COMMUNIST PARTY OF AUSTRALIA ISSN 1325-295X Howard … · 17.08.2005 · The Guardian The...

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COMMUNIST PARTY OF AUSTRALIA ISSN 1325-295X

August 172005

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# 1241

Bob Briton

The Howard government has effectively ditched its previous “be alert but not alarmed” slogan in its ongoing beat-up of domestic terror threats. Next month the PM will host a national summit on terrorism at which he hopes to get broader support for a range of attacks on the civil rights of Australians.

Among other things, he wants a ban on “inflammatory language”, longer periods of detention for peo-ple suspected of having knowledge of terror plans and a national iden-tity card. Howard and his minis-ters are trying to make every post a winner in a new drive for more po-lice state powers in the wake of the London bombings.

Howard wants the states to take a greater role and contribute more funds to the cause and it seems new-ly-installed NSW Premier Morris Iemma, at least, is up for it. “The state and territory governments are determined to do everything possi-ble to bolster our defences against terrorism. That includes better intel-ligence, appropriate powers for se-curity agencies and a co-ordinated approach to preventing the spread of radical teachings advocating terror-ism”, he announced.

People in Sydney are to face in-trusive body searches and other dra-conian measures from September 1. As a starter, visitors to the Opera House will be required on demand to remove coats, jackets, gloves, shoes, hats or any other headwear, as well as submit to electronic scans and car searches.

“Reasonable force” may be used by staff and security guards to re-move anyone who refuses to coop-erate. Such a person also will face

a three month ban from the Opera House. People will also be forced to give their names and addresses and be photographed against their will.

Howard is hoping to follow the lead of the British govern-ment which has started a program of banning Islamic organisations. Blair’s government has also given itself the power to detain “terror suspects” for up to three months without charge.

It is considering amending the Human Rights Act to make it easier to deport individuals and deny asy-lum to people involved in “terror-ism” – as if international terrorists are currently accorded that protec-tion. “Let no one be in doubt that the rules of the game are changing”, Blair said in some chilling, inflam-matory words of his own.

In Australia, Howard was ward-ing off criticisms from concerned civil liberties groups last week with a very disturbing argument: “The most important civil liberty I have and you have is to stay alive and to be free from violence and death. I think when people talk about civil liberties they sometimes forget that action taken to protect the citizen against physical attack is a blow in favour and not a blow against civil liberties.”

Cameron Murphy of the NSW Council of Civil Liberties stated, “We’re quickly falling into the trap where the terrorists are achieving their goals by getting our govern-ment to remove those freedoms.”

Meanwhile, government and opposition heavyweights are do-ing their best to inflate the ji-hadist threat. Ruddock believes Australians would be right in be-ing nervous about a London-style terror attack. He was referring to

a recent official “confirmation” that there are 60 suspected Islamic extremists supposedly “operating” in Australia. Much has been made of the video images first shown on Dubai-based Al Arabiya TV of a supposed al-Qaida spokesman threatening western nations with revenge attacks in what sounds like an Australian accent.

Books have been seized in re-cent raids and clerics have been barred from the country. Abdur Raheem Green was prevented from

boarding a plane from Sri Lanka to New Zealand because it would be setting down in Brisbane. He is on the Immigration Department’s “movement alert list” for once hav-ing made statements to the effect that Westerners ands Muslims can-not live together peacefully.

The fact that he long ago dis-owned those views made no differ-ence in the eyes of a government hell bent on inciting fear and suspi-cion among the public.

Cleric Abu Bakr has had his passport revoked for having de-scribed Osama bin Laden as a great man and suggesting Australian Muslims could be justified in fight-ing against occupying forces in Iraq.

Mamdouh Habib, who spent two years in the hell hole of the US prison in Guantánamo Bay without ever being charged, has had his re-quest for the return of his passport rejected by the government.

The corporate media has fanned all of these flames and singled out other views for scrutiny under a pro-posed new law to deal with “incite-ment to terrorism” – a law with a longer reach, presumably, than the current proscription on any incite-ment to violence.

Day after day, Australia’s Muslims are feeling pressure to make public statements to dem-onstrate their “loyalty” in a man-ner reminiscent of the loyalty oaths forced on civil servants and film ac-tors in the US at the height of the McCarthy era in the 1950s.

Australia’s Muslims may be the first to feel the weight of this sort of political oppression. Other Australians and particularly the la-bour movement must stand with them because, if these attacks are not defeated, they certainly will not be the last to be muzzled in this manner. J

The sinister side of the Gaza withdrawal

Working parents’ rights

JohnWinston Howard

– war criminal

2page 3page 6page 7page 9page

The globalisation of State terror

It’s still 5 minutes to

midnight...

Howard grabs newpolice state powers

“ Let no one be in doubt that the rules of the game are changing”

British PM Tony Blair

2 The GuardianAugust 17 2005 3The Guardian

August 17 2005

The GuardianIssue 1241 August 17, 2005

PRESS FUNDIt’s August, those tax returns should be flowing in. It’s great to receive a lump sum – sure helps to pay bills or buy something special. We like lump sums at The Guardian too and always have bills to pay. Can you spare some of your tax return? Please give it a thought. We have so much to do, no corporate sponsors, and the Press Fund has fallen behind in recent weeks. Let’s give it a big boost! We should be past the $8000 mark by now if we are going to meet our annual target of $14,000. It is your contributions that enable us to keep the price of The Guardian as low as it is. If you possibly can, please send us in a contribution for the next issue. This week our sincere thanks go to the following, for their generous support: R Bryant $20, J Hale $27, Bert Appleton $40, J Clancy $30, “Round Figure” $13.This week’s total: $130. Progressive total: $6325.

Telstra squabblesStrongly contending and contradictory forces are threaten-

ing to undermine the federal government’s determination to completely privatise Telstra. The Liberal Party has not wavered in its aim to push through privatising legislation as soon as pos-sible. At the same time, the political forces standing up in the National Party and the failure of Telstra to provide adequate telecommunication services in many country districts is forcing them to manoeuvre.

The recently imported American, who is now Telstra CEO, Sol Trujillo, is fully in favour of privatisation but wants a deregu-lated market place so that a fully privatised Telstra would be able to do as it pleases, ignore the needs of the countryside, put up prices and sack even more Telstra workers.

There is a tug of war between the Liberal Party and some National Party Senators who are demanding a multi-billion dol-lar fund to guarantee that country users get a service that is not less than that available to city subscribers.

In an attempt to hasten and guarantee the success of the pro-cess of privatisation Sol Trujillo has proposed a $5 billion fund to meet the needs of the countryside but the suspicion is that most, if not all, of this huge sum of money would be provided by tax-payers. This blatant proposal comes despite the fact that Telstra has just announced an annual profit of $4.4 billion. When asked what proportion of this proposed fund would be provided by the federal government, Minister Mark Vaile refused to answer.

Despite some initial reluctance, federal government leaders have indicated that they are looking at the proposal. As on other occasions, the government has been prepared to pay out huge sums of taxpayers’ money when it is a question of achieving its political objectives. Enormous sums have already been paid out to upgrade country services without the expenditure having had much impact of the quality of country services.

Treasurer Peter Costello, who will have the job of finding the money, is justifying privatisation claiming that it is in the “na-tional interest”, ignoring the fact that most Australians are not in favour of the privatisation of Telstra. Opposition in the country is running at about 80 percent according to some recent reports.

This is a fact that those in the National Party who are raising points of difference, including newly elected Senator Barnaby Joyce, should take into account. Any sort of deal, no matter how many billions of dollars are put into a fund, which results in privatisation will be a betrayal of the real national interests of Australia and a slap in the face for that majority opposed to privatisation.

Another indication of the mood of the electorate is the fact that support for National Party Senator Barnaby Joyce in-creased substantially following his much publicised stand against the Howard government’s policies.

The difficulties that the government now finds itself in have arisen not merely because some National Party Senators are at-tempting to pressure the government to bring country services up to scratch. They have more to do with the basic policy of privatisation and the failure of the government (which continues to hold a majority shareholding and therefore is able to appoint a majority of the board of directors) to appoint representatives who really look after the interests of Telstra subscribers, whether they reside in the cities or in regional and rural Australia.

Competition policies do not result in proper services because private companies are in it for the profits; profits first, last and always. The Telstra board members, coming predominantly from the corporate sector, are all motivated by private enterprise ideology. As directors of a corporation, they are bound by law to maximise profits.

A fully publicly owned Telstra, which has been the situation for most of Telstra’s and it s predecessors’ existence, is a much better proposition. There is nothing wrong with publicly owned and accountable monopolies that are properly led by a compe-tent board of directors that not only have the necessary technical know-how but accept that their first responsibility is to provide telecommunications services to the people of Australia.

The choice is between full privatisation or full public owner-ship. What we are witnessing at the moment is the failure of full privatisation by a bunch of corporate manipulators and their political henchmen.

Indictment and prosecution of John Winston HowardAfter arduous work, research and investigation the authors of the petition below believe they have enough evidence to indict John Howard for crimes committed in the illegal invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. The petition comes from Tim Anderson, who readers will recall was wrongfully convicted of the 1978 Hilton bombing and spent years falsely imprisoned. At present “signatures” are only being collected online – via the internet. We apologise to those who do not have access to the internet, the question has been raised with the organisers of the petition and it is hoped that an alternative means of signing will become available soon. Readers are urged to sign the petition if they can. It reads:

10th Congress AppealOver the first three days of October this year, elected delegates representing the Communist Party organisations all over Australia will gather in Sydney for the 10th Congress of the Party. A financial appeal has been launched to help defray the considerable cost of transport of delegates and accommodation during the Congress. Delegates will be coming from as far away as Perth.We are appealing to Guardian readers, Party members and organisations and all friends and supporters of the Party to help fulfil our $6000 target as soon as possible.You may use the form below or write your details on a separate piece of paper. All contributions will be acknowledged in The Guardian unless requested otherwise.We would like to thank the following who were quick off the mark in sendingin the first contributions to the Press Fund:CW Reed $50, Noel Wilson $10, Sam Moutsos $100, Fred Rouady $10.This week’s total: $170.

10th CPA Congress $6,000 Financial Appeal

I, (Name) ………………………………………………..

Address…………………………………………………………………………

wish to contribute $............................ to the above Appeal.

I enclose a Cheque/Money Order/Cash for that amount. Payment may also be made by Credit Card giving the name on the card, the card number and the expiry date:

□ Visa □ Mastercard □ Bankcard

Name on the card ……………………………………………………

Card Number __________ _________ ________ _________

Expiry Date ______ /_______

I agree/disagree to having my name published inThe Guardian in acknowledgement of my contribution.

"

To: International Criminal CourtWe, the undersigned, called for the indictment and prosecution of John Winston

Howard (currently Australian Prime Minister) for acts of terrorism and war crimes.We believe that under Australia’s Criminal Code Act 1995, and under the articles

of the International Criminal Court, there is a prima facie case for the prosecution of Howard for complicity in illegal attacks upon and mass murder of civilian populations of Afghanistan and Iraq, between 2001 and 2005.

These prosecutions should include the following crimes, committed by the accused in their official capacities:

Complicity in the massacre of hundreds of civilians in Baghdad, Basra, Khormal, Babel, Nassariya, Najaf, Karbala and Anbar, in March 2003, through aerial bombardment, including cluster bombs, assisted by Australian “imagery specialists”

Complicity in the SAS backed murder of ten Sabri tribespeople (mostly teenagers) in Afghanistan, 16 May 2002

Complicity in the massacre of between one thousand and three thousand prisoners, after US operation “Anaconda” operation at Shah-i-Kot, Afghanistan, March 2002

Complicity in the maintenance of an international network of torture, from Pakistan to Iraq to Egypt to Guantanamo Bay (US-occupied Cuba)

Complicity in the criminal two attacks on the civilian population of Falluja, in April and November 2004 – where between one thousand and two thousand people were murdered in attacks which included the use of napalm, and the blockading of Falluja Hospital

We reject utterly the claim that any of these crimes could be carried out under any “‘democratic mandate” from Australian citizens.

We urge responsible prosecution authorities such as the Australian DPP, and the International Criminal Court to take immediate action.

Sincerely,

To view the list of signatories and sign the petition visit <www.petitiononline.com/warcrim1/petition.html>For more information: Dr Tim Anderson, Human Rights campaigner 0401 0418 or 02 604 488


August 17 2005

Peter Mac

New extensions to existing parental leave allowances are certain to be terminated under the Howard government’s new industrial relations legislation.

In a historic decision, the Industrial Relations Commission (IRC) last week granted working parents the right to an extra year of unpaid parental leave and the right to work on a part-time basis until the child begins school.

The decision was not a total vic-tory for working families. The IRC rejected the ACTU’s application for other leave, and decided that paren-tal leave and part-time work rights should be granted unless employers could prove that they would be un-able to find a replacement, or that these concessions would cause inef-ficiencies or customer problems, or would cost too much.

Although this seems like an ob-vious “out” for employers, the deci-sion means that they would have to prove their case, rather than sim-ply being able to bluntly say no. However, even this qualified victory for workers will be scrubbed by the Howard government’s new rules.

The government has refused to include these new rights into its new five minimum working standards, which are to replace the 16 “allow-able matters” in award, i.e. indus-trial rights granted by previous IRC decisions.

This means that under the new laws workers will have to “negoti-ate” for these entitlements with their employers. Kevin Andrews, federal Minister for Workplace Relations

said that the government thought employees and employers should sort such matters out between themselves.

His views were echoed by Peter Hendy, boss of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Indus-try, who spoke in favour of “limit-ing future national award arbitration and creating more flexible laws governing workplace agreements and employment contracts.”

However, as industrial lawyer Charles Power commented telling-ly, “Flexibility is really code for al-lowing employers to get rid of these provisions in the agreement mak-ing process”. In short, under the Howard government’s new laws, working parents will be entitled to ask for extended leave or part-time work, and employers will be enti-tled to refuse.

As if this wasn’t enough of a crisis, two other major problems are looming for working parents.

Firstly, access to childcare is likely to become increasingly dif-ficult to obtain. The government’s new “welfare to work” policy means that many parents will be forced to return to work far earlier than they had anticipated. This has forced many retirees to accept responsibil-ity for care of their grandchildren, but it also means that demand for childcare services is skyrocketing.

However, for those who do manage to secure a place in a child-care institution, there’s a second layer of problems. During the last election the Howard government promised enthusiastically that its new child-care rebate would cover 30 percent of childcare costs, but

now they have limited the cost ben-efit to $4000 per annum.

Many parents have had to bor-row money to meet the cost of childcare, but have not allowed for this limitation. Moreover, there is now a strong possibility that the government will increase the mini-mum number of hours that parents have to work under the “welfare to work” rules.

And just to ensure that parents are financially driven to the wall, there will now be a two-year delay in payment of the rebate. The gov-ernment decided that childcare re-bates backdated to July 2004 could be claimed, but then decreed that claims could not be made until af-ter income tax returns had been submitted for the 2005-2006 finan-cial year.

And finally, just to be thorough, the government’s policies will hit those who actually carry out child-care work. The new industrial laws would mean that most childcare workers, who are among the lowest-paid employees in Australia, would lose improvements in pay and con-ditions won after gruelling industri-al struggles over recent years. This includes the recently-won right to convert from casual to permanent employment, and the right to over-time loadings.

The nature of the work, and the intermittent employment to which many childcare workers are subject, means that they will be overwhelm-ingly subject to demands to sign in-dividual work contracts under the new legislation.

Annie Owens, Child Care Union Secretary of the Liquor, Health

and Miscellaneous Workers Union (LHMU) commented: “These con-tracts are secretive documents deny-ing a whole lot of our existing basic workplace rights – including annu-al leave, unpaid parental leave and personal leave, as well as the week-ly hours and wage rates.

“In this environment people do-ing the same job will be paid differ-ently. Past practice shows us who will get the lower pay if a woman and a man are doing the same job.

“These individual employment contracts undermine co-coopera-tiveness in the workplace and favour those who prefer a harsh, competi-tive, stab-you-in-the-back working environment.”

Now that the government is gaining the total parliamentary con-trol it has long craved, its callous policies are revealing the hollow-ness of claimed concerns about the quality of Australian family life and child care. J

Thousand of students and their supporters turned out for a national day of action last Wednesday against the Howard government’s plans to introduce Voluntary Student Unionism (VSU). VSU would hit students’ right to organise collectively and would have a disastrous effect on a whole range of services and activities that are funded through the compulsory fees paid by students as members of their university’s students union.

More than 2000 people gath-ered at Sydney Town Hall, 1500 in Melbourne, 600 in Brisbane, 200 in

Adelaide, 150 in Perth and 300 in Canberra. Sydney University Vice-Chancellor Gavin Brown remind-ed those at the Sydney rally of the threat VSU poses to university life. “We have a rich set of clubs and so-cieties in the sense of rich and di-verse, but poor and impoverished if the legislation goes through.”

In Melbourne protestors heard speakers from the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union, the Finance Sector Union and the National Tertiary Education Union. Assistant Secretary of the NTEU, Ted Murphy, said, “Students are the

best people to determine what sorts of services they need and how to provide them”.

NUS National President Felix Eldridge noted that the proposed legislation will attack all aspects of university life. “VSU will hit the thousands of students in need of welfare and academic advice.

“We don’t want or need tax-payers to fund our services through grants. We already have a system that works. It’s time to drop this de-structive ideological garbage.”

Mr Eldridge warned that student parents will not be able to afford

child care without the crucial sub-sidies student organisations provide. He said everything from tenancy ad-vice, employment services, advo-cacy and representation to sporting activities will be destroyed if the government gets its way.

“The Australian sporting, arts and business communities have made their opposition clear, along with the higher education com-munity. The question [Education Minister] Brendan Nelson needs to answer is: who actually supports this legislation?

“The Victorian, NSW and Queensland branches of the National Party are opposed to the bill – even Liberals, including Senator Alan Eggleston, the government’s Deputy Whip in the Senate, are opposed to the bill.”

The government is effectively blackmailing the management of universities by threatening to with-hold funding if they do not do what the government wants.

The VSU is part of a combined attack on university and TAFE staff and students by the Howard govern-ment which are linked to its changes to the Workplace Relations legisla-tion. It includes:

• Withholding up to $280 mil-lion in university funding if uni-versities do not comply with government-controlled manage-ment and staffing policies;

• Forcing universities to offer non-union Australian Workplace Agreements on terms inferior to current enterprise agreements;

• Undermining the role of staff members’ unions in being able to negotiate collective agreements on behalf of all staff.

Like VSU’s affect on stu-dents, these changes aim to limit the ability of university staff, from cleaners to academics, to have a col-lective voice. The National Union of Students points out that it is all part of the government’s agenda to pri-vatise education in all its forms. J

Australia

Day of action against VSU

Pete’s Corner

Childcare under attack

Parental leave will be scrapped under the government’s new IR laws

Phot

o: T

om P

ears

on

Workers Radio Sydney 88.9FM!Launched Monday August 1st, 2005

A number of trade unions, including the Construction Forestry Mining & Energy Union, Maritime Union of Australia, Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, Transport Workers Union, Public Service Association, Australian Services Union NSW & ACT Services Branch, National Union of Workers, and Liquor Hospitality & Miscellaneous Union have established a trade union radio

program – Workers Radio Sydney. Other trade unions are in the process of adding their support.

Broadcast between the hours of 5.30 am and 9.00 am Monday to Friday.

Visit the website and download individual support forms atwww.workersradiosydney.com


August 17 2005

Thousands of public servants have rejected an AWA-driven campaign to undermine their wages and conditions. CPSU (Community and Public Sector Union) members at the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR) secured an in-principle deal, last week that will maintain their access to the Australian Industrial Relations Commission and deliver on average 16 percent in wage increases, over three years.

The agreement came eight months after their last EBA expired

and followed a campaign of sporad-ic industrial action.

CPSU spokesperson, Stephen Jones, said the agreement was “very pleasing” and hailed the role of del-egates and activists in rolling back the department’s politically-moti-vated campaign.

“It’s clear public sector work-

ers are going to have to fight for their rights at work. If we are stra-tegic and determined we can win.” During the 12-month stand-off, the CPSU accused the DEWR or run-ning its Minister Kevin Andrews’ anti-union agenda.

The department initially reject-ed a union agreement but work-ers responded by overwhelmingly voting down its non-union alterna-tive. DEWR made AWAs compul-sory for new starters, despite Prime Ministerial assurances that workers would be able to choose between collective agreements and govern-

ment-favoured secret, individual contracts.

The final sticking point was its refusal to allow staff to put workplace disputes before the Industrial Relations Commission for resolution.

DEWR folded on that position last week. J

Public servants win collective deal

Defending health careA nurse on the NSW Central Coast, forced to use individual contracts against her staff, has quit in order to lead the charge against AWAs. Genevieve Thyer letterboxed her Erina neighbours about how contracts threatened job security.

“I am very concerned about how AWAs threaten not only health care but education”, Ms Thyer said.

She was moved to alert neigh-bours to her concerns after her em-ployer, an aged care home, tried to get her to put staff on short-term contracts to make it easier to sack them.

Twenty out of 29 staff have since resigned from the Maxine Louise Aged Care facility at Erina over management tactics at the

home. Ms Thyer will tell a rally of over 1100 health care workers at Gosford Hospital this week how management wanted her to put staff on short-term contracts in order to sack them.

“As well as insecurity of jobs it affects the resident care of the el-derly”, she says. “They are in a set-ting where they need the safety and security of strong relationships with staff.”

Staff at the aged care facility are refusing to return until its Director of Care is removed. Ms Thyer will be joined at the rally at Gosford Hospital by asbestos campaigner Bernie Banton, who has thrown his support behind community concerns about the federal government’s in-dustrial relations changes. J

Labour Struggles

Half-baked rip offA national bakery chain has used non-union Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs) to rip up to $3 an hour out of the wage packets of young Australians. Judge Peter McCusker of the South Australian Industrial Relations Commission found Baker’s Delight paid teenagers “grossly less” than award rates and said he was “troubled” that the federal government’s Office of the Employment Advocate (OEA) had okayed the rip-off.

The Commission found at least 50 OEA-approved contracts had un-dercut the relevant award.

The finding was made after the court heard the case of a 15-year-old Deanna Renella who was paid 25

per cent less than the award mini-mum. Under current legislation, AWAs must not put employees at a disadvantage compared to their “overall” award entitlements. But unions have argued that the OEA has a “cavalier” approach to that safeguard.

Changes flagged by the federal government will do away with that requirement and see secret individu-al contracts judged against five min-imum conditions.

They will also see responsi-bility for judging the acceptability of AWAs and agreements, shifted from the independent AIRC to the Howard government’s OEA.

The South Australian court heard that not only was Deanna

Renella underpaid, but she also had also been denied annual leave and sick leave entitlements. The court rejected a Baker’s Delight appeal and upheld an original ruling that it must back pay Renella.

Judge McCusker said young people were at a “manifest disad-vantage” negotiating with experi-enced business people over awards.

ACTU Secretary Greg Combet said the case proved the government should scrap AWAs, especially for young workers.

“This is one of the most dis-gusting and graphic examples of how the government’s AWAs are al-ready used to exploit workers, par-ticularly young people”, Mr Combet said. J

Boeing workers’ protest trekAbout 20 maintenance engineers locked in an industrial dispute with their employer, Boeing, went to Parliament House in Canberra last week to call on the Howard government to support their right to choose a collective agreement in their workplace. Thirty-one Boeing workers at the RAAF base at Williamtown near Newcastle had been on strike for 75 days as The Guardian went to press.

“These qualified technicians, who maintain the RAAF’s fighter jets, have been taking legal industri-al action for ten weeks now, which hasn’t been easy on them or their families”, said Australian Workers’ Union (AWU) national secretary Bill Shorten.

“They’ve decided to make the trek to Canberra because they are fed up with the government ignor-ing their plight, or worse still, rub-bing their noses in it.

“John Howard is spending mil-

lions of taxpayers’ dollars on ad-vertisements telling us one of the key points of the government’s IR proposals is to ‘preserve the right of workers to have a union nego-tiate a collective agreement if they wish’.

“Well, our members have clear-ly demonstrated they want the right to a collective agreement, rather than being forced to stay on unfair and discriminatory individual con-tracts.”

But in Federal Parliament last week Howard made his position crystal clear, stating that Boeing was “within its rights” to refuse to negotiate a collective agreement.

The AWU says the existing con-tracts are in breach of the princi-ple of equal pay for equal work, as Boeing was paying the workers up to $2 an hour less than their coun-terparts elsewhere who were do-ing the same job at the same skill level. J

Bosses Seek“Train and Turf” DealEmployers want the power to sack apprentices as soon as they finish taxpayer-subsidised training.

The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) is demanding there be no right for ap-prentices to claim unfair dismissal.

The Australian Manufactur-ing Workers Union (AMWU) has slammed the proposal as “ludicrous”.

The call is part of a “barriers to training” report written for the Department of Education, Science and Training and follows a num-ber of successful unfair dismissal claims by sacked apprentices.

The report says the right to fire an apprentice at the end of their training would be an incentive for employers to take on younger work-ers.

But AMWU National President Julius Roe says the proposal would drive people away from apprentice-ships.

“The proposal that ACCI has been pursuing vigorously will un-dermine the quality of apprentice-ships and their attractiveness to young people”, Roe said.

“It would make the skill short-age worse. Why would someone sign up to something for a long period on low pay with no rea-sonable prospects for long term employment?”

Roe says the proposal would ad-

vantage unscrupulous bosses who use apprentices for cheap labour and to benefit from government in-centives.

“Unfortunately there are some employers abusing subsidies for training apprentices without mak-ing any commitments to further em-ployment”, Roe said.

The federal government will spend more than $500 million this year on “incentives”, including cash-handouts to employers, under its New Apprentice scheme.

Roe says the government should be considering more certainty for apprentices if they want to attract people to trades. J

Telstra’s cash grabAustralia’s largest company is using labour hire firms to try and slash up to $9 an hour out of workers’ pay packets. Hundreds of employees of BDS Recruit, Telstra’s largest labour hire supplier, are considering industrial action in an effort to stave off massive cash grabs.

Last week, the company re-vealed plans to cut earnings by be-tween $3.30 and $9 an hour. BDS Recruit supplies labour to Telstra for work on its phone network infra-structure, mobile phone tower and broadband service.

Telstra was an early and enthu-siastic user of Howard government laws that attacked wages and job security.

It introduced thousands of AWAs (individual contracts), sacked tens of thousands of work-ers, and contracted out thou-sands more positions to ready

itself for John Howard’s promised privatisation.

While its labour hire provider was moving to slash wages, Telstra announced a $4.4 billion profit and confirmed its new American CEO, Sol Trujillo, would pocket more than $11 million a year.

Electrical Trades Union Queensland Secretary, Dick Williams, said it was a foretaste of what would be tried on once the Howard Government titled laws fur-ther in employers’ favour.

“It just defies belief that, in the face of irrefutable evidence, the Prime Minister and his support-ers continue to say their proposed changes are about higher wages and greater prosperity for working peo-ple”, Mr Williams said.

BDS employees held meetings and telephone hook-ups around Australia last week. J

The department initially rejected a union agreement but workers responded by overwhelmingly voting down its non-union alternative.


August 17 2005

Bob Briton

Last week in Adelaide a new anthology of the poems of Juan Garrido-Salgado was launched. Many of the poet’s friends and comrades gathered in the upstairs rooms of the Adelaide Writers Centre to hear fellow poets tell of Juan’s commitment to his art and the struggle for social justice reflected in it.

Juan’s latest Collected Poems is divided into three sections rep-resenting the three stages or major areas of concern in his life since arriving in Australia as a refugee from Chile in 1990. The poems are very personal. They talk about his battle to master a new lan-guage and a strange new way of living in the country that gave him sanctuary from the Pinochet regime. But always the collec-tive, global experience of capital-ist oppression and the resistance to it come to the fore. Juan’s po-etry is personal but not at all self-absorbed or individualistic. It is unmistakeably socialist verse of the straight-talking variety.

There are recollections of his time in detention at the hands of

Pinochet’s secret police and the tragedy of the coup on September 11, 1973. There are tributes to the Romero Community that does tireless work with the disadvan-taged of Adelaide. There are outraged commentaries on de-velopments like the detention of asylum seekers in concentration camps like Baxter. There’s even a letter to Karl Marx about the relative lack of progress towards the new society foretold by the German philosopher/theoretician/activist. And, of course, there’s recognition of the support and love of Juan’s family who have shared his experiences in Australia.

While the poems deal with problems of huge dimensions and the sense of frustration and isolation this realisation creates, the work is ultimately optimistic and a good read for those need-ing a boost in these dark days of high imperialism. The last poem signs off on this note. Entitled Revolution and Roses, it says that the peoples of Venezuela, Cuba, East Timor, Northern Ireland, the Sudan and Chile will have peace and progress J

Australia

Revolution and roses

Washington’s man in the Ukraine, President Viktor Yush-chenko, not only faces the growing anger of the populace over the country’s worsening economic crisis, but is also be-ing condemned for privatising the symbols of the so-called “orange revolution”, the US-bankrolled campaign that saw him come to office seven months ago. The new owner of the copyright for the symbols is none other than his son, a university student who gets around in a BMW and has a per-sonal bodyguard and fancy digs in the middle of Kiev. The orange slogans and symbols are real money makers, being reproduced on t-shirts, hats and other fashion items as well as sporting goods. Nepotism comes with the capitalist territory.

It’s the technology, stupid, dept. Internet search engine Google has been told by the Australian Nuclear Science and Tech-nology Organisation to remove an aerial photo of the Lucas Heights reactor from its Google Earth program. The satellite from where the images come allows anyone with a computer anywhere in the world to zoom in on any site. They can super-ficially censor sites but the technology will always be leaps and bounds ahead of any attempt to rein it in. And like the idiocy of building a cement wall around Parliament House in Canberra, if anyone was actually intent on causing damage do you think they’d have trouble finding the country’s only nuclear reactor?

The privatisation of the military is chugging along apace with the maintenance of the Air Force’s F111s to be contracted out to a private company. The contract would go beyond the planned 2010 withdrawal of the aircraft from service, meaning that Air Force aircraft maintenance would remain in private hands. Next they’ll be contracting mercenary pilots to fly them.

So that’s why they didn’t sign the Kyoto agreement: the Howard government denies that global warming exists and that burning coal releases greenhouse gases. Their position was exposed last week in court defending the approval of two new coal mines in Queensland. Who said “flat earth society”?

CAPITALIST HOGS OF THE WEEK 1 & 2: ARE Katie Lahey and John Ralph. The takeover of public services and assets is both overt and insidious. Lahey is chief executive of the Business Council of Australia alongside former Western Min-ing Company head Hugh Morgan, who is president of the Business Council. Lahey, who says she works quite happily with the parasitic and fascist-minded Morgan, has also been chief executive of such public bodies as the Victorian Tourism Commission and the Sydney City Council. Ralph is a Chris-tian fundamentalist – a member of the Catholic Lay Order and the Equestrian Knights of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusa-lem. He is also the deputy chairman of Telstra and the former head of mining corporation CRA, which is now Rio Tinto.

UnlawfulPalm Island police raids illegalPolice unlawfully stormed houses on Palm Island after last year’s riot, an inquiry by Queensland’s crime watchdog has found. In a report released by Police Commissioner Bob Atkinson, the Crime and Misconduct Commission (CMC) said heavily armed officers did not have the power to burst into the homes of the Aboriginal community after the disturbances in November last year.

The finding came as a senior police officer admitted the investi-gation into the death in custody of a Palm Island man was flawed and that more could have been done to help the victim’s family.

Under the Public Safety Preservation Act 1986, po-lice should not have entered and searched the private houses because the riots had ended and there was no longer a state of emergency, the re-port stated.

However, the CMC said it could not substantiate allegations police

had assaulted residents when they stormed the houses.

One resident accused police of hitting with a Taser stun gun and a baton, while another alleged police had said they “could kill them and no one would know what happened to them”.

The report did not find any grounds for disciplinary action against the officers involved. Palm Island mayor Erykah Kyle said the CMC’s findings did not help the community move on from its breakdown with the police, sparked by the release of a post-mortem ex-amination of Mulrunji Doomadgee, 36, which revealed he died from a punctured lung while in police custody.

“It’s quite upsetting still for us that our people have experienced such an ordeal”, Cr Kyle said. Palm Island resident Rick Johnson said his five-year-old son was “very ter-rified” of the police working with the Aboriginal community, located

off the Townsville coast in north Queensland.

“Every time he sees the coppers now he runs away and hides”, Mr Johnson said.

However, Queensland Premier Peter Beattie defended the police’s action in the days following the riot by up to 300 residents, in which the police station and adjoining court-house were burnt to the ground. “For God’s sake, you know there was a riot, the police station was burnt down, there was police in fear of their lives … I haven’t seen a lot of public sympathy for that.”

Queensland Indigenous Affairs Minister John Mickel refused to comment on the CMC report. “You would appreciate that the matter’s before the police and the courts … It is entirely inappropriate for me to comment on that”, he said.

Detectives gave evidence at a committal hearing of the 21 people charged over the violent riot.Koori Mail J

Collective action against union bustingOver 2000 rail workers em-ployed by the union busting Chris Corrigan walked off the job last Friday in the face of at-tempts to shut their union out of negotiations on a new collective agreement.

There were large turnouts at peaceful assemblies at rail depots from Perth to Port Kembla by workers at Pacific National – a joint venture between Corrigan’s Patrick Corp and road transport giant Toll Holdings.

“This is something we have to do”, said the Rail Tram and Bus Union’s (RBTU) Greg Harvey from the gates of the Sydney Freight terminal at Chullora. “And we are prepared to do it again if we have to.”

Truck drivers for Toll and other independent operators refused

to enter freight terminals where assemblies had been established. Members of the Transport Workers Union and the Maritime Union of Australia, who fought off attempts by Patrick to de-unionise their stevedoring operation on 1998, joined RTBU members in their actions.

In the lead up to the stoppage Pacific National had told employees the protected action was illegal, a move the RTBU says was designed to put fear into the workforce.

The management strategy backfired with 70 rail workers joining the union in the week leading up to Friday’s action.

RTBU national secretary Bob Hayden described the turn out as “fantastic”.

“RTBU members showed their solidarity with each other and their

desire for a single union collective agreement.

“Workers have delivered productivity and profits under the current collective agreement. But the return for their loyalty and dedication must not be job insecurity, erosion of conditions and wages and the contracting out of current collective agreement jobs.

“The decision has not been taken lightly, members are giving up a day’s pay because they care about their job security.”

The RTBU members have been negotiating with Pacific National for five months in an effort to secure a collective agreement.

Pacific National recently announced a nine-month net after tax profit of $78 million, a 39 per cent increase from the previous nine months. J

Even if the soil of the country is invadedBy lies and corruptionThese people will know; Justice and FreedomAre for us,Are for the world: bread and rosesRoses like dreamsBread like revolution.

Excerpt from the poem Revolution and Roses

Collected PoemsJuan Garrido-Salgado

Five Islands PressMelbourne, 2005ISBN 1 74128 089 3

RRP $18


August 17 2005Magazine

Guardian: What brings you to Australia?

Carah Ong: Well, I was very fortunate. I was always wanting to come to Australia, so this is a dream come true for me and it’s made all the much more important to have been invited by the Hiroshima Day Committee of Australia and to be here for the 60th anniversary of the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The Foundation is putting for-ward a new course for US nuclear policy. One of our main programs, one of the programs that I run is our Turn the Tide campaign to chart a new course for US nuclear policy. I actually just moved to Washington DC last April so I’ve only been there for a few months. What we are focussing on is legislation in Congress, educating members of Congress on the current situation because I think a lot of people don’t actually realise the legislation that is being passed and the even more daunting policies that the US is pur-suing.

For example, the United States is spending right now one and a half times what it spent at the height of the Cold War on nuclear weapons when adjusted for inflation. And most members of Congress don’t realise this. There are also a num-ber of members of Congress who are actually putting forward real-ly great legislation which are steps towards the ultimate goal that we envision which is a nuclear weap-ons-free world. So we’re actually monitoring the legislation and edu-cating Congress and telling grass-roots groups across the country in the United States about this legisla-tion and urging them to contact their members of Congress to support or oppose particular legislation.

G: Can you give us some exam-ples of the type of legislation?

CO: Sure, a positive example – let’s start with the positive one – on July 20 Representative Lynn Woolsey who is a Democrat from California introduced legislation, it was called the Woolsey Resolution on Nuclear Disarmament. I’m ac-tually one of the organisers for Hiroshima and Nagasaki days in the United States. We created an ac-tion postcard on this legislation that people can send in to their members of Congress urging them to support this piece of legislation because it’s really a great piece of legislation that calls for the complete elimina-tion of nuclear weapons. That’s the positive one.

The administration is pursuing new nuclear weapons. It would re-ally like to develop mini-nukes. Fortunately that money was zeroed out last year by representative David Hobson who is a Republican from Ohio, so that was a positive that he actually zeroed that money out.

But quite a bit of money was re-oriented from the world’s best nu-clear earth penetrator to something

called the reliable replacement war-head. This program is actually quite dangerous because it really signals that the United States is looking to maintain its nuclear arsenal indefi-nitely. The program received the money last year and it’s also got an increase of funding this year to produce the reliable replacement warhead. The administration had asked for funds for the robust nucle-ar earth penetrator – it’s also called the bunker-buster – that money was eliminated last year and moved over to the reliable replacement warhead program.

G: What does that program entail?

CO: Well it’s actually very un-clear what the reliable replacement warhead is. They’re not really tell-ing us what it is. I don’t think they’d allow the National Laboratory offi-cials or the scientists know, them-selves. But it was a way to get some funding for the time being. Basically, they want to modify ex-isting warheads.

As Lynton Brooks, the head of National Nuclear Security Administration said recently: if you had grandfather’s axe and you re-place the head and you replace the

handle, you still have your grandfa-ther’s axe.

This was his answer to the re-liable replacement warhead issue, whether or not it was a new nuclear weapon. So, he’s essentially saying “look we’re going to make all these modifications and I don’t want to come out and say that it’s exactly a new nuclear weapon because it’s re-ally unclear that it is at this point.” But it is a very dangerous program and it’s received quite a bit of fund-ing from Congress.

Congress this year actually put some stipulations on that funding saying that it couldn’t be a new war-head but, of course, once the labs get that money it’s very difficult to look over the scientist’s shoulder and make sure they’re not develop-ing something that’s new.

G: And the missile defence sys-tem?

CO: Well missile defence is an absolute debacle. More than US$120 billion have been spent on missile defence to date. And the United States is looking to spend at least another US$50 billion over the

next five years on missile defence. Of course, the United States abro-gated the anti-ballistic missile treaty in 2002 so that it could pursue mis-sile defence and now it’s devoting quite a bit of funding to it.

In fact last year they emplaced six interceptors at Fort Greely, Alaska, and at Vandenburg air force base in California, which is very near where I’m from. I’m from Santa Barbara, California so it’s just in my backyard there. Missile de-fence is one the things that I start-ed organising on when I first started in this field. But missile defence is extremely expensive and – what’s actually very disturbing about it – scientists and experts have come out and said that this is something that is not going to work but yet we’re still pursuing it. The last two tests of the system have been dramatic fail-ures but it’s also a system that incor-porates the international community quite well.

The US has been quite success-fully able to sell this program, for example to Japan, and asked Japan to invest money into it. And also Germany, Iceland and Greenland – there’s a broad range and it’s come to Australia. Australia is actually a

very key component of the missile defence system with Pine Gap here. It actually contributes quite a bit to US missile defences. It’s just a huge waste of money with no chance of success.

G: Not so long ago the peace movement was talking in terms of the threat of nuclear war being at “five minutes to midnight”. That mobilised a very large peace move-ment. How do you see that situation now?

CO: Well, I’m pretty sure the original atomic scientists were the ones that came up with the idea of the atomic clock and I think we’re actually still at five to midnight. It might, perhaps, be even a bit closer, quite honestly. It’s actually a situa-tion in the United States where the peace movement has largely subsid-ed and the nuclear issue has really fallen off the radar screen of most people or the public conscience, if you will.

I think that after the end of the Cold War, in many people’s minds, nuclear weapons went away. There’s been a resurgence particu-

larly in the media, I think very for-tunately, because President Bush has really brought the issue back to the forefront of international atten-tion talking about “nuclear terror-ism”, talking about the situation in Iran and in North Korea; basical-ly, pointing the finger at everyone else except for the nuclear weapons states and particularly its own self, the United States.

I think we’re in a situation now where the talk is centred around non-proliferation and counter-pro-liferation meaning that the exclusive nuclear club doesn’t want anyone else to get nuclear weapons but it’s perfectly fine if they keep them. Really, the situation is that we have 30,000 nuclear weapons in the glob-al arsenal and 4,000 of those are on hair-trigger alert waiting to be fired at a moment’s notice. The United States and Russia each maintain about 2000 each nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert.

This is really quite a danger-ous situation because they’re sus-ceptible to human miscalculation, of course, and they could very eas-ily be launched. But you don’t hear about that in the news media. You don’t hear about the fact that the United States has about 10,350 de-ployed nuclear weapons, 5000 of which are operational and 5000 of which could be operational very quickly. We don’t really hear much about the fact that the United States has 480 nuclear weapons at eight bases in six NATO countries in Europe and Turkey. We don’t hear about Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom – the fact that they’re modernising their nuclear

arsenals just as the US is modernis-ing its arsenal and deploying missile defences.

We don’t hear much news about India and Pakistan and the fact that they’re not members of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and we hear absolutely nothing about Israel’s nuclear arsenal. Israel is the fifth nuclear power in the world and we don’t hear anything about it. There’s no debate whatsoever. But we hear quite a bit about North Korea which could have eight nuclear weapons. We hear quite a bit about Iran which may be pursuing a nuclear program. Clearly they want nuclear energy and they’re moving towards enrich-ment but it’s not at all clear that they want to obtain nuclear weapons. Clearly they want to maintain that option and that’s why they’re pursu-ing enrichment.

But all the international tensions are focussed on this and nuclear ter-rorism. After 9/11 there’s this idea that terrorists could get their hands on nuclear weapons and, while that is indeed the case, it’s not really the greatest threat facing us.

G: Talking about nuclear en-ergy, what is the Foundation’s ap-proach to issue?

CO: We believe there is an in-herent link between nuclear weap-ons and nuclear energy. If a country has a nuclear power plant they’re capable of making a nuclear weap-on. There are 44 countries that are capable of this. This is very clear

with the current situation with Iran, they say they’re pursuing nuclear energy for peaceful purposes but, of course, everybody is worried about it because they know that if you have nuclear technology for peace-ful purposes you can convert that into a nuclear weapons program. In fact that’s how India and Pakistan developed their nuclear capabilities as did North Korea. They had tech-nology for peaceful purposes that they converted to a nuclear weapons program.

The other side of that coin is that nuclear energy has recently been touted as the solution to global warming and to climate change. It’s the new clean, green energy source. Of course in the United States President Bush has touted this and here in Australia there is also a push to open up new reactors and all over Europe, also, there is a push for new nuclear reactors.

But the thing is that nuclear en-ergy is not clean. First of all, the processing of mining and milling uranium creates more carbondiox-ide than the processing of coal or

Nuclear clock still ticking– visiting US peace activist

Carah Ong

Carah Ong is the research and advocacy director for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in the US and the director of the Washington DC office. The Foundation is a non-profit, non-government organisation which focuses on education and advocacy to advance initiatives to eliminate the nuclear weapons threat to humanity, to empower young people to make a difference and to foster the rule of international law. During a recent visit to Australia, she spoke with Anna Pha of The Guardian and described some of the projects currently being undertaken by the Foundation. She also gave her views on a range of issues related to nuclear weapons and energy that are of concern in the US and worldwide.

What greater gift could we give to the people of Japan than to eliminate nuclear weapons this year.

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August 17 2005

other fossil fuels. So, it’s not that green if you have to mine urani-um for use in reactors. Secondly you have huge capital investments involved in building reactors and the construction of these plants will release carbon dioxide. And then with the end product you have nu-clear waste which no-one knows what to do with. We have hundreds

of thousands of metric tonnes of nuclear waste around the world and there’s no safe way of disposing of it. So, our stance is that we should halt nuclear energy until there is a scientifically credible solution to the nuclear waste problem and until more research can be done regard-ing whether or not it’s clean.

G: I believe you’ve got a big campaign going on over there in the US over plans for a new stor-age facility.

CO: Right, Yacca Mountain was the site named by the Bush ad-ministration that would have our na-tional nuclear waste repository. Of course, Yacca Mountain is on sacred Western Shoshone land in Nevada. This site is actually not scientifical-ly credible. There are recent reports where scientists have come out and said that the documents were fudged, that they’re trying to make it the site and so there are a number of law suits in place now trying to stop the Yacca mountain site.

In the meantime, they’re pursu-ing another nuclear waste reposito-ry; once again on sacred Indigenous

land in Goshute Valley in Utah. This is also quite a problem and they’re moving forward with this site, as well, or trying to at least because the representatives in the state of Utah are trying to stop it. But again, the fact that it is on sacred indigenous land really goes to show the rac-ism inherent in the nuclear issue. I mean, of course we wouldn’t put a nuclear waste repository on the land of wealthy white men. Of course, it has to go on sacred indigenous land. It really devalues their culture.

G: Obviously the 60th anniver-sary of Hiroshima is an important one, but do you think there is a par-ticular significance to it at this point in time?

CO: Besides being the 60th an-niversary – the number 60 holds par-ticular significance in Japan, it’s the first year that longevity is celebrat-ed – there are all the things we’ve been saying with our Hiroshima and Nagasaki days in the United States: what greater gift could we give to the people of Japan than to elimi-nate nuclear weapons this year.

Unfortunately, I don’t think that that’s going to be the case but I think that this year offers us the opportu-nity to really once again try to move people around the world, and really try to unite people in saying there cannot be another Hiroshima and there cannot be another Nagasaki. And there’s a time to end the nu-clear legacy and a time to clean it up and the redress the grievances that have occurred all around the world. It’s not limited to Hiroshima and Nagasaki; it began there but it extends much further and there are “down-winders” everywhere in the United States and Australia.

There are nuclear war groups everywhere whose grievances need to be addressed. People every-where need to recognise the dev-astation that has been caused by nuclear weapons globally and that it is something that hasn’t gone away. It’s still very much part of our lives and we can’t continue to be com-placent and learn to live with it. It’s time to end it. J

Magazine

Nuclear clock still ticking– visiting US peace activist

The globalisation of State terrorMike Whitney

“ This is not an isolated criminal act we are dealing with; it is an extreme and evil ideology whose roots lie in a perverted and poisonous misinterpretation of the religion of Islam.”

– Prime Minister Tony Blair

The “evil ideology” that underscores the war on terror is predicated on two basic theories; pre-emption and enemy combatants. Both of these run counter to fundamental principles of human rights and democratic governance. Both must be met head-on and defeated. There is no wiggle-room for equivocating or appeasement; this ideology is the greatest manifestation of fanaticism in the world since the rise of Nazism in the 1930s and must be collectively challenged. As Tony Blair says, “This is not an isolated criminal act” but “an extreme and evil ideology” thrusting us towards global war and ever-increasing human rights abuse.

The pre-emptive doctrine overturns the conclusions of the Nuremburg Tribunals that “War is the Supreme Crime” from which all the lesser crimes naturally flow. It elevates war to a viable form of for-eign policy; an acceptable means of establishing one state’s superiority over another.

In the case of Iraq, where the theory was applied with the most appalling results; it has been ex-posed as a cruel facsimile of un-provoked aggression against a defenceless enemy. The horrific af-ter-effects have been the destruction of Iraqi society, the death of over 100,000 civilians and an enduring conflict with no end in sight. These are the predictable consequences of a pernicious theory that glorifies force above all else.

The principle at the heart of “enemy combatants” is no less sin-ister than that of pre-emption. The theory presupposes that there is a category of people that are intrin-sically undeserving of any human rights whatsoever.

“Enemy combatants” is not in-tended to selectively deprive people of particular rights; it is a blanket indictment of anyone the President arbitrarily chooses to name; strip-ping them of their civil liberties without any legal recourse. It over-turns every meaningful precedent of international law and American jurisprudence. Due process, habeas corpus and the presumption of inno-cence are all rescinded by executive edict. “Enemy combatants” is the language of tyrants; it represents the dénouement of the rule of law and the birth of the imperial presidency.

We have no choice but to cat-egorically reject both these theories as a direct assault on the constitu-tional system, representative gov-ernment and the inalienable rights of man.

It is clear now that the neocons, in their rise to power, developed a strategy to eliminate the obstacles in their path. They wisely narrowed their focus to three main areas where they anticipated the most re-sistance; civil liberties, congressio-nal approval of war and the checks on presidential power. The moni-kers of “enemy combatant” and pre-emption, minted in neo-fascist think-tanks, have concealed the re-al objectives of their creators behind

modern-sounding jargon. The goals, however, remain the same; declara-tion of a permanent state of war and the supremacy of the President.

That’s where we are now; the world tilting further and further to the right and the litany of horrors growing by the day. Torture and indefinite detention have become staples of the new foreign policy

regime; compromising America’s prestige in the world and eroding the nation’s moral authority.

“Usable nukes” are now an inte-gral part of the Pentagon’s forward-defence strategy making the Bush administration the first country to claim a “first-strike” policy if US national interests are at stake.

This makes the US the most dangerous nation in the world; bran-dishing its high-tech weaponry at third world countries and threaten-ing to attack if they fail to comply with Washington’s directives.

The expression of Bush’s maligned vision is now evident

everywhere; from the gun-towers over Guantánamo, to the concertina wire surrounding Falluja, to the cement abutments enclosing the White House. The rising wave of militarism has been accompanied by an equal and opposite retreat in civil liberties and personal freedom.

The full-force of the econom-ic-political-military establishment

is bearing down on the institutions that preserved the peace for the last 60 years. The old order is crumbling and being replaced by a system that accepts no rule except the absolute authority of the executive.

Ideas are the fuel that powers the engine of history. The radical ideology that animates the Bush re-gime is a force as real as the laser-guided munitions that pummelled Baghdad. They may be obscured by the vile fictions of the media, but their deadly meaning is not hard to grasp. They represent the greatest danger the world has ever seen; the globalisation of state terror. J

Carah Ong

The rising wave of militarism has been accompanied by

an equal and opposite retreat in civil libertiesand personal freedom.

A doctrine of permanent war – a US helicopter over Bagdad

What greater gift could we give to the people of Japan than to eliminate nuclear weapons this year.


August 17 2005

Dan Margolis

Unable to win Senate confirmation of John R Bolton as the next US ambassador to the UN, President Bush sidestepped lawmakers and appointed Bolton to the post during a congressional recess on August 1. Bush’s support for the ultra-conservative Bolton has provoked an outcry both in the US and abroad. Among other things, Bolton once remarked that the UN’s headquarters could lose 10 floors and “it wouldn’t make a bit of difference”.

“The appointment of Bolton re-ally shows the disdain and the cyni-cism that the Bush administration has for the UN, to appoint someone who frankly doesn’t really believe in the mission of the UN”, said Kevin Martin, executive director of Peace Action. “It’s a huge slap in the face.”

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was diplomatic. He told re-porters that he would work with Bolton as he would with any other ambassador, but warned, “I think it is all right for one ambassador to come and push, but an ambassador always has to remember that there are 190 others who will have to be convinced, or a vast majority of them, for action to take place.”

During Senate confirmation hearings, Bolton was criticised for his brash style and provoca-tive actions, including his opposi-

tion to the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, claiming it would un-dermine American security; us-ing inflammatory language against North Korea during negotiations on nuclear issues; and falsely asserting that Cuba was producing biological weapons.

Bolton played a role in Bush’s rush to war with Iraq as well. According to Democrat Representative Henry Waxman, Bolton pushed for the inclusion of the false claim that Niger had sold uranium to Iraq in the president’s 2003 State of the Union speech.

Bolton’s critics point out that now is an especially bad time to send someone like him to the UN, which is currently involved in dis-cussions about its future. The top-ic will be addressed at the General Assembly in September, which is shaping up to be the largest gather-ing of heads of state in history.

Bolton’s input to this debate is likely to be dangerous because, as Martin told the People’s Weekly World, “He doesn’t put a whole lot of stock in international law, inter-national treaties or working cooper-atively with other organisations.

“[Bolton’s] line is basically that the projection of US power, particu-larly military but also political and economic, is the only thing that we can really put any trust in. Working with the rest of the world, to him, is just some sort of pipe dream, even though most of the people in this

country think we should be working with the rest of the world.”

Bolton, formerly the Under-secretary of State for arms control and international security, faced unprecedented opposition in the Senate. His nomination was re-ferred by the Committee on Foreign Relations to the full Senate with-out the recommendation of a vote for or against him. Even though the committee is Republican-con-trolled, its members could not agree on a recommendation, particu-

larly in view of the deep misgiv-ings of Republican Senator George Voinovich.

Democrat Senator Christopher J Dodd, writing in the Washington Post, said, “The recess appointment shows that the president is more concerned with political battles than sending the most capable represen-tative to the United Nations, and this manoeuvring has made this al-ready questionable nominee less legitimate to the members of the United Nations.”

At the same time, Peace Action’s Martin said that Bush’s having to resort to a recess ap-pointment was a victory of sorts for those who opposed the nomination. Martin called it a sign of Bush’s weakness. “It also shows just how deeply unpopular Bush’s foreign policies are right now”, he said.

To underscore the point, Martin noted that when Bolton first arrived in New York at the headquarters of the US mission to the UN, people in the area spontaneously booed him.

Bolton will simply be a mes-senger – albeit a rude and strongly disliked messenger – of Bush ad-ministration foreign policies, Martin said. The main thing now, he added, is to focus on changing the policies of the Bush administration.People’s Weekly World J

Youth demandright to education

and jobsThe need to guarantee education and jobs as fundamental to the future of the new generations is the topic of discussions at the 16th World Festival of Youth and Students in Caracas, Venezuela. Nazario Peña, mayor of Balasapuerto, in the Amazonian region of Peru, pointed to free education as one of the main issues of his country’s delegation to the gathering, which has brought together more than 15,000 delegates from more than 100 countries.

In an interview with Prensa Latina, Peña affirmed that limited access to education is one of the most serious consequences of pov-erty among the Amazonian peoples of Peru.

The young mayor noted that re-sources are needed to take forward production and health projects, and also to guarantee basic and higher education. Peña considers it essen-tial to deal with the neglect of young people by seeking integration, with the goal of developing young peo-ple’s potential and abilities.

In this same context, Samuel Moncada, the Venezuelan minister of higher education, explained that his country is studying the possibil-ity of expanding its scholarship pro-gram to take in foreign students.

At a meeting with delegates from Canada, Spain, Colombia, Angola and Mexico, Moncada talk-ed about drawing up agreements

between Venezuela and other coun-tries for student scholarships like those currently offered to Caribbean students.

He emphasised that these uni-versity scholarships are being dis-cussed in coordination with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, given that it is believed that Venezuela is capable of developing those programs.

At the Plenary Hall of Central Park, discussions centred on the right to a job with dignity, with speakers from Venezuela, India, Greece and Cyprus, among others.

According to Pedro Euser, a Venezuelan trade union activist, poor countries must integrate as a way of boosting the struggles for workers’ rights.

Paradip Kumar, of India, stated that the capitalist system is responsible for the lack of job opportunities and the exploitation of the poor.

Pablo Calocinatos of Cyprus commented that young people are the main victims of capitalist labour exploitation, a point supported by most of the participants in the dis-cussion.

Most there agreed that inter-national unity is necessary to back the struggles of workers in different countries, because their problems are created by an international la-bour structure.Granma J

International

Bolton appointmenta “slap in the face”

Chávez visit to UruguayPresident Hugo Chávez of Venezuela last week initiated an official visit to Uruguay, where he met with his host, President Tabaré Vázquez.

Uruguay and Venezuela moved forward in their relations with the signing of a letter of intent on March 1 this year, when Tabaré as-sumed the presidency.

On this occasion, the two lead-ers discussed integration issues in-volving both countries, such as the Venezuelan investment in the state fuel refinery ANCAP.

Similarly, technical personnel and ministers from the Venezuelan delegation followed up on the busi-ness side, including Uruguayan exports of meat, milk and their de-rivatives.

The foreign ministries are likewise working to establish a Uruguayan-Venezuelan Joint Commission to formalise agree-ments between the two countries.

Chávez and Vázquez met at a time when the former is heading the Andean Community of Nations, while the latter is currently acting president of the Southern Common Market.Granma J

A new organisation of cooperating states is steadily emerging on the Eurasian continent. It was formed in Shanghai in 2001 following the US invasion of Afghanistan and initially comprised Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. It was soon joined by Uzbekistan making six member states. It has become know as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and according to Deputy Russian Foreign Minister Alexander Yakovenko has become “a very dynamic, influential international organisation”.

The SCO was initially formed to settle several border disputes but has now gone beyond such issues to include regional economic coopera-tion and the creation of favourable conditions in trade and investments. In 2003 the SCO adopted a memo-

randum to include multi-national trade matters.

In the current month of August several members of the SCO are to conduct joint military, air and naval manoeuvres.

The SCO has now been joined as observers by India, Pakistan, Iran and Mongolia.

Yakovenko says that the SCO is “a unique political chance and a basically new model of geopolitical integration”. He says that it is “an open organisation of partners, aimed at maintaining peace and stability in the region and developing broad in-ternational cooperation.”

This organisation uniting two major world powers and also in-volving India, has enormous, mu-tually supplementary, potential to influence Eurasian and world politi-cal developments. J

Russia, China and other Asian countries consolidate relations

New on the web:The South AustralianState Committee CPA

www.cpasa.blogspot.com


August 17 2005

Jonathan Cook

Until last weekend Israel’s one million Palestinian citizens had stayed out of the debate about the country’s imminent disengagement from Gaza. “It’s not our story”, they said when pressed, “this is an entirely Jewish conversation.” That is no longer the case. Last weekend Arab drivers in the Galilee could be seen flying black ribbons to commemorate the August 4 killings of four Arab citizens on a bus by a young Jewish extremist with his Israeli army-issued rifle.

The 19-year-old gunman, Eden Nathan Zada, presumably hoped that by killing Arab citizens he could provoke riots across the Galilee that would draw the massed ranks of sol-diers away from Gaza. The settlers might then be able to reach their de-sired destination, the threatened set-tlements of the Gaza Strip.

The country’s Arab minority, however, is refusing to be dragged

into a confrontation with the secu-rity forces. And for the moment, at least, the government appears to be siding with Arab citizens against the extremist settlers. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who lost no time in denouncing Zada as “a bloodthirsty terrorist”, needs Palestinian citizens to stay “on his side” as he takes on opponents who hope to bring about his downfall over the disengagement.

But what about the day after the pullout from Gaza? What does Sharon plan then? In this respect, the country’s Arab citizens have strong grounds to be extremely fear-ful, as many of their leaders admit in private.

Their reasoning is based on an understanding that the second in-tifada is all but finished and that a third intifada – with very different

features and goals – will begin soon after disengagement. The signs are that, despite their success in staying out of the two previous intifadas, the minority will have little choice but to be dragged into the struggle this time.

That assessment is based on a view shared by almost all Palestinians that Sharon has no in-tention of turning the disengage-ment – what they interpret as a military redeployment to Gaza’s pe-rimeters – into the first step towards Palestinian statehood.

As if to confirm their fears, the Israeli prime minister and his gen-erals are already warning that they will respond “very harshly” against any signs of what Israel regards as Palestinian “terrorism”. General Eival Giladi, an adviser to Sharon, has said there is likely to be “ma-jor collateral damage”, that is civil-ian deaths, if Gazans refuse to keep quiet post-disengagement.

In such circumstances, it is dif-

ficult to believe Palestinians and Israelis will not be forced into an-other round of bloodletting.

So what will be the battleground of a third intifada? Most likely, it will be shaped by Israel’s current obsessive policy of “ethnic consoli-dation”, of which disengagement is only a small part. Israeli demogra-phers believe that today’s slim ma-jority of Jews in the land between the Mediterranean and the River Jordan – 5.2 million Jews to 4.9 million Palestinians – will be eroded within a decade.

The disengagement will in-stantly erase at least 1.2 million Gazans from the balance sheet. But as the historian Benny Morris and the former chief of staff Moshe Yaalon have suggested, the Israeli government’s greater concern is the “unfinished business” of 1948,

the 20 percent of the indigenous Palestinian population who were not expelled from the newly founded state of Israel 57 years ago.

According to Professor Yoav Peled of Tel Aviv University, Israel has reached a “dangerous turning point” where it is searching ever more desperately for a pretext to remove the citizenship rights of the Palestinians it inherited unwilling-ly in 1948. The goal, says Peled, is to create a demographically pure Jewish state and alongside it a stunt-ed, phantom state for the region’s Palestinians.

As a result, Palestinians under Israeli rule – whether Arab citizens or occupied subjects – are finding themselves being pushed into the same corner, victims of the same oppressive and racist policies. The more Israel presses on with its “un-finished business” from 1948, the more likely it is that a third, even more violent intifada is just around the corner.Jonathan Cook reports from Israel. This article is excerpted from a longer article written for The Electronic Intifada, found at <electronicintifada.net>. J

International

UN: Chinese Ambassador Wang Guangya said last week that it would not be helpful to submit the Iranian nuclear issue to the Security Council. Wang made the remarks before the monthly lun-cheon between UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Security Council members. “The Council has too many things on the ta-ble. Why should we have more?”, Wang said. “The Council is not the proper place for it.” Wang believed the European Union and Iran can work out a solution through diplomatic efforts, stressing that the issue should be solved within the framework of the Inter-national Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The IAEA confirmed that the last seals on Iran’s uranium conversion facilities in the central city Isfahan were removed by the UN nuclear watchdog inspec-tors, marking a complete unsealing of the sensitive nuclear site.

HAITI: Police stormed a slum in the capital last week in what they claimed was an attack on armed gangs that witnesses said left at least five people dead – including a pregnant woman and a teen-age boy. The witnesses said the police, some of them masked, fired indiscriminately during the operation in the Bel-Air slum. Po-lice then stood by as men in civilian clothes attacked suspected gang members loyal to ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. One witness, 25-year-old Genel Gilo, said police fired at him and others as they hid inside a house in the massive slum, killing the teenage boy. They brought the youth to UN peacekeepers, using a door as a makeshift stretcher, but he died on the way.

SIBERIA: A vast expanse of western Siberia is undergoing an unprecedented thaw that could dramatically increase the rate of global warming, climate scientists have warned. Re-searchers who have recently returned from the region found that an area of permafrost spanning a million square kilo-metres – the size of France and Germany combined – has started to melt for the first time since it formed 11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age. The area, which covers the entire sub-Arctic region of western Siberia, is the world’s larg-est frozen peat bog and scientists fear that as it thaws, it will release billions of tonnes of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere.

The deepening crisis in Iraq is forcing the United States to trans-fer troops currently serving in “Operation Enduring Freedom” in Afghanistan. To fill the gap the US is moving 1250 Canadian troops under its command from their support role in Kabul di-rectly into battle zones in Kandahar. Canada, which refused to join the “Coalition of the Willing” invasion of Iraq or the US “Star Wars” missile defence strategy, has so far lost the lives of seven soldiers in Afghanistan – four of whom were killed by US forces.

“Pure Jewish state”behind Gaza disengagement

The Israeli goal is a stunted, phantom Palestinian state

Global briefs

Cuban Five win new trialThe five Cuban citizens currently serving terms ranging from 10 years and double life imprisonment in US jails for “espionage” have been granted a new trial. After taking more than a year to weigh the evidence, the federal appellate court in Atlanta, Georgia vacated the original Miami court’s ruling of December 2001 and ordered that a re-trial take place in a location other than Miami. The decision of the three judges was unanimous.

Cuban agents Gerardo Hernan-dez, Rene Gonzalez, Ramon Labañino, Antonio Guerrero and Fernando Gonzalez were arrested in 1998 after successfully infiltrat-ing anti-Cuba terror groups based in Miami, Florida. However, rather than showing gratitude for the co-operation in its “war on terror”, the

Bush administration was happy to allow a trial marred by irregularities and held in a hysterical anti-Castro atmosphere to grind on to reach the outrageous sentences.

During the original trial, defence lawyers for the Five requested that the trial be shifted from Miami no less than five times. Miami is home to approximately 650,000 Cuban exiles – a community dominated by powerful groups of anti-commu-nist public officials, businessmen, press and other media figures. It is also home to groups that engage in terrorism against Cuba. Orlando Bosch – the man responsible for the 1976 bombing of a Cubana air-liner and the deaths of all 73 passen-gers and described by the US Justice Department as the western hemi-sphere’s most dangerous terrorist –

walks its streets a free man.The Five were never going to

get a fair trial in Miami. The per-sistence by authorities in holding the trials there was a clear violation of their right to a trial free of out-side influences that were prejudiced against them.

After the announcement by the appellate court, defence law-yers held a telephone media con-ference organised by the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five. They expressed their relief that a chance now exists for a fair trial and satisfaction that the latest ruling is in line with what they had requested from the beginning of the process. It is also a measure of the strength of the movement inside Cuba and worldwide to see the Cuban Five set free. J

The goal is to create a demographically pure Jewish state and alongside it a stunted, phantom state for the region’s Palestinians.


August 17 2005

A business connectionOrganised crime and big business have always had a close connection. Both are driven by the profit motive, both believe themselves to be above (or outside) the law, both are anti-social.

The two have always worked closely together, aiding and abet-ting each other, whether using la-bour racketeers and their strong-arm goons to prevent the growth of mil-itant unions or using the vast sums produced by the drug trade, pros-titution, gambling, etc to finance takeovers, enhance an already lavish lifestyle or bribe politicians.

In the United States, the con-nection with organised crime has even become a recognised part of government policy, the intelligence services in particular frequently “co-operating” with crime leaders for their mutual advantage.

Big business has always utilised the underworld to suppress progres-sive movements, terrorise or elimi-nate workers’ leaders who were deemed a threat to the smooth run-ning of business, to break strikes or just to rough up left-wing unionists.

In the 1930s, the Ford compa-ny employed an army of goons with criminal records to keep their work-ers in line. These criminal thugs with clubs and guns were backed up by police with clubs and guns (the capitalist state also has close con-nections with organised crime and big business).

In the 1940s, during WW2, US Intelligence used its connections

with the Mafia on the New York waterfront to organise the destruc-tion of the anti-fascist, communist-led guerrillas in Sicily prior to the US invasion, so that the US authori-ties would not be faced with having to co-operate with a communist-led local government.

The Mafia’s domination of Sicily could have been smashed with the overthrow of Mussolini, but instead the Mafia’s position was reinforced by the US military.

Back in the US, in the ’40s, or-ganised crime had an island of its own, called Cuba. There, a dictator named Batista – with the full co-op-eration of the US government – kept the population under control while US-organised crime figures used the country as a permanently-anchored, off-shore casino and brothel.

Lots of lovely money flowed (il-licitly) into the US from the many criminal enterprises operating in pre-Castro Cuba, and many US businesses and well-connected fam-ilies shared in the action.

One of those families was named Bush. As commentator William Bowles notes: “The Bush-Cuban connection is central to an understanding of the later [US] in-volvement with the Nicaraguan Contras, for both involved organ-ised crime and the use of mercenary armies.

“In Cuba, it was the protection of gambling and prostitution (in the pre-Castro days), and [in Nicaragua] it was the drugs that paid for the illegal supply of weapons to the Nicaraguan Contras.”

In both countries, the connec-tions to organised crime proved useful, “the first in the attempts to overthrow the Castro govern-ment, the second, to remove the Sandinistas. In both instances, it meant breaking the law in order to pursue a foreign policy…

“The network extends in many directions, but with the Bush fam-ily at the centre of the web. The common links are: the CIA, drugs, anti-Castro Cubans, money-laun-

dering operations, gun-running and a plethora of ‘front’ organizations, many of which are still in operation today but now operating in the ‘war on terror’.”

Bowles’ comments are con-tained in an article contributed to the book Devastating Society: The Neoconservative Assault on Democracy and Justice (edited by Bernd Hamm and published earlier this year by Pluto Press in London).

Bowles’ article carries the sig-nificant title “The Bush Family Saga – Airbrushed Out of History”. How much money was laid out over the years to ensure that that hap-pened, eh?

But then, airbrushing embarrass-ing moments, actions and even peo-ple out of the US historical record has become commonplace. Look at how quickly the revelations about the CIA’s involvement in the 1980s in launching the crack cocaine epi-demic in South Central Los Angeles were swept under the carpet and have now disappeared.

The US government’s pre-mier intelligence agency was as-sisting in opening up a new market for the Nicaraguan Contras, whose continued co-operation against the Sandanistas was dependent on their being able to extend their drug traf-ficking operations into the US.

Bringing crack into black areas of the US was also part of the gov-ernment’s strategy for combating the spread of black militancy in the ghettoes. The willful spreading of the drug trade was of minor conse-quence for US strategists.

“In the 1980s cocaine from Colombia was helping to finance nearly all of the competing fac-tions of the CIA-supported Contras in Central America”, writes Peter Dale Scott in Drugs, Oil and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina [Rowman & Littlefield, 2003].

Once again, the intimate con-nections between organised crime, big business and the various parts of the US Administration were

evident. As Scott notes: “The US government did not merely con-done the drug trafficking of most Contra factions, it favored known drug traffickers with government contracts and intervened to pre-vent incipient drug cases from be-ing prosecuted.

“Active in the latter role was a Chief Assistant US Attorney in Miami by the name of Richard Gregorie, the man later responsi-ble for the indictment of Manuel Noriega.”

As dictator of Panama, Noriega had been a US intelligence “asset”, but he fell out with this bosses and had to be removed and quarantined.

Self-righteously charging him as a “drug trafficker” – as though the US had not been intimately involved in everything he did – was [the] means used to put Noriega “out of circulation”.

“Gregorie was backed in his efforts by the number three Justice [Department] official in Washington, Mark Richard. In the crucial year 1986, Richard was giv-en an award by the CIA for ‘pro-tection of national security during criminal prosecutions’.”

In other words, he made sure US involvement in criminal activi-ties was hushed up. What a country! What a system! J

WWII whitewash

This week saw the commemoration of the victory over imperial Japan 60 years ago and therewith the end of WWII. However, somehow it didn’t turn out to be a celebration of the work of a mighty popular alliance against militarist and fascist forces. In fact, the country that did most of the heavy lifting, particularly against Hitler’s hordes – the Soviet Union – got scant mention. Where it was mentioned in the corporate media, it was to revive controversies designed to besmirch its huge contribution.

It seems no effort has been spared to create the impression that, despite all the mounting evidence, the USSR was the only WW2 ally that did not fight those grim battles strictly according to Hoyle. The criminality of the governments of Britain, France and the US in en-couraging Hitler and then failing to form an alliance with the Soviet Union early enough to prevent what followed is simply painted over in the newspaper lift-outs marking the anniversary. And so it is with all the details of betrayal on the part of the capitalist countries.

This week, another such de-tail cames to light briefly before it, too, gets swamped by the enduring self-serving mythology of the rulers of the major capitalist countries. It seems the US General Headquarters (GHQ) in charge of occupied Japan at the war’s end waived charges against officers of Japan’s notori-ous Unit 731 based in Harbin, China from 1936. They conducted germ warfare in various places in China and used Chinese, Russians and other subjects in their human ex-periments. Some 3000 are believed to have perished at the hands of Dr Shiro Ishii’s ghouls before and dur-ing WW2. Their weapons included plague, anthrax and other bacteria.

It turns out that, rather than pun-ish the perpetrators for their crimes, the US military paid them between 150,000 and 200,000 yen – the equivalent of about US$2.37 mil-lion today – for data obtained during their human experiments. In fact, the truth about Unit 731 – obvious-ly well-known to the US occupying forces – only came to light when se-nior Japanese army officers detained by the Soviets confessed to the ex-periments.

Apparently, the whole immoral trade in germ warfare information was justified in the eyes of the US military because it would help give them the drop on the Soviet Union in the planned military contest with the former ally after WW2. No doubt, in the press and on the TVs in countries like Australia, this shame-ful episode will not even appear as a footnote to the history of the war. What a shame for the manipulators of history that survivors of those

dark days are still alive in places like China, who are not so readily influenced by the whitewashing of the facts of that conflict.

R KeefeQueanbeyan, NSW

The role of “The Toad” in Australian lifeThe toad, in the guise of a human, has acquired two of the worst traits of the human race.

It is a consummate liar and hyp-ocrite, as well “it” has developed the ability to play on the weakness-es of the human race to keep him-self in his position. He shows signs of being as “cunning as a shithouse rat”. What a contribution he makes. You have to wonder just what is tak-ing place at the policy meetings of the coalition. Are they secretly en-gaged in gene transferring research? To come up with the nastiest of nas-ties. Makes you take a second look at some members of the coalition. Such names as Andrews, Abbott, Costello, Ruddock and Vanstone to mention just a few.

I have neither the space nor the inclination to list the lies and un-truths of the toad, but I will men-tion just few. In Foreign Policy the two that stand out are the children overboard and the WMDs that were there and yet not there.

In home affairs there are nu-merous instances, but I will list just four:

1) The toad expresses concern for the poor and elderly and then proceeds to cut welfare payments and also makes conditions tough-

er for applicants for their pitiful pittance.

2) The toad expressing concern for disabled and the aged and then under the cover of giving them dig-nity puts them back into the work-force – in a system that cannot find enough work for its ... The unspo-ken agenda of course wasn’t told

a) To provide a cheap work-force to undercut the already poor-ly paid casual and part-time workers and

b) To shorten the lifespan of the disabled and aged thus cutting down on pension payments.

3) The toad expresses concern about the wages and conditions of “The Little Aussie Battler” and proceeds to introduce legislation to lower wages and make working conditions tougher.

4) The toad expresses concern for the security of the Australian people and then introduces mea-sures to curtail their human rights and civil liberties.

Conclusion: when the toad ex-press concern for you run for cover and strengthen your defences, you are about to come under attack.

Bert AppletonWoy Woy, NSW

Workers respond to family in crisisMine workers at a Hunter Valley coal mine have dug deep into their pockets to come to the aid of a young workmate whose family have hit hard times. The family in question have a 20-month-old son who has just had a brain tumour

removed and now the young lad needs constant medical attention at great cost to his parents.

The chances of this young fel-low surviving are slightly improv-ing but it is a long way home for his parents who have to nurse this baby 24 hours a day.

Over the past four weeks the workers at BHP-Billiton. MT Arthur Mine have donated just over $7000 with more to come so “well done fellas”. This money will go to help with medical expenses incurred over the past two months.

On his return to work the father of this sick young boy gave a per-sonal thank you to his workmates for their kind words of support and their generous financial donation.

Peter KennedyMuswellbrook, NSW

Baghdad/LondonWhat would the London death toll have been if, instead of a strike by suicide bombers, London had been subjected to the same “shock and awe” attack that blitzed Baghdad?

Gareth SmithByron Bay, NSW

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August 17 2005

Sun August 21 ~~ Sat August 27

Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canter-bury Tales are bawdy par-

ables that make serious points with earthy humour. Sally Wainwright’s take on The Wife of Bath’s Tale in the BBC’s updated retelling of the great English poet’s Canterbury Tales (ABC 9.25pm Sundays) is all about sex but is neither bawdy nor humorous. Sad, tragic (in a minor key), or pathetic are the adjectives that come to mind.

Avie Luthra, who wrote the script for one of the other tales (The Sea Captain’s Tale) put his finger on the problem with this series when he said of his own effort: “Chaucer’s tale is more lightweight and comic, whereas I saw the sea captain and his wife as tragic figures in a story about the hazards of adultery.”

Sally Wainwright has made The Wife Of Bath into a tale of sex, ob-session and the desire to be young forever, set in the cut-throat world of TV soap opera production.

Julie Walters plays Beth, a 53-year-old television star; Bill Nighy is her fourth husband who confesses that he has been having an affair for so long that his son by it “starts school this week”.

Beth seeks solace in the arms of her young co-star (Paul Nicholls) and then takes drastic action to try to stay young.

Human beings are not the end-product of evolution.

Changes to our environment will mean changes in the evolution of homo sapiens.

In National Geographic’s Tiny Humans: Finding ‘Hobbits’ In Flores (ABC 8.30pm Thursday), scientists investigating the cave-dwelling pygmy humans whose re-

mains were found last year on the Indonesian island of Flores have concluded that they evolved from homo sapiens to cope with the lack of food on the island, as did oth-er animal species restricted to the available resources.

This prehistoric race was tiny. They stood just 1.1m tall, about the size of a modern three-year-old, and were nicknamed ‘hobbits’ by the scientists who discovered them. They lived alongside modern humans for more than 15,000 years.

At Yankee Stadium in New York in 1936, German

boxer Max Schmelling, the darling of the Nazi regime, creamed Black American champion Joe Louis. The defeat of Louis was crushing to black Americans, who had come to regard him as the only black man who could meet and defeat whites on equal terms.

Two years later they were re-matched for the heavyweight championship of the world. More than 90,000 people crowded into Yankee Stadium to watch the encounter, and countless millions more – the largest radio audience in history – listened around the world.

The Fight in the Hot Docs timeslot (SBS 10.00pm Tuesday) tells the interweaving stories of these two men, culminating in what was one of the most politicised sporting events in history.

The pressure on each fighter was enormous. Joe Louis was not only fighting for the honour of his country, he was literally holding the hopes of all of black America in his fists. For Max Schmeling, the fight would demonstrate Hitler’s racial theories of white superiority.

This week’s episode of Midsomer Murders (ABC

7.30pm Saturdays) was originally scheduled to screen in June. It’s not listed as a repeat so I don’t know if the earlier screening was cancelled or not.

For a “police procedural”, Midsomer Murders seems re-markably free of police procedure. DCI Tom Barnaby, as played by John Nettles, never seems to be bothered by superiors, or even to feel the need to establish an incident room, despite it being standard practice for British police when there has been a murder.

He never has a team of more than his sergeant even though his police station is full of coppers apparently just walking about. Except for the police surgeon none of the other coppers seem to have any role other than to string blue and white striped tape around the scene of the lastest murder.

And Midsomer and surrounding district does seem to be crawling with murderers. Dead bodies pop up in numbers that rival the Black Death.

However, as I said in June, this new series is better written than the previous ones, particularly as regards the colourful English village settings. This week’s episode, Dead In The Water, takes place during Midsomer’s regatta week, and it’s the body of the Chairman of the

Rowing Club that inconveniently bobs up during the first race.

The mixing of middle class gentility (with a dash of the upper classes thrown in) and murder is a very English literary tradition, and this TV series unashamedly apes that tradition. And as you would expect of middle class gentility, it is mildly amusing and mildly intriguing.

The second episode of Lost Highway: The Story Of

Country Music (ABC 10.10pm Saturdays) charts the transition of country music from folk art to purely commercial enterprise, and the effect this had on the music itself.

The “hillbilly” music that came out of Kentuckey and Alabama blended two distinct forms: on the one hand the language and traditions of 18th century rural England and the English reformed churches (“Chapel”), on the other the African inspired work songs and gospel style of the black rural labourers.

This folk form was popularised with the spread of records and radio. In Texas, however, conditions caused it to change. There the music was performed in “honky tonks”, bars catering to oil workers that

dispensed music, dancing and liquor in equal proportions.

The raucous nature of these joints called for louder, more insistent music styles with microphones and electric guitars, and “honky tonk” was born, quickly becoming – thanks to radio and records – the dominant form of country music. It is epitomised in the drink-sodden, grief-ridden career of Hank Williams.

Then along came Elvis and rock’n’roll, and the kids deserted honky tonk for the new music. The executives of the record companies with an investment in country music responded by abandoning country music’s roots and changing its form to a more mellow, commercial pop music (called “the Nashville sound”) deliberately aimed at the audience that did not like rock.

The “hillbilly” form of country music would now be restricted to folk festivals. The new attitude is epitomised in this series by a very popular singer (millions of country records sold) who clearly didn’t give a toss about the commercial takeover of country music: “I was out there to sell records!” (which is another way to say “I was out there to make money!”). J

Worth Watching

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POLITICSin the pub19 AugAustralia’s military hardware procurement –dependence on USARichard Broinowski, Adjunct Professor Sydney Uni., former diplomatand General Manager Radio Australia, Author of Fact or Fission –The Truth About Australia’s Nuclear AmbitionAldo Borju, Military Analyst Australian Strategic Policy Institute

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Celebrate the Cuban Revolutionwith the Santiago de Cuba Carnival at KULCHAFriday 19 August 8:00pm till late 1/13 South Terrace, Fremantle (Above Dome Cafe)

Help raise most needed funds to build a child care centre in CubaExperience the best of the hottest Latin Band Rumba Y Café Enjoy the traditional Cuban Mojito and Latin food on saleContact Vinnie on 0419 812 872 or Lefki on 08 9367 2622Pre-sale and members tickets: $15.00 / $18.00 at the door If you prefer book on line at: www.kulcha.com.au (booking fees may apply)Give us a call we will deliver the tickets to you or leave them at the door for you. Make cheques/money orders payable to ACFS WA,Post to PO Box 1455 South Perth 6951

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The Guardian

War is fun as hellSheldon Rampton

Years of writing about public relations and propaganda has probably made me a bit jaded, but I was amazed nevertheless when I visited America’s Army, an online video game website sponsored by the US Department of Defense (DoD). In its quest to find recruits, the military has literally turned war into entertainment.

“America’s Army” offers a range of games that kids can down-load or play online. Although the games are violent, with plenty of opportunities to shoot and blow things up, they avoid graphic imag-es of death or other ugliness of war, offering instead a sanitised, Tom Clancy version of fantasy combat.

Overmatch, for example, prom-ises “a contest in which one oppo-nent is distinctly superior... with specialised skills and superior tech-nology ... OVERMATCH: few sol-diers, certain victory” (more or less the same overconfident message that helped lead the US into Iraq).

Ubisoft, the company contract-ed to develop the DoD’s games, also sponsors the “Frag Dolls”, a real-world group of attractive, young women gamers who go by names such as “Eekers”, “Valkyrie” and “Jinx” and are paid to promote Ubisoft products. At a comput-er gaming conference earlier this year, the Frag Dolls were deployed as booth babes at the America’s Army demo, where they played the game and posed for photos and vid-eo (now available on the America’s Army website).

On the Frag Dolls blog [internet term], Eekers described her turn at the “Combat Convoy Experience”: “You have this gigantic Hummer in a tent loaded with guns, a rotatable turret, and a huge screen in front of it. Jinx took the wheel and drove us around this virtual war zone while shooting people with a pistol, and I switched off from the SAW turret on the top of the vehicle to riding pas-senger with an M4.”

Non-virtual realitiesUnsurprisingly, the babes-and-

bullets fantasy world celebrated in these games contrasts markedly with the experiences that real sol-diers are facing in Iraq. A report by the Pentagon’s own Mental Health Advisory Team – completed in January but only released last week – found that 54 percent of soldiers stationed in Iraq described morale in their individual units as “low or very low”.

In recent testimony to the House Armed Services Committee, US Undersecretary for Defense David Chu, who is in charge of personnel recruitment for the mil-itary, admitted that “there is a reduced propensity to join the mil-itary among today’s youth. Due to the realities of war, there is less en-couragement today from parents, teachers, and other influencers to join the military.”

Chu said parents and other “old-er advisers to young Americans” whose views on military service were shaped by the Vietnam War

have become a chief obstacle to military recruiters, adding that he was also “lamenting the failure” of the media to report all of the “posi-tive successes” of the military along with the news of bombings and growing insurgency.

In reality, as Editor and Publisher reported the day before Chu gave his testimony, the news media has actually been failing to report the horrors of war, as “few graphic images from Iraq make it to US papers”. And as Newsweek war correspondent Joe Cochrane ob-served just three days before Chu gave his testimony, one reason for the lack of positive news from Iraq is that reporters no longer dare ven-ture out from Baghdad’s barricaded Green Zone “unless they’re embed-ded with US soldiers.

“That wasn’t the case early last year, when foreigners could walk the streets outside the Green Zone, shop in local markets, and, most important to journalists, talk to the Iraqi people. Those days are long gone.”

School monitorsMilitary officials have also de-

veloped an elaborate PR strategy for outreach to schools. In autumn 2004, the army published a guide-book for high school (HS) recruit-ers. Colin McKay, a public relations pro in Canada, took a look at it and thought it could serve as a use-ful reference for anyone needing a “step by step guide to building in-fluence in a school setting. ... It’s full of practical student activities (tactics), promotional opportuni-ties for Army reps (brand building), and a detailed explanation of how to track school performance, recruiter visits and identify potential recruits (research and evaluation).”

Specific advice included the fol-lowing:

“Be so helpful and so much a part of the school scene that you are in constant demand.”

“Cultivate coaches, librarians, administrative staff and teachers.”

“Know your student influenc-ers. Students such as class officers, newspaper and yearbook editors, and athletes can help build inter-est in the Army among the student body.”

“Distribute desk calendars to your assigned schools.”

“Attend athletic events at the HS. Make sure you wear your uni-form.”

“Get involved with the parent-teacher association.”

“Coordinate with school offi-

cials to eat lunch in the school caf-eteria several times each month.”

“Deliver donuts and coffee for the faculty once a month.”

“Coordinate with the homecom-ing committee to get involved with the parade.”

“Get involved with the local Boy Scouts.... Many scouts are HS students and potential enlistees or student influencers.”

“Order personal presenta-tion items (pens, bags, mousepads, mugs) as needed monthly for spe-cial events.”

“Attend as many school holi-day functions or assemblies as pos-sible.”

“Offer to be a timekeeper at football games.”

“Martin Luther King, Jr’s birth-day is in January. Wear your dress blues and participate in school events commemorating this holi-day. ... February ... Black History Month. Participate in events as available.”

“Contact the HS athletic direc-tor and arrange for an exhibition basketball game between the faculty and Army recruiters.”

Grand theft privacyThe Pentagon’s recruit-

ment effort also entails massive information-gathering efforts aimed at both students and their parents. Under a little-publicised aspect of Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” ed-ucation program, the military has gained what the Chicago Tribune

described as “unprecedented ac-cess to all high school directories of upperclassmen – a mother lode of information used for mass-mailing recruiting appeals and tele-phone solicitations.”

Before No Child Left Behind took effect in 2002, 12 percent of the nation’s public high schools – some 2500 – denied the military ac-cess to student databases. According to the Washington Post, “Recruiters have been using the information to contact students at home, angering some parents and school districts around the country.”

In addition, the Post reported in June that the Pentagon has contract-ed with BeNOW, a private database marketing company, to “create a da-

tabase of high school students ages 16 to 18 and all college students to help the military identify potential recruits.”

The new database is described on a Pentagon website as “arguably the largest repository of 16-to-25-year-old youth data in the country, containing roughly 30 million re-cords.” According to the military’s Federal Register notice, the infor-mation kept on each person includes name, gender, address, birthday, e-mail address, ethnicity, telephone number, high school, college, grad-uation dates, grade-point average, education level and military test scores.

Questioned about the database, Undersecretary David Chu respond-ed, “If you don’t want conscription,

you have to give the Department of Defense, the military services, an avenue to contact young people to tell them what is being offered. And you would be naïve to believe in any enterprise that you’re going to do well just by waiting for people to call you.”

“Then why not simply restrict the data fields to name, address, telephone number?”, a reporter asked.

“The information that goes be-yond that comes off of commercial lists. Anybody could buy that in-formation. We’re not, this is not a government file. This is off a com-mercial file, commercial providers. So we’re not intruding – and typi-cally that information has come off of forms people have voluntarily filled out to a commercial source. So I don’t see the...”

“They may not have intended it to be the property of the US mili-tary”, the reporter observed.

Privacy rights groups have been sharply critical of the database. According to a joint statement by a coalition of eight privacy groups, the database violates the Privacy Act, a law intended to reduce gov-ernment collection of Americans’ personal data. The database plan, they wrote, “proposes to ignore the law and its own regulations by col-lecting personal information from commercial data brokers and state registries rather than directly from individuals.”

Privacy groups also warned that data collected by the Pentagon could be used for other pur-poses besides military recruit-ing. According to the Washington Post, “The system also gives the Pentagon the right, without notify-ing citizens, to share the data for numerous uses outside the military, including with law enforcement, state tax authorities and Congress.” Defense Department spokesperson Ellen Krenke said the Pentagon does not do this, but the Federal Register notice says the military re-tains the right to do so.AlterNet J

Cindy Sheehan and Bill Mitchell, who have both lost sons in Iraq, comfort each other at a protest outside the Bush ranch

The Pentagon has contracted with BeNOW, a private database marketing company, to “create a database of high school students ages 16 to 18 and all college

students to help the military identify potential recruits.”

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