The continuing debate about public money should be used to assist struggling private farmers, raises important questions about agricultural production in Australia. Over the past few decades, more and more family owned farms - that have been kept afloat by government grants - have been snapped up by agribusinesses for a song. Family owned farms in Australia no longer form the backbone of the agricultural sector. Corporations that have brought vast tracts of land now dominate agricultural production. As more and more family owned farms are incorporated into corporate owned farms, people who have lived in the country all their lives drift into the major capital cities and provincial centres putting extra pressure on a already stretched infrastructure.

Faced with this dilemma, serious thought should be given to finding ways people can be encouraged to return to the land. A movement back to the country and regional centres would help to break the stranglehold both foreign and locally owned agricultural monopolies exercise over agricultural production in Australia. The Federal government faced with the dilemma of pumping more taxpayers money into failing farms that are failing, could buy farmers out (allowing them to die with dignity) and call on Australians who want to tree change to establish cooperatives on these failed farms. This would give Australians, who would never be able to buy a farm but want to work on the land, an opportunity to move from the cities back to the country, reversing the current one way traffic from the country to provisional centres and cities.

A cooperative venture where the land was provided free of charge by the government to people while they farmed and lived on that land, would give people the opportunity who could never raise the necessary capital to purchase a farm, to be involved in agricultural production. Innovative ways need to be examined to repopulate the countryside. Decentralisation is becoming an important issue in an era when food security is becoming a real issue. Cooperative ventures initiated by the money that is now being poured into farming ventures that are currently destined to fail, may be just the shot in the arm that is required to take agricultural production from the hands of unaccountable monopolies that are only responsible to their major shareholders.

Putting back agricultural production into the hands of producers, who are responsible to the Australian people, is the best way to ensure food security in an era when increasing population growth and finite resources make this one of the major issues of our times.

What has been described as a crushing blow for the government in Malaysia, is in reality little more than an adjustment to a non sustainable gerrymander that has allowed the National Front government (Barisan Nasional) to exercise a stranglehold on political power in that country. Enjoying a two thirds majority for the last 40 years, they have been able to alter the Constitution at will introducing authoritarian laws and systems that have made life difficult for an increasing number of Malaysians.

Although the government lost 61 seats, it still retains a comfortable majority wining 137 seats in the 222 seat Parliament. This means it won’t be able to alter the Constitution without the help of an Opposition Party. Unfortunately, taking into account the huge differences between the opposition parties, it’s unrealistic to expect that Islamists and Reformists will form a united opposition. The Islamic Party of Malaysia (PAS) gained 23 seats, winning power in two new Northern States as well as retaining power in the North Eastern Kelantan State.

More promising, the People’s Justice Party – a centrist Party formed in 2003 by the former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim – gained 31 seats while the more radical Democratic Action Party gained 28 seats in the new Parliament. The Opposition Parties took control of the country’s economic heartland, winning in the industrial State of Selangor and winning almost every seat in the Capital Kuala Lumpur.

Unless the government is able to form a coalition with the Islamists whose representation in Parliament has risen from 16 to 23 – they will not be able to change the electoral laws to further tighten the gerrymander that keeps them in office. The mood for change in Malaysia is highlighted by the success of the People’s Justice Party who increased their seats in Parliament from 1 to 31. The Democratic Action Party also increased their parliamentary representation from 12 to 28.

Although the government has held the countryside, the People’s Justice Party and the Democratic Action Party have captured the workers, whose blood and sweat have created Malaysia’s ‘economic miracle’. The National Front Coalition (Barisan Nasional) may have lost its moral authority but it continues to exercise political power.

Whether the Opposition is able to overcome the ethnic divisions between Malays, Chinese and Indians that continue to play a significant role in Malaysian society is debatable. Whether the Opposition parties are able to challenge the authority of the government depends on whether they are genuinely interested in dismantling the authoritarian laws and systems that have been put in place by previous governments to maintain their power and financially reward their more powerful corporate backers.

The 1880’s and 1890’s saw the spread of the 8-hour day to non skilled workers. The trade union procession to mark the 8-hour day struggle became more colourful and vibrant as different trade unions competed for the prize of the best trade union banner and float in front of ten of thousands of spectators. In the early 1950’s the Labour Day weekend was hijacked by the city’s business interests who changed Labour Day from a day that celebrated the successful 8-hour day struggle, to a day that promoted the city’s commercial interests in a parade that was made up of corporate sponsored floats.

The changes to what was considered to be almost a sacred day to trade unionists caused consternation at Trades Hall. Searching for a catchy name for their new commercial festival, the organisers approached Bill Onus – a prominent member of the Australian Aboriginal League for an Aboriginal name for the festival. The story goes that Bill, in good faith, accidentally and inadvertently chose ‘Moomba’ – a Koori word that translates to ‘up your arse’ as a name for this new festival.

The real story is a bit more convoluted. Bill Onus was both a Koori and a trade unionist. He, like many other trade unionists, was upset at the bosses usurping the workers festival. Angry at what was happening, he proposed the name ‘Moomba’ for the new festival knowing full well what the word ‘Moomba’ really meant.

Irrespective of how we look at it, the primary role of a soldier is to be a member of an organisation whose primary role is to kill people in a non emotional “professional” manner. Human beings are not normally “professional non emotional” killers. We kill for a variety of reasons that are normally related to the situation we find ourselves in. Not everybody is able to kill on demand, our common humanity prevents us from killing unless we find ourselves in a situation where our safety is at risk. As a community and individuals, we all agree that killing for whatever reason should not be tolerated except when we directly attacked.

When men and women join the armed forces they need to go through a training process that reprograms them so they are able to kill on demand. Irrespective of the type of training soldiers receive when they are put in a situation where their actions result in the death of somebody else, especially when they know they were personally responsible for that death, many soldiers have problems dealing with what they have done.

With Australian troops taking active combat roles in Afghanistan, Iraq and East Timor more and more active soldiers and veterans are having to deal with mental health issues related to them being turned into killers.

Unfortunately, the Australian Armed Forces has traditionally shown little interest in the welfare of Australian solders once they leave, especially those who are burdened by mental health problems as a consequence of a culture in the Australian Defence Forces that denigrates those defence personal who suffer mental health problems as a result of being turned into professional killers by the Australian Defence Force.

The Australian Defence Force needs men and women who can be brain washed into doing what doesn’t come naturally to a human being. Those who show remorse or are filled with self doubt are cast aside by an organisation that wants men and women who are willing to respond to orders. The poor mental health services available for soldiers sent to Iraq and Afghanistan continues a long tradition of denial by the Australian Defence Forces that stretches all the way to Gallipoli.

The problems experienced by “shell shocked” soldiers (post traumatic stress disorder) in all the wars Australia has participated in, were conveniently forgotten by successive governments that were never willing to acknowledge that turning men and women into professional killing machines does have profound life long consequences for defence service personnel, their partners and children that requires life long government assistance.

This year, over $3 billion of public money will be used to subsidise the private health insurance premium of the 40% of Australians who have the disposable income to buy private health insurance. Almost $1 in every $2 of money used to buy private health insurance is provided by the tax payer to a private hospital sector that is notorious for cherry picking the easier, more profitable cases and leaving the more complex, complicated and costly cases to the public sector.

There is something not quite right about arrangements that ensure that the 40% of Australians who enjoy the luxury of having access to publicly subsidised private hospitals and health care professionals other Australians cannot afford, while the rest of the country has to make do with an under staffed, under funded public health care sector that is having a great deal of difficulty meeting its responsibilities to all Australians.

Middle and upper class welfare has become a significant problem in Australia. Whether it’s private health care, private education, the for profit nursing home sector or the for profit child care sector, too much taxpayers money is going to subsidise the profits made by these sectors at the expense of the public services provided to the whole community. The diversion of funds from the public to the private sector to provide heavily subsidised privately owned health, education, nursing home and child care facilities has created a two tier Australia where the very people who could do without subsidises, have profited at the expense of those who need public assistance to survive and prosper.

In essence we are slaves to the desires and wants of those who, through their monopoly on the use of force, use us, to live their dreams. An anarchist society cuts the economic, social, cultural, religious and national chains that prevent us from reaching our full potential. It does this by making the creation of community wealth a community not an individual concern. The economic health of the individual is intertwined with the economic health of the community. An anarchist economy frees the individual from the personal struggle of trying to eke out a living because wealth is held in common and used for the common good. As individuals - personal economic security is tied into the economic security of the community as a whole, giving the individual the space to develop themselves to their fullest potential.

The other chains that bind us are also loosened in an anarchist society because the domination of one group by another is tackled through the abolition of hierarchy and the development of political, social, religious and cultural processes that put the needs of everyone, not just a small minority, on the agenda of that community. The abolition of hierarchy and the creation of an economic system based on the satisfaction of real, not manufactured human needs where the individual has access to the resources of that community, not because of what they do but because they are a member of that society gives human beings the opportunity to be born free and die free. Only in an anarchist community can people reach their full potential both as an individual and as a member of a community.

Nothing comes of nothing. People can participate in many different ways. Not everybody needs to be upfront about their activity but everybody needs to be doing something. Just talking to your neighbours, friends and workmates is a beginning. The way you raise an issue may just be the catalyst that is needed for people to question their lives. If they don’t hear it from you, they are not going to read about it in the newspaper, hear it on the radio, watch it on TV, or stumble across it on the internet. To questions and to raise alternatives is a revolutionary act. Even if you don’t have the opportunity to articulate your ideas and many people don’t, you may be able to help established groups with their campaigns by helping them meet the financial costs of their activities. What we can and cannot do in the real world is to a significant degree related to the resources both human and financial we have at our disposal.

Finally if you can, you should consider forming new groups or joining established groups to promote anarchist ideas. Whether anarchist will ever become a significant political, social and cultural movement is to a large degree dependant on people becoming involved in the movement to create an anarchist society. Whether we succeed or fail is not the main issue. We can consider ourselves a success if people take on board the issues we have raised and consciously and unconsciously use anarchist principles and strategies to build an egalitarian society where wealth is held in common and used for the common good and the people living in that society make the decisions about what happens in their communities.

On the 3rd of October 1916, 12 members of the I.W.W. appeared before the Central Court in Sydney and were charged with treason, conspiracy and arson. A few days previously, three members of the Tottenham branch of the I.W.W. – Roland and Herb Kennedy and Frank Franz – were arrested and committed for trial for the murder of Constable George Duncan.

The PM and his supporters had a field day trying to link alleged I.W.W. criminality with the anti conscription struggle. The I.W.W. 12 were committed to stand trial in Sydney on the 20th of November 1916. The trial of Frank Franz and Roland Kennedy was conducted on the 18th of October 1916 – 10 days before the Referendum. They were both found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. Two days later Michael Herbert Kennedy was acquitted of the murder of Constable Duncan. The Prosecutor’s case revolved around the men’s membership of the I.W.W. When Michael Herbert Kennedy was asked whether it was right to shoot Czars, Governors and policemen, he replied “no”, “as it was no use”, “if one shot those in office, others would be appointed in their place”.

The Sydney Mirror true to form did all it could to prejudice the trial of the I.W.W. 12 and muddy the waters before the anti conscription Referendum: - “The public now know who are behind the anti reinforcement campaign. They know that the I.W.W. is dominated on the one hand by German money and German influence and, on the other hand by a gang of America and other foreign criminals who will stop at nothing to achieve their wicked ends – murder, arson, forgery, smuggling – all the crimes in the calendar”.

The anti conscription movement fought back, rallies were held around the country. In Melbourne, 3 days after the Women’s Political Association was founded, Vida Goldstein formed the Women’s Peace Army – its anti war auxillary. The Women’s Peace Army worked under the slogan – “We War Against War”. The anti conscription movement brought women into the Australian political arena. In conjunction with Melbourne Trades Hall, the Women’s Peace Army brought Melbourne to a standstill on the 4th of October 1916 when over 100,000 people marched to the Yarra bank to hear a bevy of women speak against conscription. The Trade Union movement women’s groups like the Victorian based Women’s Peace Army, the Roman Catholic church under Melbourne’s Arch Bishop Mannix and returned service men who had experience the horrors and futility of WWI, conducted spirited campaigns against the anti conscription Referendum despite wide spread hysteria and the passage of a series of laws like the current ‘anti terrorist’ legislation which criminalised legitimate political activity.

On the eve of the Referendum newspaper headlines warned Australians the Kaiser and the I.W.W. want you to vote “NO”, the ANZACs want you to vote “YES”.

Despite the hysterical campaign conducted against the anti conscription forces, the people of Australia voted no to conscription at the Referendum held on the 28th of October 1916 and a second conscription Referendum which was held in December 1917.

NEXT WEEK: ‘The Aftermath ’

I better come clean before I do this review – I wrote the preface for this wonderful book and was also instrumental in having it published. Keep those two facts in mind when you read this biased review. ‘Ned Ludd’s Diatribes’ are the product of an ongoing discussion between Jerry Harant and Joseph Toscano on the Anarchist World This Week – a radio program broadcast from the studios of radio 3CR in Melbourne broadcast across Australia on the National Community Satellite streaming live on 3CR.org.au. The programs is now podcast – follow the links on 3CR.org.au or anarchistmedia.org to access the last 4 months of the Anarchist World This Week and the discussions between Ned Ludd and Joseph Toscano held in the first week of the month.

Ned Ludd’s essays all 163 of them in this volume examine the accepted dictum that every problem has a technological solution and the path to human happiness is a life burdened by technological innovation. These essays cut to the question of what it means to be human. They stimulate the readers neurones and force readers to think beyond the limitations that technology imposes on them. The irony that the more technological innovations we have, the harder and longer we have to work to acquire them is not lost on the readers of this book.

Ned Ludd, the mythical leader of the rebels who with the help of ‘Big Enoch’ (a large hammer) smashed technological innovations that destroyed people’s lives and livelihoods and produced shoddy goods during the Industrial Revolution was like Jerry Harant (a retired mechanical engineer), not against all technology but technology that makes our lives not worth living.

Jerry Harant has, through this collection of essays, rehabilitated the reputation of Luddism and has succeeded in dragging the Luddites out of the cold and put them back into the ongoing discussion that needs to occur in the community to ensure that technology does not destroy the human spirit and human civilisation.

Unfortunately ‘Ned Ludd’s Diatribes’ have been published by the Anarchist Media Institute – a very small publisher that can’t do justice to the contents of this book.

You can access ‘Ned Ludd’s Diatribes’ via anarchistmedia.org or obtain a hardcopy by writing to

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The book costs AU$20 in Australia and AU$30 outside Australia – (includes postage).
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“Now look at this and this and this” I’m looking, nothing but the same woman, trolley in hand walking down the supermarket aisle. She mumbles to herself, nobody else seems to mind. Why should I care? A decade or so ago if people where talking to themselves, we would keep away from them and nod wisely when they were bundled into an ambulance and taken away. Today, nothing. The unacceptable has become acceptable.

“I found it, I found it, I found it” punctuates the air, I walk past head down, dreading she’s found the missing ingredient to make her magic mushrooms palatable. Then I noticed, she wasn’t talking to herself, she had a thin cord coming out of her ear attached to a mobile phone with a camera in it that she was flashing at different products. Normal, normal, normal, I heard my inner self saying. Normal? What’s bloody normal about flashing a phone camera at a tin of baked beans or talking to someone who knows where in the world about your shopping trip. Talk about the virtual taking on all the trappings of reality. Why doesn’t she sit at home and do some online shopping, without going through this charade?

Looks like I’m showing my age, nobody else seems to mind. “Hey Johnny”, “look at this”, “I can’t believe it”, “wicked”, “wicked”. Her verbal orgasm over tinned food must be a new first for human civilisation. I nudged her trolley, looked up in the air and shouted “Beam me up Scotty” she looked at me, I looked at her, she knew I was crazy because I didn’t have a mobile phone in my hand or a cord sticking out of my ear. She moved away, mobile in hand, “You wouldn’t believe it Johnny some old fart is talking to himself”. She pants down the phone as she points her mobile phone at me. I’ve had enough of this post modern lunacy. I abandoned my trolley in the middle of the supermarket and walked out, empty calico bags in hand, as a bloke talking on the mobile phone, oblivious to the world, bumps into me - “BEAM ME UP SCOTTY!”

The returns to the individual farmer from growing agricultural products for the bio-fuel market are far greater than growing food for consumption. In an economic system where the creation of profit, irrespective of the social and human costs, dominates economy activity, it makes sense to use land that grows food to grow bio-fuel. The tragedy is compounded by the fact that bio-fuel production is heavily subsidised in many countries, further compounding the problem. In scenes eerily similar to the great Irish potato famine in the 1840s when over a million people unnecessarily died of starvation while potatoes continued to be exported to England, the United Nations is having greater and greater difficulty accessing enough food to feed people who have been displaced by war and famine.

The situation is further compounded by the fact that agricultural land is used to produce bio-fuels on a planet where harnessing solar energy seems the most sensible way to tackle the problems of energy security and increasing greenhouse emissions. The lunacy of not subsidising solar research, but subsidising bio-fuel production, is not lost on those people who are now having to pay the very real price of decreased food production. The current shameful situation is directly linked to the type of economic system that dominates human activity on the planet.

Anybody who thinks the market should play a central role in human activity, forgets that markets, as we are seeing in this case, can be manipulated to increase profits for a minority while making the life of the rest of the community a nightmare.

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Private contractors charged the US military US$45 per can of soft drink & accepted prostitutes as 'presents' among other corrupt activities, acc to investigators. A freight-shipping contractor has confessed to giving US$25,000 in illegal 'gratuities' to 5 employees of engineering & construction company KBR, "to build relationships to get additional business." KBR is also the company responsible for charging $45 for each can of soft drink supplied to the military. KBR, a ex subsidiary of Halliburton Co., says it has repaid the Defense Dept more than US$1m for questionable invoices. Investigations have shown corrupt practices began b/4 the US invasion of Iraq in 02 & continued after 04 hearings on the issue. Ex KBR procurement manager Stephen Seamans was given the services of a prostitute as a 'present' by a representative of the Tamimi company, as well as US$130,000 worth of bribes, 5 months b/4 the US-led invasion of Iraq. 5 days later KBR awarded Tamimi the war's first $14.4m mess hall subcontract. Tamimi also showed the US Army false medical records for workers brought in to work in Army kitchens. 172 of the workers tested positive for exposure to hepatitis. Mr Seamans once taught ethics to junior KBR employees. (Chicago Tribune [US])