LL:DDV: Build Union Support for Iraqi workers
End US/UK/Australian occupation of Iraq Build Union Support for Iraqi workers 6.30 pm Thursday 4 September John Curtin Hotel (upstairs) Speaker Surma Hamid The Iraqi labour movement is taking the first vital steps to re-establishing itself after years of repression. Iraqi workers are organising unions and unemployed organisation are challenging the occupying forces to provide jobs or unemployment benefits. Surma will provide an up-to-date account of the struggles underway in Iraq. Help plan out how Australian unionists can work to support the rebuilding of their labour movement. Contact: Riki Lane 0400877819, Surma Hamid 98869650 Sponsored by Socialist Alliance, Worker Communist Party of Iraq. -- -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Sub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
LL:DDV: US anti-war speaker tours Australia
AMERICAN ANTI-WAR ACTIVIST NATIONAL SPEAKING TOUR RESISTING BUSH'S WAR AGENDA: AMERICA SINCE 9-11 IN MELBOURNE THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 18 7.30 PM, TRADES HALL (cnr Lygon and Victoria St, Carlton) American socialist and anti-war activist Paul D'Amato is coming to Australia in September. An activist in the anti-war movement and associate editor of the magazine 'International Socialist Review', D'Amato is well placed to discuss the challenges facing progressive movements in George Bush's America. Tour presented by Socialist Alternative. For more info about Melbourne or interstate meeting details phone (03) 9650 0404 or email [EMAIL PROTECTED] . -- -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Sub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
LL:ART: DANGER: POLICE STATE POWERS
The following articles were published in The Guardian, newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia in its issue of Wednesday, August 27th, 2003. Contact address: 65 Campbell Street, Surry Hills. Sydney. 2010 Australia. Phone: (612) 9212 6855 Fax: (612) 9281 5795. CPA Central Committee: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Guardian: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Webpage: http://www.cpa.org.au Subscription rates on request. ** DANGER: POLICE STATE POWERS The House of Representatives has passed legislation that would give the Federal Government the power to cut off the internet and phone services of groups and individuals involved in organising protest actions. The Government will be able to order communication companies to stop supplying services to groups or individuals labelled by ASIO and the Federal Police as being a threat to national security and contrary to the interests of national security. Also, people running such targeted web sites, and those with links to it, could be jailed for two years under the proposed laws. by Tom Pearson The claim by the Government that the new laws are an anti-terrorist measure is utterly without truth. The clear intention of the legislation, which will now go to the Senate, is to suppress and silence public dissent and protest against government policies. It follows the passing of draconian laws during the past three years giving ASIO, the Federal Police and the military unprecedented powers for use against the Australian people. The ALP supports the Bill and is set to pass it with lame amendments in the same way it gave the green light to the ASIO Bill, Labor's Lindsay Tanner saying the ALP backed the thrust of the aim to cut people's telecommunications services. Those who have their telecommunications cut off will not have to be told beforehand that they failed a security check. The Attorney-General will also be able to order the Australian Communications Authority to refuse a licence to any telecommunications service provider and the Authority would be required to get permission from the Attorney-General's office before granting a licence to any provider. The Australian Council of Civil Liberties warns that the legislation gives wide discretion to the government of the day based on vague terms such as national security to deny what is a basic right, the ability to access telecommunications services. It is not about dealing with crime, said Council of Civil Liberties spokesperson Ian Dearden. It's about dealing with politics. It's a classic authoritarian step. Keysar Trad, a spokesperson from Sydney's Muslim community, said the proposed new laws were extreme measures and that the Government had failed to provide proof that there was a terrorist threat to Australia. The threat of a terrorist attack, if one exists at all, comes from Australia's involvement in the war on Iraq and ties to the US: it is the actions of the Howard Government that threaten Australia's security. The creation of a police state has taken a number of authoritarian steps. Australia's secret police, ASIO, now has more agents than at any time in its history. The Government has put the reintroduction of the death penalty on the political agenda with Howard promoting a debate on capital punishment as part of the coming federal election campaign. In response, the Queensland and Northern Territory branches of the Liberal Party have publicly supported a return of capital punishment. Added to this are the new powers given to ASIO in laws passed in July. ASIO now has the power to arrest and detain citizens. People can now be held indefinitely on the basis that they might have information about terrorism or matters the Government can label terrorism. The definition of terrorist groups is so vague and sweeping that they allow the label to be put on trade unions, protest groups and political parties. The power of the Attorney-General to simply nominate groups as terrorist-oriented leaves the way open for widespread discrimination and victimisation. It should be recalled that the Australian military, under legislation introduced in the lead up to the Sydney 2000 Olympics, now has the power to shoot down civilians in the streets. The Defence Legislation Amendment (Aid to the Civil Authorities) Bill established the legal and political basis for using troops to suppress political disturbances. The measures allow for the use of reasonable and necessary force, in essence the right of military personal to shoot to kill. All these fascistic powers were introduced under the cover of anti-terrorism measures, but that cover, never having any substance, is now transparent. In the name of fighting terror, during just the past eight months the Australian people have witnessed the Howard Government: * commit them to a terrorist war on the people of Iraq that slaughtered more than 10,000 innocent people; * lie to the public to do so; resume ties with the
LL:ART: ACTU Congress falls into line behind the ALP
The following articles were published in The Guardian, newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia in its issue of Wednesday, August 27th, 2003. Contact address: 65 Campbell Street, Surry Hills. Sydney. 2010 Australia. Phone: (612) 9212 6855 Fax: (612) 9281 5795. CPA Central Committee: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Guardian: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Webpage: http://www.cpa.org.au Subscription rates on request. ** ACTU Congress falls into line behind the ALP A delegate's observations Trade unionists gathered in Melbourne at the Convention Centre from August 18-21 for the triennial Congress of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU). Most of the 800-900 delegates were organised into officially sanctioned left and right factions, along similar lines to those of the Australian Labor Party. There was little contest of ideas or real debate over trade union objectives or policies. Delegates were told to get behind the ALP and that is essentially what happened. To all intents and purposes the Congress was a preparation for the election of a Labor Government with the trade union movement, in effect, adopting a don't rock the boat attitude. The overall theme of the Congress was working for a fairer Australia. Sharan Burrow hammered this concept in her presidential address to Congress. Titled Australians Want A Fair Country Back, her report said, Fairness, tolerance, 'a fair go' - these are the values Australia has always aspire to but they are now in contest. She pointed to the many social and economic inequalities and injustices which have only worsened in capitalist Australia. The concept of fairness was mirrored in the Statement of Australian Union Values, the Future Strategies document and in the many policies adopted by Congress. These policies ranged from traditional workplace issues to social, economic and political questions as well as international issues and solidarity. Working hours Working hours and work intensification, casual employment and employee entitlements were among those policies adopted. However no target for a reduction of working hours was set despite the fact that many full-time workers are now working up to 60 hours per week while overtime is often unpaid. Maternity leave was also on the agenda, but there was no demand that it be funded by employers. There were differences over a range of issues, but tight stage management and scripted contributions were used to suppress dissent and present a united trade union movement. This aspect of Congress aside, progress was made in promoting struggle over casual employment, unionisation of non-union areas and strengthening unions in the workplace. A fair day's work for a fair day's wage was touted as the solution to workers' problems although this concept had been torn to shreds by Karl Marx more than a century ago. Some positive proposals regarding traineeships, labour hire, job security, greater access to permanent work and other pressing issues were adopted. Quite often they fell short of the mark by not directly challenging the cause of the problem, instead trying to reduce the damage. International guests Guy Ryder, the General Secretary of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions addressed Congress, taking up the theme of fairness in the global economy. Linda Chavez-Thompson, Executive Vice President of the AFL-CIO (US unions); Ross Wilson, President of the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions; and Willie Madisha, President of COSATU (South Africa) were among the other international guests who addressed Congress. Big business leader addresses Congress There was a long list of other speakers, filling in a great deal of the time. The most stunning and surprising guest was the Chair of the Qantas board, Margaret Jackson AC. Jackson is no friend of the union movement. She addressed Congress precisely at the time Qantas baggage handlers were being sacked and management was attempting to replace them with labour hire company workers. This proved to be an embarrassment to ACTU officials. The baggage handlers took strike action and succeeded in forcing Qantas to withdraw the labour hire company workers. Margaret Jackson is also a director of the ANZ - another company that is in the business of sacking workers. Jackson was unflinching in her call for flexibility, the very flexibility - sackings and casualisation - that Congress was adopting policies to fight. In response to a question about Qantas' plans to contract out and casualise work, Jackson said, yes, we have to make some decisions to improve competitiveness. Doug Cameron from the Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union took exception to the choice of speakers and strongly expressed the inappropriateness of such speakers at an ACTU Congress. Strong ALP presence Two state Labor Premiers addressed Congress - Bob Carr from NSW and Steve Bracks from Victoria. The purpose of the
LL:DDV: Quantock Comedy Debate, OCT 3
please forward this email the 4th Annual GREEN LEFT WEEKLY COMEDY DEBATE featuring ROD QUANTOCK along with live music, a cast of comedians, trouble makers liars! You are invited to a night of comedy, music, politics, food fun... Children overboard, weapons of mass destruction the Jessica Lynch rescue... Do we want the truth, or will a good story do? Should polititians come up with better lies? And should the media let facts get in the way of a good yarn? You probably wont find the answers to any of these questions here... but a good time is guaranteed at the 4th annual GLW Comedy Debate! OCTOBER 3, FRIDAY 7PM (2003) @ BRUNSWICK TOWN HALL cner of Glenlyon Sydney Rd, Brunswick ph 9639 8622 for bookings. entry $12/ $8 concession a fundraiser for Green Left Weekly http://www.greenleft.org.au please forward this email... tell your friends, print it nail it to your door, frame it, show your grand kids... and on FRIDAY, OCTOBER 3, be sure to come! -- -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Sub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
LL:DDV: public forum
Public forum on What it means, in 2003, to be a woman or a man a generation on from the Women's Liberation Movement with guest speakers: Beatrice Faust - The Weaker Sex Val Kaye - Affirmative Action Bob Pease - Masculinity after the second wave feminism Wednesday 3rd September 2003 8.00pm Clarrie Whollers Hall, Corner Albert and Cross Streets, Brunswick wine and nibbles provides ALL WELCOME hosted by the MORELAND BRANCH OF THE GREENS Enquiries Jo 9380 6704AH -- -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Sub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
LL:ART: All the News That Fits
This week's stories: Prime Minister's Office Fabricated Evidence on Iraq...This Fine Australian Gets Away With It...Police Corruption Privatised...But I Had To Feed My Starving BMW...US Environmental Report Doesn't Mention Global Warming, Pollution From Cars...Howard Makes Unjustified Ratbag Lefty Attack On Himself...Quote of the Week. John Howard's office fabricated evidence and deliberately deceived the public in order to justify sending troops to Iraq, according to a former senior intelligence analyst. Andrew Wilkie, a former analyst at the Office of National Assessments, told a parliamentary enquiry that sometimes the exaggeration was so great it was clear dishonesty. Mr Howard told Parliament in February that Iraq was re-starting its nuclear weapons program and there was evidence that it had tried to buy uranium from Africa. This claim had been discredited by a United States official who visited Africa to investigate almost a year earlier. Mr Wilkie is a former member of the Liberal Party. (The Age, August 23). Wilson Tuckey will remain a Federal Minister despite using his position to try and get his 45 year old son out of paying a traffic fine. Mr Tuckey wrote several letters on Ministerial letterhead to the South Australian Police Minister. Tony Abbott told Parliament that Mr Tuckey is a man who quite rightly fights for the things he believes in and if from time to time, this minister goes over the top in a cause in which he believes, that is his nature, that is the nature of the man, that is the way this fine Australian operates. Mr Tuckey's nickname is 'Iron Bar', from an incident where he was said to have beaten an Aboriginal man with an iron bar while another man held him down. (The Age, August 23). A US company accused of human rights violations, who fired an employee for exposing a prostitution ring, is handling the policing of Iraq. DynCorp, who has made substantial donations to the Republican Party, was given the contract by the US State Department. DynCorp personnel contracted to the United Nations police service in Bosnia were implicated in buying and selling prostitutes, including a girl as young as 12. Several DynCorp employees were also accused of videotaping the rape of one of the women. When Dyncorp employee Kathy Bolkovac exposed the ring she was dismissed by the company for drawing attention to their misbehaviour, according to the ruling of a British employment tribunal in November 2002. DynCorp has also been heavily criticised over its involvement in Plan Colombia, instigated by Bill Clinton, that involves spraying vast quantities of herbicides over Colombia to kill the cocaine crop. A group of Ecuadorean peasants have filed a class action against the company alleging that herbicides spread by DynCorp in Colombia were drifting across the border, killing legitimate crops, causing illness, and killing children. (originally reported in the Observer (UK), April 13). Welfare fraud costs a maximum of $15 million a year. Tax avoidance through trusts costs an estimated $700 million a year. (The Age, August 23). The White House has removed negative references to global warming from a US government report on the environment. References to health threats posed by exhaust emissions that were part of the draft report by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have also been removed, according to leaked versions of the report. The EPA head, Christie Whitman, said on Thursday that she had decided to omit a section on climate change because the only language the Administration could agree on amounted to Pablum - a popular bland cereal for infants. The New York Times, to whom the draft documents were leaked, said White House officials had cut details about the sudden increase in global warming over the past decade compared with the past 1000 years and inserted information from a report that questions this conclusion and which was partly financed by the American Petroleum Institute. A memo circulated among EPA staff said the report no longer accurately represents scientific consensus on climate change. One of the most striking changes comes in the report's global issues section. In the draft the introduction reads: Climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment. This has been replaced with: The complexity of the Earth system and the interconnections among its components make it a scientific challenge to document change, diagnose its causes and develop useful projections of how natural variability and human actions may affect the global environment in the future. (The Guardian, Los Angeles Times) John Howard has described Pauline Hanson as a champion of those who felt left out of the political process. Mr Howard added that I lead a mainstream political party which I think which I think has identified many concerns of people who felt a bit shut out of the political process. (The Age, August 23).
LL:DDV: Alvaro Guzman - Venezuela, the revolution unfolding
PUBLIC MEETING: Venezuela The revolution unfolding in Latin America Introducing: Alvaro Guzman National Director of the Bolivarian Student Front in Venezuela Thur. Sep 11, 6.30pm Trades Hall, New Ballroom crn Lygon Victoria Str, Carlton Entry: $8 waged $5 low income Organised by Committees in Solidarity with Latin America the Caribbean Contact Allen for info on 9639 8622 or 9279 1829 BACKGROUND INFO: VENEZUELA: Why the right has declared war on Chavez BY JOHN PILGER LONDON - Almost 30 years after the violent destruction of the reformist government of Salvador Allende in Chile, a repeat performance is being = planned in Venezuela. Little of this has been reported in Britain. Indeed, little is known of the achievements of the government of Hugo Chavez, who won presidential elections in 1998 and again in 2000 by the largest majority in 40 years. Following the principles of a movement called Bolivarism, named after the South American independence hero Simon Bolivar, Chavez has implemented reforms that have begun to shift the great wealth of Venezuela, which comes principally from its oil, towards the 80% of his people who live in poverty. With 49 laws adopted by the Venezuelan Congress last November, Chavez began serious land reform, and guaranteed indigenous and women's rights and free health care and education up to university level. Chavez faces enemies that Allende would recognise. The oligarchies, which have held power since the 1950s during the corrupt bipartisan reign of the Social Christians and Democratic Action, have declared war on the reforming president, backed by the Catholic Church and the trade union hierarchy and the media, both controlled by the right. What has enraged them is a modest agrarian reform that allows the state to expropriate and redistribute idle land; and a law that limits the exploitation of oil reserves, reinforcing a constitutional ban on the privatisation of the state oil company. Allied with Chavez's domestic enemies is the Bush administration. Defying Washington, Chavez has sold oil to Cuba and refused overflying rights to American military aircraft supplying Plan Colombia, the US campaign in support of the murderous regime in neighbouring Colombia. Worse, although Chavez condemned the attacks of September 11, he questioned the right of the United States to fight terrorism with terrorism. For this, he is unforgiven. On November 5-7, the State Department, Pentagon and National Security Agency held a two-day meeting to discuss the problem of Venezuela. The State Department has since accused the Chavez government of supporting terrorism in Colombia, Bolivia and Ecuador. In fact, Venezuela opposes American-funded terrorism in those three countries. The US says it will put Venezuela in diplomatic isolation; Colin Powell has warned Chavez to correct his understanding of what a democracy is all about. Familiar events are unfolding. The International Monetary Fund has indicated it supports a transitional government for Venezuela. The Caracas daily El Nacional says the IMF is willing to bankroll those who remove Chavez from office. James Petras, a professor at New York State University, who was in Chile in the early 1970s and has studied the subversion of the Allende government, says that the IMF and financial institutions are fabricating a familiar crisis. The tactics used are very similar to those used in Chile. Civilians are used to create a feeling of chaos, and a false picture of Chavez as a dictator is established, then the military is incited to make a coup for the sake of the country. A former paratrooper, Chavez apparently still has the army behind him (as Allende did, until the CIA murdered his loyal military chief, opening the way to Pinochet). However, several senior officers have denounced Chavez as a tyrant and have called for his resignation. It is difficult to assess this; in its rumour-mongering, the hostile Caracas press plays a role reminiscent of Chile's right-wing press, with poisonous stories questioning Chavez's sanity. The most worrying threat comes from a reactionary trade union hierarchy, the Confederation of Venezuelan Workers (CTV), led by Carlos Ortega, a hack of the anti-Chavez Democratic Action Party. The CTV maintains a black list of disloyal and disruptive members, which it supplies to employers. According to Dick Nichols, writing from Caracas [see GLW #480], Chavez's most serious mistake has been his failure to move against the union old guard, following a national referendum in which a majority gave him a mandate to reform the CTV. The crime of Hugo Chavez is that he has set out to keep his electoral promises, redistributing the wealth of his country and subordinating the principle of private property to that of the common good. Having underestimated the power of his enemies, his current counter-offensive is imaginative but also hints of desperation. He has set up what are called Bolivarian circles, of which 8000 are
