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The following articles were published by The Guardian, newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia, in its issue of September 1, 2010. Reproduction of articles, together with acknowledgement if appropriate, is welcome.
The Guardian,
Editorial, 74 Buckingham Street, Surry Hills,
Sydney NSW 2010, Australia
Communist Party of Australia,
74 Buckingham Street, Surry Hills,
Sydney NSW 2010, Australia
General Secretary: Dr Hannah Middleton
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INDEX
1. Greens emerge as third major party – Two party system dealt heavy blow
2. EDITORIAL – Greens in the cross hairs
3. Organisations demand protection for asylum seekers
4. Major parties pay the price for vindictive policies
5. Communist Alliance election campaign
6. Count Bernadotte: ME ambassador for peace
7. Solidarity Poem
8. CULTURE & LIFE – Menzies and chaos
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01. Greens emerge as third major party
Two party system dealt heavy blow
Anna Pha
While uncertainty remains over the final composition of the government, there can be no doubting that the two-party system took a hammering in the federal elections. It can also be said that the success of the Greens was not the result of a protest vote, but a conscious choice on the part of many voters based on policy. The Greens with 11.5 percent of the vote only won one seat in the House of Representatives, highlighting the undemocratic nature of the present voting system and the need for substantial electoral reform.
The youth vote and widespread desire for action on climate change played an important part in the increased support for the Greens. For some voters, it marked an historical break with a life-long allegiance to a particular party.
The two major league teams have fought out the finals for decades, each with its own members’ club, supporters, and corporate backers. They played to the same conventions, used the same tactics, and the minor league players posed no threat. The Democrats, One Nation, etc, came and went.
This time, there was a third team in the finals, with a fresh approach, a growing base of members and supporters that most importantly, was not beholden to corporate sponsors. There are now three major players and the third team, the Greens, presents a serious threat to the interests of the backers of the other two teams. There are also some minor players on the field, some uniting to form the Independents team. They must now be taken seriously.
As counting continues the Lower House looks set to have Labor 72 and Coalition 72. There are six other MPs – four independents (three working as a team), one Greens and one unattached National Party. Both Labor and the Coalition are fighting to gain their support. Greens Adam Bandt, who won the seat of Melbourne, has indicated his preference for Labor. The others at the time of going to press remained uncommitted.
Greens team
The Greens are to be congratulated on their excellent campaign, and on their principled approach and progressive platform. They increased their votes by almost 50 percent, to 11.5 percent in the Lower House. Under a more democratic, proportional system of representation they would have had 17 seats, instead of one, in the Lower House. Whereas the Australian Labor Party (ALP) with 38.4 percent of the primary vote (down from 43.39 percent in 2007) won 72 seats – 48 percent of the seats. The ALP owes a number of its seats to the distribution of Greens preferences.
In the Senate, the Greens polled almost 13 percent, and won six out of the 38 seats being contested. They polled more than 1.7 million votes. As from July 2011, when the new Senators take their seats, they will for the first time have representation from every state. They also have three seats from the 2007 elections which are due to come up again in 2014. This brings their total to nine Senators, in theory giving them “the balance of power”. To what extent they can exercise this position and negotiate amendments to legislation from the government will depend very much on the type of government that is formed and the policies of the Labor and Coalition Parties.
Balance of power kicks in when the Opposition refuses to support legislation. On questions such as the environment, health, education, refugees, Indigenous Australians, social welfare, Afghanistan and the US alliance, the ALP and Liberal/National Coalition have very similar policies.
It is not beyond the realms of possibility for some sort of national government to be formed, for the next opposition party to make some rule changes, and abandon the idea that everything a government does has to be opposed. When the two major parties sit back and reflect on the situation, it may well suit their interests to forge some form of stated or unstated united front against the Greens. The Greens pose the major threat to both parties and the comfortable relationship they had taking it in turns to form government.
Independents team
The increased support for and re-election of independents Bob Katter, Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott to the House of Reps – all former National Party MPs – are a direct result of their closeness to their constituents and their unstinting efforts to pursue the needs of their rural and regional electorates. Although fairly conservative, they do not fit easily into the mould of left or right, being conservative on some issues and progressive on others. They have been joined by another independent Andrew Wilke and West Australian National Tony Crook, who says he will not be bound by National Party decisions.
The three decided from the outset to unite in their negotiations with the Labor and Coalition parties to gain the best outcomes for their constituents and backers. They enjoy considerable personal popularity in their electorates – something which cannot be said about many Labor or Coalition MPs.
Katter, Oakeshott and Windsor are conservative but not neo-liberals. On some issues they take a better position than Labor and the Coalition. Depending on the specifics of their rural and regional constituents they have concerns about the lifting of trade barriers and tariffs on agricultural imports, poor communications (national broadband network should remain in public hands), lack of infrastructure, inadequate access to health services, education, water and transport.
The mining tax played a big part in Katter’s Queensland electorate. Katter is more of a red neck, with a reputation for racist and other outlandish statements. At the same time he opposes competition policy, “free markets” and cuts to trade protection. He opposed the full privatisation of Telstra and deregulation of the sugar and dairy industries.
Windsor has strong links with and receives considerable funding from the ethanol industry. He is opposed to competition policy and the Coalition’s broadband policy and their reliance on the private sector.
Oakeshott supports Labor’s health and hospital reforms, its emissions trading scheme and has a relatively more compassionate position on refugees.
Crook is strongly opposed to the mining tax and supports a “royalties for regions” scheme that puts dollars into the bush. He says he might attend meetings of the Nationals, but sit as an independent.
Wilke was a Liberal with a background in defence intelligence, but fell out with the Howard government over the non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He previously stood as a Greens candidate in 2004 and has narrowly won Denison in Tasmania as an independent. Apart from seeking Australia’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, one of the issues he is strongly committed to is setting controls over gambling machines. He also wants better treatment of asylum seekers.
The National Party finds itself in a difficult position, with rumblings in its ranks. It has been tied to the Liberal Party and the voice of country and regional Australia has hardly been heard. This is in sharp contrast to the powerful positioning of three former members (Katter, Oakeshott, Windsor) and one current member (Crook) who are not only influencing policy but also having a say on which party might form government.
Seeking real change
Policy differences between the two major parties were hard to discern, despite the attempts of leaders to make them look different. Neither offered what the majority of working Australians or small farmers wanted. The frustration of the electorate was compounded by phoney debates, arrogance, deception and outright refusal to come clean on key issues. The campaign lacked real content, descended to the lowest depths imaginable with discussion of physical and other attributes of individuals rather than policy. The corporate media played ball, seeing its interests in maintaining the two-party charade.
The key issues were there for all to see, and the Greens addressed these with progressive policies that put the needs of people and the planet before private profits. The independents also put genuine policies that met many of the needs of their electorates.
As the week progresses, it should become clearer whether a minority government is formed, or whether some form of national government with ministers from both sides emerges – in effect a united front against the Greens. Gillard appears prepared to go in that direction.
The question of electoral reform will be taken up in a future issue of The Guardian.
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02. EDITORIAL – Greens in the cross hairs
Prime Minister Julia Gillard is still to test whether she can retain government at the first sitting of parliament following the remarkable federal election of August 21. The country has witnessed the courting of the independents and the lone Green elected to the House of Representatives at the poll. “Wish lists” have been presented. High-sounding phrases about the “national interest” have been bandied around but from all the backroom dealing one thing is clear – the proponents of political business as usual are gunning for the Greens.
The result of the federal election is a major vote of no confidence in the two-party system, a swipe at the two parties of big capital themselves and their unwillingness to implement the political changes endorsed at the election of 2007. The Australian people voted for an end to anti-union legislation, for action on climate change, a more humane approach to asylum seekers and a general break with the extreme conservatism of the Howard years. They didn’t get it and they weren’t being offered anything like it by the Coalition under Abbott. The Greens did offer a refreshing alternative and Australians voted for them in record numbers. There is no question they will hold the balance of power in the Senate.
The arrival of the Greens is a challenge to the cosy old two-party arrangement. In that system of alternating Coalition and Labor governments, the ALP long ago ceased to be the party of reform of the type seen in the early years of the Whitlam government. The neo-liberal agenda has been adopted by the Coalition and Labor. The difference in their programs of privatisation and deregulation is sometimes simply a question of the pace of change. The Liberals are usually more “up front” about their distaste for public enterprise. Australia is probably the last developed country to dispense with this “revolving door” style of government. Its use-by date is up.
Not everybody is happy with this situation. The two-party system has served big business well for over a century. It has guaranteed “stability” – code for a political and economic environment conducive to maximum profit making by the transnationals. Independent MP Rob Oakeshott – one of the “three amigos” at the centre of intense lobbying at the moment – has suggested a “unity cabinet” with ministers from outside the government. Bob Brown weighed in saying that would be a splendid idea and put forward the names of two very experienced Greens – Christine Milne and Rachel Siewert. That is not what Mr Oakeshott would have had in mind. He would not be alone in preferring a “united front” against the growing influence of the Greens. That front would be seen as an interim measure until the old mechanisms could be restored.
The Greens are bound to come under more intense attack in order to drive back their advance. A piece in The Australian last week carried the very old “news” that newly elected Senator Lee Rhiannon is the daughter of the late Bill and Freda Brown – two founding members of the Socialist Party of Australia (now the Communist Party of Australia). She also was a member for a short time. The article noted a disagreement (a “spat”) between Rhiannon and Mark Aarons who has recently written another instalment in his rather drawn out recanting of his former political beliefs. The piece, by Katherine Jiminez and Christian Kerr, is silent on Ms Rhiannon’s years of service in the NSW Upper House but makes much of a recent gaff when her state parliamentary office was used as a point of contact for her federal campaign.
Greens MP for Melbourne, Adam Bandt, has also been targeted over his former political affiliations. The Australian reprinted comments presumably made by Bandt in 1995 when he called the Greens a “bourgeois” party. He went on to describe the ALP as almost as right wing as the Democratic Party in the US and say that “the parliamentary road to socialism doesn’t exist.” Greens leader Bob Brown stood by his member, saying the thinking in his party has “a good balance of origins.”
It is true the Greens are not a party of working class ideology, though the influence can be seen in its more progressive attitude to industrial relations, taxation of big business, etc. Occasionally the influence of bourgeois ideology can be seen as in the case of their support for the sale of the first tranche of shares in Telstra (in return for an environment fund) – the formerly publicly owned telecommunications provider. Regardless, if the opportunity can be grasped, the Greens have opened up the possibility for other progressive political forces to enter the breach made in the old two-party system. They must be defended from the attacks being directed at them and which are bound to increase.
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03. Organisations demand protection for asylum seekers
Peter Mac
The death of a detainee at the Curtin Detention Centre last week has once more drawn attention to the immigration policies of the both the ALP and the conservative coalition.
The 30-year-old detainee died in a Perth hospital a day after being found unconscious. Immigration officials have stated that the cause of death is unknown. However, suicide cannot be ruled out as a possibility. Psychologists have issued many warnings about the deterioration in mental heath of asylum seekers who are detained for months or even longer, especially in isolated areas where there is little chance of a visit from a doctor or social worker.
However, in attempting to court the vote of the most conservative electors, both the Labor Party and the conservative Coalition have adopted immigration policies that treat asylum seekers who arrived by boat as criminals, and which include detaining them offshore, or in extremely remote mainland locations, for long periods and often in extremely harsh conditions.
The Gillard government has crammed hundreds of detainees into the Christmas Island centre and is still intent on opening a new detention centre in East Timor. It opened the extremely remote Curtin Detention Centre last June, and intends to expand the numbers incarcerated there from 560 to 600. The government has denied claims by Liberal leaders that after planned expansion the centre will accommodate up to 6,000 people.
For their part, the Liberals have declared that they intend to reopen the former Howard government’s notorious detention centre on Nauru, in a revival of the discredited “Pacific solution”.
A new deal for asylum seekers
The possible formation of a government that would include the Greens and independents has led a group of Australian non-government organisations, including the National Council of Churches, Amnesty International, the Asylum Seekers Resource Centre, the Refugee Council of Australia and 17 other organisations, under a Regional Refugee Protection framework, to issue a joint demand for protection for asylum seekers from unjust and inhumane government policies. They have called for a regional refugee protection framework, based on the following principles:
There must be no removal of asylum seekers from Australian territory for processing in a third country. Australia has an obligation to process claims and provide protection to those found to be refugees under the Refugee Convention.
Australia’s refugee and humanitarian programs and policies must comply with all international human rights standards.
There must be no discrimination or difference in treatment based on the country of origin or manner of arrival in Australia.
Australia must not fund, or in any way be party to the detention of refugees in third countries.
Any program to which Australia is a party as part of the regional protection framework must adhere to all human rights obligations and standards.
The group also declared that Australia should engage, as partners in the regional protection framework, other governments, including countries affected by significant flows of asylum seekers, potential countries of resettlement, the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR) and concerned organisations. The UNHCR, which opposes the detention of designated refugees, should have the central role in claims processing.
The group has also stated that the physical needs of both asylum seekers and recognised refugees should be met, and resources provided to ensure that partners in the agreement can fulfil their role in that process. Additional resettlement places should be found (20,000 extra places recommended) to avoid people risking their lives on dangerous journeys. People who are found not to require protection should be returned safely, with the assistance of non-government organisations who should also be involved in the operation of the framework, within an expert working group.
The Australian Lawyers Alliance has joined the calls for a better deal for asylum seekers, with particular reference to statements from Scott Morrison, shadow Minister for Immigration, that an Abbott government would reject applications for asylum where identity documents had been lost of destroyed. A similar proposal was rejected in 2003 by a Senate committee, which included conservative Coalition members of parliament and was chaired by a Liberal senator.
The committee pointed out that in some cases people may be forced to destroy identity documents to ensure they have a safe passage or (else) be captured or killed. The committee accepted evidence from a senior migration lawyer that:
An attempt to deny a person who cannot produce evidence of identity access to a refugee determination process is simply wrong in principle. There are plenty of examples of people who are unable to obtain documentation in their country, given its lack of sophistication, who flee conditions of persecution in anonymous circumstances by design or who employ fraudulent documentation… While one would certainly qualify in situations where there is a deliberate attempt to mislead, as a matter of principle it is our submission that the inability to produce evidence of identity should not preclude consideration of claims.
The Lawyers Alliance has also called for the scrapping of mandatory sentencing regarding the protection of asylum seekers. The national secretary of the Alliance commented: “…now the opposition is spruiking up a mandatory of up to 10 years (imprisonment) with an added clause to include anyone found housing illegal immigrants. The arbitrary nature of such legislation means judiciary discretion is excluded in the decision-making process, yet the whole premise of good decision-making is that all circumstances and evidence are examined before an appropriate conclusion or sentence is reached.”
Organisations that have demanded a Regional Refugee Protection framework include:
Act for Peace – National Council of Churches in Australia
Amnesty International Australia
Asylum Seekers Centre of NSW
Australian Council for International Development
Brotherhood of St Laurence
Caritas Australia
Coalition for Asylum Seekers, Refugees and Detainees
Edmund Rice Centre
Federation of Ethnic Community Councils of Australia
Federation House – The Victorian Foundation for Survivors of Torture
Hotham Mission Asylum Seeker Project
International Detention Coalition
Jesuit Refugee Service Australia
Oxfam Australia
Refugee Council of Australia
Refugee and Immigration Legal Centre
Settlement Council of Australia
Uniting Church in Australia
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04. Major parties pay the price for vindictive policies
Peter Mac
The federal election was notable not only for the blending of the policies of the two major parties, but also for the public’s disillusion with those policies. Nowhere is this better demonstrated than in the Gillard government’s recent attempted revival of a discredited Coalition welfare policy.
Shortly before the election, the Gillard government announced its intention to reintroduce a modified version of the Howard government’s policy of paying job seekers to relocate for work, particularly to Western Australia, which was an obvious ploy to provide extra labour for the booming minerals industry in that state.
The new Labor scheme involved paying job seekers $6,000 if they took a job in a regional area or $3,000 for a job in a city. That sounds fine. The money would certainly help to meet the costs of relocation for people who were prepared to move. However, the sting was in the tail.
In many cases a job that involves relocation may fall through, for example if the work poses health risks to the employee, or if they simply can’t meet the demands of the work. Nevertheless, under the Gillard scheme, if the employee left the job “without good reasons” (whatever that might mean for Centrelink or the government) he or she would lose entitlement to welfare payments for three months.
The scheme also provided for a $2,500 payment to employers who employed a welfare recipient. For some employers this could have provided an incentive for a high turnover of welfare employees, but there appears to have been no allowance for penalising employers who abuse the scheme.
The Coalition had been hatching its own plans to revive the Howard government’s relocation policy, and after the government announced the new scheme the Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey declared indignantly that the government had pinched Liberal policies. However, neither of the two major parties took into consideration the fact that the previous relocation scheme had failed for very good reasons, or that the vindictiveness of their policies would alienate them from the public.
Firstly, most unemployed people were unwilling to relocate, not only because of the enormous readjustment involved, but also because of the risks of being stranded (in some cases with their families), perhaps thousands of kilometres from home and without any means of support. The Howard government’s trial scheme resulted in the filling of only 87 out of 150 positions. The former Labor government of Kevin Rudd wisely dumped the scheme in 2008, but then Rudd himself was dumped by Gillard, who decided unwisely to revive it.
Secondly, both parties increased the penalties for breaches of rules by recipients of welfare or other support, under the assumption that this would increase their party’s appeal for conservative voters. They ignored or overlooked the possibility that the more vindictive their policies became, the more they would alienate voters, even including some who have until now supported very conservative policies.
This was also evident with respect to the treatment of asylum seekers, particularly regarding off-shore processing of applications for asylum. The government’s position would not have been helped by its announcement that welfare recipients who missed a Centrelink appointment would have a payment suspended, and that if they missed another they would forfeit payment altogether.
Despite its failings, the Rudd government at least took some initiatives, for example the apology for the stolen generations, which differentiated its policies from those of the conservatives. In contrast, Gillard’s tactic of moving ever closer to the position of the conservatives, while both the major parties competed to appear the most hard-line, may well have contributed to the poll result, in which both parties scored a roughly equal number of votes while votes for progressive and left-wing parties and candidates increased remarkably.
The vote of the August 21 federal election has heralded a markedly different political situation, which has the potential to usher in greatly improved policies regarding welfare and a number of other issues. The Greens have now joined the ranks of the major parties, and the situation will never be the same for the other two. And that’s a particularly good thing.
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05. COMMUNIST ALLIANCE ELECTION CAMPAIGN
The Senate Campaign – Brenda Kellaway
Just prior to the election being called our CPA Branch in Newcastle organised a seminar on unemployment attended by people from the Party, the Progressive Labour Party (PLP), the Maritime Unions Socialist Activities Association (MUSAA), the Newcastle Trades Hall and other interested individuals. All the participants felt that the outcome of this seminar was positive and that we should continue actions regarding this issue. We resolved that unemployment and underemployment are important because they affect everybody. Unemployment affects those that are employed via the threat of losing their jobs, encouraging workers to accept poor working conditions that they would otherwise reject.
When the election was called our Branch felt that it was important to keep the impetus going regarding our campaign for full employment as well as introducing other party policies. We feel that having an issues-based campaign was a real strength in the elections.
We also recognised that a campaign for the Senate needed to be conducted state-wide and therefore we needed a way of reaching as many people across the state as possible. It was for this reason we decided to organise the first ever Communist television advertisement. Co-produced by myself and Bernadette Smith, we created this ad on a shoestring budget. We managed to have the ad aired across NSW, particularly in the regional areas where it aired on SBS Television 30 times and on NBN television, on the Central Coast, Mid north coast and Newcastle, 10 times. We also placed this advertisement on Youtube where thousands of people have viewed it and it is still being viewed, in spite of the elections being over.
We were invited to do a 10-minute interview on ABC Radio National on the Friday directly before the voting day. In this way I was able to publicise the full range of party policies.
The Trades Hall Council in Newcastle sends out a weekly newsletter that reaches thousands of people across the state and through the union movement. The Communist Alliance successfully submitted articles and information regarding our policies over the three weeks prior to the elections.
We were aware of the need to consolidate our prior activities in the Newcastle area. To this end our Branch leafleted regularly at local shopping centres, at the University of Newcastle, put up hundreds of posters around the inner Newcastle area and also reached voters by placing two ads in the Newcastle Herald which reached thousands of people right up to the border of NSW. In the newspaper advertisement we were able to highlight other major party policies such as on education, healthcare and housing.
In addition, I was interviewed on the local radio with 2K0 FM and 2HD FM for approximately three minutes each. Our branch also placed the audio of our TV ad on radio, which was aired many times in the greater Newcastle region.
We also held a very successful fundraiser at the Socrates Club in Newcastle where both myself and Steve Mavrantonis from the Beloyiannis Branch of the CPA spoke.
We feel that the key to the success of our campaign was the integration of all the areas, the website, the Youtube ad, the TV advertisement, the radio interviews and ads, along with talking to people whilst handing out material on the streets.
You can still see our Youtube video on unemployment/full employment at
We have had many, many positive reports and responses from the public regarding our election campaign and the votes are still climbing up from 5,500.
The Senate Campaign – Geoff Lawler
Our campaign throughout the Riverina, South and Central Western Plains was low-key but very successful. It awakened a lot of people who had clearly been looking for the kind of answer to the problems confronting them that Marxism-Leninism can provide.
People who spoke with other members of the Riverina Branch of the CPA while we were campaigning for the Communist Alliance raised such issues as the Australian Wheat Board debacle and the sell-off of Australian agricultural interests to the trans-nationals.
The first immediate thing that one noticed as a result of the election campaign was the heightened level of recognition of the Communists and more importantly of interest. It quickly became evident that targeted, effective press releases were a must.
The interview I did in the Wagga Daily Advertiser resulted from the media release about the Senate candidates and was a real help. Even the guys I drink with were suddenly interested in talking to me about socialism.
One thing that struck me forcibly was how much the political climate has changed in the last decade or so. My brother was once knocked out during an argument in a pub with people who objected to trade unionists, let alone Communists.
But today, after capitalism has fallen on its face so spectacularly and in so many areas, there is a new respect for Communists as, at least, opponents of some substance. In fact, I found that my standing on the Communist Alliance ticket seemed to carry no negative connotations at all.
I was taken by surprise by this changed attitude, and did not take advantage of it to the extent that I could have. I will not be so hesitant next time!
As it was, with the help of the Riverina Branch of the CPA and my own union contacts, I was able to mobilise support among people in far flung places across the south and west of the state to distribute leaflets and man polling booths. On polling day, I worked on the Ashmont booth in Wagga, while other comrades manned booths in Cootamundra, Temora and elsewhere.
Small farmers in Australia have suffered severely under Liberal and Labor governments. Free Trade Agreements have given transnational agribusiness a 70 percent stake in our agricultural production.
The remaining Australian producers are seeing their farm gate prices driven down to rock bottom by Woollies and Coles (Wesfarmers).
The Riverina Branch of the CPA will be working to capitalise on the interest aroused during the election campaign by creating workshops for small farmers and farm workers, to show country people where the true causes of these problems originate.
The Seat of Sydney Campaign – Denis Doherty
The Communist Alliance had a great election team for the seat of Sydney. The Port Jackson, Auburn and Maritime CPA Branches combined with more than 20 supporters to work on the campaign. We letterboxed about 40,000 leaflets, held over 15 stalls over three weekends and visited the major transport hubs in the electorate during the morning rush hour.
The Sydney electorate includes working class as well as wealthy middle class areas. We identified key areas in the electorate and key issues to focus on. We selected polling booths that had high ALP votes in past elections and were, in most cases, linked to public housing estates and focused our work around them.
As well as the basic Communist Alliance leaflet, we distributed hundreds each of special leaflets on the Barangaroo development and on public housing in the Cowper Street, Glebe estate and at Millers Point. We also held a sausage sizzle for public housing tenants in Surry Hills.
We targeted Royal Prince Alfred Hospital with stalls and a special leaflet on the hospital’s problems and the Communist Alliance policy calling for nationalisation of the health system. We distributed leaflets supporting public education at a NSW Teachers Federation Council meeting.
We were pleased at the reception we received during the campaign and on polling day. There were fewer anti-communist jibes than in earlier years and very little hostility.
Instead, many people expressed appreciation that we were offering an alternative to what we came to call the “Laborils”.
One woman in Glebe said, “At last I can vote formal as there is someone to vote for!” A young man emailed that he had voted for the Communist Alliance because we were cool!
Another email ran: “On hearing about this morning’s Australian soldier fatalities in Afghanistan, and worse the drone ones yesterday in unheard of places like Waziristan (20 killed), good on you and the CPA for standing for the election and doing your bit about peace.”
We were particularly pleased that one of the Cowper Street public housing campaigners distributed a leaflet saying our policy in defence of public housing tenants was better than all the other parties, and then came to a booth and handed out Communist Alliance How to Votes for over four hours.
We planned our election work understanding that it was essential to work in a way that would allow us to build the Party once the election was over. Work in defence of public housing tenants will continue with the first step a special open meeting on the topic.
We thank everyone who helped in any way with Communist Alliance Sydney election campaign.
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06. Count Bernadotte: ME ambassador for peace
Steven Katsineris
Count Folke Bernadotte was a Swedish noble and diplomat, nephew of the Swedish king, fluent in six languages; he was an outstanding humanitarian and very well respected for his integrity. He gained international recognition through his work as head of the Swedish Red Cross during World War 2, organising exchanges of disabled prisoners.
Bernadotte also used his position to negotiate with Heinrich Himmler and save the lives of about 30,000 Jews, allied prisoners of war and other people from the concentration camps, just before the end of the war. David Hirst wrote that Bernadotte “appalled by the wholesale Nazi massacres of Jews…had on his own personal initiative, succeeded in rescuing a surviving remnant of them…” The Gun and the Olive Branch. In this effort Folke Bernadotte had risked his life and his actions were certainly courageous.
During the 19th Century some Jews banded together to form a political ideology called Zionism, based on the idea of a “Jewish homeland”. In the USA the Zionist movement developed a powerful political lobby to promote its aims, while its military groups pursued a violent terrorist campaign in Palestine against the Arabs and Britain to force acceptance of its demands.
On November 29, 1947 the United Nations adopted a partition resolution dividing the land of Palestine into two independent states – one Arab and one Jewish, while Jerusalem was put under international protection.
This was accepted by most of the Jewish settlers, who comprised 13 percent of the population and rejected by the majority Arab population, the original inhabitants who demanded self–determination. The British said the UN decision would be a failure and refused to apply it. When British forces withdrew in May 1948, though, Israel declared independence and fighting broke out between Arabs and Jews.
On May 14, 1948, Bernadotte was appointed UN Mediator for Palestine by the UN General Assembly and sent to Palestine to mediate a truce and try to negotiate a settlement. On June 11, Bernadotte succeeded in arranging a 30-day ceasefire. Bernadotte began his assignment with a strong sympathy for the Zionists, no doubt largely to do with his wartime experiences. But he eventually came to the conclusion that the UN partition plan was unworkable and an “unfortunate resolution”.
As entries in his diary show, he progressively became discontented by what he saw as the “arrogance and hostility” of the Zionists and most particularly their “hardness and obduracy” towards the Arab refugees. He proposed to the UN his own recommendations that Arabs and Jews should form a “union” and to change the partition boundaries to try to bring peace between the feuding parties.
Bernadotte suggested several proposals. That the Jewish state gives up the Negev (in southern Palestine) to the Arab state and receive western Galilee, that the port of Haifa and airport of Lydda become free areas and that Jerusalem become totally demilitarised (he blamed the Jewish forces for “aggressive behaviour” in the sacred city) and be under the protection of the Arabs, with Jews given autonomy in its municipal affairs.
He also felt that Jewish immigration to Palestine was against the prospects of peace (as the Arab population feared the influx of settlers) and needed to be under international control, suggesting that the UN take charge of this issue in two years.
As part of Count Bernadotte’s efforts for an overall solution he also expressed concerned about the situation of the 300,000 Arab refugees and advocated their right of return and compensation. He stated that, “No settlement can be just and complete if recognition is not accorded to the right of the Arab refugee to return to the home from which he has been dislodged by the hazards and strategy of the armed conflict between Arabs and Jews in Palestine.
“The majority of these refugees have come from territory which, under the Assembly resolution of November 29, 1947, was to be included in the Jewish State … It would be an offence against the principles of elementary justice if these innocent victims of the conflict were denied the right to return to their homes while Jewish immigrants flow into Palestine and indeed, at least offer the threat of permanent replacement of the Arab refugees who have been rooted in the land for centuries.”
When the Zionist leaders heard of Bernadotte’s peace plan they became furious, considering it to favour the Arabs and against their goals, especially in respect to Jerusalem, Jewish immigration and the return of refugees and now considered Bernadotte to be an enemy. The Israeli government hated the idea of giving up Jerusalem and bent on military victory rejected the Bernadotte plan. Fighting resumed on July 8, and the Israeli army made more military gains until a new ceasefire was declared on July 18.
One of the far-right Zionist extremist groups that saw Bernadotte’s efforts as a threat was LEHI (Freedom Fighters for Israel) also better known as the Stern Gang, led by Yitzhak Shamir (later to become an Israeli Prime Minister), Dr Israel Scheib and Nathan Friedman-Yellin. LEHI was founded in 1940 and had waged a brutal campaign of terror against the Arab inhabitants of Palestine and to force the British out.
Among their most well known acts were the assassination of the British government Cabinet Minister for the East, Lord Moyne, in Cairo, in 1944 and the massacre in the Arab village of Deir Yassin on April 9, 1948. The combined forces of LEHI and the Irgun group (the military arm of the Revisionist Party, commanded by Menachem Begin, later Israeli Prime Minister) decided to destroy Deir Yassin.
The Irgun too were responsible for many terrorist horrors and as a senior Irgun officer said later, “The clear aim was to break Arab morale and raise the morale of the Jewish community.” The villagers resisted, but were overwhelmed by the well-armed attackers. The Zionist forces entered the village and executed 23 men in a quarry; another 230 unarmed people were shot in the village. Begin stated after, “Accept my congratulations on this splendid act of conquest…” from A History of the Jews by Paul Johnson.
When the Israeli Defence Force was established in May 1948, Lehi was supposed to be disbanded and its members join the IDF, but it continued to act independently, especially in Jerusalem. LEHI called Bernadotte a British agent and said he cooperated with the Nazis in the war. Some of its military commanders, such as Israel Aldad, Yehoshua Zeitler and Mashaloum Macover, talked to the gang leaders Nathan More and Yitzhak Shamir about assassinating the Count.
This was accepted and was planned by Shamir himself. This was later documented by Charles Anderline in his book, War or Peace- the Secrets of the Arab-Israeli Negotiations in 1917-1997.
Commander Yehoshua Zeitler of the Jerusalem branch of LEHI started to train four men to kill Bernadotte and solicited information from two sympathetic journalists about his schedule. LEHI decided to assassinate Bernadotte while he was on his way to meet the Israeli military governor of Jerusalem’s New City on September 17.
An Israeli jeep carrying the four assassins blocked the path of the UN convoy and one man (later discovered to be Yehoshua Cohen) fired an automatic pistol into the car, killing French Colonel Serot and Bernadotte. The other LEHI members shot the tires of the rest of the convoy and all the terrorists escaped into a Zionist ultra religious community of LEHI sympathisers for some days before fleeing to Tel Aviv.
A group calling itself The Fatherland Front claimed credit for the assassinations; in fact it was a cover name LEHI used in hopes of avoiding being exposed and to stop action being taken against the group.
But LEHI was suspected and under intense international pressure and condemnation the Israeli government arrested many of its members and disbanded LEHI. Two of the leaders of LEHI, Nathan Yellin-More and Mattityahu Shmuelevitz, were sentenced to prison terms of eight years and five years by a military court, but were released immediately in a “general” amnesty.
Another top leader, Yitzhak Shamir, was not only implicated, but actually instigated planning the murders, but he was never tried. Israel’s first Prime Minister, Ben Gurion, was at least an accessory after the fact and knew who the assassins were and made a behind the scenes deal with LEHI, freedom from prosecution if they would cease their activities.
Ben Gurion was motivated by the determination to assert the supremacy of the IDF and his own authority and prevent the strengthening of the independent Zionist militias. Shamir, in his autobiography, Summing Up, does not deny that LEHI members assassinated Bernadotte, but he claims that he nor any other members of the LEHI high command were involved. He did extol terror stating, “Neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat.”
While the world mourned Bernadotte, who gave his life to the cause of peace, in Israel, former LEHI radio announcer and MP, Geula Cohen, considered the assassination had been an effective measure, “because we prevented the internationalisation of Jerusalem.” A little recognised result of the tragic murder of the Count was the arrival of the Israeli Army in Jerusalem. Fortunately for Israeli aims, the presence of the IDF meant those sections of Jerusalem remained in Israeli hands after the truce agreements, rather than the whole area being in the Arab zone.
And for forty years this crime was forgotten until in September 1988, when two of the old members of the LEHI, Mashaloum Macover and Yehoshua Zeitler broke their silence and appeared on Israeli television. Macover admitted he led the assassination squad and Zeitler said, as LEHI chief in Jerusalem, he had directed the operation.
Zietler also stated that the decision to kill Bernadotte was made by himself and the three joint leaders of LEHI, Israel Aldad, Nathan Yellin-More and Yitzhak Shamir, the then Prime Minister of Israel. Yossi Ahimeir, (Shamir’s cabinet director) said that Shamir believed that the affair belongs to history and should be left to historians, that “there is no reason that Israel or Mr Shamir as premier can be held to account for an act of individuals forty years ago.”
Kati Marton, writing in the New Yorker, summed up well the reasons for the assassination: “ Shamir’s underground hated what the United Nations mediator stood for; compromise, conciliation, the abandonment of maximilist demands in the service of turning enemies into neighbours.” Having successfully completed their task of killing a man dedicated to peace, justice and human rights, the assassins as well killed the possibility of peace.
The murder of Bernadotte and Israeli military strength both contributed to the sabotaging of the peace efforts. Bernadotte’s proposals were never implemented and over fifty years later the Palestinian refugees still live in exile and the killings go on.
The killers of Count Bernadotte were never brought to justice and the most powerful sections of the international community did not want to pursue the case, even when new details came to light. The political assassination of the man that the UN sent to seek peace is a crime of great dimension and we should remember him and his efforts. When it comes to Israel, war crimes are merely forgotten and war criminals forgiven.
It was Count Bernadotte’s suggestions that to a great extent influenced the UN General Assembly to adopt Resolution 194 of 11 December 1948, of which paragraph 11, is regarded as the most important basis on which Palestinian refugees from 1948 are entitled to the right to return to their homes. It also constitutes the acceptance of responsibility for a solution to the plight of the Palestinian refugees by the international community.
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12. The soul of the “Land of the Pure”
Robert Grenier
It is the sheer scale of the devastation that leaves one speechless. As one surveys the overhead photos of vast lowland plains inundated with swirling brown water or stares at the upland images of mighty torrents washing away roads, bridges, entire villages, it is the utter scope of the disaster which almost defies comprehension, which far outstrips the power of words to convey.
Only the flint-hearted could be left unmoved by this. The heart aches for Pakistan.
But it is only in the photos of the people that one begins to grasp the full dimension of what is happening and, through that prism, to gain a glimpse into the soul of the Land of the Pure.
Endurance
One hears the stories of building frustration, of bitter complaints against a government so often indifferent in the best of times, and simply unequal to the challenge in these, the worst of times.
But this is not what I see in the photographs, in the images of entire families clinging to trucks to gain higher ground, of people stranded on roof-tops or on the raised strips of highways, of those isolated and forlorn, reaching for a bottle of clean water or a packet of sodden food dropped from a helicopter.
In these images one looks in vain for signs of hysteria, or for righteous indignation. What one sees instead is what one always sees in Pakistanis – endurance: Simple, often noble, endurance.
I have lived some years among Pakistanis. I cannot claim to have done them much good. Instead, my preoccupations have been those which animate the game of nations. I have served a great power which hunts its enemies, pursues its interests, and tries to meet what it sees as its responsibilities in distant places, far from home. I make no apology for this; neither do I expect great credit.
But one cannot travel among the Pakistanis, as I have been privileged to do, without developing a great admiration for their decency and their dignity.
I have found the mass of Pakistanis to be honest, hard-working, devoted to their faith and to their families, hospitable and generous almost to a fault, and devoted to the defence of right as God has given them to see it. But more than anything else, I have come to admire their capacity for endurance.
Beset by plagues
The current cataclysm has focused the world’s attention, albeit perhaps only briefly, on the suffering of ordinary Pakistanis.
Without trivialising the acuteness of their current plight, however, it is hard not to see in Pakistan’s current distress a metaphor for the many plagues which beset the mass of Pakistanis even in normal times: The crushing demographic pressures, the growing scarcity of clean water supplies, the slow strangulation of civil and economic infrastructure, the indifference of an elite class whose relation to the masses is most often “extractive,” the woeful lack of public education, the growing radicalism of the militants, and the increasing wantonness of the violence they inflict, mainly upon the innocent.
Eventually, the flood waters will recede. For some time, other calamities will replace them: Persistent economic devastation, disease, perhaps famine. Eventually, these, too, will recede, and the world’s attention will focus elsewhere, if in fact it has not done so already.
No one knows how long the effects of this year’s floods will persist, or how far they will retard Pakistan’s progress towards development. The one thing one can count on is that through it all, Pakistanis will do as they have always done. They will endure.
Robert Grenier was the CIA’s chief of station in Islamabad, Pakistan, from 1999 to 2002. He was also the director of the CIA’s counter-terrorism centre.
Al Jazeera
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07. Solidarity Poem
She thumbs through
caressingly,
looking for laksa.
The book emits age and a rhythm of
words,
brown pages brittle.
Each instruction informs us
that
we are part.
An ancient and succulent
dish,
sweet yet shocking.
Chicken & noodles & coriander &
coconut,
hunger craving satisfaction.
from whence it comes the plough
turns,
people dig earth.
They watch the sun dip
low,
and organise thoroughly.
Theirs is a bitter and long
struggle,
old as colonialism.
Bent with oppression in his
cell,
the prisoner dreams.
The pot simmers its milky
crucible,
clung with goodness.
In our country a police cell
death
swings head sideways.
outside the fog rises
slowly,
filling the trees.
Tom Pearson
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08. CULTURE & LIFE – Menzies and chaos
Rob Gowland
It is surely ironic that when Australian television programs want to show viewers the impact of the outbreak of WW2 on this country they usually start with people listening to the radio while the then Prime Minister Robert Menzies hypocritically intones that “it is my melancholy duty to inform you that Britain has declared war on Germany and that consequently this country is also at war.”
Like his British counterpart, Chamberlain, what made Menzies melancholy was his belief that Britain had been obliged to declare war against the wrong enemy. Politically, Menzies was an ultra conservative who revelled in the imperial glory of Britain’s “dominion over palm and pine”.
Britain’s Tories had sought to overthrow the Soviet government of the USSR since it first captured the Winter Palace in 1917. The only differences between Tories like Chamberlain and Churchill were over the British policy towards Germany.
Churchill correctly saw German imperialism as a deadly rival to British imperialism, coveting the same markets, the same territories, the same investment opportunities, and building up the armed might necessary to eventually take them by force.
Chamberlain and those of the British Establishment who supported him, on the other hand, were so intent on getting rid of the menace of Red revolution that they saw German imperialism as their natural ally, a willing tool that the clever diplomacy of the British Foreign Office could manoeuvre into waging war on the USSR while remaining on friendly terms with Britain.
In fact, from their perspective at the heart of “the greatest empire in the world”, they assumed that not only could they get Germany to pull their chestnuts out of the fire for them by a war with Russia, but afterwards they could dictate terms to the combatants favourable to Britain (vis à vis Russian resources).
Menzies wholeheartedly bought into this way of thinking. He travelled to Germany in the 1930s and returned an unashamed apologist for Hitler’s regime. Hitler after all had crushed the Communists, just as Menzies himself wanted to do (and tried to do as soon as the war provided the opportunity).
The Russian revolutionaries had shot their monarch, which certainly put them on the outer with a staunch imperialist like Menzies. When the Japanese empire began flexing its muscles, seizing Manchuria and then attempting to invade Mongolia in preparation for conquering Siberia, Menzies did not hesitate to assist Japan.
He drafted new laws to prevent black bans by Australian workers stopping the shipment of pig iron to Japan for armament manufacture.
His sobriquet “Pig Iron Bob” was not a compliment.
The recent Four Corners program on the imminence of a further financial crisis, likely to make the last one look like a mere rehearsal, emphasised, if nothing else, the inherent chaos that is the capitalist economic system.
Capitalism is a system built around the pursuit of profit. But Marx showed that despite all the smokescreens put up by capitalists claiming profit is the result of “buying cheap and selling dear”, profit actually derives from the capitalist precept of not paying workers the full value of what they produce. The consequence of this is that, overall, workers cannot purchase everything they make or hire all the services they provide.
Crises of overproduction are thus built in to the system: they are as certain as the sun rising in the East. And, since wars are the most effective way to use up the stockpiles of unsold goods, wars are also inevitable under capitalism. Since the end of the Second World War we have seen a truly appalling series of virtually non-stop wars around the globe.
The chaos of capitalism – its unstructured dog-eat-dog nature, its woeful instability, and its integral relationship with war – used to be a popular argument in favour of socialism: the planned economy vs the unplanned chaos of capitalism.
Predictably, the response of capitalism, since it is a system in the grip of an unquenchable thirst for new sources of profit, was to aggressively set about the dismantling of what few monetary and economic planning controls were still left. Government itself would become a commodity to be taken over by the “private sector” and exploited directly for profit.
New sources of profit however do not change the nature of capitalism, do not bring order to the system’s inherent chaos. Nor can they, of course, for the chaos is basic to the system itself.
By spin-doctoring, however, and the expenditure of an awful lot of time and money on generating and disseminating that spin, aided of course by capitalism’s domination of the mass media, the pundits of capitalism in many parts of the world have successfully beaten back or at least misdirected the popular calls for consideration of a planned economy, calls to see whether socialism is in fact a better system.
But no amount of spin doctoring or lying propaganda can long disguise the true nature of capitalism. Life itself – people’s own experiences – quickly reveals whose interests the capitalist system serves. And as the inevitable crises hit and the ruling class seeks to off-load the brunt of each crisis onto the working class, people reassess what the propaganda and spin said about socialism, about the advantages of a planned economy.
In many countries, from former parts of the Soviet Union to South America, people are pushing the propaganda aside and turning towards socialism again. For life itself demands that they do.
You can live with chaos for only so long.
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