I’ve just come across a fantastic resource for all you activists out there.
Eco Shout is an internet portal to Melbourne’s green underbelly and I like to think my under belly is quite green (with a hit of red though I must admit.)
We’ll be listing all of our forums there.
It seems hard to believe. Monday (25th) was the Australian Centre for Democracy and Justice’s 2nd birthday.
This means a few things.
We’re not going to ask you to sing, but we are going to suggest that now is an ideal time for you to become a member. Membership starts from as low as $20 a year as a special birthday offer, if you join (or rejoin) in the next month we’ll throw in a free T-Shirt (worth $25 – while stocks last), a free book and free entry to all of our forums. It also means that we can maintain our web site and continue to monitor lobby money through our Lobbyocracy site (http://lobbyocracy.org – now with a new home page). We’ll also be able to help out a range of groups by providing support for their campaigns including campaigns around civil rights, the G8, nuclear power and the Melbourne Social Forum.
There are lots of exciting ventures on the horizon that can only happen with your support.
In addition to it being our second birthday, it is also the end of financial year and therefore a perfect time to give a little extra cash to an organisation that really needs your help.
We’re only 2, but if we’re to grow up big and strong, we’re going to need your support.
You can become a member with your credit card here, or by cheque/money order with our membership form here. We’re also happy to give you our bank details if an Electronic Funds Transfer takes your fancy.
So go on, sign up now!
Barack Obama has released a document called Reforming Washington: Taking Back Our Government which outlines 10 ways to reduced of removed corruption from government.
Point number one is concerned with revolving doors – something we keep an eye on over at Lobbyocracy.
Having just finished reading Monbiot’s Heat, I popped down to the New International Book Shop at Trades Hall and picked up a copy of Clive Hamilton’s Scorcher. I loved Heat but am not in a position to comment on Scorcher yet as I’ve only read the first chapter.
However I was pleased to come across a debate between Hamilton and Monbiot in the latest edition of New Left Review which can be found on Monbiot’s site here. Of course what I should have done is read the articles before posting this. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
I find Howard’s new plan for indigenous Australia deeply troublesome. I’ve struggled with it for a lot of reasons, not least of which is that it has the endorsement of some indigenous leaders (notably Noel Pearson). I mean, where do I get off knowing more about indigenous issues than Pearson? Quite obviously I don’t.
But this serves to highlight what I find most troublesome. The government has pitched the plan as though it has the support of the entire indigenous community. It doesn’t and we all know Pearson isn’t representative of the entire indigenous population. Once again, the government assumes that one indigenous person can speak for all indigenous Australians (that is not to say that Pearson has ever said that he speaks for all indigenous people.)
I’ve never claimed to have the answers, but taking power away from indigenous people strikes me as pretty regressive. Hardly the “communities in control” that ACDJ advocates.
So I was relieved to see Suki’s comment on the issue (astute as always) and then positively fired up on the issue after reading Guy Rundle’s comment in Crikey:
Last week, the Howard Government, via a sleight of hand connected to the grant of lands in the 1970s, imposed a de facto apartheid system on Australia. You may want to argue that this was necessary, desirable, a last resort, etc etc, but first you have to acknowledge that this is apartheid. A section of the population will be prevented from exercising their legal rights in the places where they live and rarely leave.
This denial will extend to what they can buy, how they raise their children, what they can do with the benefit money to which they, as citizens, are entitled to receive. İn other words, such people have been legally ruled – if the law survives a High Court challenge – to be denied the right to equality under the law. Aborigines in these areas are once again the exceptional case.
How did the editorial writers of The Australian mark this occasion? By arguing that it marks the end to “Aboriginal exceptionalism”. That’s pretty much the screwy non-logic that has dominated this episode, and which will dominate the inevitable failure of what is de facto, the military occupation of Aboriginal Australia.
Forty years ago the Aborigines got full citizenship and the beginnings of land rights. Neither of these were due to white beneficience, but to the pressure put on sluggish governments by political movements – the ‘freedom rides’ in the first place (started by Charles Perkins and black and white members of the Communist Party of Australia) and the Wave Hill strike on the other (sparked at least in part by communists such as Frank Hardy, who would later draw Fred Hollows, another communist, into Aboriginal Australia).
İn the ’70s these grew into full-scale urban and remote political campaigns, which generated medical services, legal services, campaigns on land control and ultimately the successful Mabo et al lawsuit establishing native title.
To understand this is to understand why Howard’s initiative, should it be implemented, will inevitably fail. Nothing that Aborigines have won or achieved has come from outside. İt has come, as it can only come, from movements built from within that force white Australia to cede power, not to re-extend it.
(Read on …)
Disability rights have a long way to go as this article by Anne McDonald points out.
I’ve met Anne briefly via a friend at A Live Toad Every Day. Her story is certainly a remarkable one.
This article over at Eric Lee is certainly worth a read for all unionists and FOSS enthusiasts:
Fourth, if you really love monopoly capitalism and companies like Microsoft earning billions in profits just warms your heart, go ahead — keep using Windows. But if you like the idea of a society in which goods and services might be distributed for free (does “to each according to his need” ring a bell?), you might find the free and open source software movement of some interest. For ideological reasons, unions should be lining up behind and aggressively promoting this one sector of the modern economy in which there is a real alternative to giant, profit-driven transnational capital.
…
It’s time for unions to save their members’ money, to make their offices more efficient and secure, and to support the free and open source software movement. It’s time for unions to switch over to Ubuntu Linux.
(Via CopyFight)
Readers of The Consumerist have voted the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) the worst company in America. While it is not technically a company these guys have been on the ACDJ radar for some time for their extreme approach to intellectual property (ie they are a little TOO keen on copyright).
However, as they are not a company and therefore hard to boycott or something else along those lines, the Consumerist has decided to take a bit of action Lobbyocracy style and compiled a list of 50 congresspeople who took campaign contributions from the RIAA in the last election cycle.
You’ll notice many thing, not least of which include Dianne Feinstein (Cali’s finest and a big fan of censorship and draconian copyright laws etc), Barack Obama (perhaps our final hope) and Ms Clinton herself (you know, the one I suppose we’d settle for… and by “we’d” I mean most non-Americans).
Due to a double booking (on behalf of the venue) our next forum will be held on June 26 at the Stork Hotel – not the 19th as previously advertised.
However I am excited to announce that Marika Dias will also be presenting at the forum with Anthony Kelly. Marika is an expert on Howard’s new Anti-terror laws after representing extradited US peace activist Scott Parkin. She is a Community Lawyer and Community Legal Education Worker for the Western Suburbs Legal Service.
The full details can be found here.
