need for the victim and their relatives and friends to be the main players in the criminal justice system (when he sentenced Peter Dupas to life imprisonment without parole for the murder of Mersina Halvagis) highlights a significant weakness in the way crime and punishment is handled in Australia today. The criminal justice system tends to make the process, not the victim, the centre of the trial. If the accused is found guilty of the crime they are accused of, they are fined, given a community service order or jailed.

Jailing offenders, except in cases like Peter Dupas, who is a proven risk to the community, does not help victims or society. Jail should be limited to that small percentage of offenders who are a threat to the community if not incarcerated. Offenders involved in victimless crime and in many cases where victims exist, should repay their debt to society and victims not by being incarcerated at taxpayers expense, but by being allowed to work in the community. The courts should be able to direct a percentage of their wages to be paid to the victims to help compensate them for their pain and suffering.

Obviously monetary compensation could never fully compensate victims for their pain and suffering, but it could go some way to making the victim, not the legal process, the centre of the criminal justice system.

Anything would be better than the current push to incarcerate more and more people for victimless crimes. In many cases, victims would prefer to see offenders spending their time working and compensating them for their pain and suffering rather than leaving them to rot in prison and asking the taxpayer to pick up the tab for their incarceration.

This type of legislation can never succeed if people call the government’s bluff and openly defy these laws. There are not enough jails in Australia to hold activists involved in peaceful passive resistance to the government’s legislation. When Claire O’Shea, the Head of the Tramways Union in Melbourne was jailed for defying the government’s penal sanctions in the late 1960’s, tens of thousands took to the streets.

To date, the trade union movement has put its faith in the re-election of a Labor government. Considering Rudd’s and Gillard’s pronouncements on the WorkChoices legislation, it is highly likely the current restrictions on union entry into workplaces and workers withdrawing their labour outside legally sanctioned Enterprise Bargaining periods will have to be openly defied.

It looks like those community activists, who are currently involved in activity to support workers involved in disputes with employers, will be the first group that will openly defy these obscene laws. It is one thing waving a big stick at the trade union movement and community activists and expecting them to comply, it is another thing enforcing these laws.

Laws that deprive us of our inalienable human rights are made to be broken. Under the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and the principles outlined during the Nuremburg Trials, it is a citizen’s right and duty to defy governments and laws that deny them their inalienable human rights. To do otherwise, is a crime against humanity.

I could not help noticing the fuss in the fourth estate about you meeting the Grand PoohBah of the Exclusive Brethren and his merry band of men. I was impressed by your justification, pointing out they were Australian citizens and that from time to time you made the effort to meet all types of Australians. Considering you were able to take time off from running the country to chew the fat with the folk from the Executive Brethren, you may be interested in having a little chat with a small delegation from the Anarchist Media Institute to discuss affairs of State. Unfortunately we cannot help you with your re-election campaign as, unlike the Exclusive Brethren, we do not charge members a 10% tithe but ask our supporters to help us when they can.

I know you will not give up the chance of showing your even handedness, and in the next few weeks I am sure you will invite us to Kirribilli House for tea, scones and a little chat about how to stymie those Fabian Chardonnay socialists, those horrible people that make up the black armband brigade and those ungrateful doctors wives (that seem to have forgotten you butter their bread) from seizing the tiller on the good ship private enterprise Australia (my apologies to John Batman) from your more than capable arthritic fingers.

So we do not waste our time during our little conversation, I have taken the liberty of setting the agenda for the fireside chat with Janette and yourself. Knowing you are keen to remove Beattie’s jackboot from the neck of Queenslanders, I’m sure you will be more than willing to discuss ways of removing the Commonwealth government’s jackboot from the necks of the States. A few ideas include:-

• The power of recall – allowing the electorate to recall a fresh election in between elections, to remove poorly performing politicians who do not keep their promises (oops, maybe I should not have mentioned that thing about promises – my humble apologies),

• Citizen Initiated Referendums – giving the electorate, not just Parliament, the power to call a referendum to change the Constitution. Knowing your ideological penchant for all things democratic, I am sure you will support this initiative.

Finally, considering how stressful it must be for you in Parliament when those ingrates on the crossbenches call you a liar, fraud and cheat (their words not mine), you would be all in favour of abolishing Parliament and replacing it with a federation (sorry to use the “F” word, knowing you are not into pole dancers) of community and workplace councils based on direct democratic principles.

In a direct democratic society, the electorate makes decisions and appoints or elects delegates with limited mandates to coordinate those decisions at a regional and national level. I am positive you will agree that giving a politician signed blank cheque to make decisions for the electorate for three whole years is not the type of thing you would write home to mother about.

All the very best, see you in a week or two. By the way, could you get Flo to send down some of her famous pumpkin scones for our afternoon tea with you and Janette down by the harbour at Kirribilli? I am glad you do not like that fellow Peter Costello – considering what he keeps saying about you in the media - you do not want that type of breaking wind at our little pow-wow.

-Your humble servant

The person who is to blame for the public disruption at the APEC meeting in Sydney next week is John Howard. The person who was responsible for the fiasco at the G20 protests in Melbourne was the Treasurer Peter Costello. The Prime Minister and the Treasurer are willing to put a whole city to ransom to satisfy their political vanity. Only a fool would jeopardise a city’s people and its businesses to push their ideological barrow.

Considering the public reaction around the world to APEC meetings over the past decade, you would think the Prime Minister would have been advised by the New South Wales Government, Federal Police and Australia’s security agencies to hold his little pow-wow with the world’s leaders in more suitable surroundings. Only a government that holds its people in contempt would hold such a divisive meeting in a city of over 4 million people.

If John Howard thinks his quip about ‘violent protestor’ will win him any public sympathy for holding the APEC meeting in the centre of Sydney, he is badly mistaken.

The disintegration of a society will not necessarily lead to the creation of a better society. Power vacuums are nearly always filled by people and groups who have no hesitation in using force to impose their will on other people. You can break all the eggs you want, unless you cook them properly and add the right ingredients, you are not going to create and omelette fit for human consumption.

The political and social struggle needed to create egalitarian change, centres on two important tactics - Public awareness of the anarchist message and the creation of a society within a society that mirror the organisational structures used in an anarchist community – the creation of a dual power situation.

The more people wanting to live in an anarchist society and the more people who have taken steps to create independent workplace and community co-operatives and build anarchist social networks within society, the less violent and destructive the transition from an authoritarian hierarchical society into a non-authoritarian, non-hierarchical community based on direct democratic principles.

At what moment the creation of a dual power situation begins in the struggle to create an anarchist society, is dependent on public awareness about anarchism and the number of activists within the movement who are willing and able to create the society within a society that is required to create an anarchist community.

To stop the smaller States from being dominated by the larger States, and the Commonwealth government dominating the people living in the States, the States agreed to form a Federation. In a federation, each State retains control of its own internal affairs and the federal or central government deals with matters which affect the country as a whole.

To ensure the independence of the States, the Australian Senate consists of the same number of Senators from each State. The residents of the six colonies that federated to form Australia only did so because they believed the Senate not only acted as a House of review, but it also protected the autonomy of the people living in each State.

Since the Second World War, the Federal government has achieved more and more powers through a carrot and stick approach. They offer States financial incentives to give up their powers and use a High Court they appoint judges to, to find implied federal rights in the Constitution. The question of State autonomy is not just an academic question. The centralisation of power in a central government creates the situation where the institutions that need to protect the individual from the arbitrary exercise of power by the Federal government, are swept away. The individual becomes hostage to the vagaries of a central government that is able to exercise unrestrained power.

Today, 107 years after the formation of the Federation of Australia, both the intent and the spirit of the Constitution have been sabotaged by a Federal government that is willing to intervene in the most minute affairs of the States. Through its behaviour, the Howard government has indicated it intends to centralise more and more power in Canberra, while the Rudd led Opposition has indicated it will continue to promote what is laughingly called the ‘New Federalism’.

Faced with the erosion of their powers and the domination of their citizens affairs by the Federal government, State governments make the right noises about the centralisation of power in Canberra but do nothing to halt these assaults. State governments have the power to halt and reverse this shift of power by calling referendums that ask the people of the States whether they want to continue to remain a part of the Commonwealth or whether they want to secede from the Commonwealth and regain control of their own affairs by forming new independent nations.

The Victoria Secession League was formed to pressure the Victorian State government to hold a secession referendum to determine whether Victorians should, for their own good, secede from the Commonwealth. We call on all State and Territory governments to hold secession referendums to determine what their people think. If these secession referendums are successful, we call for the formation of a new Australian Federation based on direct democratic principles where the people make the decisions and elect or appoint delegates to carry out these decisions.

We call for the formation of a Federation of regional councils where people have the power to recall non performing delegates and where they have the opportunity to alter their Constitution through Citizen Initiated Referendums. We also call for the ‘Commonwealth’ to be held in common and used for the common good.

What at first may seem like a far fetched idea is relatively easy to implement (in the 1930’s West Australians voted to secede from the Commonwealth). Even if this attempt to secede is unsuccessful, the fact that there is a growing band of citizens who are agitating to stop the centralisation of power in Canberra is enough to halt the current drift of power to Canberra. Ultimate political authority does not lie in the hands of the State or the government of the day, it as the Eureka miners so ably demonstrated, lies in the hands of the people.

The Tasmanian Aborigines raided the hut of Mr. Watson, the overseer of a small open cut cliff face mine at Cape Patterson that had been established to provide coal for Melbourne. Following their normal practise, they spared the women in the hut, ordering them into the bush, stole guns and ammunition and then set fire to the hut, ensuring that it couldn’t be used by the settlers in the future.

On one of the few occasions when they didn’t get away without exchanging shots, the hut’s overseer and his son-in-law Walter Inman began shooting at the party; the Aborigines fired back wounding Walter in the leg. Walter Inman and Mr. Watson made their way to a squatter’s station for assistance. A party of 7 whalers, who were walking along the beach from their camp at Lady’s Bay, came across the deserted mining settlement soon after shots were exchanged, unaware of what was happening. Seeing some people a few hundred metres away in the bush, who they thought were the miners, two of the whalers – William Cook and Yankee – went into the bush to investigate. Within 5 minutes of them leaving, two shots rang out.

NEXT WEEK: ‘All Out Warfare’

Remember the 1960’s and 1970’s when it wasn’t unusual to refer to police as pigs? We all thought it was a new word that we had invented. Well, the ‘1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue’ puts upstarts like you and me in their place. Under Pig;- ‘Pig – A police officer’. If you were bragging to your mates in 1811 that you’d floored the pig and bolted, you were celebrating the fact that you had knocked over a police officer and got clean away.

It has been a long time since I have derived so much fun from reading a book. The fascinating thing about the ‘1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue’ is that nearly 200 years later, many of the terms are still in common usage. One that has fallen by the wayside that I found amusing is ‘The Sheriff’s Picture Frame – the gallows or pillory’. A term still in common usage today:- ‘A Piece – a Girl’. ‘Mouse trap – The State of Matrimony’ - It seems some things never change. ‘Muff – The private parts of a woman’. Another term that has fallen out of favour is a ‘Star Lay – Breaking shop windows and stealing some articles from inside’. ‘Wry Neck Day – a little bit of irony here – hanging day’. ‘Canary Bird – a jail bird’ – this word is still in common usage in some quarters. ‘Riding St. George – the woman uppermost in the amorous Congress, that is, the dragon upon St. George’ make of this little beauty what you will.

The word cundum is very familiar to the word condom and has exactly the same meaning. ‘Cundum – The dried gut of a sheep, worn by men in the action of coition to prevent venereal infection – said to have been invented by one Colonel Cundum’.

It seems the English have never forgotten the 100 years war with against the French – ‘Frenchified – infected with venereal disease’.

This dictionary highlights that English is a dynamic language. The ‘1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue’ is largely copied from Frances Grose’s 1785 ‘A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue’.

Want to have a laugh, then get hold of a copy, try your local library or look at the World Wide Web www.abebooks.comor www.bookfinder.com

NEXT WEEK: Something little more ‘worthy’ to tickle your fancy. - ‘Fancy Man – A Man kept by a lady for secret services’
I have got to stop reading this dictionary; I am quickly becoming more vulgar by the page.

Clubs normally have 3 or 4 charities they support and have built links with local groups and businesses to raise money for those charities - So far so good. Different people went up to the microphone to give cheques to the local police for a particular charity. Local business pledged a few thousand dollars, the club’s volunteers also handed over a cheque and the police auctioned off a few pieces of donated football memorabilia. $5000 or $6000 was raised during the course of the lunch - the business donations would obviously be tax deductible.

I began to question the whole process, when it became apparent that the money was being raised to help a major Melbourne public hospital provide equipment for children being treated for cancer. I am in no way questioning the motives of the people involved in the fundraising; they give their time and money to raise funds for what is obviously a pressing need. My beef is not with the hospital, they obviously do not have the funds to buy the necessary equipment and infrastructure. It is all very well for people in the richer suburbs of Melbourne to kick some money into the bucket. What happens in poorer suburbs where the disposable income is not available to donate money to provide basic services needed by the community?

More importantly, how can a country as relatively rich as Australia, with only 21 million people living on a continent that is going through an economic boom, not provide the necessary equipment and infrastructure to adequately treat Australian children with cancer.

The necessity for public fundraising to provide facilities to treat children with cancer highlights there is something radically wrong with our society.

By the way, my football team lost the last game of the season. There is always President’s Lunch next year.

The use of terror to promote a political cause or ideology is noting new. The Old Testament is littered with examples of politically inspired terrorism. The difference between the periods described in the Old Testament and today is the weapons of mass destruction that are available to individuals and States that are willing to use terror to seize and maintain political power. Although individuals and medieval fanatics like al’ Qaeda dominate today’s debate on the use of politically inspired terror, the nation State continues to play the dominant role in politically motivated terrorism.

The greater the concentration of State power in the hands of individuals and small groups, the greater the risk nation States perpetrate acts of terror. The Hitlers, Pol Pots and Stalins of the world would never have been able to unleash the terror they did if they did not control the State apparatus. The greater the number of institutional checks and balances, the more effort that is made to decentralise power; the greater the protection the individual enjoys from the arbitrary exercise of State power, the less chance those exercising State power have of using political terror to advance national, racial and ideological agendas.

The ‘Living with Terror’ -The Age’s series - has so far failed to adequately tackle this point. Christine Nixon’s concerns that phrases like ‘war on terror’ do not advance the debate and the struggle on the ground against nation States, groups and individuals who think you can blow up a social relationship, is an important point that should have been made by people in authority long ago.

Politically motivated violence is an endemic human problem. Until we as a society are willing to acknowledge those who exercise power are just as much, if not more, of a danger than those who are trying to seize power through the use of politically motivated violence, the struggle against political terrorism will never succeed.

CNT No.324, AUG / SEPT 2007, Organo de la Conferedacion Nacional del Trabajo, Pza Tirso de Molina 5-6, 28012 Madrid, SPAIN, Tel : 913690838 / 972
Fax : 914200856
Email : redaccion@periodcocnt.org

SOLIDARIDAD OBRERA-AIT No.331 JULY 2007, C/- Jocquin Costa 34, entresueto, 08001 Barcelona SPAIN,
Tel/Fax : 933188834
Email : soliobrera@hotmail.com

• 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.

(We Currently Have 111 Paid Up Members)

JOIN US THIS WEEK :

Wednesday 11.30am – 5th September 2007
Corner Flinders and Swanston Streets, 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’

200 prisoners on periodic detention will be excused from part of their sentences - in order to make room for an expected mass arrest of protestors. 200 prisoners will be allowed home over the long weekend of Sept 7-9. Fed & state police have asked the NSW govt to make space for up to 500 protestors, who are expected to be arrested during demonstrations against the APEC summit in Sydney. The ALP has criticised the decision. However they haven’t objected to the decision to prioritise political protestors over ordinary criminals, nor to deciding on mass arrests before any crime has been committed. Rather, shadow Attorney-General Greg Smith said "there are sporting stadiums, army disposal areas & other places they could‘ve arranged." The arrested protestors will also be denied the presumption of bail. (ABC News website)

The Defence Min has said he sees no need to refer anti-Semitic & other racist emails circulating in the Defence Dept to Defence Force commanders. The emails incl a mock 'rules of engagement' for pub crawls, which states "while your commander will normally issue the 1st round, he may in fact be either too drunk already or Jewish" & "you aren’t to back away unless a Leb is calling reinforcements on his mobile." A seperate email claimed refugees receive more govt assistance than aged pensioners (in fact they receive less). (The Australian)

QUOTE OF THE MOMENT: "After each war there is a little less democracy to save." - Brooks Atkinson.