I do not know how many times I have heard that parliamentary democracy is the pinnacle of human achievement and no alternatives exist. Alternatives exist, but no one outside small circles of radial activists is willing to raise alternatives to two minutes of illusory power electors traditionally exercise every 3 years.

In past years, the Anarchist Media Institute has openly run ‘Don’t Vote and Vote Informal’ campaigns. This year, we will use what little political space is available during the election campaign to raise alternatives to the parliamentary process.

We will be campaigning for the ‘Power of Recall, Citizen Initiated Referendums and the Replacement of Parliament with a Federation of Community and Workplace Councils based on the delegate system’. Whether these ideas gain any significant traction in the community is not the issue By raising alternatives to Parliament, we help to put power back into the hands of the people, break the constitutional logjam and most importantly of all challenge the puppet masters who sit in the boardrooms of national and transnational corporations in Australia who by and large set the economic, political, social and cultural agenda in this country.

That small section of the community that owns the means of production, distribution, exchange and communication have hijacked Parliament and use Parliament to promote their hopes and aspirations before the hopes and aspirations of the Australian people.

Real change will come when people like us are able to articulate alternatives and openly organise to replace Parliament with a Federation of Community and Workplace Councils based on direct democratic principles where the people involved in a decision make that decision and appoint or elect delegates to coordinate decisions at a local, regional and Federal level.

New Zealand’s so called anti terrorist laws, like in Australia, are designed to deal with internal dissent, not tackle terrorism. The laws remove many of the legal rights that Australians and New Zealanders take for granted. The police’s unprecedented powers to collect evidence, the holding of trials in closed courts, the inability of supporters of the accused to use the media while the police saturate the media with their version of events, makes it impossible for defendants to post bail, let alone receive a fair trial.

Those people who supported the introduction of these draconian laws because they believed the propaganda that fundamental rights and liberties have to be curbed to maintain security, forget the greatest terrorist threat faced by citizens is not the actions of individuals or groups, but the actions of governments that are able to exercise unfettered power over their citizens.

The arrest of so many activists, from so many diverse groups, for what at first sight seem to be relatively minor offences under the new anti terrorist laws, highlights the price citizens and society pays when we allow the State to strip away our inalienable human rights.

Australia was a divided nation during the war to end all wars. The Hughes led government, faced with the possibility of a general strike and even widespread violence if they introduced conscription through Parliament, was forced to hold Conscription referendums in late 1916 and 1917. Despite the introduction of legislation eerily similar to the plethora of anti terrorist laws that were passed after 9/11, the Australian people refused to give the Hughes government permission to sacrifice another 60,000 young Australians on the killing fields by the God, King and Country brigade.

The sacrifices made by the Australian people are acknowledged in the World War I monuments and avenues of honour that exist in nearly every hamlet, village and town and in almost every suburb in the capital cities. 300,000 volunteered from a population of a little over 5 million – 1 in 5 were killed in a trade war that was fought by workers at either end of a bayonet. Another 1 in 5 were returned home with life long health problems related to their service. Many of those who were not physically harmed bore life long psychological scars which had a major impact on their relationships and family life.

A country that refuses to acknowledge its past, preferring to accept the myths that have been publicly propagated to deny that history, faces the very real possibility of recreating the circumstances that led to the unnecessary and pointless deaths of so many Australians over 90 years ago.

This year, I heard on ABC local radio of all places, a journalist who should know better, talking about “the greatest act of terrorism in Indonesian history”. Every second journalist covering the events, babbles on about the peaceful paradise Bali was before the bombing, somehow missing the mass murder of 80,000 Balinese – 5% of the population in late 1965, early 1966.

Bali – an island less than 1/10th the size of Tasmania - was plunged into a politically orchestrated campaign of rape, looting and mass murder in late 1965, early 1966, when forces – loyal to the United States backed Suharto led a military coup in Indonesia – went from house to house rounding up over 80,000 Balinese, slaughtering them in the most barbaric fashion imaginable and burying them in unmarked mass graves across the Island.

40 years later, no public acknowledgement is ever made of the 2 million Indonesians (the Generals figures) who were slaughtered by the supporters of the Generals who, despite recent elections, continue to pull the strings in Indonesia. The survivors of this politically inspired genocide in Bali and the rest of Indonesia, still privately mourn their loss, not even knowing where husbands, fathers, wives, brothers, sisters and children are buried.

The Australian media’s ignorance about the brutality of recent Indonesian and Balinese history does not do justice to the victims of the Kuta bombing, the long suffering Indonesian people and ourselves as Indonesia’s nearest neighbour.

In 1788, indigenous Australians welcomed the First Fleet with open arms - singing and dancing in the streets at their good fortune. They were so impressed by their new British neighbours and so concerned about their welfare, they voluntarily gave up the lands they had occupied for over 40,000 years and promptly left on the next spaceship to Mars.

It is about time the heroic exploits of employers who fought against thuggish trade union leaders, who tried to exploit Australian workers and keep them penniless and destitute, were remembered and honoured.

The kiddies will nod their heads in agreement when their teachers tell them about Australia’s very own year zero. The horrors that followed the election of the Whitlam Labor government in 1972 – free tertiary education, land rights for that handful of ungrateful Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders who refused to go to Mars in 1788, and the release of draft dodgers and traitors from prisons - are just a few of the horrors that made grown men cry during this dark chapter in Australia’s history.

In every classroom, in every school around the nation, every child will stand at the beginning of each class and give thanks to the Kim il Sung of the South - the great and dear leader, the Right Honourable John Howard. They will thank the Prime Minister because he has given them and their children’s children the opportunity to learn the Australian narrative that has been denied to them for so long by generations of chardonnay swilling café latte drinking bleeding heart Left leaning liberals.

Thank you John Howard, my life is complete; I can go to my grave knowing that future generations will not repeat the mistakes of the past because they know their country’s history. Thanks mate!!

An anarchist community isn’t as some people still believe a federation of agrarian villages where citizens meet in the Town Square to make decisions. Anarchism, as we saw in Barcelona during the Spanish Revolution in 1936, can work effectively in cities with millions of people. The Information Technology revolution has made it much easier for millions of people to be involved in the decision making process.

Complex organisations need coordination. The delegate system is supported by anarchists because it gives people the power to make decisions as well as control the mechanism by which those decisions are coordinated. It is possible to create a non hierarchical administrative system that takes its direction from the community and is directly responsible to the community. The problem is not the creation of a structure that ensures community decisions are carried out. The problem is the creating of a service delivery network that is hierarchical and not accountable to the community that finances and directs it.

Creating surplus value is not the problem, nor is the creation of a service delivery system that distributes that wealth a problem. Problems arise when wealth is not held in common and is not used for the common good. The problems associated with a minority exercising power are compounded when the bureaucracy is used to keep power and wealth in the hands of a minority. Anarchists oppose hierarchy; they don’t oppose the creation of networks that allow the community to exercise power through the creation of a non hierarchical accountable ‘bureaucracy’.

This year, as we have done so since 2002, The Anarchist Media Institute has organised The Reclaim the Radical Spirit of the Eureka Rebellion celebrations in Ballarat on Monday the 3rd of December from 4.00am to 4.00pm. Details of these celebrations can be downloaded from the website anarchistmedia.org and are listed on the back page of the Anarchist Age Weekly Review.

We encourage people from all corners of this country to join us at 4.00am at Eureka Park (corner Stawell and Eureka Streets, Ballarat) at the site the rebellion took place, to commemorate this pivotal moment in Australian history. We call on all Australians to Reclaim the Radical Spirit of the Eureka Rebellion and use that spirit to understand the present and change the future.

Take a day off work, come to Ballarat and keep the spirit of Eureka alive. Nobody else in Ballarat will, on Monday the 3rd of December 2007 – the 153rd anniversary of the Eureka rebellion – publicly acknowledge this very important moment in Australian history.

The more people who turn up at the Reclaim the Radical Spirit of the Eureka Rebellion celebrations, the greater the possibility the lessons of the Eureka rebellion will continue to influence the present. Do yourself a favour, reclaim your history and join us at Eureka Park in Ballarat at 4.00am on Monday the 3rd of December 2007.

Only by participating in celebrations on the day the rebellion occurred, will we be able to stop the John Howards’ of the world writing the Eureka rebellion story out of the Australian historical narrative.

In 1841, Aborigines were not equal in the eyes of the law. They could not testify or lay charges in the courts. The only way they could achieve even a modicum of justice was for a white witness to testify on their behalf. Considering the crimes against humanity that were being perpetrated against Aborigines were conducted in an undeclared frontier war where those squatters doing the killing were the only white witnesses, the ruling against Aboriginal evidence ensured that crimes committed against Aborigines never made it to the colonial courts.

Five Aborigines were executed in Melbourne, for crimes against whites between 1842 and 1848. Only one white man was convicted in court for killing Aborigines during this period and he only received 2 months incarceration for his crime.

Considering the legal gun was loaded against the Aboriginal defendants because they couldn’t call Aboriginal witnesses to speak in their own defence or were even allowed to tender an alibi, Redmond Barry – the Defence Counsel for Aboriginals for the Port Phillip region - mounted a spirited defence on their behalf. Just in case the name Redmond Barry seems familiar – the young Irish Aboriginal Defence Counsel is the same Redmond Barry who as a Judge, presided over the trials of a number of the Eureka miners charged with Treason in 1855 and sentenced Ned Kelly to hang almost 30 years later in 1884, but that’s is another story.

As a public defender, Redmond Barry canvassed a number of interesting arguments in Judge Willis’ court, even arguing against the legal validity of the court proceedings.

NEXT WEEK: ‘More Legal Manoeuvrings’

Les Darcy was born in Maitland NSW in October 1895, the 2nd of 12 children who lived with their parents Ned and Margaret in a 3-room shack. Dead at 22, Les Darcy was an Australian celebrity who made a name for himself as Australia’s greatest boxer. Born in poverty, he was lauded as a man’s man and when war broke out in 1914, the God, King and Country brigade expected him to volunteer to fight their war. Les Darcy, an Irish Catholic to his bootstraps, refused to play their game and stowed away in a ship that was travelling to the US to pursue his boxing career.

Almost overnight, this Australian hero became a national leper, his refusal to volunteer to satisfy the bevy of stay at home patriots was seen as the height of treachery.

Peter Fitzsimmons, in ‘The Ballad of Les Darcy’ attempts to draw together the story of this great Australian legend who was buried in a casket with a glass top so his adoring fans could continue to worship him for years after he died. He has weaved into a historical narrative the thoughts and feelings of his subject. He has tried to inject humanity into one dimensional words on a page.

This is a story of an honest man who put his duty to his family before his ‘duty’ to the God, King and Country brigade. Not all Australians agreed with the war; the government’s attempts to introduce conscription in 1916 and 1917 failed.

Peter Fitzsimmons, given the opportunity to write about any topic he liked in the Australian government’s ‘Book Alive’ series, chose to breathe life back into the legend of Les Darcy. The story of Les Darcy is more than a story about one man, it is a universal story of the price that men and women, who don’t live the life that is plotted out for them, pay when they dare to cut the puppet master’ strings.

This book has only been out a few months. You should have no trouble finding it in your local bookshops. Otherwise try the publishers Harper Collins www.harpercollns.com.au

Thanks to PETER for asking me to review this excellent yarn.

How hard can it be to select 7 out of 45 numbers I asked myself as I hand over my $11.75 I grab my ticket, put it in my wallet and think to myself it is in the bag, well it’s actually in the wallet. Ever wondered how many bags you’d need to stuff with $100 notes at Tatts head office if you won $35 million? I haven’t, maybe you have. The odds of winning ‘Super 7’ are 25 million to one, as I said – the money is in the bag.

Lotto 7 or Tuesday lotto comes out on Tuesday night, I never look at the numbers straight away; I wait a day or two before I check the numbers as I want to keep the illusion alive that I have the winning numbers sitting in my wallet. This week, I knew I had won because the boards outside the Tatts agencies showed that next week’s prize would be a miserable $2 million. As long as I didn’t check my ticket I told myself, I could be a winner.

I finally cracked and checked the ticket, I couldn’t believe it, it couldn’t be true, I stared at it, took it to the counter and had the ticket checked. The woman behind the counter told me two lucky winners shared $35 million as she ran my ticket through the computer. Yes, I was right! I had managed not to pick one number. That’s right folks I couldn’t even pick one lousy number

She smiled. There is always Thursday’s Powerball – the prize has jackpotted to $40 million. $40 million for $11.75 – a 1 in 45 million chance of winning, the odds seemed good to me. As I handed over my money, the thought flashed through my mind that a fool and his money are easily parted. I consoled myself with the thought ‘you have got to be in it to win it’, as I put the winning Powerball ticket in my wallet.

Not that you would expect anything different from a man who refused to come to Ballarat to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the rebellion in 2004 and who refused to fly the Eureka flag from Federal Parliament House in 2004 to mark the 150th anniversary of what is acknowledged by most historians as the crucible of Australian democracy.

The Eureka rebellion was not just a riot about gold licenses; it was an event that changed the course of Australian history. The central elements of the Eureka rebellion:–

· Direct Democracy – thousands of miners met at Bakery Hill to make decisions about their future, and elected delegates to carry out those decisions.

· Direct Action – miners and shopkeepers took up arms to protect and extend what they believed were their inalienable human rights.

· Solidarity – the men and women on the goldfields worked together despite pressure from the authorities to disband.

· Internationalism – men and women from all corners of the globe, from many nations and many races fought together to overthrow the yoke of oppression.

The Eureka rebellion had ramifications that went far beyond Ballarat. It influenced political struggle for decades and continues to have a significant impact on the political process.

The Eureka oath:- “We swear by the Southern Cross to truly stand by each other and fight to defend our rights and liberties” – encapsulates everything John Howard is not. Irrespective of John Howard’s failure to include Eureka in his Australian narrative, it will continue to inspire Australians long after John Howard has become a footnote in Australia’s historical record.

Guests: Dr. Ismail Al-Jalili, Ophthalmologist & Chairman of the National Association of British Arabs & former President of the British Arab Medical Association, Brendan Ross – Humanitarian Advocacy Co-ordinator with Oxfam Australia.

- Acc to the Brookings Institute’s Iraq Index, b/w March ‘03 & ‘07 an estimated 2,000 Iraqi doctors & professionals were killed & almost 12,000 fled the country.

- Acc to Refugees International, Iraq now represents the fastest growing refugee crisis in the world.

- Up to 4,000 Iraqis applied for refugee status to Australia in ‘03, but little is known of their fate.

- Currently an estimated 8 million are living in absolute poverty (not able to access food, healthcare, water/sanitation or humanitarian assistance).

- 2 million have fled to (mostly) Syria & Jordan. (Dr. Al-Jalili puts this figure higher at 2 million in Syria & 1 million in Jordan).

- 2 million displaced in Iraq.

- 90% of victims of the crisis are women & children.

- During Saddam’s rule, child malnutrition was at 19% (under sanctions). Today it is at 28% or more.

- Only 30% of Iraqi children are currently going to school (less than half of the figure of ‘06).

- The teacher’s population in Baghdad has fallen by 80% & the universities are likely to continue emptying for the remainder of ‘07. Teachers & students are likely to stay at home for fear of killings & persecutions.

- Despite Dr. Al-Jalili’s recommendations, the plight of Iraqi doctors & academics has been ignored by the British and US governments.

- Most specialist doctors have now left Iraq. Dr. Al-Jalili describes Iraq as a ‘10th World’ country.

- Acc to Brendan Ross, Oxfam will not (or cannot) take funding from the US, Australia or Britain due to being seen as collaborating with ‘belligerents’. They are unable to operate in Iraq due to lack of humanitarian space.

Additional: Cholera, typhoid & tuberculosis have broken out sporadically. Acc to the Boston Herald 22 Sept ‘07 – “Cholera is also spreading. The disease, detected in August but confined to Northern Iraq, has spread south. As cholera spreads south to Basra, 100,000 tons of water purifying chlorine are stuck at the Jordanian border over fears the chemical could be used in explosives. A world health organisation spokeswoman said Iraq has registered 1,500 cases confirmed as cholera” - (Confirmed by BBC News Sept ‘07).

- Funds for humanitarian assistance & rebuilding (originally $20 billion) have slowed to a trickle ($453m) due to billions of dollars going into a ‘black hole’ due to both US & Iraqi govt corruption (confirmed by the BBC Report ‘The Baghdad Billions’ broadcast in Nov in ‘06). “Iraq has become a vast financial black hole... mismanagement & corruption on such a gigantic scale that much of the money is now untraceable. The cost to rebuild the infrastructure is estimated is $60 billion”.

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/documentaryarchive/6126196.stm

- by John COLLINS

• 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

P.O. Box 43, Clunes, 3370, Victoria AUSTRALIA

andrewpstretton@yahoo.com.au

“SEDITION – Conduct or speech inciting to rebellion”

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 114 Paid Up Members)

JOIN US THIS WEEK :

Wednesday 11.30am – 24th October 2007
2 Lonsdale 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’

Please send AKIN SARI A POSTCARD OR LETTER OF SUPPORT TODAY!

Write to:

AKIN SARI, c/- Melbourne Assessment Prison
371 Spencer Street, Melbourne 3000
Victoria, AUSTRALIA

QUOTE OF THE MOMENT: - "All for ourselves & nothing for other people seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind." - Adam Smith.