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Issue No. 138 | 31 May 2002 |
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Issue No. 138 | 31 May 2002 |
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The Mad Monk made the brazen play this week, announcing he would use the External Affairs power to override state unfair dismissal laws and impose his own regime. It's the latest play in his long-running crusade to strip dismissal rights from millions of workers employed in small business. Long-time Lib watchers could not escape the irony that Abbott was advocating a tactic normally scorned on by the Conservatives, using an international treaty as the basis of domestic law-making. Indeed, it was his predecessor, Peter 'Mad-Dog' Reith who proclaimed: "we will not have Australian laws for Australian written in Geneva".
Then again, the conflict between principle and base politics has never been much of a dilemma for the Mad Monk. But now he's on a roll, how about opening up the entire Workplace Relations Act to international standards. This would see a national scheme of paid maternity leave enacted forthwith; unions would be allowed to levy bargaining fees and unions would be allowed to negotiate industry-wide agreements. All are rights enshrined in International Labour Organization conventions. Of course, this would require a consistency beyond the power of our hero.
Abbott's been skirting around the Shed for some time now. Last week he expanded on his idiosyncratically homely contention that the workplace was "like a family". Abbott says he likes to think of the world of work as a neighbourhood where workers and managers live in harmony. When someone disturbs the peace, he says, you need a policeman, not an "umpire". "I reject the cricketing metaphor [of Australian IR] where there are two players - one winner, one loser - and an umpire in the centre adjudicating," Abbott told practitioners at the IR Society of NSW convention which had as its theme, "The umpire reaches 100."
"I think often the umpire has too often been a player, which just isn't cricket," Abbott went on to proclaim. "I prefer the metaphor of the neighbourhold where workers and managers get along with each other, except on the rare occasions when they fall out, when you need a policeman as well as a mediator." Needless to say, in an audience that included commissioners from the federal and NSW industrial relations commissions, Abbott's homespun wisdom wasn't well received.
Then there were the wage negotiations within Abbott's own department. When workers in the Department of Workplace Relations voted overwhelmingly for a union-negotiated agreement, Abbott went public with his insistence on a non-union deal. The Monk whipped up his own deal and told his department to take it or leave it. The workers opted for a third option - to stuff it where the sun don't shine.
As for the Cole Royal Commission, suffice to say we had prepared an extensive expose, only to be told it would be in contempt. All we'll say is that $60 million could go a long way towards policing the taxation, immigration and safety rorts that dog the construction industry.
Abbott's been taking to monitoring the Tool Shed in recent times; generating all sorts of levity on the Treasury benches when he quoted from our missives against Labor luminaries. We challenge to give equal time in the House to the Liberals. It won't take long, just four short words: "I am a Tool"
Sixty six percent of CFMEU respondents told Melbourne-based pollsters they believed the Royal Commission into the Building Industry was “politically motivated”, while 55 percent said it was established to “crush unions”.
The rank and file sentiment reflects concern across the union movement that the commission is a one-trick pony, driven by the anti-CFMEU sentiments of Workplace Relations Minister Tony Abbott and his controversial Office of the Employment Advocate.
National secretary John Sutton says while the Commission has been set up to examine serious criminality and corruption in the industry, it has spent no time getting to the bottom of any of those kinds of allegations.
"Ninety-Nine per cent of the public resources used to date have been used on largely irrelevant petty disputes in the industry," Sutton says.
"From what I've seen of their allegations, very few of them would even get a hearing in the Industrial Relations Commission, let alone be the substance of a Royal Commission."
Under the carpet
Sutton spoke after commissioner Terrence Cole announced that while he would continue to air anti-union claims in open court, wider issues would be diverted to discussion and issues papers.
These include:
- Health and Safety: "The Commission proposes to address this critical issue otherwise than through public hearings."
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- Security of Payments to Sub-Contractors: "The Commission will seek to draw together the work of the various state governments ... it is likely the commission will invite interested particpants to confer to see if agreement can be reached on best practice."
- Tax Rorts and Phoenix Companies: "The Commission expects to receive a report and submission from the Taxation Office in the near future. This will be tendered as an exhibit..."
- Workers Comp Avoidance:
- Avoidance and Underpayment of Worker Entitlements:
- Abuse of Migrant Labour: "On the avialable information to date, it would appear to be insignificant... The Commission is seeking the advice of DIMA."
While the above issue were being removed, by and large, from public exposure, the CFMEU NSW branch was served with an 11-page discovery order, requiring everything from financial records to the personal diaries of clerical staff.
It has hired two additional fulltime workers to comply with the commission's demand.
Hunt For Anti-Union Witnesses
Sources close to the Office of the Employment Advocate say its staff numbers have been boosted in a drive to get anti-CFMEU witnesses before the commission.
Commissioner Cole sparked further controversy last week when he decided to relitigate claims dismissed by the Federal Court in 1999.
In that case Employment Advocate, Jonathan Hamberger, was blasted by a judge who ruled a CFMEU organiser had been "set-up and illegally taped" by two "untrustworthy" businessmen.
The commission's review of the case will be conducted by government solicitor, Craig Rawson, who represented Hamberger in the 1999 proceedings.
The counsel briefed by Rawson in that case, Nicholas Green, QC, is also attached to the Cole Commission.
Government enriching of high-profile legal operators has raised Parliamentary scrutiny.
The Senate Estimates Committee revealed that $60 million dollars has been set aside for the Cole Commission, compared with $29 million for investigations into the HIH collapse, Australia's largest.
The Committee also heard the Howard Government had committed $19.1 million for lawyers fees and expenses, headed by the $660,000 salary being paid to Cole.
The commission employs 135 fulltime workers with Cole's earn just pipping the $613,000 it is paying a media adviser.
Cole is on record saying workers would be happy to earn 14 or 15 percent less than they are receiving now.
Woman Offers DNA Test
Meanwhile, a Sydney solo mother has volunteered to take a DNA test after learning the commission would hear a backpay claim she brought against a cleaning contractor was motivated by her "relationship" to the Chilean wife of CFMEU NSW secretary Andrew Ferguson.
The allegation has been made by former Hi Lo Cleaning boss, Ed Wallace, one of dozens of employers and contractors interviewed in preparation for the Commission's Sydney hearings.
Chilean immigrant Patricia Silva was backpaid more than $2000 two years ago. She said she was "amazed" by the claim going before the commission.
"I knew I was being ripped off so I went to the union. I was a member, I paid my ticket," she said.
"This man got very, very angry because I told other women they weren't getting what they were entitled to either. Some of them went to the union as well and I think he had to backpay 10 or 12 of us.
"I am not related to Andrew Ferguson or his wife and I will take a DNA test to prove it. All we knew about Mr Ferguson is that he was good for the workers."
The Councils – covering the key centres of Sydney sweatshop production – have been given new powers to flush out sweatshops under State Government changes to WorkCover regulations.
TCFUA secretary Barry Tubner is arranging a meeting with the councils. "We want to talk to all councils but primarily the responsibility will rest with Marrickville, Blacktown, Auburn, Liverpool and Fairfield," he says.
Under the changes, anyone making commercial gain from clothing, textile or footwear production must register as a factory. They are then obliged to grant access to "authorised officers" from WorkCover, DIR or the TCFUA who can check records and safety compliance.
Since such provisions were removed by "administrative oversight" three years ago, 300 factories disappeared, largely into residential homes.
If these operation continue commercial production, without registering as factories, they will now be liable to $2200 fines.
That's where the councils come in. Their officers will be required to process applications for factory registration, deciding whether or not they should be scattered through residential suburbs.
"Our position is that factories should be in industrial areas," Tubner said. "We have no problems with homeworkers working from domestic dwellings but, from a safety perspective, domestic dwellings were never set up to be factories.
"If a factory burns down after hours there is an economic loss. If a house burns down there is very likely to be loss of life."
Tubner says sweatshops in residential areas are easily identified. Typically, they are barred and locked in the manner of gang fortresses to discourage investigation.
Legislative changes mean legitimate operators will, in practise, have to run genuine factories to comply with requirements.
"It will cost an awful lot of money to bring a home up to required standard, just from a health and safety perspective," Tubner explained.
"Whether councils want genuine factories scattered amongst residential homes is something they will have to decide."
CFMEU Miners Union president Tony Maher made the call just hours after mining giant Rio Tinto agreed to split $25 million amongst 190 mineworkers it sacked in 1998 and 1999. The union claimed Rio Tinto had introduced a “so-called merit-based system” to victimise union activists at Mt Thorley and Hunter Valley No 1 mines.
The CFMEU won three previous actions against the multi-national but been forced back into the courts by repeated appeals.
Maher called it "plainly ridiculous" for victimised workers to have to wait so long for an outcome.
"Three of our members have died since winning the first case and, that's an indictment on the Federal Government's unfair dismissal laws," he said.
"Rio Tinto used its enormous wealth to keep this matter before the courts while miners, their families and their communities struggled to survive.
"If unfair dismissal laws are to mean anything they must offer justice within a reasonable timeframe.
"It was fortunate we had the resources and determination to wait Rio Tinto out. A lot of worker organisations are not in that position.'
Today's settlement came after years of industrial, political, legal and corporate campaigning.
Miners took their cases to shareholders in London, Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Brisbane - at one point inciting a near revolt against the top table.
The settlement applies to 108 miners sacked at the Hunter Valley No 1 mine on October 20, 1998, and 82 miners dismissed from Mt Thorley on November 17, 1999.
Rio Tinto will also offer sacked miners preference on 20 available positions in NSW.
A hearing into the sacking of workers from the Blair Athol mine in Queensland continues.
The Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal found the State Government indirectly discriminated against one of its workers by failing to implement a work plan that would have allowed her to retain her job while fulfilling carer responsibilities.
The worker, a full-time Hansard sub-editor, had asked to work part-time from home so she could care for her ill son. The Victorian Government said she could, but then failed to follow through with its plan.
The Tribunal found that by effectively giving the worker no choice but to continue working full-time, the Government had imposed an unreasonable condition on her with which she could not comply.
The decision was first made in 2000 but it was appealed in the Supreme Court on the grounds the Tribunal had not taken into account the impact of the decision on the worker's colleagues. It was remitted back to the Tribunal where it was upheld.
The decision is seen as a warning for employers to ensure they are adhering to their own family friendly policies.
But some unions are saying that while the decision can be seen as a small win for the worker, it does little to change general workplace practices enough to ensure it does not happen again.
NSW Labor Council's Alison Peters says the case still leaves the onus on individual workers to blow the whistle on bosses who fail to uphold their own policies but "most people just don't have the time and energy to go through all this".
The Hansard worker struggled for more than two years to get a final ruling on her case and ultimately lost her job. She has so far been awarded $161,300 but there is little assurance her former employer will act differently if the situation arises again.
A resolution passed at ALP State Conference attempts to put the onus back on employers by requiring them to submit in writing any reasons why they cannot fulfil their own family friendly policies. Another encourages unions to continue placing family friendly policies into agreements.
Peters says it is also crucial unions keep taking an active role in ensuring workplace policies are being properly implemented.
Labor Council secretary John Robertson has called on WorkCover to start enforcing the criminal code after Della Bosca rejected a push for a separate law of 'industrial manslaughter' on the grounds that the criminal law already dealt with the issue.
Robertson says its now time to test that contention by initiating manslaughter charges whenever there is a workplace deaths.
Either the law is in place or it is not," Robertson says. "If it is, then we need to see a few cases testing its scope."
Robertson says the issue should also be examined in detail at the upcoming Summit on Work Safety called by Della Bosca to be held in Bathurst in July.
A resolution to make industrial manslaughter part of ALP policy was voted down at last weekend's ALP State Conference on the basis of NSW Government advice that the laws already existed.
The Howard Government successfully fought to deny Australians pre-election access to information contained in cabinet papers but, slowly, its avenues for denial are being blocked off.
Five members of the Federal Court bench ruled shadow transport minister, Lindsay Tanner, had the right to seek a Federal Court review of a decision by Department of Employment and Workplace Relations head, Peter Shergold, to exempt the cabinet documents from release under Freedom of Information provisions.
The documents in question are reports commissioned by former Workplace Relations Minister, Peter Reith, before he unleashed dogs and mercenaries on the country's wharves in an effort to break the MUA.
The tortuous legal process began with the MUA winning a prima facie case that there had been a conspiracy which breached the Workplace Relations Act.
Government headed off that threat with an out of court settlement which required the beneficiary of its actions, Patricks Stevedoring, to pick up the union's legal tab and pay millions of dollars to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.
In return, the union dropped its conspiracy action but Tanner has been seeking to shed light on the matter through Parliament, use of the Freedom of Information Act and actions in the Federal and High Courts, ever since.
The increase, agreed to by the NSW Labor Council, the NSW Government and employers, will apply to all workers employed under NSW state awards who haven't received a pay rise through enterprise bargaining.
The $18 increase was the largest ever safety net rise awarded by the NSW IRC. Workers in the retail, hospitality, warehousing and agricultural industries will be amongst those who benefit from the decision.
Labor Council assistant secretary Mark Lkennon said the decisionw as good news for the lowly paid.
"For those on the lowest rates of pay, the decision equates to a 4.5 per cent wage increase," he says.
Lennon says it's good to see the way the NSW system has delivered the wage rise in a timely manner.
Star today agreed not to work as a liquidator or administrator for 12 months after the Company Auditors and Liquidators Disciplinary Board found he had "failed to adquately investigate and report" on three companies, including National Textiles and an associated entity.
National Textiles was chaired by Stan Howard, brother of Prime Minister John Howard, when it went belly-up in January, 2000.
Public outrage forced the Government to cough up $11.2 million in worker entitlements.
Countless companies had failed before taking millions in workers entitlements with them but never one closely linked to the Prime Minister.
TCFUA secretary Barry Tubner said Star had effectively placed himself "in the sin bin" and the public, workers and voters were entitled to know why.
"When John Howard wanted National Textiles to go away he roped in taxpayers to pick up the tab," Tubner said. "I think taxpayers are entitled to know the full story behind this latest development."
Opposition industrial relations spokesman Robert McClelland also called for a new inquiry to identify what "caused or motivated" the liquidator not to properly discharge his duties.
The CPSU's Graeme Thomson said most staff welcomed the decision and looked forward to working with Balding, who has been acting in the top job for several months.
"The last thing the ABC needed was another 'crazy ideas man'. After 18 months of 'Shier madness,' staff were keen to get back to doing what they do best, making Australia's finest programs," Thomson said.
"We will be looking to Russell to promote and defend the independence and integrity of the ABC."
Balding's appointment seems to have pleased most observers with the notable exceptions of Alan Jones and representatives of the extreme right wing Institute of Public Affairs (IPA).
Jones said the ABC was a 'shambles'.
Not to be outdone, the IPA's Mike Nahan described Balding as a 'bean counter' who lacked 'the media experience or tough personality required to run the ABC.'
So it appears, normal transmission has resumed.
Unions say the decision to defund the Industry Training Advisory Boards (ITABs) will lead to the privatisation of the national training agenda.
ITABs are government funded bodies, made up of union and employer representatives who advise government and industry on training.
They help tailor training programs to the meet the needs of their state or territory while also meeting national standards, and ensure programs provide a practical benefit to trainees, employers and the industries in which they operate.
Most importantly their input feeds back into creating and maintaining high national standards, provides form of quality control, and produces workers with transferable skills that are not limited only to one particular employer's agenda.
In the NSW forestry industry alone, the ITAB program has resulted in a 450% increase in traineeship enrolments.
Its decision to decimate funding of Australia's Industry Training Advisory Boards (ITABs) has angered unions and prompted the ACTU to hold an emergency meeting to determine its full impact.
In NSW the move translates as a $3m funding cut, effectively siphoning $70k from each of the state's 20 industry ITABs.
The money is crucial in ensuring each ITAB has a full-time worker to coordinate operations, and that basic administration support and infrastructure are provided.
Labor Council's Michael Gadiel says the result will be a Government increasingly providing direct inducements to employers who will now be free to provide watered-down training programs tailored for their needs alone and carrying no guarantees of meeting basic industry standards.
According to NSW Nurses' Association general secretary Sandra Moait the value of advice delivered by state ITABs have been "seriously underestimated and were ITAB to be no longer available, any credibility the national training agenda has will cease to exist because it will have disconnected from its information conduits".
The Government-endorsed pay rises, backdated to October last year, are worth up to $24,000 per departmental head.
The CPSU says retrospective pay rises have been virtually outlawed for general public servants, pointing to Department of Workplace Relations guidelines which stipulate public service pay rises should 'apply prospectively' and that 'long-standing industrial practice has been to avoid retrospective pay increases.'
CPSU Acting Assistant National Secretary Adrian O'Connell, says public servants are "doing it tough" and most were appalled by the way those at top had accepted back-dated increases unavailable to the rest of the workforce.
"We would not begrudge anyone a fair pay rise, but it's a bit rich for a handful of highly paid chiefs to accept backdated rises while denying them to everyone else," said Mr O'Connell.
"If it's good enough for Max Moore-Wilton and his mates, it should be good enough for the rest of us. We are calling on the government to remove their centralised and restrictive 'pattern-bargaining' approach to public sector wages and allow members to negotiate backdated pay rises."
Diane, who asked that her surname not appear, has moved on to another job, but union members at the resort praised her efforts as delegate.
Union action at the Pacific International also won backpay for a number of other LHMU members.
The Pacific International, which opened in September 2000, had been underpaying workers and failing to meet award conditions.
'People were employed for up to 10 months on the introductory pay rates, when they should have been paid at Level 2,' Diane said.
The introductory rate is just $13.59 per hour - $1.36 less than the Level 2 rate of $14.95 per hour.
Staff had also working up to nine hours without a break.
Management attempted to silence Diane, but union action in the Industrial Relations Commission led to her getting 20 weeks pay.
Around 20 employees joined the Union and got active for a better deal.
NSW Union Assistant Branch Secretary Mark Boyd said: 'We know many employers in the industry attempt to increase profits by undercutting correct pay and conditions.
'Our members at the Pacific Resort have shown once again that if we get active, we can win.'
It is estimated that between 60 and 70 casino staff a year will access the maternity leave entitlement.
"Star City is now the biggest employer in the Sydney CBD so this agreement to fund paid maternity leave is an important benchmark which we believe other Sydney employers - especially in the hospitality industry - should quickly follow," LHMU assistant national secretary, Tim Ferrari, said.
Enterprise agreement negotiations are on-going, with another meeting held today between the union and the casino.
LHMU Casino Union members want to get an improved wages deal out of their employer in these negotiations.
Star City management have agreed to pay the maternity leave in two instalments:
· 3 weeks pay on commencement of maternity leave
· 3 weeks pay upon 2 months of returning to work
" Star City accepted the union proposal for paid leave and said they wanted to show support for their employees, absent taking care of the new child, and to acknowledge the union members' right to return to work," Ferrari said.
The deal however hinges on the ratification of a new enterprise agreement package.
Ferrari said early agreement on maternity leave was encouraging.
Spokesman Evan Hall says workers have been raising security concerns since standards were downgraded after the Sydney Olympics.
AGAL facilities at Pymble perform narcotic analysis for the NRL, AFL, ARU, soccer and cricket authorities as well state and federal police forces.
"AGAL needs the same security rating as Lucas Heights and other high-security Government facilities," Hall says. "Local police and private security are not enough."
Hall said contractors were not generally subjected to the type of rigorous background checks as permanent public servants. He called for fewer workers on short-term contracts and increased permanent staff.
by HT Lee
Alkatiri thought he had an understanding with Foreign Minister Alexander Downer over lunch in Canberra just before independence that the issue of maritime boundaries is still on the table for discussion after the signing of the Timor Sea Treaty (TST) on 20 May.
'He made it clear at the lunch that they are prepared, they are ready to negotiate the maritime boundaries. This is the reality,' Alkatiri told ABC journalist Karen Snowdon in an interview for the Asia Pacific program recently:
This is the second time an 'understanding' Alkatiri had with Australia had gone soured. Alkatiri and the East Timor Transitional Authority (ETTA) negotiating team lead by Peter Galbraith were also led to believe the signing of the 5 July 2001 Timor Sea Arrangement would preclude Australia issuing 'exploration or exploitation of petroleum in areas outside the Joint Petroleum Development Area (JPDA) that are on the seabed claimed by East Timor.'
However, on 22 April this year, Australia issued a bid in the area known as NT02-1-- just outside the JPDA and adjacent to Greater Sunrise--an area that East Timor is contesting as within their rightful seabed boundary.
Commenting on this latest development, East Timorese opposition MP, Eusebio Guterres said he hoped Prime Minister Alkatiri will in future not fall into the trap of agreeing to 'a gentlemen's agreement or understanding' unless it is written down and signed somewhere on some piece of paper.
'In international politics and treaties, unless it is written down, it does not mean a thing,' Eusebio said.
Many East Timorese oppositions MPs and local NGOs have criticised the TST because under the treaty, 80% of Greater Sunrise--the largest of the oil and gas fields in the Timor Sea--falls within Australia's exclusive economic zone (EEZ).
Greater Sunrise has a gas reserve of 300 million barrels of condensate and 177 million tonnes of LNG, and is expected to return an estimated tax revenue expressed in cumulative dollars of the day of US$36 billion.
A working group-- consisting of local MPs and NGOs opposed to the treaty--the Independent Centre for Advocacy Research of Timor Sea (ICARTS)--has been established.
ICARTS is putting together a position paper calling on the East Timorese Parliament not to ratify the TST. ICARTS also wants East Timor to lodge an appeal with the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
According to Eusebio, Australia's intention of refusing to negotiate with East Timor over the maritime boundaries has left East Timor with no choice but to appeal to the international tribunal.
'East Timor's Parliament must, without any further delay, enact a legislation mapping out our seabed and maritime boundaries claims, and file an application with the ICJ at the Hague,' Eusebio said.
31 May 2002
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by Dale Keeling
At present all Australian citizens are granted tourist visas when they arrive at Nadi International Airport, however today Fiji's Minister of Foreign Affairs announced that he has instructed the Immigration Ministry to deny a visa to any ACTU official and to contact the Minister. Security has been given as the reason for the move.
Although the ACTU and its affiliates in the Civil Aviation industry have decided to provide solidarity support to their colleagues at Fiji's airports, no action or even threat of action has as yet been made by any Australian union organisation.
Talks have been underway this week between cabinet ministers and union official in Fiji however late this afternoon the General Secretary of the Fiji Public Service Association, Mr Rajeshwar Singh said that the talks had made little progress. "To be frank, the talks are going nowhere and this announcement about the visas is very bad news indeed. Very reIuctantly it looks to me as if solidarity support needs to be turned on."
Date of the event: 13 June 2002 6.30pm (show starts at 7.30pm)
Join the wild women of this century ( Joan Kirner, Jenny Macklin, Joanna Briggs, Jenny George, Susan Halliday, Geraldine Doogue, Anne Summers and Penny Wong) in a frank and funny look at what we have done with our vote at 6.30pm on Thursday June 13th, 2002 at the Metro Theatre, 624 George St, Sydney.
Cost is $60/$40 concession (plus booking fee) and includes show, light meal and drinks at bar prices.
To book phone 02 9287 2000. Group bookings can be made by emailing the Metro at [email protected]
Dear Sir,
The" jack in the box" effort displayed by Kim Beasley the member for Brand, this week in federal parliament, reminded me of the quote attributed to:
George Eliot, novelist 1819-1880 - "It is never too late to be what you might have been."
As he not once, but twice rose to his feet and forcefully made two points of order.
This must have had those liberal slapstick clowns, Abbot and Costello, in raptures, as they had just bagged; ball busted and otherwise besmirched Simon Crean and the *Creanites, in a manner that would have made Keating envious.
Judging by the smirks on their faces, which gave an excellent impression of two little adolescent, smart arsed public school boys, perhaps they too were also contemplating:
"It is never too late to be what you might have been."
Thomas E.C.
The recent letter from Tom Collins regarding Mark Latham appears to reflect much of the pointless sloganeering that characterises many of Mr Latham's enemies, whether they be old-fashioned Stalinists, wimminists, public sector ideologues, or basket-weaving greenies. It is not Mr Collins that I primarily take issue with - his letter is a drop in the ocean - it is the hysteria and brainlessness of the broad coalition of apparatchiks who are making a comfortable career out of opposing anything Mr Latham does.
It is unfortunate that there are the usual wild accusations, "rejecting blue collar workers", "belonging in the Howard Government", all of the lines that the Socialist Left tend to feed to their acolytes to keep them content and well within their comfort zone. It is usually the way of the cynical opportunists that they are happy to use old slogans to attack any kind of original thought, without coming up with any sort of viable alternative (excluding the usual calls to increase the size of the public sector).
Everytime Mr Latham proposes some policy or other, there will be guarded support in The Australian (a brainless publication in itself which is the capture of Tory sloganeers), and another round of Latham bashing by the vested interests that he seems to offend. Indeed, the cries of the ill-defined "economic rationalism", are just a convenient way to drop one's obligation as a party of government to implement rational economic policy. If keeping a budget surplus, keeping down interest rates and inflation, implementing microeconomic reform (which has our multifactor productivity growth at 2.5% a year), and generally allowing people to go about their business is "economic rationalism", then let us be economic rationalists. It has been a long time since I've heard anyone actually say "government knows what's best for society and individuals", because it is evidently not true. It is often the vested interests in the public sector and the universities, who have the most to lose fro!
m anyone who demands accountability. Hence the hypocritical cries of "neo-liberal" when someone tries to go about doing that.
Labor has two choices. It can go back to the silly ideas of re-regulation, stifling protectionism, a permanent budget deficit, and a no-obligation welfare state. This sort of rubbish will keep us out of office for the rest of human history. As romantic as it may seem running with socialism's false vow of "equality of outcome", it's simply not the stuff of grown-ups. Why do people insist on pandering to the lunatic fringes of society?
The other choice is to move on. To embrace the idea of "equality of opportunity", to acknowledge that people have aspirations and thus don't want to be "the same" as everyone else, to understand that there are limits to what a government can acheive, to foster civil society. When Mark Latham talks of "social capital", instead of bagging him out (as the philosophically-challenged do), why not try to engage with his argument? Does anyone really believe that the majority of working people actually like Government bureaucracies?
It is frightening to see how close we are to losing our mind and confining ourselves to irrelevance (as was so easily achieved during the 50s and 60s), simply because it all just seems to difficult to actually find out what people are thinking about in the suburbs, and in rural Australia.
The sooner the Labor Party encourages a culture where people (especially the youth) are encouraged to think calmly and sensibly about rational and responsible public policy (rather than encouraging misguided "idealism" as a substitute for policy), the sooner we are likely to regain office from the real opposition: not Mark Latham, but the Howard Government.
Steve Murray Edwards
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George Piggins |
Re: The South Melbourne Football Club Pty Ltd
Isn't it ironic that the "sports club" who became the darling of the Sydney intellegentsia's fashionable flight towards engagement with sport in the mid 90's, the same intellegentsia that holds the values of democracy as an article of faith, is itself undemocratic and merely another corporation masquerading as a sports club.
The Swans are nothing but a business entity, interested only in profit, transplanted from the carcass of a Melbourne sports club with no soul, other than a mass delusion shared by middle class wankers who wouldn't know the feel of real club even if it got up and smacked them in the face.
On the other hand, the very unfashionable South Sydney District Rugby League Football Club, a working class, community owned club from a sport derided by the intellegentsia, bar a few true radicals, is wholly democratic and far more politically credible than the Swans will ever be. Us members elect the board and can even become board members ourselves!
How does anyone, with a brain and not in denial, seriously think that a club founded on opportunism, media spin, pink helicopters, Geoffrey Edelsten, bankruptcy and the joke of a no neck in Barry Round in the era of corporate greed, could think of the Swans as a club worth having anything to do with is beyond my comprehension.
I've only ever followed one football side and always will, and it amazes me how you could somehow just wake up one morning and say to yourself, "OK - now I'm a Swans supporter". What was this, some media induced epiphany?
When I see Swans supporters walking to the SCG in their lycra red & white I see gullible customers, not members of a club from a community with roots, tradition and spirit. And I can't help but think that these people are a lost tribe of media victims from urban Australia.
The Swans are impostors and if they survive it will not be because of any laudible attributes they may claim to have, but merely because a chunk of Sydney has lost its way and fallen for a pathetic con-job.
Mark McGrath
Member Number 5184
South Sydney District Rugby League Footbal Club
by Peter Lewis
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The Royal Commission has been travelling around the nation for most of this year, what do you think it has achieved so far?
Very little to this point. A great deal of public monies have been expended. I have to say the majority of the money and resources has been chewed up on stuff that is pretty irrelevant to any agenda about reforming or improving the building industry. The vast majority of the time has been spent on judicial style hearings in a courtroom full of lawyers where union officials and union members are put under immense pressure in the witness box. Usually the incident that is being examined is a petty incident and certainly this kind of process won't lead to any lasting improvements in productivity or any kind of sensible reform of the building industry.
Do you get a sense that the Commission has a sense of the direction of where they want to take this, or are they still fishing for angles?
Well, I think it is a bit of both. Obviously the personnel that would have been chosen to run this Commission have an anti-union bias. It has been quite clear from day one. So they have not been put there to do any favours for the union movement. And generally they would favour prescriptions that would be about restricting our capacity to represent our members and bringing in a range of new laws that would make life more difficult for unions.
Their problem however, is knowing exactly what laws to bring in, and what kind of mechanisms that they might be able to deploy to achieve their goal. It is one thing to have the broad goals, but another thing to know exactly what you want to do.
When he announced the Royal Commission, Tony Abbott really fingered you in an effort to get legitimacy. He said that your comments about corruption within the industry was why he was setting the Royal Commission up. Have any of the concerns that you raised at the beginning, actually been dealt with?
That I think is one of the very ironic parts of this Commission. 99% of the public resources to date, have been used on largely irrelevant petty disputes in the industry, and indeed looking at the agenda for the next five weeks in Sydney, the vast majority of the complainers against the unions are small businesses with absolutely petty complaints. Very few of the allegations that I have looked at would even get a hearing in the Industrial Relations Commission, let alone be the substance of Royal Commissions.
Now, having said all that, it just seems ironic that the Commission, which was ostensibly established to examine serious criminality and corruption and matters like that, seems to have spent precious little time on getting to the bottom of those types of allegations.
I'm not sure of the answer to that. If the Commission was to spend some of its resources on nailing real criminals, particularly those employers in our industry who have got very poor track records in terms of ripping off - not just workers - but ripping off the government - if they went after some of those chronic offenders in the industry, that would be money well spent. But of course there is no sign of them doing that.
I think there is no end of examples in the industry of crooked operators, and indeed some that are even prepared to go the full extent of using colourful identities in their misdeeds, but to date the Commission seems to have spent precious little time, apart from one or two examples in Victoria, where $250,000 was paid to some colourful identities. Apart from that example, it is hard to think of many instances where they have even gone near big time criminality.
So, I am not sure why it is, but I certainly know that the Commission's resources have been very poorly used to date.
· $19 million in legal resources to the Commission, we hear today. How has the CFMEU been able to match that sort of firepower?
$19 million chewed up on lawyers. I think it is just outrageous, and I think the public - certainly if you listen to talkback radio in Sydney and Melbourne today - is giving a predictable public reaction that it's profligacy of the worst kind. And when you think of the irony of these characters that have got their snouts so far into the trough - all these lawyers - are down there investigating collusive practices and lack of transparency and all that sort of thing in relation to workplace arrangements. I mean the irony just jumps out for anybody to see.
It is quite clear that the Royal Commission we should be having is into the rorts of the legal profession. $19 million on what? What productivity? What assistance has this industry got to date - and there is not much sign that it is likely to get any for the rest of the Royal Commission - for all this money being spent on this vast battery of lawyers.
I just think it is an outrage and the public understands that.
Do you have any sense of the response of your rank and file to the hearings to date?
We do. We have in fact just completed a survey of our members in three States and the results that have come back are quite startling. The membership in that survey demonstrates an understandable scepticism - even hostility - to the Commission. It demonstrates that they don't believe that the Union is going to get a fair hearing in this Royal Commission, and that is quite clear from the survey results.
The survey is interesting in other regards too. It shows that there is a very high support amongst the membership for the Union and for its current leadership, and it also, much to Tony Abbott's disappointment no doubt, shows that the more that Abbott confronts us, the more the members are willing to take up cudgels on behalf of their Union. It shows that they have got a lot of faith and commitment to their Union.
I think in fact that the most telling statistic is that if there is an attempt to deregister our Union, 73% of the members would be prepared to go on strike, and about another 17% are prepared to take other forms of supportive action. There was only something like about 10% of the members who didn't volunteer any kind of action in response to an attempt to deregister us.
Now, I think that is an amazing figure for 90% of the members to come back and say that they are prepared to be active around defending their organisation when in fact we are such a big organisation. We are not a small craft society or anything; we are a very big organisation. It shows that the leadership must have been doing something right to attract that kind of support amongst the membership.
Finally, what would the Commissioner need to do to convince you that he is serious about delivering a non-partisan report?
I think it is well past the time that he has to realise that queuing up a vast amount of resources on judicial style hearings into petty disputes is not the best use of the $60 million he has available. If he wants to hold judicial style hearings and examine and cross examine witnesses ad nauseum, it is also well past the time when he ought to start to look at some of the chronic employer offenders in this industry. It is well know that we have given about 10 boxes of examples to the Commission of employers who have repeatedly breached the standards, both legal and customary standards, in this industry. In fact we have provided more than 200 examples of those kinds of breaches.
But to date, six months into the Commission, there has not been one of those employers put through the judicial style hearings. In fact, it is quite telling that the Commissioner has said he doesn't see his courtroom as being a place to investigate breaches of awards and enterprise agreements by employers. He believes that is the proper province of the Industrial Relations Commission.
So we are sort of in a bit of a bind here where the Commissioner has ruled out looking at employer breaches in the public domain - or through the kind of public hearings that he is conducting.
So, if that is to be the way he is conducting it, he ought to forget public hearings altogether and we ought to start to go into more tripartite discussions of all of the serious industry players - because the ones who know about this industry are the people who work in the industry, and they ought to be committing their time to serious discussions about reforms and improvements to the industry.
It is quite clear to me, that if he is not going to look at any employers in the context of public hearings, then I just can't see why we are going to waste much more time on these public hearings with a courtroom full of lawyers that are just queuing up for public monies at an incredibly fast rate.
by Jim Marr
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Tattersall & Howes |
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They say the camera doesn't lie but Labor Right operator Paul Howes and the Left's Amanda Tattersall locked in an embrace on the national news. Hang on just one minute!
Even at their tender years Howes, 21, and Tattersall, 25, carry the wounds and some of the baggage, from life in the no-holds-barred ring that is Labor's factional battleground.
Eighteen months earlier their respective families had been on opposite sides of a torrid tussle for Labor's federal candidacy in the must-win constituency of Richmond. Tattersall's sister-in-law was campaign manager for the candidate that rolled Howes' mother-in-law.
Factionalism, NSW-style, is tribalism.
That's what made the Tattersall-Howes success on immigration policy at last weekend's NSW Labor Party conference remarkable. For once, well twice if you recall the 1997 resolution on power privatisation, the tribes sublimated their desires for ritual clubbing to unite on policy.
Members beat the machine by breaking down factionalism, just as they had five years earlier.
Amongst other things, their successful resolution, called on the Party to:
- replace mandatory detention with mandatory identification followed by community accommodation
- open access to counselling, schools, TAFEs, language courses and health services to refugee applicants
- close regional detention centres such as Curtin, Woomera and Port Hedland
- reject the system of Temporary Protection Visas
Labor for Refugees emerged from rank and file embarrassment at the "me too" line on asylum seekers their party took to last year's election.
The movement began with branches at Paddington and Newtown and broadened when it became clear its aims were shared by the Labor Council, a traditional bulkwark of the NSW Right.
Council secretary John Robertson was an outspoken champion of Labor For Refugees, drawing personal fire from the likes of Right wing front bencher Mark Latham.
On January 22 the factions formalised their organisation, giving Tattersall and Howes as co-convenors, the task of developing policy all could sign off on.
The reactions of the pair, back then, reflected opinions and prejudices formed before they were.
"I only knew her to yell at during Young Labor Conferences. I didn't really think I would get on with her," Howes admitted.
She, on the other hand, found his manner off-putting.
"I just remember him, from five years earlier, as a Trot, standing up and ranting at meetings. When it came to that, he was up there with the best."
Their dealings, in the beginning, were businesslike but as conference drew nearer, so did they.
In the final two weeks, their original, agreed resolution underwent change after change as federal politicians, unions and factional heavyweights weighed in with this objection or that.
More than once they sailed close to disaster.
"Paul just wanted a resolution that would go through. I was more precious about the language because I wanted a clear statement of principle" - Tattersall.
"There was a lot of patience and a lot of biting of tongues," - Howes.
During working hours, Tattersall virtually moved out of Upper House president Meredith Burgmann's office to the Labor Council where the odd couple re-tooled the form but clung to the substance.
For a time, on the Friday afternoon, it seemed the whole exercise had been for nought. The Left reckoned the Right was selling out while the Right suspected the Left wanted a blue so it could demonstrate its purity, once again.
Howes and Tattersall insist both suspicions were ill-founded. Around 9pm they got the nod from every powerbroker they could think of.
Imagine their shock at 4.30 on Saturday afternoon when they learned that, despite their best efforts, the powerful International Relations Committee had rejected their amendment.
Tattersall rushed from her seat at the back of the Town Hall auditorium to join Howes in front of the stage. What the hell was happening?
Powerbrokers met out the back and proceded, metaphorically-speaking, to crack skulls.
When the issue returned to the floor Robertson was as good as his word, delivering a powerful plea which Tattersall matched in tone and substance.
Two more speakers then delegates spoke, overwhelmingly.
That night, euphoric delegates dined and drank across factional lines. Tattersall got back from her grandmother's birthday dinner to join Left comrades drinking with Robertson and Howes in a Chinatown hotel.
But, when hangovers cleared, had anything changed?
Both are inititally defensive. This was an issue that went across factions, or as Tattersall would have it "the best people and the worst people were in both factions".
"I believe in the Right faction because it is the best group to govern the state," Howes says, "the Right has a head as well as a heart."
"The whole history of Labor Party conferences," according to Tattersall, "is one of the Left putting up brilliant motions but not having them supported."
Hmm... then the experiences of the past five months appear to kick in.
Howes believes trade unionists will lead an inevitable loosening of the factional straitjacket. Already, he argues, they are finding more in common with each other, across the divide, than with machine people from their own factions.
It's not something Tattersall, who tossed in a Young Labor leadership position out of "disgust" with rampant factionalism, is about to disagree with.
"Honestly, I have faith in the Labor Council because it played an impressive role on this issue. It delivered on everything it said it would," she says.
"John Robertson has committed himself personally to breaking down factionalism and, on my experience, I'm willing to work with him on that basis.
"The ALP is vulnerable at the moment because its policies are poll driven rather than membership driven. This exercise was promising because it showed how members, and important party institutions, could come together to demand better policy."
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Stevanovic, with the support of the CFMEU, is on a one-man strike with his painstaking restoration of Blacktown's Serbian Orthodox Church, St Nicholas', just months away from completion.
Why? Because he's become another victim of an immigration regime that doesn't follow through on the thousands of work visas issued each year. Besides, the church can hardly go out and get someone from Work For The Dole to finish the job.
In his mid-40s, Stevanovic is an iconographer of international repute. He holds double fine arts degrees from Belgrade University and studied his ancient craft in Italy, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Holland, Greece, Spain and Portugal before completing a scholarship in Norway.
Prior to his homeland being bombed beyond recognition he had painted the insides of 10 Yugoslav monasteries, some of which were 700 years old.
In 1997 he came to Australia to visit his sister in Blacktown. News of his presence spread throughout the Orthodox community and it wasn't long before the priest at St Nicholas' was onto DIMA about the possibility of a special work visa.
The cleric could envisage the inside of his western suburbs church being transformed into the equal of most anything in Europe, a job that would take the best part of five years.
Clearly, we're not talking a ladder and a can of Dulux here. The walls and ceilings of traditional Orthodox churches are covered in intricate Byzantine frescoes - real Michaelangelo stuff.
It was a toss-up for Stevanovic whose wife and two children were still on the family farm, 140km south Belgrade.
But, having already turned down a professorship to remain a working artist, it was the state of his homeland that swung the issue. Today, in Serbia, there is not enough money for penicillin, let alone gold paint and most places of worship have been ruined. Prior to leaving, Stevanovic had found himself restoring the works of others, rather than creating his own.
He set about St Nicholas' with enthusiasm, covering the walls with his finest handiwork and spending more than a year, flat out on scaffolding, applying intricate designs to the ceiling.
But, early on, when the priest gave him a disused hall, without bath or shower, for his paint and told him it would double as his living quarters, the seeds of doubt were planted.
They flowered as promised cash continually failed to materialise.
In the four and a half years before being referred to the CFMEU, Stevanovic says, he received $30,000 in ocassional stipends and a good $20,000 of that went back into buying paint and equipment for the job.
He has kept himself going by turning out dozens of small, wooden icons outside the 70-80 weekly hours he has devoted to St Nicholas'. One of his best customers has been a priest from the nearby Catholic church.
The work at St Nicholas' has been praised by church and community leaders but Stevanovic insists there won't be another lick of paint until wages and entitlements have been sorted out.
CFMEU secretary, Andrew Ferguson, calls the situation "another Ruddock outrage", comparing it with the eight Hindu stonemasons the Minister's department had working at Helensburgh for $110 a week.
"We don't blame the Serbian church for this situation. The Federal Government is facilitating the abuse of this man's skills while trying to drive down the wages and conditions of Australians," Ferguson says.
"They let in as many as 15,000 people on working visas each year but don't follow them up. Everyone knows about the temple stonemasons but these highly-skilled people are just the tip of an ice-berg."
Construction companies, Ferguson says, bring in Chinese and Koreans on 12-month visas then send them home to be paid in their own currency at Chinese or Korean rates.
"It's a rort and this Government is encouraging it," Ferguson argues.
So where does all this leave Stevanovic? In a hut in a Blacktown park working on a mural, depicting the history of the region, he will donate to the local council.
He wants to bring his wife, son and daughter to Australia and, armed with four or five contract offers from around NSW and Queensland, has applied for permanent residence.
That way, at least, he would attract Australian wages and conditions when he embarks on his next masterpiece.
Besides, argues a man whose work has already been finalist-listed for Australia's prestigious Dobell Prize, he has the skills and experience to make a contribution to this country's artistic development.
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In tackling his new job, Russell Balding, an ex-accountant, need look no further than the Report of the Australian National Audit Office, Corporate Governance in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation which found serious problems with the standards of corporate governance in the National Broadcaster. Sadly the political obsession with who would be annointed managing director has exacerbated a serious structural problem identified by the Audit report, that lambasted a culture of managing up to the top of the ABC pyramid rather than consult with audiences in shaping content. If politicians like Peter Costello or board members like Michael Kroger really care about the ABC they should be talking about audiences not whinging about alleged bias against their party. In my opinion the Auditor's concerns about lack of management accountability, the decline in young adult audiences under 40 and the long term failure of the ABC to better understand its consumers call for the radical reform Mr Balding says is not necessary.
It is no secret that ABC Television is looking worse for wear, but the standard excuses of reduced funding and the exodus of creative talent do not explain why ABC TV is so stale? Commissioning, production and scheduling occurs at the whim of the senior executive service rather than in reference to audiences. In the absence of targeted audience research and performance indicators ideas are greenlighted and vettoed on the basis of personal tatse which, from the evidence of my TV, is depressingly middle brow, risk averse, British to its bootstraps, and in a word conservative - these moguls in cardigans are a far cry from the radicals of Liberal nightmares. . How many 'crazy ideas ' have failed the good taste test? Left to the mercy of personal prejudice it is doubtful that the successful BBC comedy Ali G have made it through the ABC's commissioning hoops? How many others have got up, only to die on screen , the victim of a thousand compromises. In the case of the ABC the fish Aunty reject doesn't make her the best.While ABC TV's share of viewers 18-39 has declined by 13% since 1990, it has increased its share of people 55 and over. TV management's reaction to these figures has been to define the over 55s as its core audience, and do what it can not to alienate them - a shortsighted strategyif ever there was one.
The Auditor finds that the ABC has made little effort to measure if is meeting its Charter responsibilities to reflect Australia's diversity, lacking until recently even basic professional performance indicators standard in a modern business. The Auditor identifies a problem of managers working up to the apex of the corporate pyramid, rather than down to stakeholders that seems to have been exacerbated in recent years. Most senior managers, relatively new to the ABC, were ignorant "of specific features of the Commonwealth's accountability framework Š and do not perceive any major role for themselves [in public accountability] outside their line responsibilities to the Managing Director". The Auditor is particularly scathing about the ABC's failure to use audience research to consult with its audiences and to learn more about their preferences and tastes.
The Auditor criticised the ABC for relying on inappropriate and statistically confused commercial ratings services such as OzTam and the Neilsans when comparable public broadcasters in Europe employed sophisticated qualitative and qualitative methods to engage their audiences in programming. The ABC "appears to be somewhat behind the majority of overseas national public broadcasters in measurement of the outcomes it expects to achieve." The Auditor advised in the strongest terms that because the Charter enshrines terms like 'innovative', 'high standard', 'sense of national identity' , 'cultural diversity' and 'multicultural character' of the Australian community the ABC could be expected to have a methodology that would enable consistent reporting to Parliament in relation to these concepts. The Report advises the ABC to undertake new measures to understand why its share of the audience is changing and to guide strategies to increase its appeal to disenchanted groups such as young adults and people outside the cities.
The ABC has replied that it is "totally committed to research" as a strategic tool to meet the needs of its audiences and to meet the Charter mandate. The audience research section of the ABC is to be boosted, with more outsourced and in-house audience testing and the establishment of an "Audience Appreciation" service similar to that operating in the UK. This is to be supported. But consultation across audience demographics must be made mandatory on television program makers during the program bids process and after programs go to air. It should be a transparent process, carried out against agreed bench marks.
Placing audiences at the centre of programming is 'radical reform' and would trigger a profound change to what we see on ABC TV. There is no substitute for originality of ideas but program-makers have everything to gain from a more meaningful dialogue with audiences. Innovation and ideas can be tested with its target audience when the inevitable doubts are raised by Commissioners about a proposals acceptability. In Drama, documentaries, comedy, and info-tainment decisions over style, format, story or timeslot can be made with deep knowledge of the audience rather than on the basis of anecdote, instincts or personal bias. Clearly the ABC editorial responsibilities, together with time constraints minimise the practicality of audience testing in the news and current affairs. However programs with longer turn-around like Four Corners would benefit from detailed audience feedback about topics and style.
Of course a minority of paternalist program-makers and executives will oppose formal obligations to consult audiences as 'commercial', but this is to see the world in terms of a crude dichotomy between the old elite public broadcasting and the old mass broadcasting. Commercial TV stations are interested massing audiences together by appealing to the lowest common denominator. A 21st century media is concerned with audiences in their diversity, satisfying those niche interests that help to make us unique and encourage a vibrant, complex culture.
The Charter requires the ABC to provide innovative services. Everyone supports innovation, but real innovation often offends, angers or leaves one underwhelmed. One person's innovation is another's old hat. Similarly with the term 'quality' that is bandied about by program-makers and defenders of the ABC - one person's quality may make no sense to another person. Perceptions of what constitutes 'quality' may depend on particular cultural literacies which nowadays are not shared by a community criss-crossed by aesthetic and attitudinal divides. This is the real challenge of a divergences of opinion based on age, geography, ethnicity or class that Australia is still to deal with.
Public broadcasting has always sought to identify the tastes of the tertiary educated upper middle class with a universal notion of 'quality' that is seldom tested. 1940s House is good and the Big Brother House is bad, although both are unreal reality programs.The trouble for reformers is that the ABC gives most of us what we love - sober, abstract discussion of public affairs; BBC dramatisations of classic literature; truly intellectual radio programs; and bucolic soaps that buy into our childhood memories. A diverse society with many different ways of seeing de-stabilises this once sacrosanct notion, throwing open the parameters to a wider, range of ideas, aesthetics, personalities and stories. The sheer volume and diversity of media in the post -broadcast age means people will be constantly exposed to things they don't like. But it is important to think about our fellow citizens who are left out by the old model of broadcasting. Surely it's not unreasonable to take into account Australians with different tastes, icons, knowledge, humor and dreaming?
The big problem for the ABC is how it caters for younger adults up to age 40 who are different. All the evidence shows younger people are watching less and less free to air TV. The Auditor noted that they are moving to alternative leisure activities such as the Internet, subscription TV and videos. What they are watching less of is mass model media, that looks to common denominators. The 'loyal' ABC viewer is making way for the discriminating conditional viewer, who makes an individual choice from the array of media options at their disposal - the internet, books, videos, games, pay TV, radio, cinema, chat lines, magazines, and commercial TV- on the basis of personal interests and passions. Media that seek to treat the under 40s as one group, to attract them on the basis of what they are assumed to have in common, will have no audience - its about serving and providing access to the public as diverse groups. Its also about being playful with the medium of TV, in the way that SBS, 2JJJ, Foxtel and even Channel 10 are. In my view the policy response to audience fragmentation, increased lifespan and the exponential growth in information diversity is a second television channel, that expands on the ABC's worthwhile experiments in digital television , ABC kids and Fly , the youth service.
Liberal politicians claim a special interest in making organizations business-like . In an ABC context this means a flatter, smaller management structure that devolves power down to more autonomous teams and accountability of content makes to consumers who as theoretically sovereign as both the shareholders and market. Historically Labor stands for robust public institutions, the advancement of democracy and a lively Australian culture, which it understands as diverse. Labor should therefore champion a bottom up reform of the ABC that gives the Australian public a meaningful role in ABC governance, and a fair dinkum input into programming. Imaginative reform of public institutions like the ABC is the radical alternative to the crude dualism of market forces or a sentimental clinging to the status quo. Yet both parties are locked into leaving in tact an essentially authoritarian structure so that they can wield influence over a board undemocratically stacked with their mates. The craven hierarchical structure that makes the ABC a plaything for whoever sits as managing director is itself the problem and simply changing the people who wield control in a top- heavy corporate hierarchy, whether steady as she goes accountants or crazy ideas people' will not change things.
Tony Moore is the publisher of Pluto Press
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After all the FIFA World Cup stirs the passions of millions around the globe once every four years - why not try to direct some of that passion in support of workers rights.
Workers Online readers can also take part in these campaigns - in between barracking for a favourite soccer side.
Global unions today launched a campaign highlighting the Korean Government's abuse of worker rights with a poster emblazoned Our Team Won't Be At The World Cup.
The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), together with the International Metalworkers Federation, Public Services International and the two Korean national trade union centres, launched the month-long global campaign which culminates with a global day of action on 27 June.
Meanwhile campaigners against the use of child labour have also launched their World Cup Campaign 2002.
They have got a new website pointing out that in the shadows of your favourite soccer games there are thousands of children spending their precious childhood stitching footballs, unable to receive an education.
The International Campaign Backing Korean Workers
The clever Korean campaign for workers rights puts the spotlight on a football team photo which - instead of soccer stars - highlights the faces of worker activists who have been jailed by the Seoul regime.
The poster explains that about 30 people are locked up, and many more wanted for arrest in Korea for trade union activities which are within everyone's basic human rights.
They are being treated as criminals because they have tried to form trade unions, have sought to protect workers' rights or have joined peaceful demonstrations.
The current President of Korea the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Kim Dae-jung - is often touted as the Mandela of Asia for his democracy movement activities - but he has overseen the imprisonment of over 700 trade unionists since the beginning of his presidency in 1998.
Some of the facts being used to back up this campaign include :
· Under Kim Dae-jung industrial disputes are often violently repressed by unnecessarily provocative and disproportionately brutal police action.
· Over 200 trade unionists were incarcerated last year for actions. Currently, around 30 trade unionists are languishing in South Korean jails. These include Dan Byung-ho, President of the Korean Congress of Trade Unions (KCTU).
· The majority in prison were arrested for leading or participating in strikes or peaceful demonstrations, seeking to protect workers' rights or attempting to set up trade unions. Approximately 40 others are on the Korean authorities' 'wanted' list.
· 2002 has witnessed a surge in industrial unrest in the country. With privatisation costing thousands of jobs, Korean unions have been forced to react. 7398 workers in the rail industry alone lost their jobs in 2001.
· The President of the Korean Railworkers Union, Kim Jae-ghil, is in prison.
· In February this year, supported widely in both private and public sectors, 5000 workers at thermal power plants affiliated with the state utility, Korea Electric Power Corporation went on strike. 342 workers were fired as a result.
· A further series of strikes began again on 22 May in which 40,000 workers from sectors including metal, health and transport took part. The strikes are being held in reaction to some of the harshest working conditions in the industrialised world including long hours, low pay and a 6-day week.
You can show your support for this campaign by copying a draft protest letter and find out more by going straight to the campaign's centre on the web, here:
http://www.global-unions.org/korea2002.asp?LN=E
Global March against Child Labour
The FIFA World Cup is an international sporting event which stirs the passion of millions of people around the world once every 4 years.
However, in the shadows of this festivity, thousands of children are losing their precious childhood, stitching footballs that may be used for such sporting events.
No chance to go to school or to play, they are denied the opportunity of growing up dreaming of a future without stitching. Instead, they work day and night stitching the dreams of others.
Thousands of adults are also exploited as cheap labour to produce sporting goods used in official matches and merchandise sold in stores around the world.
While they are paid much less than the minimum wage, it is inevitable that their children are required to start working alongside them at early age in order to support the family.
Exactly one year away from the 2002 FIFA World Cup in Japan and Korea, the World Cup Campaign 2002 was kicked off with a 14 year-old former football stitcher from India, appealing to the world to help her friends be able to go to school and play instead of stitching footballs.
The World Cup Campaign 2002 demands FIFA to make the World Cup and the sport of football, fair in its labour practice and free of child labour.
Their promise to make all FIFA licensed products fair must be kept with a transparent monitoring system in place.
However, making football a fair game is not solely the responsibility of one organization. All 250 million football players, 2 billion football fans, and the rest of the world must come together to bring out the best in the game!
Join the World Cup Campaign 2002! Take Action Now!
http://worldcup.globalmarch.org/world-cup-campaign/
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Persuasion works best when it's invisible. The most effective marketing worms its way into our consciousness, leaving intact the perception that we have reached our opinions and made our choices independently. As old as humankind itself, over the past few years this approach has been refined, with the help of the internet, into a technique called "viral marketing". Last month, the viruses appear to have murdered their host. One of the world's foremost scientific journals was persuaded to do something it has never done before, and retract a paper it had published.
While, in the past, companies have created fake citizens' groups to campaign in favour of trashing forests or polluting rivers, now they create fake citizens. Messages purporting to come from disinterested punters are planted on listservers at critical moments, disseminating misleading information in the hope of recruiting real people to the cause. Detective work by the campaigner Jonathan Matthews and the freelance journalist Andy Rowell shows how a PR firm contracted to the biotech company Monsanto appears to have played a crucial but invisible role in shaping scientific discourse.
Monsanto knows better than any other corporation the costs of visibility. Its clumsy attempts, in 1997, to persuade people that they wanted to eat GM food all but destroyed the market for its crops. Determined never to make that mistake again, it has engaged the services of a firm which knows how to persuade without being seen to persuade. The Bivings Group specialises in internet lobbying.
An article on its website, entitled "Viral Marketing: How to Infect the World" warns that "there are some campaigns where it would be undesirable or even disastrous to let the audience know that your organization is directly involved ... it simply is not an intelligent PR move. In cases such as this, it is important to first "listen" to what is being said online ... Once you are plugged into this world, it is possible to make postings to these outlets that present your position as an uninvolved third party. ... Perhaps the greatest advantage of viral marketing is that your message is placed into a context where it is more likely to be considered seriously." A senior executive from Monsanto is quoted on the Bivings site, thanking the PR firm for its "outstanding work".
On 29 November last year, two researchers at the University of California, Berkeley published a paper in Nature magazine, which claimed that native maize in Mexico had been contaminated, across vast distances, by GM pollen. The paper was a disaster for the biotech companies seeking to persuade Mexico, Brazil and the European Union to lift their embargos on GM crops.
Even before publication, the researchers knew their work was hazardous. One of them, Ignacio Chapela, was approached by the director of a Mexican corporation, who first offered him a glittering research post if he withheld his paper, then told him that he knew where to find his children. In the US, Chapela's opponents have chosen a different form of assassination.
On the day the paper was published, messages started to appear on a biotechnology listsever used by more than 3000 scientists, called AgBioWorld. The first came from a correspondent named "Mary Murphy". Chapela is on the board of directors of the Pesticide Action Network, and therefore, she claimed, "not exactly what you'd call an unbiased writer." Her posting was followed by a message from an "Andura Smetacek", claiming, falsely, that Chapela's paper had not been peer-reviewed, that he was "first and foremost an activist", and that the research had been published in collusion with environmentalists. The next day, another email from "Smetacek" asked the list, "how much money does Chapela take in speaking fees, travel reimbursements and other donations ... for his help in misleading fear-based marketing campaigns?"
The messages from Murphy and Smetacek stimulated hundreds of others, some of which repeated or embellished the accusations they had made. Senior biotechnologists called for Chapela to be sacked from Berkeley. AgBioWorld launched a petition pointing to the paper's "fundamental flaws".
There do appear to be methodological problems with the research Chapela and his colleague David Quist had published, but this is hardly unprecedented in a scientific journal. All science is, and should be, subject to challenge and disproof. But in this case the pressure on Nature was so severe that its editor did something unparalleled in its 133-year history: last month he published, alongside two papers challenging Quist and Chapela's, a retraction, in which he wrote that their research should never have been published.
So the campaign against the researchers was extraordinarily successful; but who precisely started it? Who are "Mary Murphy" and "Andura Smetacek"?
Both claim to be ordinary citizens, without any corporate links. The Bivings Group says it has "no knowledge of them". "Mary Murphy" uses a hotmail account for posting messages to AgBioWorld. But a message satirising the opponents of biotech, sent by "Mary Murphy" from the same hotmail address to another server two years ago contains the identification bw6.bivwood.com. Bivwood.com is the property of Bivings Woodell, which is part of the Bivings Group. When I wrote to her to ask whether she was employed by Bivings and whether Mary Murphy was her real name, she replied that she had "no ties to industry". But she refused to answer my questions on the grounds that "I can see by your articles that you made your mind up long ago about biotech". The interesting thing about this response is that my message to her did not mention biotechnology. I told her only that I was researching an article about internet lobbying.
Smetacek has, on different occasions, given her address as "London" and "New York". But the electoral rolls, telephone directories and credit card records in both London and the entire United States reveal no "Andura Smetacek". Her name appears only on AgBioWorld and a few other listservers, on which she has posted scores of messages falsely accusing groups such as Greenpeace of terrorism. My letters to her have elicited no response. But a clue to her possible identity is suggested by her constant promotion of "the Center For Food and Agricultural Research". The center appears not to exist, except as a website, which repeatedly accuses greens of plotting violence. Cffar.org is registered to someone called Manuel Theodorov. Manuel Theodorov is the "director of associations" at Bivings Woodell.
Even the website on which the campaign against the paper in Nature was launched has attracted suspicion. Its moderator, the biotech enthusiast Professor CS Prakash, claims to have no connection to the Bivings Group. But when Jonathan Matthews was searching the site's archives he received the following error message: "can't connect to MySQL server on 'apollo.bivings.com'". Apollo.bivings.com is the main server of the Bivings Group.
"Sometimes," Bivings boasts, "we win awards. Sometimes only the client knows the precise role we played." Sometimes, in other words, real people have no idea that they are being managed by fake ones.
First published in the Guardian 14th May 2002, reproduced with permission
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The Australian government introduces legislation to crack down on internal dissent. It supports and joins in the invasion of another country to our north.
This 1950 action was not the first time Menzies banned the Communist Party. Laurie Aarons, at an Evatt Foundation Forum in April 1991, recalled the night in 1940 when the police raided his father's home after the regulations gazette-ing the outlawing of the CPA came into force. "The police took away truckloads of documents and books." The political police took away copies of the work of Marx, Lenin, Brian Fitzpatrick, Doc Evatt, Shakespeare, Hemingway and even The Bible. He was wounded because his own place wasn't raided so he wasn't deemed important enough.
He had had earlier "brushes with fame" when in 1933 Sir John Latham, as United Australia Party (UAP) Attorney-General, prosecuted Hal Devanny for soliciting money for a subversive publication, namely the Workers Weekly. This was the official CPA journal at the time, and Laurie sold it door to door and wrote for it occasionally. The High Court through out the case eventually.
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) had been an earlier victim of attacks on free speech and human rights in Australia, when Hughes went after it during World War I.
Clem Lloyd traced the connections between Latham and Menzies at the same forum as Laurie Aarons. Latham was a long term anti-communist, anti trade union warrior, having been involved in defending the status quo after the Brisbane Red Flag riots in 1919, introducing amendments to the Crimes Act in the 1920s to harass unions and communists and he was the federal governments main player in the prosecution of maritime and timber workers in 1928-9. He also moved to deport Walsh and Johnson in 1927
The Commonwealth Investigation branch flourished while he was A-G in the 1920s. He returned to that position in 1932 after the defeat of the Scullin government and restrictions on mail, offices and access to public halls were applied to Communists and other "subversive" groups.
Through this time, Latham maintained connections with Menzies. They were close legal confederates in the Melbourne Bar in the 1920s. When Latham went to the High Court in 1935 Menzies inherited his annual retainer from BHP (which was apparently still paid to him in when he was PM during WWII).
On the Labor side Doc Evatt played a crucial role in the defeat of the attempt to ban the CPA, and was also a player in the attempts to deport Walsh and Johnson in 1927, was a member of the High Court that threw out the prosecution of Devanny. Evatt also signed the documents that banned the CPA in WWII.
Laurie Aarons feels that Evatt's individual efforts were the highpoint of his many achievements. Aarons says that "Menzies was determined to press ahead with a totalitarian program of banning the CPA and taming the trade unions forever. Once he started on that road, the logical result must have been a full-blooded effort to impose a police state and crush all opposition. It was rumoured, not too fancifully, that he planned a concentration camp for the Reds on King Island - he had already interned Thomas and Ratcliff in 1941, and he believed the danger was much greater in 1951.
Lest this be thought exaggerated, consider the powers he sought: ban and dissolve the CPA, seize its property and assets; disqualify all Communists from Commonwealth employment; declare other organizations to be unlawful associations and seize their property if they had as officers members of the CPA; and remove from office in a trade union anyone alleged to be a Communist and debar them from standing for office (this applied to unions in the coal-mining, steel, engineering, building, transport or power industries, and to any other industry declared by the government)."
Aarons moved on to address squarely the seriousness of Menzies attacks. He says that conventional wisdom would have it that Menzies was not really serious in his attacks, but just using the move for political gain as it suited him, so he could paint Evatt and Labor as "crypto-Reds". Aarons begs to differ. "Menzies hated the CPA. It had fought him, ridiculed him and thwarted him: the Kembla wharfies, led by the Reds, had tried to take foreign policy out of his hands in the Dalfram struggle when he tried to appease Japan, coining his nickname Pig Iron Bob; they had led his political police a merry dance by producing and spiriting away Kisch and Griffin under the noses of the cops; and they had defied his 1940 ban and exposed him as a man of Munich, an appeaser and an apologist for colonialism in British India, Dutch East Indies and French Indo-China. He was fair dinkum in his determination to ban the CPA and eradicate it root and branch."
Menzies revisited the red menace in 1960. Garfield Barwick and Menzies tried to get through their unfinished business from the defeat of their Communist Party Dissolution Act. They moved to amend the Crimes Act. Barwick argued "tough security legislation was an attribute of nationhood" David Marr quotes from Barwick's statements of the time in language that is alarmingly familiar. "...in diplomacy and in defence Australia has found it necessary to enter into close relationships not only within the Commonwealth of Nations but also with its near and distant neighbours in Asia and across the Pacific."
Daivd Marr commented "Barwick's bill redefined four offences against the State. The greatest was treason: levying war against Australia. A new provision was added making it treason to assist 'by any means whatever' an enemy at war with Australia whether or not war had been declared. ...Australia's Cold War adversaries would be enemies for the purposes of treason whether there was a 'shooting war' or not. It was an argument Barwick used to try to validate the Communist Party Dissolution Act ten years before but now the penalty for peace-time treason was death.
There was a new crime of "treachery, both domestic and foreign". As the CPA put it in its campaign against the Bill, the concept of a "proclaimed" country whereby any country could be declared a "proclaimed country". Thus the USA could be declared a proclaimed country, and Australians could be gaoled for life for "treachery" to the USA. The throwback this time was to Latham's 1926 Act making membership of any association pledged to violent overthrow of the state punishable by imprisonment.
The draft of the bill meant that any discussion by anyone of Australian foreign policy would expose the discussants to charges of treason.
The definition of sabotage was a wide restatement of an old law. It protected any article in "prohibited places" such as commonwealth offices, dams, roads etc. The harm had to be done with intent to prejudice the defence of the Commonwealth but the courts would be allowed to infer criminal intent from the accused "known character."
The key feature was the "known character" provisions. Under the clause, a union official might be in danger of facing prosecution if he or she approached a declared "prohibited place" for the purpose of organizing the workers. The penalty was seven years gaol.
These features even went beyond what Barwick had tried in the Communist Party Dissolution Act, in that the person did not have to be a member of the CPA but just needed a reputation of being one.
Even the arch anti-Communist John Latham wrote to Barwick asking him to remove the 'known character" provisions and to introduce protection of free speech. The bill was passed and many aspects of it remained for many years, as the toughest security legislation in the English-speaking world.
Laurie Aarons was speaking at a 1991 conference held during the first George Bush's war to establish a "New World Order" where the US took its first major opportunity to assert its right to decide what's best for all unrestrained by any countervailing power.
The current George Bush has been pursuing the agenda of his father (and of many other figures in the US establishment who have been driving it uninterrupted for many years). Aarons comments then that "we will need to fight new fights for democracy, civil liberties and human rights." He was writing during the Hawke-Keating years and stated then that the main threat to democratic rights in Australia was the threat to unionism and the right to strike. With John Howard now in power, a man who regularly speaks of the Menzies heritage as important for Australia and his own political views, the Menzies example of suppression of free speech, and crackdowns on any perceived "dissent" looms large. The security legislation that has been introduced (and delayed so far) would introduce the same powers that Menzies sought then (and later in the early 1960s) and poses at least an equal threat to rights of Australians, and is being introduced again at a time when the "security" of the "free world" is again seen as under threat.
Many people today enjoy attacking the CPA and its members as Stalinist apologists. The most boring stuck record on this is Gerard Henderson (although Robert Manne was a challenger for the title a few years ago). This week he managed to get in an attack on Cathy and Paula Bloch for writing an obituary of their mother Betty without the apology for Stalinism that he seems to feel is obligatory for any CPA members or even someone who "had a reputation" of being one. The CPA, however, has been the longest standing group in Australia supporting human rights and civil liberties for all Australians (including Aboriginal people long before any other political party). Communism has faded, but the issues that drew many people to a party that stood up for ordinary people remain alive today.
Laurie Aarons summed up in 1991. "The defeat of the Menzies referendum, 40 years ago, has this lesson for us all - the fight goes on in new conditions and times. We all should strive to answer the questions this poses. We will come up with different visions, perhaps. Certainly our ways of achieving it will differ. But we should turn our minds and our efforts to seeking answers."
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Further Reading:
Max Julius. What the Communist Dissolution Bill Means to You! [pamphlet]
Brian Fitzpatrick. Constitutional Aspects of the Royal Commission on the Communist Party. (Melbourne: Australian Council for Civil Liberties, 1949)
J. G. Starke. Constitutional Aspects of the Communist Party Dissolution Referendum. {article: source unknown to me]
Defend Peace - Union Rights - Liberty. Defeat Barwick's Crimes Bill. (A Tribune publication, 1960)
David Marr. Barwick. (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1980)
Laurie Aarons. Confessions of a Failed Outlaw; in; Seeing Red: the Communist Party Dissolution Act and Referendum 1951: lessons for Constitutional Reform (Sydney: Evatt Foundation, 1992)
Clem Lloyd Evatt, Menzies, Latham and the anti-Communist Crusade; in; Seeing Red.
by David Peetz
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Just what are workers being asked to eat these days by the multinational firms that dominate the food industry? To answer this question, we turn to Lionel Bart's malnutritious musical, "O, Liver!", about an orphaned London lad who (like an increasing number of things we eat) doesn't know his parents...
(Tune: Food, Glorious Food by Lionel Bart)
Food, Modified Food,
Pig genes in tomato.
Hot chromosome soup -
Fish crossed with potato?
Chickens that are featherless...
'What next?' is the question
Gene cocktails are giving us
- Indigestion!
Food, modified Food,
We're anxious to try it,
Unlabelled it means
Anxiety Diet!
Just picture a great mistake,
Cooked up in your stew!
Oh Food,
What's in that food?
Gene altered food, modified food
Food, modified food,
To make it look handsome -
Multinationals
Making a king's ransom.
What are the results of this
Hidden revolution?
Skipping millennia of
Evolution?
Food modified food,
Why rush to stampede us?
What tests have been done?
Tell us what you feed us!
What was that sound I just heard?
A green lettuce that mooed!
Oh Food,
What's in that food?
Gene-altered food,
Modified food!
by Red Pepper
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I've seen the big screen adaptation of Marvel Comic's legendary superhero Spider-Man twice now and I'm left wondering if I saw the same movie that conservative US talk show host and film critic Michael Medved saw.
In an USA Today opinion article titled "Film Puts Best Spin On USA", Medved argues that the big screen adaptation of Spider-Man is a celebration of U.S. patriotism that counters the perception of the U.S. as a global bully in the world today.
Following the attacks of September 11 Spider-Man "remains the most quintessentially American of all classic comic-book creations - offering a revitalizing vision of national identity that's especially appropriate at this moment of danger and doubt."
This is a rather odd interpretation of the film since the barest tincture of right-wing patriotism as a theme is nowhere to be found in it. Marvel Comic's publisher Stan Lee and the rest of the Spider-Man production crew (to their credit in my opinion) set most of the movie's Manhattan scenery north of the World Trade Center area, mostly around the Times Square and the Empire State Building areas of the city.
The WTC is not once mentioned in the movie and the fact that the twin towers of the WTC are missing from Manhattan's skyline is a non-issue. Manhattan's towering skyline serves as Peter Parker/Spider-Man's own personal jungle gym throughout the movie and is filled with so many high rise towers that the missing twin towers is not even noticed.
If somebody had been hit over the head on September 10 of last year and went into a coma until Spider-Man opened, he/she would have no idea the events of September 11 happened while watching this movie.
There is a scene near at the end in which a group of citizens assists the crime fighting Spider-Man that was clearly inspired by the events of September 11. However, the person who was in a coma wouldn't have known what inspired that scene.
Also, the movie ends with Spider-Man swinging from the towers of Manhattan. Just before the ending he clings to a spire-topped tower with an American flag on it. The insinuation is that Peter Parker/Spider-Man is a representative of the United States, particularly the rescue workers who died on September 11. Fair enough and its done in good taste compared to the way most Rambo-style post-September 11 patriotism has been thrown in everybody's faces.
I too want my country to have a good image on the world stage. I just wish that the government of my country really did conduct itself the manner of Peter Parker/Spider-Man, but it doesn't.
Medved's contention that Peter Parker/Spider-Man equals the conduct of the United States government on the world stage in this era is completely inconsistent with the actual historical record.
His embrace of the character is about as odd as the right's embrace of Bruce Springstien's very unpatriotic anthem "Born In The U.S.A."
The real kicker with Medved's analysis of the Spider-Man movie is his incorrect comparison of Spidey's arch nemesis, the Green Goblin, to Osama bin Laden.
Medved wrote, "Spider-Man connects with this point in our natural pageant because it reassures us that unlike the aristocratic, power-mad, nihilistic Green Goblins of this world (Osama, anyone?), we intend to use our potent options to benefit ordinary people everywhere. As Peter Parker's wise hardworking Uncle Ben pointedly reminded him - and the rest of us: "With great power comes great responsibility."
Earth to Michael Medved: The Green Goblin is the alter ego of Norman Osborne, founder and chief executive of a New York based Pentagon contractor, not a Saudi millionaire and Islamic militant, you idiot!
Unlike Peter Parker/Spider-Man, it is this American corporate executive/supervillain who irresponsibly abuses his superpowers throughout the movie.
Let's not forget that Uncle Ben Parker at the beginning of Spider-Man has just been laid off from his job and tells his wife May that, "the corporations are down sizing the people and upsizing their profits."
Sounds like the 68-year-old Uncle Ben has more in common with those activists opposed to corporate dominated globalization of the economy than the KVI crowd who listens to Meved and his ilk every weekday.
Uncle Ben has to sift through the daily newspaper ads to try and find work because he obviously doesn't have the financial resources to retire. I guess one could conclude that the American Dream isn't alive and well when a 68-year-old is still struggling to make ends meet for his wife and adopted nephew.
In fact, the portrayal of businessmen in the movie is so unflattering I'm surprised the film's producers haven't been put on Attorney General Ashcroft's shit list as "supporters of terrorism" yet. Every single businessman the recent high school graduate Peter Parker/Spider-Man encounters are immoral and untrustworthy scumbags, who abuse their power by taking advantage of the hapless working class teenager trying to make his way in the world.
Shortly after Peter Parker is endowed with his superpowers (after he is bitten by a genetically altered spider), he sees an ad for a three-minute fight contest for $3,000. He wants to put the $3,000 towards buying a car for the purpose of impressing his love interest and next door neighbor Mary Jane Watson.
After Peter Parker/Spider-Man beats the shit out of "Bonesaw," played by professional wrestler Randy "Macho Man" Savage, he goes up to the office of the fight promoter to collect his $3,000. The promoter only gives him $100. His reason for short changing Peter Parker $2,900? He was offering $3,000 for three minutes, and Spidey pinned Bonesaw in two.
After Spider-Man dons his spandex costume for the first time and starts a personal war on street crime, the publisher of the Daily Bugle, the fast talking, cigar chomping publisher J. Johan Jameson, offers a $3,000 reward to anybody who can photograph the mysterious vigilante. The aspiring photographer Peter Parker has no problem photographing himself. Jameson at first offers Parker $200 because all of the photos are either "crap" or "mega-crap".
After Parker protests Jameson ups the ante to $300, the standard freelance fee. So the lesson learned by the young Peter Parker is that even the respectable "legitimate" businessman who publishes the daily newspaper is as much a scumbag as the seedy fight promoter. Like the seedy fight promoter, Jameson doesn't honor a contract when he has the power to get away with it.
Then of course there is Spidey's arch nemesis, the supervillain Green Goblin, the alter ego of Norman Osborne. An eminent scientist and founder of top Pentagon contractor OsCorp, Norman Osborne/Green Goblin is the quintessential archetype of the greedy American capitalist.
Self-centered and rich beyond the average American's wildest dreams, Norman Osborne is divorced and has a strained relationship with his son Harry, Peter's best and only friend at the public high school. Harry starts attending after he flunks out of every fancy private school his father gets him into. Needless to say, Harry the heir has difficulty living up to the high expectations of his self-made genius father.
Meanwhile, OsCorp is in a bitter struggle with its arch-rival, Quest, for a lucrative Pentagon contract. Events aren't going Norman Osborne's way. Osborne's top scientist disagrees with him about the readiness of an OsCorp patented strength-enhancing drug. The Pentagon appears to be favoring Quest in a majoring bidding war over a contract to develop a new aerial combat glider. The OsCorp board decides to sack Osborne as the chief executive of the company he founded in order to pave the way for its sale.
So how does Norman Osborne/Green Goblin deal with his problems when things don't go his way? He does it the way the United States government goes about its foreign policy: Assassination and bombing.
Osborne/Green Goblin fires his top scientist for disagreeing with him about the readiness of the strength-enhancing drug by basically executing him after he successfully tests the drug on himself.
Osborne then steals the company prototype for a combat glider that the navigator controls with a specially designed green body suit, and becomes the Green Goblin. The Green Goblin then bombs a Quest pilot while he is in the middle of a prototype demonstration of a flying machine before a group of Pentagon generals.
The Green Goblin makes his first appearance in Manhattan when he thwarts the announcement of Norman Osborne's forced resignation from OsCorp by the company board at a company sponsored event in Times Square. The Goblin chucks a couple grenades at the balcony where the OsCorp board has gathered to observe the festivities and assassinates the entire company board.
I suppose the Green Goblin could argue in his defense that he was bombing a legitimate military target since OsCorp is the top Pentagon contractor. He could also state that he profoundly regrets the deaths and injuries of any civilians below in Times Square from falling debris.
Fortunately for the citizens of New York, Peter Parker happens to be on the scene photographing the event for the Daily Bugle and manages to save a man and woman who were both about to be crushed by falling debris after the Green Goblin began his bombing. Parker quickly tosses off his civilian clothes and Spider-Man and the Green Goblin have their first public slugfest.
Yes, Peter Parker/Spider-Man is the quintessential American working class hero who does amazing things while battling the forces of evil in New York.
This battle of good vs. evil features the alter egos of an orphan raised by financially strapped, working class relatives versus an egotistical corporate executive. The parable of class conflict is as American as apple pie.
I think most people outside the United States would agree that the Green Goblin represents U.S. foreign policy in action, whether its the most recent Israeli rampages in the West Bank, the non-stop wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, the attempted coup against Chavez in Venezuela, or the stepped up aid to the murderous military and para-militaries of Colombia, etc, etc, etc.
It is precisely these realities of U.S. foreign policy that leads much of the world to resent us, not envy us, as Medved and his ilk would like the public to believe.
No it is not the sense of justice that motivates Peter Parker/Spider-Man that best exemplifies the U.S. government on the world stage today. It is the arrogance and greed of the lawless bomber Norman Osborne/Green Goblin that provides a parable of the U.S. on the world stage today.
I nominate the Green Goblin for U.S. Secretary of Defense.
by The Chaser
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The loss comes at a crucial period for English soccer hooliganism, which faces huge challenges from Germany and is suffering after bans prevented them from training in Europe this season.
The coach of the English hooligans, William Kendall, is frustrated by the disaster. "Earlier in the year we were primed for Japan and Korea when we got the opportunity to practise on some Asians during the Bradfield race riots," said Kendall. "But injuries and arrests are really cutting into our preparation now."
Wilson's injury is a double blow for the team as he is both the captain and the star striker. "Wilson is an amazing striker," said fellow representative hooligan Kevin Jackson of West Ham. "He can strike with both feet and his head. He's also pretty handy with a baseball bat."
The selection of the national team was greatly hindered by the government who banned 1,007 of England's best hooligans from travelling overseas. "We are really taking a B-Grade team but luckily there is a lot of depth in England," said Kendall. "These guys don't have the natural talent but with enough lager under their belt I still think we can win."
England's main rival at this year's World Cup will be Germany, who have managed to incorporate the broader political statement of a return to Nazism into their soccer hooliganism.
The political orthodoxy has trade unions as the whipping boys of public discourse; backward looking thugs too consumed with their own power plays to offer anything meaningful to the community. A slow-moving target for any Tory with a wedge to wield.
But wait, something's wrong - the facts don't back the rhetoric. Labor Council polling consistently finds unions more popular than any political party, the only thing stopping a resurgence in union membership being employee fear (see Issue 103).
Those figures backed qualitative research conducted by the Liberal Party's official pollster Mark Textor that workers were "largely supportive of unions" with favourable attitudes driven by the need for security and self-esteem .
Meanwhile, the slide in union membership ends as many unions transform themselves into the sorts of grass-roots organizations that political partiers can only envy.
Even the CFMEU, targeted by Tony Abbott as the bully-boys of the movement, find massive support amongst their rank and file and a widely held belief that the Cole Royal Commission is just a political stunt.
It makes you wonder how out of touch the Canberra political cabal really is, caught up in a debate based on a false premise, that organized labour is a political liability.
That the Liberal Party would spend $60 million orchestrating such a witch-hunt is an outrage, albeit a predictable one. By choosing his target Abbott has set up an inquiry that will turn a blind eye on the real scandal in construction - the widespread rorting and evasion by phoenix companies.
But for the ALP to fall into this trap is a tragedy. As Neville Wran said at the NSW ALP State Conference last week, the union movement's involvement is what differentiates Labor from just another social democratic party.
The federal leadership may have the power to force through cuts to union influence on the Conference floor, they may have the pigheadedness to ignore resolutions the conference passes, but they fall into the trap of treating unions as a liability at their own risk.
A sobering statistic for both sides of politics from the CFMEU's survey of its rank and file: just 51 per cent would vote for the Labor Party if an election were held today. On the ground at least, the clichés of political discourse just don't wash anymore.
Peter Lewis
Editor
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By all indications, the ALP's representatives in Canberra are gearing up to cut trade union influence within the Party, regardless of the views of the trade union movement or the party's rank and file. Within 24 hours of the NSW ALP State Conference they were back-grounding media that the federal executive would be rolling over the top and imposing their change.
Their problem, of course, is that Simon Crean has turned the 60-40 rule into his own credibility test; although as Neville Wran pointed out the rule is largely irrelevant - conference is a showpiece; the so-called control of the floor is illusory.
Anyone doubting this need only look at the federal leadership's dismissal of the only meaningful policy debate emanating from the weekend's NSW Conference. In an historic shift, unions and rank and file members voted to reject 'mandatory detention' of asylum seekers. The response of Crean and his immigration spokeswoman Julia Gillard to this significant shift? To deny it had any effect and vow to carry on regardless.
This passage of events highlights the real problem in the current relationship between the political and industrial wings of the Party. Once they have secured the numbers to be elected into Parliament - either State or federal - MPs become a law unto themselves. They see themselves as being above the rabble, as they see it, of the labour movement.
It is in this context that the Crean push has created disquiet within the labour movement. Normally in negotiations, it's up to the proponents of change to offer trade-offs. But given that there has been no sign of any real willingness to negotiate around 60-40 on the part of the federal MPs, now is probably the time to put a few counter-claims on the table.
1.Pre-selections: The real power in the ALP lies in the ability to select candidates. This is currently dominated by the factional warlords, whose branch stacks deliver them the ability to anoint their chosen followers. Those involved in the trade union movement who have neither the time nor the inclination to immerse themselves in local branch politics, are locked out of these elected positions. Trade unions currently exert little influence in the choice of candidates; accordingly few candidates see themselves as owing any allegiance to the movement.
If we are going to have a genuine 50-50 partnership debate, maybe this should include a debate on the choice of candidates. If Crean insists on reducing union control to 50 per cent on the Conference floor, he should also create a mechanism for unions to participate in the pre-selection of candidates. The participation of a trade union panel in all pre-selections would build a level of accountability for all MPs. Given the 50/50 conference split; a 50 per cent weighting in pre-selections would seem appropriate.
This should go hand in hand with genuine branch reform as outlined in the Wran Inquiry.
2. KPIs for MPs: Elected Members of Parliament must be held accountable to their labour movement constituency. The Wran Reports calls for a requirement that all MPs establish consultative processes with rank and file union members within their electorate to be convened regularly. This should one of a series of Key Performance Indicators that MPs must demonstrate they have met when they seek to have their preselection renewed.
All these initiatives would allow the union movement to have some genuine influence, not control, over the Party it created. It would also provide the solid foundations that would give unions the confidence that a broadening of focus, as proposed by Crean, would not lead to a trashing of the historical ties.
The trade union movement does not have a closed mind to reform of the ALP. Indeed, the message we get from our members is that they want the ALP to change the way it operates, to start listening to its core constituency rather than acting like a law unto itself. If some of these ideas are incorporated into a Crean reform package, he can expect the ongoing support of the union movement.
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Football, or soccer as we know it, begins its great four yearly festival today with a classic David and Goliath contest between reigning champs France and Senegal, a French speaking West African nation in its first Word Cup.
It is a fascinating opener. Metropolitan power versus former colony. The power house of the game versus the debuting minnow. A sparkling team of soccer celebrities against a bunch of unknowns.
It's also a dangerous game for the champs. In 1990 the holders Argentina with Maradona still at the height of his powers were humbled in the opener by the Cameroons, a brilliant and brilliantly organised team which went on to capture the imagination of the world as the tournament unfolded
Whatever happens tonight the four weeks that follow promise to dazzle.
Sepp Covers His Arse With Blather
Yet, before the first ball has even been kicked, the tournament has been draped in controversy. This week the game's governing body FIFA, an organisation which makes the IOC look like a model of glasnost and good governance, conducted the most divisive and acrimonious elections in its history.
The dodgy democracy of the organisation was on show as Sepp Blatter, the authoritarian German head honcho crushed an African led revolt by Cameroonian Issam Hayatou after a spiteful campaign.
'Turkeys don't vote for Xmas' was how one correspondent described the election. Blatter has been able to consolidate his power base with some judicious patronage of the smaller footballing nations whose votes carry equal weight with the big boys.
Meanwhile, FIFA, which should be a license to print money, is technically insolvent and corruption in the organisation is rife.
Bigger than the UN
The political dynamics on field are always fascinating as well. 204 nations participate in the world cup more than exist in the United Nations.
Despite its diversity and spread of talent, unpredictability in the world cup is reserved for its opening stanzas. As the tournament progresses it tends towards the United Nations model. Everyone is represented, it is superficially democratic but when it comes to crunch time the big players call the shots.
In the football world the security council consists of Germany, Italy, Brasil and Argentina with the fifth place rotating between England and France. Some other nations like Holland are always applying for a spot but just miss out. Uruguay once had a seat when it was like the prototype League of Nations but this anomaly has long being dealt with. Wannabes like Spain, the Balkan states and some African countries fantasise about being fat cats but are always lacking a key ingredient to complete their football nuclear capability.
Interesting Vignettes
The French are the coolest side. The team reflects the racial hues of the French colonial empire and its alliances -Pied Noir, Mahgreb, Kanak, West African, Basque, East European and players descending from the French Carribean as well as those from the Hexagon. France has the player with the most wonderful name in world football - Bixente Lizarazu.
Brasil is the unlikely little guy. Don't believe a word of it. Politically third world but football aristocrat, Brazil enters the tournament as unfamiliar underdog after a shocking run in the qualifying phase where it was humbled by a number of South American lesser lights including Ecuador.
Argentina are the most desperate. On paper on a par with France for talent and footballing smarts, they were head and shoulders the best qualifiers but are burdened by the expectations of a traumatised and desperate country.
Holland leave a big hole at the dining table. The best team never to win the world cup, the nation which revolutionised the modern game with their 'total football' and with a contemporary side full of superstars like Ruud Van Nistleroy, Jaap Stam, Patrick Kluivert, Edgar Davids, Edwin Van Der Saar et al will not be there after imploding in Dublin before the modestly endowed Irish.
Who Will Win And Why
France, a team with power, personality and panache, is my tip for back to back wins. They are awesome all over the park and have a squad with layers of depth. With a World Cup and European Championship under the belt they have battle hardened experience but their key players aren't too old. Twenty nine year old Zinedine Zidane was still the dominant player in the Champions Cup less than a month ago. Key defender Marcel Desailly still rises to the big occasion as he showed in the FA Cup final despite being a thirty something. Ditto Bixente Lizarazu. Fringe players from the last cup like Henri, Trezeguet, and Dugarry have stepped up many notches. They have a new batch of superstars coming off that incredible assembly line of talent. Watch out for Djibril Cisse - the 20 year old from Auxerre who was the top scorer in the French league last season. Last time the French won the cup with virtually no forward line. This time they are bristling with firepower up front.
Then it is the usual suspects. Argentina is on paper another complete team, has the pedigree and comes in as the form side. But their key playmaker Juan Sebastian Veron is hot and cold and like last time the South American form could be suspect.
Italy are always dangerous and deserved to beat France in the 2000 European championship. But the Italian league isn't what it was and the poor form of Italian sides in Europe in recent seasons poses a question mark.
Bolstered by the return of a resurgent Ronaldo and with the old guard of Rivaldo, Roberto Carlos and Denilson backed up by new talent like Ronaldinho, Brazil will, as usual, have their say.
England fancy themselves but outside Beckham whose fitness must be suspect and Owen they look to lack the class to go the whole way.
One highlight of the tournament should be the continued decline of Germany.
The best outsider could be Spain. A perennial underchiever, on paper they have a strong side including one of the world's best playmakers in Raul. The Spanish league has evolved over the past few years into the strongest in Europe and one not short on verve. This might be the forge for a more resilient national team.
My sentimental team - the Cameroons. Viva Roger Milla!! I'm still dining out on Cameroons wonderful journey at Italia 90. Disappointing at the last two this time they look more composed. The reigning African and Olympic champions they've appointed a German coach to instill some Teutonic discipline in the ranks. In Samuel Eto'o they have one of Africa's most exciting prospects.
Four weeks of football bliss! Let's go!
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Nice Vice
State funding of political campaigns should be high on the Australian agenda as fellow "democracies" highlight the favours expected, and received, by private benefactors.
Nobody is surprised when George Bush repays the arms and oil industries, not to mention the gun lobby, but what the hell is Tony Blair's New Labour up to?
The Blairites are going out of their way to cuddle up to British pornographer, Richard Desmond, who initiated the relationship with a secret $260,000 donation.
Labour banked the cash eight days after giving Desmond the ministerial nod to take over national dailies, the Daily Express and Daily Star.
Prime Minister Blair ignores concerned electors by further endorsing Desmond, sending media manager Alistair Campbell to his 50th birthday bash and then inviting the man himself to dine at No 10.
Perhaps, good Social Democrat that he is, Blair is impressed by Desmond's commitment to equal opportunity as expressed by titles such as Horny Houswives, Big Ones, Asian Babes and Mega Boobs.
Libs Fail ABC
In another example of the media becoming the news, your ABC resists political pressure from Michael Kroger and the Victorian Libs by appointing former accountant, Russell Balding, managing director.
Kroger and his allies, Alston, Costello et al, had enlisted the help of one Alan Jones to push the case of a certain Trevor Kennedy.
No disrespect to one-time Kerry Packer sidekick Kennedy, who made himself a late nomination on the eve of the appointment, but why would the ABC listen to the bunch who foisted the appalling Jonathan Shier on them in the first place?
Their central contention that Australia's non-commerical network, set up to the fill the void left by private radio and television, should be run by an operator from the commercial culture, has always taken a bit of getting to grips with.
Happy Coincidence
Chalk one up for the UN. It took one of their inspections to get the mob running the Woomera Detention Centre to accept that inmates actually had names.
The Alpha Numeric code by which they have traditionally been known was finally replaced by names and, just for good measure, the accommodation units were painted, fake turf was rolled out, 1500 trees were planted, razor wire was removed and the standard of food improved.
All this within hours of UN inspectors arriving on site.
Philip Ruddock's Immigration Department insists perceptions of UN influence are merely an accident of timeing.
In a Spin
Sounds like the spin the Governor General must have been looking for when he committed taxpayers to a $13,500 spend on getting him off his child sex abuse hook. Instead, as Labor Senator John Faulkner pointed out he scored "an own goal of Escobar proportions".
Turns out that GG Hollingworth, and his daughter, hatched the plan to hire a Melbourne-based PR man to try and undo the damage he had done, all by himself, on that infernal ABC.
Remember those infamous words: "There was no suggestion of rape or anything like that, quite the contrary. My information is rather that it was the other way round."
The Hollingworth's took their case to the $250 an hour man and released a long statement claiming the GG had misheard or misunderstood the question. Trouble was, a subsequent transcript showed this was untrue.
Hollingworth, a former Brisbane Anglican Bishop, joined the Japanese whaling industry, Coles embezzler Brian Quinn and fleeing Mexican banker, Carlos Cabal, on the Melbourne PR man's high-profile client list. At least the other three didn't ask you and I to foot the bill.
NOTE: Andres Escobar was the Colombian defender murdered soon after returning home from the 1994 World Cup finals where he had scored an own goal in a crucial match.
Eddie Pole Axed
The AFL removes a poll from its website after complaints from another media personality with mixed allegiances.
Channel Nine commentator Eddie McGuire, who doubles as Collingwood president, complains about a poll seeking views on his performance in the commentary box.
The poll runs after widespread talkback criticism of McGuire's efforts during a Port Adelaide-Collingwood match.
With responses indicating 75 percent support for the contention McGuire had been biased towards Collingwood, an AFL staffer orders that other fans be denied the opportunity to state a view on the issue.
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Kerry Packer may have lost almost $1 million a day in the past 12 months, but he is still Australia's richest man, worth $5.9 billion, according to the annual BRW Rich 200 List. Packer, whose PBL was hit badly by son James's misadventure into the collapsed phone company One.Tel, owns Australia's fastest-falling fortune, which has shrunk by $300 million. The fastest-growing fortune belongs to Frank Lowy, whose shopping centre empire Westfield is worth $700 million more than at this time last year. The nation's 10th and newest billionaire is Kerry Stokes, whose Perth-based tractor and equipment business Westrac more than made up for the recent fall in the share price of his Seven television network. High-profile departures include One.Tel founders Jodee Rich and Brad Keeling, as well as Rodney Adler, who could not withstand the collapse of two companies he was associated with - One.Tel and HIH insurance.
Full list at http://www.brw.com.au/
Patrick Delivers Healthy Rise to CorriganM
Chris Corrigan's rapidly expanding transport group, Patrick, has posted a 10.1 per cent rise in net profit to $38.98 million for the six months to Marchthanks to continued waterfront productivity gains, higher port throughput and contributions from new acquisitions. The initial contribution from the newly acquired National Rail and FreightCorp, bought jointly with Toll Corp, was the focus of attention as the $1.1 billion acquisition was bedded down. Patrick booked an initial $2 million net profit contribution from the rail companies, but nothing from Virgin Blue, in which it recently acquired a 50 per cent stake.
Rip Curl Considers Offshore Production
Two colourful members of the BRW Rich List are considering moving production for their Australian surfwear company, Rip Curl,off-shore. The Torquay-based company was formed by two Victorian surfers, Brian Singer and Doug Warbrick, in 1963. Michelle O'Neil from the Textile Clothing and Footwear union says an off-shore move would cost 46 jobs, and would be outrageous. She says the pair's presence on the Rich List indicates that Ripo Curl is a pretty healthy company that's giving them some good return. A company spokesperson has stressed that no decision on the move has yet been reached.
Greenpeace Turns Corporate Lingo On Itself
Greenpeace, the most strident of all environmental groups, now wants to tackle the corporates by using their terminology. In a world first, the Australian arm of Greenpeace has developed benchmarks to monitor the way businesses handle green issues. The benchmarks focus on how companies stand on environmental policies and reporting, climate change, the protection of ancient forests, genetic engineering, the nuclear threat, ocean biodiversity and fisheries, and toxic-waste production and disposal. Greenpeace corporate environmental campaigner Monica Richter says Greenpeace will be asking Australia's biggest companies how they measure up on the issues so it could separate the progressives from the laggards.
Enron Fallout Reaches White House
A United States Senate committee has voted to subpoena the White House for documents related to contacts with the collapse of energy giant Enron. The vote was along Republican-Democrat party lines, with Republicans arguing that the decision to subpoena the White House was both premature and inappropriate, as well as overly broad in its scope. Meanwhile, investigatorshave recovered more than 29,000 electronic files and e-mails deleted from Arthur Andersen computers before a federal probe was launched, an FBI agent has testifiedAndersen is accused of destroying tonnes of paper documents and thousands of electronic files from its client Enron to hide its role in accounting irregularities at the energy firm before its spectacular meltdown last year.
Bank Pays $180m To Settle Investigations
The investment bank Merrill Lynch has agreed to pay about $180 million to settle an investigation into allegations that its analysts misled tech stock investors. The bank, which is one of Wall Streets most prestigious names, has not admitted any wrong-doing. The New York Attorney-General, Eliot Spitzer, had been investigating claims that bank analysts gave overly optimistic opinions of stocks they privately disparaged in order to win people over as investment banking clients. Mr Spitzer says the agreement will create a buffer between the stock analysts and the investment banking part of the business.
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**********
We were late. Palestinian hospitality had prevailed at the village of Salfeet and we had stayed for dinner. Now it was dark and we had an hour's drive on an Israeli only road back to Ramallah and our hotel.
There were five Aussies in our stretch taxi and two Palestinians, our driver and our guide. The Palestinians both tensed up as we approached the Israeli Army checkpoint. Our guide had spent 13 years in an Israeli prison for political activities. Our cabbie had also done time.
An armoured personnel carrier (APC) straddled the Israeli road we wanted to turn on to. As we slowed about a dozen Israeli soldiers approached the car. They were all young men, many bespecled but all in combat gear, helmets, automatic rifles, flak jackets. The heavy machine gun atop the APC was trained on us.
We were all ordered out of the car.
I confess we all babbled "we are Australians" and proffered passports in a somewhat undignified way. Some of the soldiers began to engage with us in a friendly enough way, saying they thought Australia was "very beautiful" and expressing a desire to visit.
Other soldiers surrounded our two Palestinian hosts though, demanding their ID cards and very quietly but obviously questioning them. The menace in their voices was unmistakable. Our guide quietly drifted off into the darkness after (presumably) satisfying the soldiers, with a very sotto voce "goodbye" to us. No handshakes or fond farewells.
The soldiers told us that we could not drive on the Israeli only road. We had to catch a bus "to Jerusalem". I was not going to correct them and say we were heading for Ramallah, capital of occupied Palestine!
We had to go back. Driving away we debated what to do. Our driver claimed to know a back way to Ramallah. One that would get us there around 2AM. We set off.
Ten minutes later we came across another checkpoint.
The soldiers there were much less pleasant. It was clear they thought we were "collaborating" with the Palestinians. Our driver was clearly terrified.
We negotiated a way through and drove half a kilometer up the road. There we stopped and debated what to do. Local villages informed our driver there were yet more soldiers ahead. As the soldiers were clearly getting more jumpy as the evening got later we decided to turn around again and head back to Salfeet for the night.
But back at the second checkpoint we had negotiated the Israelis were gone. They had put a huge steel mesh gate across the road. We were trapped.
"This is how they imprison our communities after dark" said our driver. As if to illustrate his point, at that moment an ambulance, lights flashing, approached. It turned around upon seeing the gate and sped away. For hours afterwards we saw that same ambulances lights in the darkness, searching for a route through the checkpoints, barricades and gates to the local hospital.
So we had no choice. We had to try for Ramallah through the back roads. A journey that would take under an hour on the Israeli road would now take six.
A half an hour in to the journey we paused to check directions at a tiny village. The locals told us there was yet another Israeli checkpoint just ahead and that they had shot at a truck a few minutes ago when it approached them. We took a detour around the soldiers, driving literally through the middle of olive groves.
From there the road climbed up into some mountains. Progress slowed as we had to carefully maneuver over earthen mounds placed across the road by Israeli bulldozers every kilometer or so.
"Why do they do this?" I asked our driver.
"To make it hard for us" he replied.
We could see highly illuminated Israeli settlements on nearby hilltops. We grew frightened. The settlers had a nasty habit of shooting at random from the settlements (to be fair the Palestinians also had a nasty habit of shooting into settlements). We made an easy target with our headlights on as we crawled across the exposed ridge. In the distance flares were being fired into the night. What did this mean?
We dropped down into the Palestinian village of Arquaba. Our driver stopped. Flat tire. He tried to pump it up as we chatted to locals. Again there were soldiers up ahead. It was close to midnight and we had been the only vehicle moving for quite some time.
The locals told us how late that afternoon Israelis had come to the village in armoured jeeps and tear gassed the village boys playing soccer. Then an old man shuffled up. "Shalom" he said and offered his hand.
Unbelievable! Earlier the Israeli's were tear gassing his kids playing soccer and now, assuming I am an Israeli he offers me his hand and says "peace".
The tire is refusing to inflate. We can't go anywhere now. A local man comes up. He offers for us to stay at his place. We accept. Mattresses are solicited from neighbors. We sit in the living room watching Yemeni TV and drinking Arabic coffee. Around midnight we hear gunshots, but here we are safe.
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