It seems in their eyes, giving a wage rise to the poorest workers in Australia will lead to increased inflationary pressures, while giving a substantial tax cut to some of the richest Australians has no inflationary implications. When you consider that some of Australia’s more well paid CEO’s yearly take-home pay equals the take-home pay of 20,000 workers on the minimum wage, it’s obvious the Rudd led Labor government has no intention of upsetting their corporate mates by tipping over their applecart so everybody, not just those who own the applecart, have access to apples.

Whether it is an apology to the stolen generations from the government, not the Australian people, with no offers of compensation - whether its support for the Fair Pay Commission’s ridiculous proposition that’s increasing wages for the most poorly paid workers in the land will increase inflationary pressures on the economy, despite companies making record profits and CEO’s taking home pay packets in a year Australian workers wouldn’t spent in a century, its business as usual for the Rudd led Labor government.

There is something not quite right about a country where the poorest and most disadvantaged are asked to make the biggest sacrifices for the sake of the economic welfare of the nation, while the big end of town continues to act like there is no tomorrow. It seems in Australia, whether it is Labor or Liberal in Canberra, that small minority who owns the means of production, distribution, exchange and communication continues to prosper while those with the least are forced to make the greatest sacrifices for the good of the country.

Anarchy is a political and social philosophy that attempts to create a society without rulers, not without rules. Unfortunately it seems The Age believes people are incapable of collectively governing themselves, as human beings are tainted with original sin, and left to their own devices - would murder, rape and rob each other.

The alcohol fuelled violence in Melbourne’s CBD at night is directly related to successive State governments bowing to pressure from powerful vested interests in the liquor and entertainment lobby, giving away liquor licenses to the highest bidder without taking into account the wishes of the people of Melbourne, the police and CBD residents. If less power was invested in the State government and more power was invested in the people affected by these decisions, this sorry state would not have eventuated.

As far as the Federal parliamentary clowns are concerned, what do you expect when we live in a society where every 3 years, electors give parliamentarians a signed blank cheque to make decisions on their behalf for the next 3 years? If people had the power to make decisions and then elect or appoint delegates to coordinate decisions on their behalf at a local, regional and national level, The Age would not be wasting valuable front page space reporting on the juvenile antics of representatives who seem to be full of their own self importance.

Next time some sub editor is trying to jazz up the front page of The Age on a slow news day, maybe the word ‘chaos’ would be a more suitable term that could be used to describe what happens when rulers exercise power without taking into account the wishes of the people they rule.

A million or 2 or 3 million people signing an online petition will not change anything unless that petition is followed by action in the streets. The interface between the virtual and real world will remain a barrier to change until an organisation spawned by the internet takes on a palpable dimension. E-Activism is not an alternative to activism, it is just one more tool that can be used to form organisations that have an impact on the real world. Virtual organisations have no real impact until they are able to develop a physical dimension, grounded in the real world.

E-Activists who do not step outside the virtual world are kidding themselves if they think they are having a major impact on political debate. E-Activism does not give politics a fresh face, all it does is help E-Activists organise on the ground. Unfortunately to date, the ability for E-Activists to drag virtual converts into the real world has been disappointing. Change, especially radical change, comes from people refusing to work up the right channels. Every major social and political change that has occurred in human history has occurred when that .01% of the population working outside the tent lights metaphorical brushfires outside the tent that makes the 99.99% living inside the tent so uncomfortable they are forced to address the concerns raised by that small minority of activists.

E-Activism gives participants a false sense of their own power and importance. Until those activists who predominantly use the virtual world realise that the internet is just one more tool that can be used to encourage people to take action in the real world, the chances of reform, let alone radical changes, are Buckley’s and none.

The stories we hear are heart breaking. Honest people chewed up by the system and spat out. Their stories are hard to comprehend; most have been emotionally, physically and intellectually scarred by their experiences. When you listen to some of them, their stories seem so fantastic you cannot help thinking they are short of a bob or two. It is easy to dismiss them as liars who have major psychiatric problems. I admit, when I first started hearing many of their stories, I thought they were mentally unbalanced and gently dismissed them.

Today I am not so sure; who would have believed a few years ago that Melbourne’s gangland killings were related to activities of corrupt police officers? Who would have believed the Armed Robbery and the Drug Squad in Victoria had to be disbanded because the integrity of these police units had been permanently damaged? The stories we hear, touch on corporate and political corruption. We are not talking about peripheral figures and small companies; we are talking about large well known companies defrauding people on a regular basis.

The Melbourne legal precinct is full of stories about injustice. The rumour mill in the corridors of power is full of stories about corruption that extend beyond organised crime and corrupt police. Unfortunately, all we can do is listen - we can’t help until we are able to build a mass movement that demands a Royal Commission Into Corruption in Victoria is held to shine the harsh glare of publicity on corruption.

A Royal Commission with wide terms of reference would give all those people who have been affected by corruption the opportunity to air their concerns in a public arena. Once their concerns are publicly aired in an arena where they enjoy immunity from being sued, their concerns can be taken up by a fourth estate that has to date been missing in action.

The trappings of office change with a change of President, but the office itself does not change. Those teary old radicals who have spent the last few decades on the political periphery, may be able to add a new button to their badge collection, but that doesn’t change the everyday reality they are faced with. Capitalists, like Rupert Murdoch, understand they need to ‘move with the times’ in order to maintain economic hegemony. Rupert Murdoch has no qualms about supporting Barak Obama or acknowledging that greenhouse emissions pose a major problem, if his power is not threatened.

On the other hand, he would have a great deal of difficulty supporting political and social movements and candidates that challenge his hold on the direct economic power he is able to exercise, and the indirect political power he is able to exercise through the stranglehold he exercises over the economy. Power and wealth are interlinked. You can not exercise one without the other.

The election of Hilary Clinton or Barak Obama or even John McCain as President - will usher in a welcome change to the pedestrian political and social achievements of Junior, but it will not challenge the power exercised by that small section of American society that owns the means of production, distribution, exchange and communication. Change comes when both power and wealth are redistributed.

Unfortunately there is little point in getting too excited about the possibility that the curtains are about to be changed and the carpet will be vacuum cleaned and deodorised at the Oval office, when the White House needs major renovations.

The cooperative nature of a community where wealth is held in common and used for the common good, gives the individual greater choices as far as moral decisions are concerned. Knowing the individual can call on both the collective wisdom and support of the community would, even in a time of extreme scarcity, prevent individuals making choices like infanticide which they would normally find to be morally repugnant.

What is considered to be good or bad goes beyond the mere problem of survival. Would you put out a contract on a child in South America so you can harvest an organ your child needs to survive? A moral choice Australians don’t face because of their universal nature of a healthcare system, but a choice that is made on a daily basis in societies where the market dominates all human activity. In a society where wealth is held in common, not by the State or the individual, such a moral choice would be less likely to occur.

Political, religious and economic movements, not hard wired genetic makeup, determine moral responses. Genocide is not a genetic response to scarcity; in such a situation, cooperative behaviour would lead to the survival of many more people than a campaign based on the elimination of people who don’t share the same racial or cultural background.

Whether what is good and right leads to the murder, rape and dispossession of neighbours or people with different racial or cultural backgrounds is dependent on political, religious, social and cultural concerns – not some innate need for human beings to destroy each other in order to ensure their gene survived in a Darwinist hell. Individual morality that respects the rights of other people is intrinsically linked to institutional structures that encourage cooperative behaviour among members of that community.

Changing the incumbent may give the voter the sense that they are in control of the situation, but irrespective of how honest or full of integrity the new incumbent is, what they can or cannot do is determined by the nature of the office. Turfing John Howard and the Liberal / National Party out of office, may lull individuals into a false sense of security, but it doesn’t change the institutional structures that allowed John Howard and his political supporters to have such a negative effect on the country. Kevin Rudd and the Labor Party may or may not be able to shave off the rougher edges off the Howard government’s legislative agenda, but they don’t have the power to change the institutional frameworks that makes poverty an issue in a society of 21 million people living on a continent.

Change comes from institutional change, not changing the incumbent. Revolution - the complete overthrow of an established government or political system - doesn’t occur with changing the incumbent, it occurs when the office is changed. Faced with a choice of the office or the incumbent, anarchists are more likely to be involved in activity that leads to institutional change in preference to activity that leads to the changing of the guard. Next time you are faced with the problem of choosing a new incumbent for an office that needs radical transformation, don’t keep your powder dry and sit in a corner and say that the process of changing the incumbent has nothing to do with you. Examine the situation and see if you can turn the battle for a new incumbent into a battle for institutional change. Elections can be used to agitate for constitutional change; to ignore them waiting for the ‘right’ moment for radical change is a wasted opportunity.

The struggle to create an egalitarian community based on direct democratic principles requires activists to use the opportunities that arise when people participate in activities that lead to the changing of the guard in the communities they live and work in.

He joined the Sydney branch of the I.W.W. writing for the organisation’s monthly paper ‘Direct Action’. By the end of the year, Tom Barker had become the Secretary of the Sydney branch of the I.W.W. and was editor of ‘Direct Action’. Under his editorial guidance ‘Direct Action’ became a flagship for the more radical elements of the Australian anti-war movement. Believing that WWI was being fought by workers at either end and of a bayonet, Tom Barker wrote in July 1915 what could arguably be called Australia’s most influential anti-war poster –

TO ARMS – Capitalists, Parsons, Politicians, Landlords, Newspaper Editors and other Stay-At-Home Patriots - YOUR COUNTRY NEEDS YOU IN THE TRENCHES! WORKERS! FOLLOW YOUR MASTERS!

The poster caused consternation among the God, King and Country brigade as soon they were put up by the I.W.W. they were torn down by police who surely had better things to do. Concerned about the casualties from the failed Gallipoli campaign and the beginning of public disillusionment with what was increasingly being seen as a trade war between Imperialist powers, the NSW Parliament found Tom Barker’s poster – “a more serious matter than Germans in our midst”. Discontent over pegged wages, rising prices, unemployment and war profiteering was having a direct affect on Australians initial unequivocal support for WWI.

Tom Barker the editor of ‘Direct Action’ was arrested on the 3rd of September 1915 and charged under the NSW War Precautions Regulations Act with publishing a poster prejudicial to recruiting. He was held in jail for a week, bailed and eventually fined 50 pounds or 6 months imprisonment for producing the poster. He was also ordered to enter into a bond of 200 pounds (a significant sum in 1915) – “to observe the regulations of the War Precautions Act during the currency of the war which Great Britain is at present engaged - in default another 6 months”.

Barker concerned he wouldn’t be able to agitate against the war from inside prison – appealed. His Counsel restated the case he made to the Magistrate that Barker had been tried under State regulations in an area covered by Commonwealth Law. The Judge, unlike the Magistrate, agreed with the Counsel’s submission and squashed the conviction. Embolden by increasing dissatisfaction among Australians with the consequences of WWI, a rapidly increasing membership base and their legal victory, the I.W.W. paper ‘Direct Action’ became a weekly.

‘Direct Action’ was fortunate in obtaining the services of not just Tom Barker, but a talented young artist Syd Nicholls. As luck would have it, Syd made his debut for ‘Direct Action’ as a cartoonist in the first week of the war. As a consequence of the Commonwealth government issuing a prospectus for a 10,000,000 pound war loan with the government asking investors “to show a patriotic spirit…. Especially as no sacrifice is entailed… the rate of interest being far higher than normal times”, Nicholls penned a cartoon with a soldier crucified on a cannon, his blood dripping into a war profit skull held up by an investor who was shouting – “Long Live the War! Hip, Hip ‘Ooray! Fill ‘Em Up Again”.

This time Barker was not able to evade the War Precautions Act through the use of a legal technicality. He was arrested, found guilty of breaching the War Precautions Act and fined 100 pounds. He refused to pay the fine and was sentenced to 12 months hard labour.

NEXT WEEK: Australia Wakes Up

Traditional unions in Western Europe, like in Australia, are rapidly losing members as production is internationalised and outsourced to take advantage of non unionised poorly paid labour. In Australia, the problem is compounded by the fact that unions are trade based, not industry based, and temporary unskilled workers are brought into the country via 245 visa arrangements which put downward pressure on wages. Capitalism is truly international, the world is their oyster; trade unions continue to be constrained by both national boundaries and in the English speaking world trade affiliations.

The booklet outlines the practical experiences of two anarcho-syndicalist groups as they attempt to fill the vacuum that is developing within the working class. Self organised groups outside traditional union structures are being formed to organise and bargain around the needs of their members. Traditional unions have, according to this pamphlet, a number of particular weaknesses.

• They aren’t able to effectively organise workers internationally
• They aren’t able to organise workers of large workplaces easily
• They aren’t able to pursue struggles flexibly and militantly enough
• They restrict themselves to economic struggles and don’t organise outside the workplace

In the author’s experience – “it’s particularly in smaller workplaces that the anarcho-syndicalist tactics of struggle work best”. The pamphlet attempts, by analysing their practical experiences in workplace struggle, to develop a theoretical perspective for class struggle for the 21st century. ‘Notes from the Class Struggle’ makes both exhilarating and depressing reading. Exhilarating because it demonstrates that anarchists are finally moving out of the intellectual and theoretical straight-jacket of the past, by attempting to deal with the reality they are faced with. Depressing because of the very real lack of interest among workers, even when they are facing the uncertainties of unemployment, in working together to help overcome their common problems.

If you want to get hold of this pamphlet contact:
Anarchistische Groep Amsterdam,
P.O. Box 16521, NL – 1001 RA AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS
Email : aga@squat.net
Web : agamsterdam.wordpress.com
F.A.U. Breman / Germany
Email: fauhb@fau.org
Web : www.fau.org

Thanks To The Kate Sharpley Library For Providing Me With The Review Copy Of This Interesting Pamphlet.

Sitting on the banks of the Tambo River 300kms from home, rod in hand, hook baited, surrounded by a few people who take their fishing seriously, I held onto the fishing rod waiting, waiting, waiting for that elusive nibble. Forget about the blue green algae in the river, you can still eat the fish I was told, just don’t drink the water or fall into the river – that’s potentially fatal. I waited and waited and waited, was that a nibble? Drawing in the line, I’d caught some reeds. I assume you can’t eat reeds that are covered in blue green algae so I threw them back into the Tambo. Hooks rebaited with bait prawn, bait prawn costs $5/kilo, you can get a good piece of flake and chips cooked and wrapped up in some paper for the same price. All I normally do to eat fish and chips is walk less than 100 metres to the Fish ‘n’ Chips shop, not spend $50 driving to the blue green algae infested Tambo River 300kms away.

Don’t blame me, friends suggested a fishing trip and trying to blow the cobwebs out of a brain boated with Rudderisms, I agreed. After an hour or so of watching blue green algae breed (very exciting), I lay down on the river bank for a snooze. I was told when I woke up about an hour later, that a fish had taken the bait, me mate lunged over grabbed the rod but couldn’t manage to reel it in. I, true to form, slept through what, listening to him, seemed like an orgasmic experience. My wife to my amazement tells me she likes fishing. It’s amazing the things you learn about people you have known for over 30 years when you’ve got time on your hands watching the blue green algae breed on the Tambo River. Eventually she caught a fish, but she lost it in the edge of the water to bank - manoeuvre that professional fishers carrying nets do overcome.

Finally the mate, 3 hours after we first cast or fishing lines, caught and brought to shore a shiny bream. Flapping in the air, we started dreaming of fish sizzling on the barbie. We stood around it, me mate shook his head, mumbled something about it was too small, “smaller than the legal limit” were his exact words. He took out an old towel he had for such events, wrapped it around the fish, removed the hook from its mouth and threw it back into the river. We fished a little longer while he regaled us with stories of flathead and bream he’d caught in the past in the same spot. I have to admit the most exciting part of the day was when we pulled out our lines from the blue green algae infested Tambo and went to the pub for a meal of locally caught (that’s what they said) fish and chips. Tomorrow we are going surf fishing, for some strange reason, all I think we are going to do is catch more sunburn.

Its failure to win hearts and minds, both in the Sunni and the Shia community, is related to the methods it has used to promote its medieval religious vision. Blowing up innocent people going about their business isn’t the brightest of ideas. The spate of indiscriminate and politically motivated suicide bombings carried out in the name of Islam has not enamoured the Pakistani people to the movement. Fundamentalist sentiments have been successfully harnessed in Pakistan by the Pakistani military which promoted the Taliban in both its frontier provinces and Afghanistan.

The implementation of the Western backed Pakistani military’s political agenda through the use of fundamentalist groups has failed, as more and more Pakistanis reject the dictatorship and the political groups in their community that have supported the dictatorships objectives. Muslim fundamentalism is a religious movement that rejects the idea that human beings have free choice. Every aspect of an individual’s life is controlled through the application of a series of laws that control personal behaviour that come from the Koran – a religious text that brings the word of God to the world through the Prophet Mohammed.

The imposition of religious fundamentalism in its various guises can only succeed if imposed by force. The moral and ethical wastelands created by the imposition of the word of God through the implementation of individuals personal interpretation of the Bible, spawned support in the West for the struggle for human liberation. Today, the struggle for human liberation in the West has been hijacked by capitalism – an idea that thrives on the illusion of individual choice is a society where choice is limited to consumption. Faced with the medieval hell on Earth, promoted by Islamic fundamentalists in Pakistan and the authoritarian political vision promoted by the President, Pakistanis have voted with their feet embracing a new era where human liberation and individual choice play a more significant role in their day to day lives.

Let’s hope their struggle for human liberation is not hijacked by capitalists who claim the road to human liberation and free choice is by the people of Pakistan adopting capitalism as their new fundamentalism.

OPERAI CONTRO Vol 24 No127 JAN 08, Giornale per la Critica, La Lotta, Via Folck, 44-20099, Seato S. Giovanni (MI), ITALY
Web : www.asloperaicontro.org

Write to:

AKIN SARI, c/- Port Phillip Prison,
P.O. BOX 376, Laverton 3080,
Melbourne, Victoria, AUSTRALIA

Akin Sari pleaded guilty to a number of charges stemming from the G20 protests in Melbourne in Nov 2006. He was arrested in Sydney on the 6th Sept 2007 for breaching his bail conditions. He appeared in the Victorian County Court on the 4th February 2008 for a presentence hearing. Nearly 6 months after he was incarcerated, he is still waiting to find out how much more time he will have to spend in jail. Keep his spirits up, write to him today!

“We swear by the Southern Cross to stand truly by each other & fight to defend our rights & liberties”

NOMINATION CLOSE – 31st OCTOBER 2008

Send in one nomination or as many as you like. Send us the following information:

• 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.

SEND YOUR NOMINATIONS ASAP TO

EUREKA AUSTRALIA DAY MEDAL
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PARKVILLE 3052, VIC
AUSTRALIA

or email your nomination to anarchistage@yahoo.com

“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,
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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.

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DIRECT DEMOCRACY NOT PARLIAMENTARY RULE - www.rulebythepeople.org

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‘LIFE WASN’T MEANT TO BE EASY’

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