Financial institutions recuperating their costs by throwing people out of their homes because they can’t pay escalating interest rates is part and parcel of the capitalist system. The Reserve Bank governor has only stated the bleeding obvious. Unfortunately over the past few decades people like Brendan Nelson and Kevin Rudd have abrogated their responsibility to the people they represent in favour of that small section of the community that own the means of production, distribution and exchange.

Australians who face the very real prospect of having their homes repossessed as a result of higher interest rates need to question both the economic system and the political processes that treat them as disposable human commodities. It makes absolutely no sense for governments (in a time of increasing population growth and finite resources to continue to allow non accountable transnational corporations who’s drive to create every increasing profits irrespective of the human, social and environmental costs has put the very question of the continued survival of life on this planet, on the political agenda) to continue to put the welfare of the corporate sector before the welfare of the people they represent and govern.

The time has come for politicians like Brendan Nelson to stop pissing in the economic headwind and kick some parliamentary butt, forcing the economic neoconservative Rudd led Labor government to regulate the financial markets so that taxpayers don’t subsidise corporate losses while the bulk of corporate profits continue to flow into the coffers of that small and powerful group that dominates economic activity in this country.

Nobody denies a little bit of talent and a lot of hard work makes these men good at what they do, but role models? Who do Australians think their kidding. Sporting stars are sporting stars, nothing more, nothing less. Anybody who considers them role models has rocks in their head. We may admire them for their skills, their dedication and for the entertainment and spectacle they provide, but that doesn’t make them role models.

The national fixation with sporting stars reveals a major flaw in the Australian character. Australians don’t have to look far to find real, not manufactured, role models. Howard Florey, the Australian scientist who shared the Nobel Prize in 1945 for the discovery of penicillin, legacy continues, long after Don Bradman’s cricket achievements are just figures in the cricket almanac. Australia has many men and women who would make excellent role models who’s achievements are not remembered let alone lauded.

We should leave sports men and women to do what they do best, and not place unrealistic expectations on them. To demand they be role models demeans us as a people and does Australia’s sporting stars a disservice.

I hate to give a little bit of unsolicited advice to the Victorian State government considering they’ve got advisors and media liaisons officers coming out of their ears but its time the Brumby led State government learnt a little bit of humility. Every day the newspapers, radio and television are full of stories about problems with the privately operated public transport system, public hospitals, public education, roads, railways, TAC, Workcover and water, to name a few areas of concern.

People working in these areas put their future on the line by going public about their concerns about perceived shortcomings and offering solutions to these problems. Since Mr. Brumby took over the leaders job, the response has been the same: criticisms are ignored or rejected out of hand. A government spokesperson tells us how we’ve never had it so good and how much more money has been spent addressing the concerns raised in the criticisms than were spent during the Kennett era. The concerns of men and women who have spent decades in their job are dismissed out of hand by hand picked taxpayer funded media liaison officers whose job it is to muddy the waters.

Victorian State Ministers are no longer listening to the public, they are dismissing public concerns without even bothering to make an effort to investigate them. The rhetoric between fact and fiction has become so wide, Victorians are beginning to question the willingness and ability of the government to tackle issues they are concerned about. Governments that stop listening to the people they represent run the very real risk of not only losing credibility in the eyes of the electorate but the electorate losing credibility in a system that promises so much but delivers so little.

The Victorian state government is at the crossroads. It either begins to listen to the concerns that are publicly raised about its performance or it faces the very real possibility of a grass roots revolt that calls into serious question the need for state governments in an era when real power is increasingly centralised in Canberra.

The time for action as The Sunday Age editorial clearly states is now. We don’t need any more symbolic actions, we don’t need unaccountable corporations dictating policy to so called democratic governments. We don’t need the economic system that has created this problem to be let off the hook. If The Sunday Age editorial team had any guts they would open up their newspaper to a debate about the prominent role both private and state capitalism play in increasing greenhouse emissions. The debate needs to go beyond private cars versus public transport, plastic bags versus cloth bags. The debate needs to be extended to what we produce, how we produce it, who benefits from production and what changes need to be made to foster co-operation instead of competition, community and collectively owned methods of production instead of privately or state owned methods of production.

The ball is in The Sunday Age’s court, you can allow the same old standard perennials to grow in your garden or you can change your editorial direction and allow hundreds of new flowers to bloom in your garden. The sooner the debate is opened up, the sooner we will find a collective solution to the problems associated with increasing greenhouse emissions

In the section explaining what I could contribute to the summit, I mentioned that for the last forty years I had been working outside the tent lighting brush fires that made the 99% of people working up the right channels inside the tent so uncomfortable they were forced to address significant issues that affect all of us.

I casually mentioned simple things like abolishing slavery, the right to vote, a universal health care system, human rights and a few other trivial issues that small groups working outside the tent have over the ages forced the majority to address.

Looking at the ten subjects on offer I thought the section on political reform would be my cup of tea as I was interested in raising subjects like giving electors the power to recall non-performing politicians in between elections, direct democracy as an alternative to parliamentary rule, using the commonwealth for the common good and citizen initiated referendums to break the constitutional log jam Australia currently faces.

Alas not surprisingly and to my everlasting relief I didn’t receive the call, as it seems when it comes to ideas the Prime Ministers “Ideas” summit is all about changing the deckchairs on the good ship Australia. Anybody who has any ideas about tinkering with the engine is not welcome to what increasingly looks like being a boring, predictable, mundane, stage managed talkfest that offers little in terms of exciting new ideas.

Although anarchist societies have existed in times of scarcity as well as abundance, they normally thrive in times of scarcity. The structures and institutions that allow people to survive in times of scarcity tend to favour co-operative not competitive behaviour. Wealth in these societies is held in common not privately and decisions are normally made via a direct democratic process. The same institutional structures that give people the best chance of surviving natural disasters, give people the best chance of surviving periods of scarcity.

Anarchists take a utilitarian approach to both living and survival, they are not particularly interested in visionary pie in the sky utopian projects. The community thinks anarchists are utopian because they believe in the inherent goodness of human nature. Nothing could be further from the truth. Anarchists understand the fallibility of the individual that’s why they are unwilling to give a ruler power to make decisions for them. If anybody has utopian fantasies about human nature its those people who think a god, king, president, dictator or prime minister will do the right thing by them. Anarchists want to create a non-hierarchical society because they know you cannot trust an individual to exercise power over others.

Its ironical anarchists, the very people who want to create a non-hierarchical society because they understand the limitations of human nature, are called utopian while those who believe in the innate “goodness” of rulers call themselves realists.

Although anarchist societies have existed in times of scarcity as well as abundance, they normally thrive in times of scarcity. The structures and institutions that allow people to survive in times of scarcity tend to favour co-operative not competitive behaviour. Wealth in these societies is held in common not privately and decisions are normally made via a direct democratic process. The same institutional structures that give people the best chance of surviving natural disasters, give people the best chance of surviving periods of scarcity.

Anarchists take a utilitarian approach to both living and survival, they are not particularly interested in visionary pie in the sky utopian projects. The community thinks anarchists are utopian because they believe in the inherent goodness of human nature. Nothing could be further from the truth. Anarchists understand the fallibility of the individual that’s why they are unwilling to give a ruler power to make decisions for them. If anybody has utopian fantasies about human nature its those people who think a god, king, president, dictator or prime minister will do the right thing by them. Anarchists want to create a non-hierarchical society because they know you cannot trust an individual to exercise power over others.

Its ironical anarchists, the very people who want to create a non-hierarchical society because they understand the limitations of human nature, are called utopian while those who believe in the innate “goodness” of rulers call themselves realists.

Anzac Day of all days is one day the true story, not the sanitised one dimensional story that is currently dished out to Australians, is aired. The price paid by those involved in war and their families and friends is too high for only one side of the Australian story to be told on Anzac Day.

I remember as a kid growing up in Brisbane that we were told that we’d end up in Westbrook Boys Home or Goodna, if we didn’t do what we were told.
When I went to Wolston Park (Goodna) Brisbane’s major long term psychiatric hospital as a medical student in 1973, the “guards” had total control of the psychiatric wards nobody, not even doctors called to attend an emergency, could go down to the wards without the permission of the chief “guard”. Everybody knew what was going on in Westbrook, and other boys and girls “homes” and state run psychiatric institutions in Queensland, was not right but nobody did anything about it. The Labor Party had been in power in Queensland over forty years when some, if not most, of the horrifying accounts of what happened in Westbrook Boys Home that are outlined in Brutal by Al “Crew” occurred. The same atrocities also happened during the thirty year reign of the Bjelke Peterson government.

The same thing happened in state institutions all around Australia. Today tens of thousands of adults, like Al Fletcher, and their children and society continue to suffer the consequences of this brutal period. Its not as if these children were criminals, most were deemed to be neglected children. For their parents and societies failures they were put into the “care” of monsters who would in a different situation have pushed concentration camp prisoners into the Nazi gas ovens.

Al “Crow” Fletcher’s story is a common one. Whether the institutions that provided care were state run or church run, the outcome was the same. Its easy to put the blame on the backs of the brutes that exercised authority in these places, what’s more difficult is to sheet home the blame on the governments that created and financed these institutions and the people who adopted an out of sight out of mind mentality to the atrocities that were carried out in their names. Al “Crow” Fletcher points the terrifying everyday picture of what happens in these institutions when people cease to care and governments cease to listen.

My greatest fear is that in Al Fletcher’s words “this horrifying but sadly true story” is not just history. I’m concerned it continues to be the overwhelming experience of many children and adults in state care around the country today.

I doubt you’ll find this fascinating first hand account of a Westbrook Boys experiences in the usual book chains. Try your local library or try the publishers if you want to relive Al “Crow” Fletcher’s experiences.

NEW HOLLAND PUBLICATIONS PTY. LTD. www.newholland.com.au
Thanks to Margaret and Peter for providing me with their copy of Brutal to review.

Information, knowledge, information, knowledge. The world is full of information, Google anything, facts, figures. Does it matter if you know the average rainfall in Bhutan or the chemical composition of silver or gold, or the names of all Australian Prime Ministers? Of course it doesn’t. Facts and figures devoid of their cultural, social, historical and environmental background are facts and figures. Access to the internet, a dictionary or an encyclopedia may give you facts and figures but it doesn’t give you knowledge. I know the Nazis executed, six million Jews, over a million gypsies and thousands of anarchists, but does it tell me anything about the Nazis?

Facts and figures the doorway to more facts and figures. Information overload, news every second of the day, two people shot in Central Park in New York, a world event, three million dead in a civil war in the Congo, not important. Facts and figures devoid of their context is post modernisms bitter harvest. Knowledge, well that’s something else, put those facts and figures in their historical context and hey presto, you begin to understand. Knowing facts and figures doesn’t mean you know something, anything.

Knowledge, a combination of experience and historical background, set in a specific cultural context opens our eyes to the possibilities before us. Facts and figures are facts and figures. There are as many grains of sand on earth as there are stars in the universe, is a fact that conjures a vision of how irrelevant we really are, but does it teach us anything? Knowing there is a fresh water well in the middle of the desert, that’s knowledge that will save your life. Knowing how to build a house, make a road, work a computer, that’s useful knowledge.

The 21st century, courtesy of the internet, has spawned the universal information age, everyone can find out the rainfall in Bhutan and who is the 100 metres world champion, but do they know what makes the world tick? So much information, so little time to access it, minds so full of facts and figures not one spare neurone to drag all these facts and figures through the historical, cultural and social sieve to make sense of our lives, let alone make sense of the communities we live and work in.

The post modern information age has deconstructed knowledge into useless atomised facts and figures that tell us nothing about how to adapt to our rapidly changing world.

Its amazing how short term the private banks memories are. I distinctly remember when we lived in a country when depositors funds were guaranteed by the Federal government (taxpayer). Remember the Commonwealth Bank sold for thirty pieces of silver to the private sector by the Hawke led Labor government. When the Commonwealth Bank was owned by the government, every dollar of depositors funds was guaranteed by the government. If the privately owned banks are so concerned about a new era of bank collapses, maybe the Rudd Labor government should take a leaf out of past Federal Labor governments and set up as new peoples bank.

All those depositors who are concerned about the viability of private banks could put their hard earned cash in the peoples bank. The re-establishment of a government owned bank would provide real security for depositors funds and it would break the monopoly private banks exercise over the fees and charges they currently levy. It wouldn’t take long, when faced with real competition from a government owned bank, for the private banks to drop their fees and charges.

Next time you hear of a privately owned bank trying to socialise their loses – do unto then what they do unto you when you fall into arrears with your credit card, loans or mortgage – screw them.

Thank you for the many e-mails and phone calls coming in, especially those looking to find out how everything is going. There are too many to respond to individually so instead I am working hard with Kristin to try and get the web site up and running so that everybody can visit the site and see the updates. I can tell you that I am averaging 70km's per day and that at the end of each day (so far) I am so tired I feel like doing little else! (apart from eating that is!)

This leg of the tour has been pretty tough simply because of the mountain ranges. In the last week I have had a 340m altitude ascent in just over 3..5km distance, a 260m ascent over 6 km's and a 361m ascent over 9km's and it hasn't ended yet. There is another 200km's of similar terrain from Eden through to Tathra and Uladulla. Can't wait! Temperatures during the 260m ascent peaked at 37 degrees and this combined with heavy smoke from CFA 'burning off' from the night before made the ride incredibly difficult. As for the endurance, (Paul you were definitely right!) breaking through into the mental toughness is the key, but that barrier is tough to get through! 280km's over four days is my maximum to date but that will increase no doubt when I get on flatter ground. On the positive side, there is some simply stunning scenery through here that you just don't get to see the same way when you are driving a car, it is stunningly beautiful!

I have lots of pictures to put up on the site along with commentary. People are donating money as I go and others have incrediblr stories of their own, so hopefully you'll get to read all about it shortly. It doesn't look like the Weekly Times article went in but we are checking to see what happened, will let you know when we find out. Kristin's performance on the ABC 774 Derek Guille show went extremely well with people as far away as Mallacoota contacting her by e-mail to find out if she would be performing there. Well we are in Mallacoota now and she did perform to a very large audience last night, not surprisingly people are blown away by her music and have been snapping up CD's at a ferocious rate!. Tonight will be my turn at Cafe 54 (the restaurant that hosts the musical strum club jam session) to have a brief talk about 'For Blokes Sake'. Anyway gotta go so that's all for now.

Cheers - Andrew & Kristin

CNT No. 343, MARCH 08 Organo de la Confederaction Nacional del Trabajo, Apdo de Correos 385 C.P. 10080, SPAIN.
Tel/Fax: 927240523
Email: radaccion@periodicocnt.org
Web: www.periodicocnt.org

UMANITA NOVA Vol.88, No.11 MARCH ’08, Settimenale Anarchico, C/-Federazione Anarchico Torinese, C.50 Palermo 46, Torino, ITALY
Tel/fx:011 857850
Mobile:3386594361
Email: fat@increte.it

NUCLEAR TERRITORY NEWS FEB 08.
Tel:0889854931, 088944 9900
Email: editor@ntne.ws

PROGRESS First pub 1904, NO.1081 MAR/APR ’08. Level 1/27 Hardware Lane, Melbourne 3000, AUST.
Tel:0396702754
Fax:0396703063
Email: office@prosper.org.au
Web: www.prosper.org.au
Web: www.earthsharing.org.au

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will be outside the

VICTORIAN ATTORNEY GENERAL’S OFFICE

– 121 EXHIBITION STREET, MELBOURNE

11.30am - WEDNESDAY 9th April 2008

Come & join us & demand a Royal Commission into the links between corrupt business, police & political Interests & organised crime in Victoria – All welcome

Write to:

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

Akin Sari a 29 year old Turkish political refugee who was granted political asylum in Australia has been sentenced to 2 years & 4 months imprisonment for offences related to his involvement in the G20 protests in Melbourne in November 2006. Akin has already spent 7 months in prison awaiting trial & sentencing. He has been set a minimum 14 months sentence. Akin will have to serve the maximum sentence of 2 years & 4 months if he fails to obtain parole in October 2008. 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
P.O. BOX 20
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,
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 122 Paid Up Members)

DIRECT DEMOCRACY NOT PARLIAMENTARY RULE - www.rulebythepeople.org

Defiant Christians Against All Terrorism members will be conducting another citizens inspection of the top secret joint US / Australian military complex at Pine Gap on ANZAC Day – 25th of April 2008.

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’

Go to www.3CR.org.au to access the podcast.

Nearly 1 in 10 New South Wales Corrective Services officers faced claims of professional misconduct last year. 554 staff faced hearings on allegations including erroneous release of inmates, Apprehended Violence Orders, firearms charges, sexual assault and failing drug tests. A spreadsheet of all 471 cases heard by the Professional Conduct Management Committee in the 2006-07 financial year show there were 35 matters linked to police investigations against staff outside work. The largest number of matters related to allegations of bullying or excessive use of force against prisoners. (news.com.au)

The Commonwealth Bank has admitted giving unaffordable loans to people who had no English skills and little idea of what the loan entailed, including one case where the interpreter between the bank and the borrowers was the family's nine-year old daughter. The bank gave African refugee Deng Gatluak a $20,000 car loan, even though he did not speak English, was unemployed, had seven children, had no idea of how the loan worked, and did not complete his application form. The guarantor was his wife, who also did not speak English and had no assets. The repayments left the family of nine with next to nothing to live on. Lauren Walker from the Consumer Action Law Centre said that in another case a girl of nine acted as an interpreter for a family and the bank.
In a related story, former National Australia Bank employee Kim White has told the Four Corners program he was pressured to talk people into taking bigger loans than they wanted. "I up-sold someone to $80,000 on more than one occasion when they only came in for a $20,000 or $30,000 loan" Mr White said. (Sydney Morning Herald)

A major newspaper has run a story arguing that foreign-born Australians commit more crimes than those born in Australia - and quoted figures which show the opposite. The Herald-Sun's article "Fears our crime being imported" stated that "People born overseas committed one in seven of crimes in Victoria...but the 2006 Census shows that 1.17 million people, or 26% of Victoria's population, were born overseas." It added that "the revelations have sparked calls from crime victims for tougher deportation and screening of immigrants." (ABC website)

QUOTE OF THE MOMENT "In order to rally people, governments need enemies. They want us to be afraid, to hate, so we will rally behind them." - Thich Nhat Hanh