Cuba holds a smoking gun to Australia

Cuba enjoys a very high prestige among progressive people the world over because of its extensive public health system.  This includes its contributions to developing countries in training and supporting medical personnel in those countries.

Which makes it all the more disappointing that Cuba has joined Honduras and the Dominican Republic as complainants against Australia in a case taken to the World Trade Organisation by the Ukraine.

Ukraine’s complaint concerns “certain Australian laws and regulations that impose trademark restrictions and other plain packaging requirements on tobacco products and packaging”.

As an article in yesterday’s Australian Financial Review notes, “The complainant countries are being supported by multinational tobacco companies”.  Or perhaps that should be “The multinational tobacco companies are being supported by the complainant countries”.

 

Australia is also being prosecuted by US tobacco giant Philip Morris in a case before the courts in Hong Kong under an Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) clause.  This is a clause that allows a company to sue for damages in any country that enacts legislation that impacts negatively on the company’s investments.

ISDS clauses clearly undermine the sovereignty of countries which agree to them, giving corporations greater rights than independent nations.

Worried by the Hong Kong precedent, the Labor government of Australia stated in 2011 that it would not allow ISDS clauses in any new trade agreements.

This is a significant and correct stance and comes as the US is attempting to enmesh Australia and various other states in our region, as well as several in Latin America, into a Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA), the terms of which are top secret. 

What is known, and this only because of leaked documents, is that the US is insisting on the inclusion of an ISDS clause in the TPPA.

 

Australian citizens only have until October to insist that the TPPA be abandoned and that the Australian government maintain its commitment to opposing any further ISDS clauses.

In the meantime, please contact the Cuban Embassy in Australia, respectfully requesting that Cuba respect Australian sovereignty and support our attempts to improve public health through plain packaging requirements on tobacco products sold in this country.

Cuban Embassy: embajada@cubaus.net

…………….

For further reading;

New Zealanders also oppose the TPPA:  http://www.itsourfuture.org.nz/th_gallery/investor-state-dispute-settlement-isds/

Malaysian Health Minister opposes the TPPA: http://www.twnside.org.sg/title2/FTAs/info.service/2012/fta.info.234.htm

The Ukrainian case against Australia at the WTO: http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/cases_e/ds434_e.htm

Melbourne’s Occupy TPPA website:  http://occupytppa.wordpress.com/

On the related threat to Australia’s Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme from the TPPA: http://phmoz.org/wiki/index.php?title=The_Trans_Pacific_Partnership_Agreement:_Implications_for_public_health_regulation_and_access_to_medicines

Sarin: US imperialism tries to create a pretext for intervening in Syria

US imperialism must not be allowed to further inflame the violence in Syria.

The same criminals who misled the world about the “Gulf ofTonkin Incident” in order to openly wage a war of aggression against Vietnam, and who misled the world about Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction” in order to invade and occupy that sovereign state are now misleading the world with allegations of Syrian president Assad’s use of sarin gas in order to invade and occupy the sovereign state of Syria.

With an estimated 65% of US citizens opposed to such a course of action, perhaps it’s time to wheel out Colin Powell to make a presentation to the UN about the use of sarin.

But that might not be possible, because the UN has already heard a report from one of its own.

On May 5, UN human rights investigator Carla del Ponte alleged that the so-called “rebels” were likely to have used sarin against Syrian government troops and civilian supporters.

Carla Del Ponte, a member of the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry on Syria, said that testimony gathered from casualties and medical staff indicated that the nerve agent sarin was used by rebel fighters.

“Our investigators have been in neighbouring countries interviewing victims, doctors and field hospitals and, according to their report of last week which I have seen, there are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated,” Ms Del Ponte said in an interview broadcast on Swiss-Italian television on Sunday.

“This was used on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities,” she added.

Del Ponte’s “strong, concrete suspicions” are confirmed by Turkish state media reports that Turkish police have seized sarin gas from Al Nusrah rebels preparing to leave Turkey for Syria.

In 2012, the President of US imperialism had made much of a “red line” that Assad would be deemed to have crossed if Syrian government forces used chemical weapons.

But when del Ponte made her allegations against the US mercenary “rebels” he was strangely silent.

So there is a “red line” for those you are trying to overthrow, but no “red line” for your agents in that overthrow.

To add to the hypocrisy of the imperialists, there are reports that the CIA has supplied chemical weapons to its proxies among the heart-devouring “rebels” and trained them in their use.

The reports add to suspicions that the US imperialists have used “rebel” forces to use chemical weapons as a means of then laying the blame at the feet of the Assad government, feet that will then be deemed to have crossed the “red line”.

There appear to be no end to the crimes that imperialism can engage in.

There appear to be no lies that imperialism cannot spread.

There appear to be no hypocrisies that imperialism cannot create.

Either the “red line” applies equally to the Assad government and to the US mercenary Al Qaeda “rebels” OR US imperialism stands exposed and condemned for aiding and abetting a war crime by its proxies at the same time as it alleges a war crime by a sovereign state.

Nationalise the Australian auto industry!

 

 

US carmaker General Motors Holden is pressuring its vehicle assembly plant workers at Elizabeth in South Australia to take a wage cut of around $200 per week as it plunges into further financial difficulties.

The US giant plans to put a series of proposals to reduce production costs to workers and ask them to vote on them.

"This is about giving Holden employees a direct say in their future," managing director Mike Devereux, a US citizen, said in a statement on Tuesday June 15.
Of course, such noble sentiments of workplace democracy were never raised by management in earlier and more profitable times.

"We made $100 million in profits this year - better call the workers to a meeting and let them vote on how much they want to take out of that."

The company in recent times has cut shifts and reduced working hours, putting workers on reduced pay via a four day week.

It has also received millions of dollars in state and federal government assistance.

 

 

Never was there a more cynical example of privatising the profits and socialising the losses.

Well, if we’re going to have to socialise the losses, let there be no hesitation in raising the demand that the whole operation be socialised.

Auto manufacturing should be possible in Australia.

With Ford shutting down, and Holden teetering on the brink of closure, it’s time to nationalise the whole industry, rationalise the whole industry and concentrate on advanced technologies and processes to support green energy car, commercial vehicle and public transport production in line with market requirements.

Planned production, not market anarchy.

Nationalise the auto industry in Australia!

Murder in Woolwich

Like the Boston bombings, the murder of a British soldier yesterday in Woolwich has received massive publicity. That is, of course, understandable: these are violent acts occurring in places where we do not expect to see violence, and in situations where any of us could be among the random victims. However, the far greater violence of imperialist attacks on people resisting "full spectrum domination" is editorially disappeared from the capitalist mass media or buried in a page 37 paragraph and by and large accepted by Western peoples because it is "over there" and in places where we assume violence to be some sort of norm.

How do we respond to workmates and friends when a topic like Woolwich comes up?

Acts of terrorism must be condemned.  But we cannot condemn them in the same self-righteous and blinkered manner as the capitalist media and right-wing nationalist and reactionary people do.

They refuse to admit that there can be any rational basis for the actions of the terrorists. 

I have before me the Adelaide Advertiser, a Murdoch publication.  On page 4 it excerpts the comments of one of the terrorists under the heading “Rantings of a madman”.  On the same page, it directs readers to its website with the prurient appeal to “Watch the extremist’s manic rant”.

Hence, any consideration of what may have motivated the murder of the soldier is dismissed.  A “madman” does not have rational motivations. A “manic rant” is incoherent and crazy, illogical and delusional.

Yet in Murdoch’s national flagship, the Australian, comprador journalist Greg Sheridan says that what was “appalling” – even “especially” appalling – was “the calm, even lucid, fashion in which one of the two murderers explained the Islamist nature of his motives to the mobile phone camera of a passer-by.”

So what was it?  A “manic rant” or a “calm, even lucid” explanation?

At least one cannot accuse Murdoch of not allowing different views and interpretations in his newspapers!

And in any case, Sheridan was hardly stepping out of editorial line.  He opened with the one result that terrorism is guaranteed to produce, namely, a call for even greater repressive powers to be vested in the capitalist state’s security services: “…the terrorist threat is increasing, our ability to combat it is beginning to decline and we are contemplating further handcuffing of our security agencies in their counter-terror efforts.”

So what did the terrorist of the manic calm, of the lucid rant, have to say?

It is true that he praised Allah and bemoaned the killing of Muslims in Afghanistan by British forces.  I suppose that is what Sheridan means by the “Islamist nature” of the killer’s motives.

But the core of the killer’s message was the need for the British people to get rid of their government, a government that cares as little for the people of Britain as it does for the people of Afghanistan, and for the British people to demand the return of British troops (“our troops”) so that “we can all live in peace”.

Editorially, the Australian was in no mood to contemplate such a rational message.

Its opening salvo was that the “horrendous slaughter of a British soldier on a London street, like last month’s bombing of the Boston Marathon, is a gruesome reminder of the Islamic terrorist evil that lurks within even the most civilised societies.”

This is the same paper and same global media empire which never reminds us of the gruesome terrorist evil of massive airpower strikes at “weddings, parties, anything” in the “other” parts of the world, in “even the most civilised societies” that are not yet subject to the “full spectrum domination” of US imperialism and its NATO allies.

Here is one statement that goes to the heart of the matter, from the UK-based World to Win News Service. Are there others?

………………

The state feeds on terror and ignores serious threats to society
Events in Woolwich yesterday show that the state is totally geared up for emergency action when it wants to be – committees meet, officials are called in, politicians focus their attention and insist something must be done.

One is entitled to ask why they can respond so strongly to a lone terrorist event when they are so entirely unable to react to long-term, serious threats to society – poverty, climate change, banking and tax corruption and youth unemployment to name a few? No committees met when it was reported last week that the concentration of CO2 has risen above 400 parts per million!

Cameron says the "British people" will "never buckle in the face of terror" and promised "terrorists will never win". But those who carried out yesterday's horrific attack and others like the Boston Marathon attack, were not aiming to win – they were aiming to die, and to strike a blow against their enemy as they did so.

Yet such acts of terrorism can no more “win” than the NATO powers can win their so-called war on terror. Instead, the world is now locked into a continuous conflict and the state adopts the rhetoric of “crushing” the terrorists, a rhetoric that is easily transferable to crushing all opposition.

The reaction of the state media shows the extent to which even intelligent journalists adopt distorted thinking in order to support the kind of imperialist and colonialist rhetoric that still colours so much public discourse in the UK. In an astonishing article on the BBC website, home affairs correspondent Dominic Casciani says:

For jihadists, it really comes down to the presence of soldiers - and an entire framework of belief that sees those personnel, whatever role they have been given under international law, as the enemy of Islam. That argument is often backed up with graphic images online of the suffering of ordinary women and children. It's all designed to whip up anger and a sense of burning injustice - the kind of injustice that leads people to be convinced that something must be done.

So women and children suffering in the Middle East and Afghanistan are just "images" and only serve to "whip up" a sense of burning injustice. They are not really burning injustices in themselves! He goes on:

Now, most people who feel a sense of injustice obviously combat it in [sic] purely peaceful means. The point about terrorism is that the sense of injustice becomes a springboard for mental somersaults in the mind of someone who thinks that indiscriminate violence can create justice.

So "most people" obviously combat injustice by peaceful means? Would that include the troops sent to Mali by the French government? Or the first invasion of Iraq, after Saddam fell out with the West and invaded Kuwait? Or the second invasion, when, as Blair now admits, the goal was regime change? Or the invasion of Afghanistan in response to the attacks on the Twin Towers? Or illegal drone assassinations?

Of course not! These claim the sanction of “international law” and fighting to “preserve our way of life”, which, when it comes down to it, means sustaining corporate and financial power over ordinary people’s lives.

The last time the cabinet’s emergency unit Cobra was in almost continuous session was in 2011 when riots broke out in London and other cities – another outpouring of anger at burning injustice. On this occasion it was the injustice of police shooting a young black man and anger at the impact of the economic crisis being foisted on to the young and the poor.

The reaction was ruthless and the justice system was instructed by the government to repress those who were caught. First-time offenders were given long prison terms; young people got four years just for Facebook messages.

Of course terrorism and rioting are not going to change the state of the world, or the state of the state. The state feeds on such acts and uses them to mobilise reactionary forces and reinforce repression against every community.

So the capitalist state is itself the problem, not the solution. It can never address the grievances that drive people to terrorism or to riot. Only when power is in the hands of ordinary people will the conditions exist for that to happen.

Penny Cole
23 May 2013
http://www.aworldtowin.net/blog/the-state-feeds-on-terror.html

The dangerous charm of Michael Chaney

Last night, the ABC TV program Lateline included a segment where presenter Emma Alberici interviewed one of the senior members of the Australian ruling class, Michael Chaney.

Unlike some of the buffoons belonging to that class, Chaney is urbane, charming, personable, pleasantly-spoken, articulate and oh so reasonable.  His formative years were spent at Aquinas College, which, together with his family, can take credit for grooming and nurturing these qualities.

Speaking of family, Chaney’s father Sir Fred was a member of the reactionary Menzies Cabinet, while one brother was a conservative Senator, and another is a Supreme Court judge.  Michael Chaney is in business, is Chancellor of the University of WA and heads a federal government advisory body on international education, so the family embraces capital, politics, education and law in its areas of influence.

The Lateline segment can be viewed here (http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2013/s3748800.htm) and there is also a transcript of the interview.  It is worth watching at least a portion of the segment just to get a feel for how smooth, how unassuming, modest and refined is our ruling class member Chaney.

But perhaps I’m concentrating too much on the person.  After all, if this were a diatribe against Clive Palmer or Gina Rinehart or Twiggy Forrest a myriad of bourgeois voices would demand that we “play the ball and not the man/woman”.  So what did he say?

Firstly, Chaney was asked for his opinion on the National Insurance Disability Scheme.

“Well, you know,” he began, “there are many causes that people would like covered. I mean I don't think many people in our community would deny the worthiness of that cause. The Opposition supported it, the Government supported it. The question is whether these sorts of things can be paid for….”

Despite his acknowledgement of bipartisan support for a “worthy cause”, Chaney took a bash at the “size of government”, a favourite hobby-horse of the corporate-financed Centre for Independent Studies of which he happens to be Director.

Returning to the topic, which he again stated to be one of a number of “terrific ideas”, Chaney effectively put the kibosh on the NDIS, saying: “no one would argue with many of them, but we need to be able to pay for them, and you can't just keep spending money without getting the revenue.”

I was at this point busy picking myself up off the floor. 

We shouldn’t be having this “terrific idea”, the NDIS, because the government can’t get the revenue to pay for it.

And who has been running campaigns against the pollution tax, against the resources super profits tax, and campaigning to reduce government expenditure from 35% of GDP to 30% of GDP if not Mr Chaney and his cronies in the ruling class?  And who would howl like a wolf in the night if, in order to increase its revenue base, the government adopted a financial super profits tax?

Perhaps the Chairman of the National Australia Bank.  Now, who might that be?  Oh, it’s the saintly Michael Chaney in another of his roles as finance capitalist. 

The banks are raking it in, as this opening paragraph from yesterday’s Murdoch rags made clear:

 “AUSTRALIA'S big four banks are tipped to pocket more than $13 billion - a record high half-year profit - after refusing to pass on interest-rate cuts in full and sacking thousands of staff.”

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/business/big-four-banks-set-for-bumper-profits/story-e6frede3-1226631870846

And if we were not all convinced by the avuncular tut-tutting “great-idea-but-pity-you-can’t-have-it-‘cos-we-won’t-let-you-tax-the-super-rich”, Chaney sealed the fate of the NDIS with a dire warning about Australia heading for a crisis of Cypriot proportions:  “ In the end you end up like the countries we're seeing now in Europe that have very high levels of debt and very few ways of getting out of it.”

Emma demurely asked whether such a scenario was likely, and Chaney smilingly assured her that unless “hard decisions” were taken, we’d end up like that “basket-case, Ireland”.

That provided Alberici with a hook into other areas of “hard decision”, like increasing, rather than lowering, company taxes to pay for the Opposition’s Paid Parental Leave Scheme should they win government in September.

“Is that something the economy needs right now?” she asked, doing such a great job of really putting her interviewee under pressure.

“Well, no, it's not,” replied the patient and always helpful Chaney. "But it's another example of what I was talking about.”

And just as helpfully he added that “we need rationalisation of the red tape that faces companies trying to do business in Australia. And also reforms in other areas I think like workplace relations.”

Oh, they dare not whisper its name, but give ‘em time, and they’ll have a re-christening of WorkChoices!

To achieve these items on the ruling class agenda Chaney proposed a more powerful and more “independent” version of the Productivity Commission.  The quotation marks are warranted because such institutions may be independent of the government of the day, but they are never independent of the ruling ideology in which is distilled the core values and outlook of the ruling class.

And as for the people, they can just be pushed aside, said Chaney, but much more nicely and reasonably.  In fact, he prefaced that little piece of fascism by citing the example of one of neoliberalism’s most eloquent advocates, the ALP’s Paul Keating:

“In the early '90s the treasurer, then Paul Keating, gave the Reserve Bank independence over the setting of interest rates. One of the most sensitive political variables that you could imagine. He did it, I believe, because he realised that's what the economy needed.”

A quick digression.  Although they speak English, capitalists often try to neutralise the language, or maybe it’s neuter the language, by disguising the class content of meanings. An acceptable interpretation of the word “economy” here would be “the financial elite and the giant mainly multinational corporations”. Re-read that last sentence in the previous paragraph and it will be clear why Keating is a poster boy for bankers and financiers. But we have rudely interrupted Mr Chaney….

“It needed to be free of political considerations and one of the problems we have today, I think, is that every decision that's made seems to be coloured by how will this look politically, how will it affect voters and so on. We need some sensible, long range planning, of people who don't have those sort of interests at heart and who have the national interest at heart.”

Ah yes, Hitler’s and Mussolini’s concept of the “national interest” pursued without reference to “voters” and their “sorts of interests”.

I took a bit longer to get up off the floor at this point and missed some minor pleasantries between host and guest about market solutions to climate change, and the possibilities of floating liquefied natural gas technology, but at least I was in time to hear Alberici courageously broaching the issue of Section 457 visas.

After all, the Federal Court this month had heard allegations that foreign workers were paid less than $3 an hour to work on oil rigs operated by Woodside Petroleum off Western Australia.

As a nice person myself, I have to acknowledge that someone as busy running the country as Michael Chaney cannot be expected to have known about the wages and working conditions of every 457 visa worker employed on a Woodside oil rig, but he surely cannot be unaware that one of his own companies is embroiled in the scandalous rorting of this scheme.

Did Alberici go him at this point? Even Leigh Sales might have by now affected a quizzical stare and made some pointed comment.  But not Alberici. She was too busy trying to compete in the charm stakes. And Chaney?  For disingenuity he has no peer.

“I haven't had personal involvement in this but anyone I've talked to who's utilised the 457 program has been really enthusiastic about it in terms of filling skills gaps.”

I had taken to bracing myself against another fall, so I only gasped a few times as he continued:

“…I've seen the comment that rorts have resulted in a reduction of wages in the IT industry. … how could you pay anyone less who's working alongside someone else, what would that do to the culture of the company? So I can't really understand that point. But, you know, the Minister says there are rorts and if there are rorts they should be fixed up. People should be prosecuted if they're rorting and we should continue with what is a terrific program.”

Hey Mr Charm, your company is facing the Federal Court, and you don’t know about it???

After another denial of knowledge about 457 visa rorts, and a pleasant sideswipe at Minister Brendan O’Connor (“if there are some rorts they should be taken care of. You know, I'm not sure what motivates people in politics, I've given up long ago trying to second guess that. But I'm sure the Minister's genuine in his concerns about some rorts but I suspect they're not material”), it was time for host and guest to blow each other kisses (figuratively speaking) and say goodbye.

Which is what we will do one day to the ruling class, but without the kisses.

Put Clive on the Titanic and push him towards an iceberg...

 

Queensland mining billionaire Clive Palmer has announced plans to resurrect the United Australia Party (UAP).

This is quite consistent with his bizarre fascination with the building of a replica of the Titanic.

Both the Titanic and the UAP were disasters that promised much but eventually sank without a trace.

In the case of the original UAP, right-wing and pro-Empire social democrats joined forces in 1931 with conservatives who had fallen out with the Nationalist government and created a party whose slogan was “All for Australia and the Empire”.

The UAP won government in 1932 and attacked the working class during the 1930s Depression.  It pursued a pro-fascist appeasement policy, particularly under its new leader Robert Menzies.  He praised Hitler and bought into a huge fight with wharfies and other workers over the issue of exporting scrap (“pig”) iron to the Japanese militarists for their war of conquest in China.

The UAP became unpopular, especially after the outbreak of the Second World War, and only stayed in office after the 1940 election with the support of two independents.

Menzies (“Pig Iron” Bob) resigned as leader and was replaced by Fadden whose 1941 Budget was denied when the independents voted with Labor.

The Governor-General then asked Labor’s John Curtin to form a government.

 

Amazing, isn’t it, that a billionaire who fights against proposals for his industry to pay even the weakest of mining taxes, has the personal wealth to splash around with rebuilding the Titanic and financing his own political party.

But history is repeating itself here, both as a farce and a tragedy.

The original UAP was scorned as a corrupt party too closely tied to wealthy backers.

In his book, If Money Talks, What Does it Say?: Corruption and Business Financing of Political Parties,  Iain McMenamin  observes:  “The Liberal Party’s interwar predecessor, the United Australia Party, was very much dependent on ‘self-constituted committees of wealthy supporters’ (p. 84). 

The Wikipedia entry on the original UAP describes it as “compromised by their reliance on large donations from business and financial organisations”.

This latest display of “I’m-rich-enough-to-buy-all-of-you-and-bugger-paying-taxes” egoism is further proof that Australia’s working people need to stop carrying the rich, buy them all tickets on Clive’s rebuilt Titanic, and give it a huge push in the direction of the nearest ice-berg.

Pyne uses Anzac Day to revive racist cultural war

Federal Opposition spokesman on education, Christopher Pyne, has stated that a future Liberal government would review elements of the new Australian Curriculum that presented a "black armband view" of Australia's history.

He said that the federal coalition wants to "restore the importance of the Anzac story in school history classes"

By attempting to score brownie points with racist and conservative Australians, Pyne has only revealed his own ignorance of history, including the Anzac tradition.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men and women, having been subjected to the violence and frontier warfare of colonisation, nevertheless served in the Australian armed forces in every conflict in which they have been involved.

Once these conflicts were over, these sae ATSI service people were thrown back into civilian life as second class citizens.

 

According to the website

http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/history/anzac-day-coloured-digger-march :

They were not only denied the recognition afforded to non-indigenous soldiers but also the same rights their comrades in arms were granted. They did not receive a war pension, were not allowed to join RSL clubs and some men even came back to find their children had been taken from them.

The nephew of Australia's most famous Aboriginal soldier, Captain Reg Saunders MBE, said when his uncle came back from serving in Korea, "he couldn't even get a beer in a pub, let alone a pension, and he wasn't permitted to become a citizen until 1968".

 

Precisely because ATSI people and their supporters have brought the black history of this country out into the light of day - the so-called "black armband view" that Pyne decries – some justice is now being done to the service record of Indigenous Australians.

For example, in South Australia, the RSL, Reconciliation Australia and the Council of Elders of South Australia, with the support of the state government, have commissioned a sculpture of a black serviceman and a black servicewoman to be erected at Adelaide’s Torrens Parade Ground.

Among those involved in this project is Bill Hignett, a Vietnam veteran and union organiser, who is a member of Reconciliation SA.

Hignett, and others like him, give the lie to Pyne’s attempt to pit the spirit of Anzac Day against due recognition of past and present injustices to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

A black service person with a chest full of medals is fully entitled to wear a black armband in memory of the victims of the colonial wars for the conquest of his or her traditional lands.

MUA members demand safety before profit

(Above: MUA members show a line of the dead)

Around 100 members and supporters of the Adelaide branch of the Maritime Union of Australia demonstrated outside the offices of BusinessSA, the SA affiliate of the national Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) on March 26.

They demanded BusinessSA get out of the way of a national stevedoring code of practice which would enshrine health and safety provisions that might put a stop to industrial accidents and deaths in the industry.

(Above: MUA State Secretary Jamie Newlyn addresses the rally)

Since 1990, 17 maritime workers have been killed at work.

Unlike factory workers who go to work at the same site each day, who have had OHS induction, who know the danger spots and the dangerous practices, and who have access to an elected health and safety rep who is familiar with the workplace routines, maritime workers go to a different "factory" virtually every day.

That "factory" is the next foreign ship in port.  Its layout may be different, its loads different, its routines different.  That is why it is dangerous work.

But none of that matters to BusinessSA or the major stevedoring companies.

BusinessSA and ACCI are attempting to remove some of the hatchmen provisions.  Crane operators on building sites are in radio contact with a "dogman" who acts as their eyes and ears.  The hatchman acts in the same capacity on board ships.  The bosses think the position is expendable.

They want the operation of ships' cranes to be exempted from a new cranes code of practice.

They want the proposed National Stevedoring Code of Practice to only have the status of "guidelines", thus removing much of its regulatory powers.

ACCI and BusinessSA are the embodiment of "corporate greed" and they are attacking basic safety conditions on the waterfront by consistently blocking the stevedoring safety code.

Naturally, they had police on hand outside the BusinessSA headquarters to ensure their own health and safety - and denied access to a deputation of MUA members.

Maritime workers have a history of struggle and will be well-supported across the working class.

Solidarity was shown by the presence of several other unions, including the Rail Bus and Tram Union, and the Australian Education Union.

..............

Further reading:  This is another example of capitalist "maggots" who create dead flesh.  See my poem "Maggots" for comment on similar bastards in the construction industry.

Market destroys local jobs

Around 100 members of the National Union of Workers (NUW) and the Association of Newsagents Cooperative Ltd (ANCOL) gathered outside the South Australian parliament to protest against the loss of local jobs to two multinational companies based in Victoria. Members of the Australian Education Union also joined the rally.

The NUW  workers were employed by local stationery supplier KW Wholesale Stationers.  KW Ancol runs a warehouse owned and operated by a cooperative of around 380 independent newsagencies across SA.

For nearly 40 years, the SA government has awarded the contract for stationery supplies to SA public schools to KW Ancol. 

Now, however, under Labor Premier Jay Weatherill’s  “left” leadership, the government has put the contract out to tender.

The cheapest tenders came from two interstate-based multinationals who engage labour through labour hire companies and who undercut the SA award rates paid by KW Ancol.

In the pre-neoliberal days when governments at least paid lip-service to some sort of social function, government tenders were often directed to achieving social goals, such as local employment.

In today’s world, where competition policy rules the roost, and the market determines the outcome of government contract tenders, anyone who can push wages down, casualise labour, and deliver a cheaper service wins the race.

David Garland, from the NUW, said “It is shocking that a Labor Government is contributing directly to the growth of temporary forms of employment by the way they are doing their own business”.

AUE President Correna Haythorpe reported complaints already coming in from schools about the poor quality of service provided by the multinational contractors.

Politicians from all sides expressed support for the local workers and their employer: Family First, the Greens, the Liberal Party, two ALP members of parliament, and an Independent.

Time to get real on mining tax

It’s time to get real on the mining superprofits tax.

The big miners have used their loopholes and their lawyers to minimise their obligation to pay taxes.

This is after Gillard came to their rescue when Rudd was planning to tax all mining and at a much higher rate than contained in the current tax.

Rudd’s Resources Super Profit Tax (RSPT) was a 40% tax on the ‘super’ profits made from ‘the exploitation of Australia’s non-renewable resources’ including gold, nickel and uranium mining as well as sand and quarrying activities.

All of the latter were exempted under a deal struck by Gillard after her coup against Rudd. 

The current Mineral Resource Rent Tax (MRRT) applies only to coal and iron ore.

The tax is lower (30%) and a company now has to have annual profits of $75m compared to Rudd’s RSPT threshold of $50m.

One of the loopholes is that companies can deduct from profits various allowances including royalties paid to states and territories and company valuations of plant and equipment.

The effect of all this is that a tax originally designed to bring in $3bn in its first year of operation (the RSPT in the 2012-13 year), increasing to $9bn in 2013-14 was emasculated so that its projected revenue was only $2bn and, with all the loopholes has only managed to raise $126m (or $0.126bn) in its first six months.

It’s now time to get serious and demand that the original RSPT scope and rates be reapplied.

We’ve got austerity measures being introduced all around the country for lack of government revenue, and the big miners just kicking sand in the government’s face.

Please follow this link to the Spirit of Eureka website and sign the online petition accessed on the right hand side of the page for an increase in the mining tax.

And if we get enough people to be really serious we can move on to nationalising the major miners and passing on all of their profits to society.

James "Purlie" Wilson

James "Purlie" Wilson



OK, she’s nearly three
but when she called with delight,
after running around the headstones
lichened and leaning
in their carpet of Hampshire green
This would be a great place to live!
I knew she didn’t quite grasp the
context…

Backtrack a week to Strathaven, Scotland
where, on a fruitless search for dead family,
we found the grave of James "Purlie" Wilson
Martyred in the cause
of freedom and emancipation
of working people
on August 30, 1820
never before heard of
how he lives for me now!
I grasp the context in my fist…

22/11/2012


http://www.scottishrepublicansocialistmovement.org/Pages/SRSMArticlesJamesWilson1820Martyr.aspx

On Alan Jones and other human deformities

I am indebted to Dennis Parker of Yongala for his Advertiser Letter to the Editor, which begins:

“So we find Alan Jones can’t stand Julia Gillard and Julia can’t stand Alan; I wholeheartedly agree with each of them.”
Having said that, this US phenomenon of the “shock jock” – and by extension, shock cartoonist, shock columnist, shock TV presenter – needs to be condemned.

And they need to be condemned by exposing the class interests behind their promotion.

Nothing suits the ruling class better than to have the people arguing amongst themselves instead of as a solid mass against the rulers.  Divide and rule.  Encourage male contempt for women; heterosexual hatred of gay, bi-sexual and transgender persons; mainstream Aussie rejection of Asians and blacks; waged people’s resentment of “dole bludgers”; the free citizen’s anger at “boat people”….the list goes on.  Only one thing is excluded: the united determination of the people to get the ruling class off their backs and into the dustbin of history.  That they will never encourage.

Adelaide’s “talkback king” Bob Francis was removed from the airwaves for four weeks last June for saying “Bugger the boatpeople, I say.  As far as I’m concerned, I hope they bloody drown out there on their way over here…”

A fortnight later Francis got his wish with the drowning of over 90 asylum seekers when their boat capsized in Indonesian waters about  110 nautical miles northwest of Christmas Island.

There was no statement of contrition or regret from Francis.  He remains on air because it suits the ruling class to have him continue to foment disagreement and disunity amongst the people.

Then there are people like cartoonist Larry Pickering who publicly harass Gillard from a sexist and misogynist perspective.

Pickering’s claim to fame was a series of satirical cartoons which were made into calendars during the era of Malcolm Fraser and Bob Hawke.

Pickering’s cartoons of Gillard naked and sporting a giant dildo are not satire: they have a meaner and nastier flavour.

 

They have moved past humour and are simply an expression of one man’s savage dislike of the woman, and a throw-back to earlier labelling of her as “lesbian” - as though lesbianism was some disgusting crime.

Pickering recently took Gillard to task for her response to allegations concerning her time as a lawyer with Slater and Gordon.  He listed 24 questions that he wanted her to answer under the heading “What a cunning stunt”.

This a rhyming slang for an insult based on the four-letter term for vagina.

Pickering is clearly bitter as a result of a divorce that has left him bankrupt, is anti-women (“I have run out of brood mares”, he says at the end of the same article) and has been exposed as a con-man and fraudster.

Yet misogynists and nutters rallied to his defense, applauding his vile rants and cartoons.

Murdoch continues to publish the reactionary Andrew Bolt whose loony ravings embraced racism for which he enjoyed a day in court.  Gina Rinehart found him so palatable that she is widely believed to be behind Channel Ten’s decision to give him his own show.

The same channel has promoted the obnoxious Paul Henry as part of its breakfast show.  He makes Bob Francis and Larry Pickering look almost sane by comparison.

Now back to Alan Jones.

His comments about Julia Gillard’s father dying of shame were cruel not just to Gillard but also to her grieving mother Moira.  That has apparently escaped Jones’ notice, for his pathetic faux apology made no reference to her.

While it is good to see major corporate sponsors temporarily withdraw support from Jones’ show, it is also testament to the power that the ruling class has to sustain divisive and reactionary commentary in normal times and explains why there are no normal people putting forward a progressive perspective in the mass media.

Those working people who follow the opinionated, belligerent put-downs offered by the “shockers” will always be “the stupid victims of deceit and self-deceit” (Lenin) until they start to ask of such put-downs, “Who does this serve?”  and “Which class stands to benefit from the divisions being promoted by this sleaze bag?”

Because in a class society, every type of thinking carries with it the characteristics of one or other of the great social classes confronting each other in daily life.