Darkness at Noon

I went to the Rally in Melbourne today against Howard’s proposed Industrial Relations reforms. It was a fantastic turn out with at least 100,000 people there. It was the biggest protest I’ve attended since the Peace Rallies before the start of the war in Iraq (which was about 200,000 people). Moreover, it was probably one of the biggest Union organised rallies ever organised in Melbourne.

The papers are reporting it up as one big Kim Beazley love up. However from the point of view of me and most on the ground this was simply not the case. There’s a great photo of it here.

I also took a few pics which I’ll post in the next day or two.

I got into work this morning and a college said ‘I read your article on the New Matilda last night.’ Confused as to what he was talking about, I asked him if he was talking about the piece I got published some time ago. Nope, it was in last night’s edition.

I thought they didn’t think it was good enough to publish and so just never got back to me. Wasn’t too upset because I though the writing in the first piece I did for them was much better. So while it would be nice to have been told that it was going to be published, the flattery of it being published completely overrides any annoyance.

I understand that I own the rights to the piece and therefore it’s ok if I provide you with a link here.

Over at Road to Surfdom Tim Dunlop makes a very clear, and important point about blogs:

Bloggers, on the whole, don’t think of themselves that way [as 'proper' journalists]. Most of them (yes, there are some triumphalist exceptions), when they write about these things, are at pains to note not only are they just offering their opinion and analysis, but that they often parasitic on the mainstream media. Journos: we get it.

Yes, the lines are sometimes blurred, and there is an obvious connection between the two activities, but professional journalists could save themselves a lot of heartache by not working from the blogger=journalist paradigm. The alternative that I’ve suggested is the blogger=citizen frame, where a blogger is a person who is just excercising their rights of participation in political and social deliberations. Work from that premise and blogging ceases to be “second-rate” journalism and becomes something a whole lot more hopeful.

On of the things I love about blogging is that is it citizen focused and therefore highly democratic because it provides a voice for the citizen. Moreover, the high level of attention paid to comments effectively act as a peer review process which is further democratising and adds to the accuracy of the opinions given (albeit in a limited sense too often).

I’ve been thinking about the blogsphere of late. One of the things I like about it is that often the people that read blogs have blogs. It’s a community.

Below is a copy of the speech I gave last Saturday (25 June 2005) at the launch party of the Australian Centre for Democracy and Justice.

Hello everyone and welcome to the launch party for the Australian Centre for Democracy and Justice. My name is Hammy Goonan and I’m one of the directors of the Centre.

I’d like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners and custodians of the land that we are meeting on tonight, the Wurundjeri people and the Kulin Nation.

It started with a bunch of do-gooders sitting in the comrades bar at Trades Hall, surrounded by the the history of resistance and empowerment, plotting to bring people back to the principles of Democracy and Justice. It began as an angry vision and is now a movement of resistance, activism and advocacy.

Unfortunately the battle is mounting. We believe, that in recent memory, there has never been a greater need for an organisation such as the Australian Centre for Democracy and Justice. Our civil liberties are being eroded and will continue to be in a global environment where the ecological and human rights don’t even register against the market forces that are manipulated to serve the needs of a privileged few.

We believe that all people should be equal and the only way to do this is to create a society that is deeply democratic. To achieve this, the society must be a just one so that the broadest spectrum of people possible have access. Access to basic food, water and shelter as well as access to health services, free education and access to the nodes of power that control the destinies of the communities we live in. We have begun on this long journey but now we need your company, involvement and support.

Tonight is very much a launch party. Resistance, activism and advocacy are all very important facets of a democratic society so it is important to celebrate them. It’s important to never forget to have fun – whether you win or loose the battle.

We just have a few thank yous that we really need to make as we wouldn’t be here tonight if it wasn’t for the help of a few wonderful people who have donated their time and done so largely out of the good faith that the Centre is a worthwhile initiative.

Firstly we need to thank all of you for being here tonight. It is so wonderful to see so many people here, showing their support for this idea of ours. And might I add how lucky we are, as an organisation, to have such incredibly attractive supporters.

Of course we also need to thank Co, Greg and all the staff here at Rrose Bar who do such a wonderful job. They have taken us on free of charge so please be sure to by a drink or two to make it worth their while.

Tonight we are privileged to witness the triumphant return of DJ Jitterbug. Its the first time he’s played in Australia since returning from a massive residency at Fabric nightclub in London.*

Where also very fortunate tonight to witness the coming together of two of Australia’s leading DJs: The Lab Raglan DJ Posse. Individually both Dewi Cooke and Richard Higgins are highly accomplished DJs and they have come together tonight to for a duo that will surely go on to rival the likes of Cold Cut, Herbaliser and the Invisible Scratch Pickles.**

We also need to thank Lukas Burke for all his help with the web page, Amy Johanson for all her design knowledge and putting up with my recalcitrant demands for various images. Theo Williams for the huge number of helpful hints and design matters that he has taken on including the flyer for tonight’s party. And finally Stuart Campbell for designing such a fantastic logo.

On a more personal note I would really like to thank my fellow directors: Simon McInerny, Nic Drever and Terry Johal. Their input has been in credible and we wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for them.

Well be here until the wee hours of the morning and we hope you will be too.

Thank You.

I should also say thank you to Jimmy Cliff for running around for me on the night – sorry I forgot to mention you in the speech.

Photos etc of the party will be up on our web page in the next few days or so.

*DJ Jitterbug hasn’t played in Melbourne for a while, but he also hasn’t played in London – ever.
**It is a stretch of anyones imagination to think that the Lab Raglan DJ Posse are “two of Australia’s leading DJs”. But they played a set that entertained the masses and it was greatly appreciated none-the-less.

There is a fascinating post over at Immanuel Rant regarding evolutionary explanations for the female orgasm. As is pointed out:

…what is more interesting is observing how gender politics and world-views can affect the interpretation of scientific research.

It reminds me of an argument I recently had with my brother. My brother is a scientist (of sorts) and certainly takes a very biological/scientific view of a lot of things. For him it is probably more ‘Nature’ than Nurture’. He was saying that the reason for there being so many very talented Aborigines in the AFL is because their ligaments are more elastic than non-indigenous people. Apparently, for similar reasons, this is why African Americans are amazing on the basket ball court but not very good in the swimming pool (something to do with their buoyancy).

I’m really uncomfortable with this argument. I’m far more comfortable explaining it in terms of Aborigines, facing the disadvantages that they do in Australia, have to work a lot harder and be a lot better to make it to the levels they do – not to mention a range of other cultural reasons.

I also remember talking to an American friend of my uncle who was a scientist and worked in genetics. She wanted to find out if there was a gene that made someone more prone to aggression. So she was going to test people in prison for violent crimes. The problem was that because the prisons had a massive over representation of black people there was a good chance her research was going to show that black people are more aggressive than white people so she wasn’t allowed to carry out her research.

Imagine they found the ‘gay gene’. It would, in many ways be liberating because it would ‘prove’ that homosexuality is not a choice but a predetermined biological trait. However it then becomes a genetic defect – a somewhat less desirable label.

The problem for me is at the end of the day I’m going to have to accept biological determinism to some extent. It’s a very fine line though.

This blog has many purposes. One is certainly to demystify the goings on of the organisation so that people feel more comfortable with the organisation which will hopefully encourage a higher level of participation. While I certainly won’t be relaying our every movement (what could be more boring?) I, and others, will certainly relay back what took place at our regular meetings from time to time.

We meet fortnightly, but with the launch party looming very closely we’ve had two meetings in two weeks to make sure that everything is in order. For our launch party I will be making a short speech. A bit of a call to arms and quite a few ‘thank yous’. I’ll probably post the speech here after the event (we need to provide you with some incentive to come to the party). So last weekend I knocked up a quick speech and sent it round to everyone. At the meeting everyone had read it already and provided quite a bit of feed back. It was fantastic. By the end of the meeting we had really developed the speech as a group and I must say it is now a much better speech. It was a process I enjoyed very much.

So come along on Saturday and see what the result of this group process is.

You can now donate to the Australian Centre for Democracy and Justice, though the OurCommunity Giving Centre at http://www.ourcommunity.com.au/acdj.

Make no mistake, we’d love you to give us some money and desperately need it at the moment to cover our start-up costs.

Pay up or we’ll have to take corporate money and compromise our position (ok, so that’s not going to happen, but you’d better donate just to be sure.)

We will have a similar system set up shortly for membership.

I doubt I’ll have much time for posting over the next week with the Launch Party looming so I thought I’d just cross post this from Goonanism:

I can’t let John Howard’s partial capitulation on Petro Georgiou’s reform of the detention of refugees go without comment.

First and foremost, we need to recognise it as a great victory. Georgiou’s private members bill was the tip of the ice-berg. The majority of the work has been done in the community through activism, support networks, letter writing, visits and so on. The issue has been kept alive which is a difficult thing to do in this day and age. However Georgiou and his fellow Liberal Members do of course deserve our praise for their remarkable bravery on the topic.

It was interesting to note that Vanstone was nowhere near the negotiations. As the minister for immigration that would piss me off. That said, it adds to my intrigue regarding Mandy’s role as the minister. I can’t pick if she is just a really nasty woman who genuinely believes what she is doing, or if she is someone who actually disagrees with the policy but enforces it with great rigor in order to please a prime minister who then publicly contradicts.

Following on from that it is interesting to note that Mandy’s powers have been extended. Flexibility is important because of the diversity of experience and the situation for the refugees is so diverse – no two cases are the same. However given my previous point I’m unsure if this is a good idea or not.

Finally we can’t forget that we still have a fight on our hands. The reforms are inadequate. Mandatory detention is a bad policy. So is the pacific solution. These people are still punished as ‘queue jumpers’ in their greatest time of need. There are viable alternatives and we do have a humanitarian responsibility to these people.

…as an interesting aside, Johnny is an opportunitist. He has obviously utilised this opportunity to his advantage. In Kyoto next?

(Via CorpWatch)

By attaching conditions to loans the IMF is ensuring that Ghana accepts chicken imports from the EU. This is destroying the local poultry industry because the chicken that is being imported comes from EU farmers who are massively subsidised meaning that the wholesale price of the imported chickens are around half that of the locally produced ones.

Despite the fact that experts think that to put a tariff on this imported chicken would not breach official WTO agreements the Ghanaian Government still ensures it complies with the IMF’s demands. It continually amazes me the way the IMF makes the WTO seem reasonable.

The economics here are obviously skewed. The EU is allowed protection in the form of subsidies for their farmers, but Ghana cannot protect its local industry through tariff. From the perspective of ‘free-trade’ this is a warped logic, never mind ‘fair-trade’. Moreover, surely you don’t need to be an economic genius (which I’m not) to realise that it is important for majority world countries like Ghana to be able to nurture their industries behind trade barriers until they are able to fully compete in the global market.

Naturally this sort of thing leads to massive local job loss (and foreign, unsustainable job creation). This only serves to further cripple the local economy and disadvantage those already disadvantaged in society – the working class.

Perhaps what is overlooked in CorpWacth’s analysis is the ecological disaster that is trading goods that there is an ample local supply of. In transport alone this is massively damaging to the environment. If we are to seriously tackle issues such as climate change then practices such as this must be stopped.

I’ll attempt to do a bit of a round up this weekend of the debt relief recently announce by the G8 (minus Russia). However George Monbiot provides a pretty good analysis. I can’t help but feel that he is a little harsh as I remain cautiously optimistic. However his main points still stand.

What is interesting and what is important is that the idea of debt relief is now an acceptable and mainstream idea. This is a significant victory for the global justice movement which has campaigned for debt relief for a very long time, perhaps most notably with the Jubilee 2000 campaign.