In a Civil case before a jury in the Supreme Court of Victoria late Monday evening after a ten day trial, a jury found the serious injuries sustained in Ararat Prison by Mr. Juric four years ago as a result of a viscous unprovoked assault by another prisoner, were not due to negligence by Ararat Prison authorities or their employer, The Victorian State government.

Mr. Juric was no ordinary prisoner. His problems began over 20 years ago when Mr. Juric, a successful Melbourne business man became involved in a dispute with one of Australia's major banks which resulted in the bank foreclosing his loans and disposing of his properties. Mr. Juric has over the past twenty years disputed the banks actions through the courts and by a one man campaign he has conducted on the streets of Melbourne. Four years ago he was jailed for four months for breaking a Supreme Court injunction that prevented him from entering the bank's premises or talking to the bank's staff.

While a prisoner at Ararat jail he was assaulted by another prisoner.
Since his release from prison he has continued his one man campaign for justice. He was offered 25,000 dollars compensation by the Victorian State government as compensation for the assault but refused to accept an offer that had strings attached to it, preferring to have the matter heard in the Supreme Court of Victoria.

If Mr. Juric had won his case in the Supreme Court it would have had profound implications for the government's duty of care for prisoners held in custody. The loss of the case is a major setback for all prisoners assaulted in prison and a devastating personal blow for Mr.
Juric who has been fighting for justice for over 20 years in a David and Goliath battle that he has failed to win.

Mr. Juric has had no media exposure over the last twenty years because the media is concerned about possible legal action. He believed a jury of his peers would give him a better hearing than he had received in the past. Unfortunately for Mr. Juric the verdict did not bear out his hopes. Mr. Juric is one of a growing number of Australians whose disputes with financial institutions have drawn them into the criminal justice system. In a justice system where the type of defence you are able to mount is dependant on the resources you can muster, its becoming increasingly difficult for ordinary people to achieve justice through the courts.

To rub salt into his wounds the court ordered that Mr. Juric, a man on a disability support pension living with his elderly sick wife in a rental property on the fringes of Melbourne, would be liable for all the State government's costs. This set back has not stopped Mr.
Juric, taking his case directly to the people. He can be seen on most days somewhere in the CBD agitating for justice.

Next time you see him, have a chat with him, he has an interesting story that everyone should hear. After you've had a chat with him, you like me, may shake your head in disbelief and say to yourself – There by the grace of God go I.

I was astounded to read the article by the Herald Sun's medical reporter Grant McArthur, "Giving up on giving" (2/6) urging the wealthy to give to medicine. I can't believe that in the 21st century we are asking "philanthropists" to help fund the health care delivery system and medical research. If Mr. Harold Mitchell is concerned that other wealthy Australians aren't contributing their fair share, it's time serious thought was given to imposing a tax levy on people earning more than a million dollars a year to be ear marked for medical research.

We as a society find ourselves begging for funds for the health care delivery system because many wealthy Australians are not paying their fair share of tax. I don't want to live in a society where health care institutions have to wave a begging bowel to do their job. Where what type of medical research is funded is determined by the personal interest of the donor, not the needs of the community. The solution to the current health care crisis doesn't lie in wealthy Australians giving what they feel like giving, but tightening up the tax laws so everybody, not just pay as you earn taxpayers, pay their fair share of taxes.

Rudd has only himself to blame for the public service rebellion "Relentless Rudd faces Rebellion" Sunday Age (1/6). You have to wonder what planet Kevin Rudd and his ilk live on, when they won government they went out of their way to keep Howard's political appointments on the government gravy train. Their decision to let the reactionary conservative elements embedded by the Howard government in the public service to keep their jobs will haunt him for the rest of his political life.

The tragedy is the public service contagion could have been contained if the heads of all the public service departments, appointed by the Howard government, had been lopped off when he first won government.
The public service cabinet leaks are the first in a long salvo of leaks that are designed to destabilise the mildly reformist Labor government and return the born to rule crowd back into government.

Rudd's inexperience has been highlighted by his lack lustre performance since he was elected. Centralising power in his office because he knows he was a labor outsider, was not one of his smartest moves. He needs to work his butt off, because he is a one man show who has little support within established labor ranks.

He believed that if he didn't make any wholesale changes to the public service they would not bite the hand that fed them and he would be able to use them to win his point of view within the Labor Party.
This country doesn't need a Prime Minister who isn't willing to cull the reactionary deadwood from the public service and appoint people to government boards and the judiciary who are willing to pursue a more reformist agenda. Rudd's inability to understand that people want reform, not more of the same platitudes, could mean that with the help of a reactionary public service, the born to rule crowd will be back in office before most commentators expected.

I'm perplexed by the so called debate raging around Bill Henson's photograph of a naked adolescent. Day after day the media is full of arguments and counter arguments about middle aged men's fantasies, the sexualisation of childhood child sex abuse and adolescent nudity. I personally find the moral Burqa descending over the country unsettling not just because public adolescent nakedness is equated with child sex abuse but because a far more pressing problem affecting Australian children has not generated the same level of outrage and debate in the Australian community.

In Mt. Isa 11% of children have unacceptable levels of lead in their blood. The intellectual, developmental and psychological problems related to elevated lead levels in children have been known for decades. It's inconceivable that in the 21st century Australian children have been exposed to lead concentrations that could have a life long impact on their lives.

In the Mt. Isa case the parents of the children with elevated lead levels are pitted against the Queensland state government and the powerful mining corporation that currently run Mt. Isa Mines. In Bill Henson's case an individual is pitted against the mass media, the Prime Minister and the New South Wales government. In both instances individuals find themselves fighting powerful interests. It's ironical the very real physical, psychological and development problems faced by Mt. Isa's children are relegated to the back pages of this country's newspapers while the possible questionable long term psychological problems faced by the adolescent in the Bill Henson case (largely caused by the media coverage) take centre stage.

Looking at the two situations it seems in Australia what is considered to be important in the media is not related to the consequences of the story, but whether the story challenges powerful and wealthy interests in the community. If the story challenges these interests you can bet your last dollar it won't be considered to be news worthy.

I was surprised to read activists would even dream of joining a council or government sponsored group to promote their concerns.
"Community Group outraged over 'gags'." Sunday Age (25/5) A ginger groups strength lies in its independence. Applying for government or corporate grants, joining government sponsored organisations or taking money from government or business, destroys a community groups ability to pursue their objectives free of outside interference.

Activists who are willing to sign gag orders to join a group to obtain funding will soon find they will lose that hard earned reputation that made them a credible force in the community. Gag orders are nothing new, Charities that take government money are prevented from criticising government policy even if they disagree with it.
Community organisations that take corporate money soon find they no longer enjoy the independence they experienced before they accepted outside support.

Community groups need to keep their eye on the issue and not waste their time looking for funding or support from the business or government sector. Activists only have their hard earned reputation to protect them when they go into battle with the corporate world and government. It doesn't matter how many staff community groups are able to employ or how many offices they are able to rent with government and business support, the impact they will have in the community will be negligible if the community thinks they have sold their soul to government and the business sector for the proverbial thirty pieces of silver.

Every few years debate will occur in the federation about what are the needs of individual communities and the federation. Decisions will be made about what goods and services communities will be able to produce and what goods and services they will require from the federation.
Need, the mother of all invention, will drive the community debate about how best to fill those needs in a sustainable manner. Labour will be able to be deployed very quickly to fill community needs as people's livelihoods are not tied to the type of work they do. All those people who are currently employed in the financial sector and involved in financial transactions will be freed to work to for fill both individual and community needs.

In some situations anarchist federations will be forced to trade with surrounding communities. Trade can be conducted on a barter basis or if surrounding communities find this unacceptable, foreign reserves held by the federation can be used to obtain goods required by the federation. The more self-sufficient an anarchist federation, the less it will have to rely on the outside world. Reliance on the outside world could put the federation in a vulnerable position, that's why anarchist communities strive to achieve both sustainability and self sufficiency.

Over the past decade the Anarchist Media Institute has attempted to reclaim the past and use the past to understand the present and change the future. We have initiated three public celebrations that highlight pivotal moments in the history of the city and the country we live in to promote an alternative view of the history of this country that celebrates its radical past. These celebrations have now been held for a number of years and are attracting greater numbers of participants over the years to allow the state and private enterprise to define what moments we celebrate is to allow that section of society that owns the means of production, distribution and exchange and exercises authority to define who we are.

Currently we are involved in organising and participating in celebrations on the 20th January, 3rd June and the 3rd December. We are also in the process of organising celebrations for the 11th November.

On the 20th January we commemorate the execution of Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheener, the first two men executed in Melbourne on 20th January 1842. Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheener were indigenous freedom fighters who took up arms against the colonisers and paid the ultimate price for taking up arms to defend themselves against the invasion of their lands and the genocide of their people.

On the 3rd June we publicly celebrate Mabo Day. The celebrations mark the beginning of a reconciliation process between indigenous and non indigenous Australians based on justice, not charity. On that day in
1992 the High Court handed down a decision that questioned the colonisation process. They found indigenous Australians had rights to land in law because of their prior occupation of this land. Sixteen years after this historic decision, after countless government and corporate attempts to destroy the letter and intent of the Mabo decision, Mabo Day continues to be a pivotal moment in Australian history we continue to celebrate.

We are also involved in organising and participating in celebrations in Ballarat to mark the anniversary of the Eureka Rebellion. Over the last seven years on the 3rd December we have held a series of events from 4:00am to 4:00pm on the spot the rebellion took place to Reclaim the Radical Spirit of the Eureka Rebellion from commercial and government attempts to bury that spirit. Ironically The Anarchist Media Institute Reclaim the Radical Spirit of the Eureka Rebellion celebrations are the only events that are held in Ballarat on the day to mark what is arguably one of the most important days on the Australian calendar (other folk wait till the weekend to celebrate Eureka).

JOIN US & RECLAIM THIS COUNTRY'S RADICAL SPIRIT.

NEXT WEEK: Why celebrate on the 11th November

The Eureka rebellion didn't happen in a vacuum and wasn't only confined to Ballarat. On 15th August 1851 Governor La Trobe, following the lead of Governor Fitzroy in New South Wales, issued and signed into law his first proclamation regarding the recent gold discoveries in Victoria.
"whereas by law all mines of gold and all gold in its natural place of deposit within the Colony of Victoria, whether on the lands of the Queen or any of her Majesty's subjects belong to the Crown"
"Now, I Charles Joseph La Trobe, Esqr. Lieutenant Governor aforesaid on behalf of her Majesty do hereby publicly notify and declare that all persons who shall take from any land within the said colony, any gold, metal, or ore containing gold, or who, within any waste lands, which have not yet been alienated by the Crown, shall dig for or disturb the soil in search of such gold, metal or ore, without having been duly authorised in that behalf by Her Majesty's Colonial government, will be prosecuted criminally and civilly as the law allows."

On the 18th August 1851 Governor La Trobe's second proclamation required diggers to buy a license to dig for gold. The proclamation made the purchase of a license dependent on the applicant being able to "produce a certificate of discharge from his last service or prove to the satisfaction of the commissioner that he is not a person improperly absent from hired service." The license fee was set at one pound and ten shillings per month and was to be paid in advance. The license fee came into effect on the 1st September 1851. The license fee was imposed to collect revenue and stop workers running off to the goldfields. Faced with a labour shortage as a result of the end of convict transportation in 1846, frightened of losing the monopoly the squatters held over the land, the government and the squatters did all they could to prevent working people from benefiting from the gold rush. The license fee was the instrument they used to try to prevent working people accumulating wealth and using that wealth to break the monopoly on land the government and the squatters enjoyed.

Seven days after the second proclamation, a week before the license system was introduced, the first protest against the license system was held at Golden Point in Ballarat on the 25th August 1851. Three weeks later the gold commissioners arrived at Golden Point to collect the license fee. Herbert Swindell led the protestors jumping on a stump declaring, while waving a pistol over his head, "before he was done with this business he would shoot someone". The protestors soon lost their nerve, frightened they would lose their claims, they paid the license fee. Herbert Swindell, the ringleader of the first organised protest on the Ballarat goldfields, was denied a license and left the Ballarat goldfields a broken man a few months later. Known agitators, like Swindell, were placed on the gold commissioners black list and were denied mining licenses forcing them off the diggings.
The government hoped that by denying agitators a license they would be able to control protests on the goldfields.

Source material for article :
Eureka Stockade - A pictorial history
Geoff Hocking 2004
The Five Mile Press P/L
ISBN 1 74124 426 9

NEXT WEEK: The Diggers first victory

Coptic Egypt is one of those fascinating academic treatises that is both pedestrian and enlightening. Barbara Watterson gives the reader an insight into Coptic Egypt that only comes from years of methodical, meticulous research.

The Greek word Aiguptios was originally used in reference to the original inhabitants of Egypt by Greeks and other foreigners who lived in Egypt. After the Conquest of Egypt in 640 AD by the Arab armies, the word Aiguptios was corrupted to qibt, which is pronounced copt in English. The Arabs used the word qibt in reference to the predominant Christian population they had conquered. One thousand years later, European Christians used the word copt to refer to the Christian population in Egypt which by the 16th century, had become a predominantly Muslin country.

Today, Copts think of themselves as the "true" descendants of the ancient Egyptians as the family history of Muslim Egyptians is more convoluted because of their intermarriage with the Muslim Arabs who conquered Egypt in 640 AD.

Coptic Egypt is a major study that leaves no stone unturned. It gives a history of both the Copts and Muslims in Egypt describing how a predominantly Christian country slowly became a predominately Muslim country. It is full of bits of fascinating information that gives the reader the ability to understand Middle Eastern politics today.

Hakem 996 – 1021 the ruler of Egypt declared himself the manifestation of God and founded a new religion which today is represented by the Druze in Lebanon. The Mamelukes (Arabic for slave) were the 12,000 Caucasian slaves brought to Egypt by the Sultan Nedjmeddin at the beginning of the thirteenth century to act as his praetorian guard.
They murdered the Sultan and became the defacto rulers of Egypt for the next 250 years.

A few years ago I mentioned the Druze to an old Lebanese Muslim and he looked at me with hatred in his eyes and spat on the ground and said they're animals. Reading about the Copts in Egypt I understand where his hatred comes from. A decade or so ago an old Italian lady I knew from Sicily called people she thought were stupid Mamelukes. She had no idea where the word came from, but reading Coptic Egypt I now know how this word entered Southern Italian dialects.

The book is full of stories of the Coptic Fathers who by the end of the fourth century AD lived in a network of Monasteries that stretched along the Nile Valley. Christian Monks wandered into the desert looking for a cave or an old tomb near a date palm. They would spend the next thirty years of their lives drinking a cupful of water and eating a handful of dates a day, wrestling with the Devil. Dying if the date palm didn't produce a bunch of dates a month. They withdrew from the world and its values and they mortified the flesh to develop their spirituality.
The book is full of interesting tit bits, two that tickled my fancy - the Patriarch of the Coptic Church was usually chosen by lot, if candidates names were written on separate pieces of paper, they were rolled into a ball put in a drawer and one was pulled out to decide who the next Patriarch of the Church would be, an old fashioned tattslotto.

The other more enlightening fact I will treasure to the day I die was the way Egypt was transformed from a hive of Christian activity to a hive of Muslim activity. Forget about the periodic massacres, the trick was taxation. Non believers had to pay an extra tax. It didn't take long for the tithe extracted from non believers to do its job.
People converted in their droves. It looks like the hip pocket nerve was as much a driver of political fortune then as it is today.

All in all a fascinating insight into a topic that helps to make sense of the world today by looking at the history of one group's journey – the Copts, over the past two thousand years.

If you want to get hold of a copy of this fascinating 200 page book, try the publishers they may have a copy or two in their backrooms as this type of book doesn't normally hit the best seller list.

Scottish Academic Press Ltd.
33 Montgomery Press
Edinburgh E147 13X
Scotland, United Kingdom

I remember when I was in Rome in 1981, I like many other visitors to the city since and before visited an underground religious ossuary.
Just in case you don't know what an ossuary is, it's a receptacle for the bones of the dead. One or two generations after people are buried, no one bothers to visit their graves, so in order not to waste good land the dead are exhumed, their bones collected and chucked into a large common grave. Real estate can be built on what has become prime residential land or the plots can be resold by a local government with an eye to making a buck. Not that any notice was taken of the dead in Melbourne when the new cemetery was established in Carlton.

The monuments were knocked down or relocated to the new cemetery but the bodies were left in the ground. A brand new market, the Queen Victoria Market was erected over the 15,000 bodies that lay in the ground. When you buy your fruit, vegetables, meat, small goods or knick knacks from Melbourne's famous Victoria Market, you're walking over the bones of over 15,000 dead, including the bones of Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheener.

Back to Rome, the Roman Catholic Church has a sophisticated attitude to old bones. Holding the key to heaven in one hand and the key to hell in the other, the church needed an ossuary to beat all ossuaries.
A five star ossuary to help unbelievers pay their tithe to the church. It is important to remind the punters of their own mortality.
As long as they're not touched with the brush of death they become the playthings of atheists and non believers.

Instead of going to the football or the gym, the Roman Catholic Church has the show to end all shows. You enter through a discrete hole in the wall, once your eyes become accustomed to the gloom your eyes quickly make out the shapes of hundreds of thousands of human bones.
Rows upon rows of disarticulated skulls, piles of femurs, if only Fido had been with me, he would have had a glorious time gnawing on those old bones. The poor, the rich, the intellectual, the ignorant were encouraged to wander in the sub terrain cavern, gawking at a flower made out of human pelvis's, piles of bones arranged in pyramids, skeletal monks hanging from the rafters swinging near the skeletal remains of children. There is nothing guaranteed to sharpen the appetite for the afterlife more than a walk in the cavern of death.
The only problem is, if you want to enjoy the joys of eternity, you need kowtow not to God but God's representatives on earth. That's the price you gotta pay if you want to become one with the Godhead or get your grubby little paws on those 36 virgins – best of luck.

You've got to hand it to the World Bank, when it comes to spin its an Olympic gold medallist. Just in case you hadn't heard the World Bank is making 1.2 billion dollars of loans and grants available to countries that are having problems coping with the current speculative food crisis. Just in case you didn't know, the world food crisis is directly related to the cost of food not the scarcity of food. Like in the Irish potato famine in the 19th century, Ireland continued to export potatoes to England despite starvation in Ireland.

The Irish weren't able to compete for potatoes with the English who were willing and able to pay a higher price for them. It seems mass starvation was the price that the Irish had to pay to keep the system ticking over. The current food crisis, to a large degree, due to speculators entering the food market because they know turning over land to grow crops for biofuel, decreases the amount of food available to the community. Speculators drive up the price of food putting it out of reach of the very people who need it most. Countries that find they are unable to pay the increased prices demanded for basic food staples soon find themselves in a vulnerable position because of World Bank Structural Adjustment Programs that demanded they deregulated their economies and privatised any state owned assets before they were given loans.

Deregulation and privatisation led to the domination of the market place by foreign owned corporations that turned self sufficient subsistence farmers into workers, working on plantations that produced export crops. Food security was no longer linked to local production, but the ability of countries to generate reserves to purchase food on the open market. After creating the very conditions that prevented poorer countries from producing enough food locally to feed their people, the World Bank now has the hide to offer a few low cost loans to poorer countries. If anything demonstrates the lunacy of deregulation and privatisation, it's the current World Bank generated food crisis.

CNT No.345, MAY '08, Organo de la Confederacion Nacional del Trabago, Apdo de Correos 385 10080 Caceres, SPAIN, Tel/Fax : 942085410, Email :
radaccion@periodicocnt.org www.periodicocnt.org

LA LETTRE CONTACT: 2008, De HOMME LIBRE APRIL-JUNE 2008, Etude et Commaissance de l'individu reflexions et investigations psychologiques, Mircel Renoulet, 32 rue Gauthier Dumont 42100, Saint Etienne, FRANCE

ROJO Y NEGRO No.213, MAY '08, CGT - Publicacion Mensual Anarcho Syndicalista, Sagunto 15, 10 Madrid 28010, SPAIN, Tel: 91 447 05 72, Email : prensa@cgt.org.es Web : www.rojoynegro.info

UMANITA NOVA Vol 88 No.17 11th MAY 08, Settimanale Anarchico, C.50 Palermo 46, 10152, Torino ITALY. Tel/Fax : (011) 857850, Mobile :
338-6594361, Email : fat@inrete.it

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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:

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The Australian government could amend its 'non-negotiable' promise not to sell uranium to nuclear-armed India, which has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. One of the first major foreign policy acts of the new Labor government was to withdraw from a deal made by the Howard government to export uranium to India. Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said that Labor "went into the election with a strong policy commitment [that] we would not export uranium to nation states who are not members of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty."
Resources Minister Martin Ferguson said in a speech to the Australian Uranium Association that the government's position was "non-negotiable". However Mr Smith told journalists that "we have made this clear to Indian officials that we are bound by party policy...but if the 123 agreement is passed by the Indian parliament, we could consider joining a consensus."
The 123 agreement is a reference to section 123 of the US Atomic Energy Act, passed through US Congress in December 2006. It would allow countries to supply nuclear power generation technology and fuel to the potentially lucrative Indian market, despite it not being a treaty signatory, in return for International Atomic Energy Agency inspections. (Source: The Age)

The US government practice of 'rendering' suspects to countries where they will be tortured has apparently been known to the Australian government for several years, who kept the information secret. ASIO director-general Paul O'Sullivan has told a Senate enquiry that, after the arrest of Australian citizen Mamdouh Habib in 2001, the Australian government opposed his being taken to another country for 'interrogation.' Mr O'Sullivan said that he believed Australia's concern at the time was "because of long-standing Australian policy going back over decades that Australia does not support torture and so we would not support a position where one of our citizens was put in such a position." The meeting where the decision was made was attended by then ASIO director-general Denis Richardson and senior representatives of the Federal Police and three government departments. Mr O'Sullivan also said that such intelligence material would routinely be distributed to the Prime Minister's office. The United States ignored Australia's requests, and moved Mr Habib to Egypt, where he says he was beaten, tortured with an electric cattle prod, and forced to watch a man being beaten to death in front of him before being warned the same could happen to him. He was then moved to Guantanamo Bay, where he was held for almost three years before being released without charge. Mr Habib said the Howard government only asked for him to be moved when the media found out where he was.
(Source: The Age)

Would-be home owners are under increasing pressure from inflation and interest rates, with a key affordability index touching another record low. Interest rate rises in the first quarter of the year have raised the average home loan payment to $2799 a month, up 4.4% on the previous survey. The HIA-Commonwealth Bank First Home Buyer Affordability Index went down 3.5% in the quarter, 10% lower than a year ago. (Source: The Age)

Quote of the Moment: "If a country develops an economic system that is based on how to pay for the war, and if the amounts of fixed capital investment that are apparent are tied up in armaments, and if that country is a major exporter of arms, and its industrial fabric is dependent on them, then it would be in that country's interests to ensure that it always had a market. It is not an exaggeration to say that it is clearly in the interests of the world's leading arms exporters to make sure that there is always a war going on somewhere."
- Marilyn Waring