PO Box 20
PARKVILLE 3052
Melbourne

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Melbourne, especially the CBD, at night has a violence problem that doesn’t seem to be going away.  Every few weeks fanned by the fourth state’s response to yet another vicious unprovoked assault by men and women whose judgement in many cases is clouded by alcohol and drugs, the cry goes up for “zero” tolerance, more police and harsher penalties.  Politicians jump on the law and order bandwagon, making a few comments about the need for tougher action to grab a headline.  A few days later some other issue hits the headlines and the violence that seems to be endemic in some parts of Melbourne’s CBD at night, simmers on.

I was forced to think outside the box about this issue when I was standing as a Melbourne Lord Mayoral candidate in 2008.  Innovative solutions, not the same tired old clichés, need to be examined to tackle an issue which is affecting more and more of us.  A few approaches that never seem to be canvassed are contingent on the state government levying a 30% turnover tax on all licensed premises in the CBD, that trade after 6:00pm.  The money raised could be used to pay for a visible police presence on the streets as well as a number of other innovative initiatives.  Ideas that could be canvassed range from the Melbourne City Council organising groups of volunteers dressed in yellow staffing prominently placed yellow tents in known trouble spots who serve free water, tea, coffee, biscuits and lend a friendly ear to people on the streets to Buskers providing entertainment on the streets.  Other ideas include making the club precinct a vehicle free zone, except for taxis that could pick up people in side streets.  Providing free trams and buses for people in the CBD, after dark.  The setting up of an alcohol and drug detoxification centre and ambulance depot in King Street.  The alcohol and drug detoxification centre could be an extension of either the Royal Melbourne or St. Vincent’s services.

Policing should concentrate on maintaining order not enforcing the law for non indictable offences.  This would give police a greater chance to interact and work with the crowds in the CBD.  Jailing violent offenders, putting them on community service orders or fining them does not seem to be a deterrent.  Different ways of ensuring violent offenders understand the consequences of their actions could include docking offenders 20% of their income (including 20% of the income of those on social security benefits) and redirecting this money to victims of their violence.  In the more serious cases offenders may be compensating their victims for decades.  Attaching violent offenders to police units that are patrolling the CBD so they better understand the consequences of their actions.  Having to front up for weeks on end at the 10:00pm to down shift with police officers would have a sobering effect on most convicted violent offenders.

I wonder how many Australians feel uneasy about the exhumation of the remains of Australian and British troops, at Fromelle, who were buried in mass graves on the European killing fields during World War One.  It is undeniable these men, like the millions of other men and women who died during World War One (including 60,000 young Australians), were the victims of a dirty little trade war that was fought by workers at either end of a bayonet.

I am sick and tired of seeing the realities surrounding World War One glossed over to suit contemporary political realities.  As a people we have conveniently forgotten the real heroes during World War One were the hundreds of thousands of Australians who were involved in the anti-conscription movement whose militant actions forced the Billy Hughes led government to hold conscription referendums in 1916 and 1917.  The defeat of these referendums prevented another 60,000 young Australian men being sacrificed on the European killing fields for the glory of God, King and Country.

Break out the champagne, thank God (with a big G) it’s over!!  What’s over?  The recession we didn’t need to have (apologies to Paul Keating).  It seems the injection of huge amounts of taxpayers’ money into the “real” world, low interest rates and tax deductions for businesses for purchasing the latest gadgets has done the trick and the economy is ticking over.  Forget about increasing unemployment levels and under employment, the world is about to become your oyster.  The recession is over, borrow, borrow, borrow, spend, spend, spend, it’s OK.

Well that’s the propaganda, let’s take a look at reality.  Sure the money that has been pumped by the state into the “real” world is having the desired effect, but what will happen when it dries up?  What will happen when the 40,000 dollar first home grant and the 50% tax deductions businesses receive for purchasing new equipment comes to an end?  What will happen when the government (taxpayers) bank guarantee that gives Australia's privately owned banks the edge when they borrow overseas comes to an end?

What happens when we go back on the “free” trade merry go round?  What happens when tax receipts dry up and the government needs to borrow at higher and higher interest rates to meet its social security bill?  You guessed it, welcome to the world of the “double dip” recession.  Yep the double dip recession when the monetary shot in the arm stops working, the economy, like the heroin addict, has a problem.  The question isn’t whether Australia will have a double dip[ recession, but when will it have one.  Currently the Rudd Labor government is working feverishly to ensure it doesn’t have to worry about the problems caused by a double dip recession, until after the next budget in 2010.

I expect they’ll call a June or July election before the political “commentators” and economic “experts” realise the inherent contradictions within capitalism cannot be fixed with a one off money injection.  Unfortunately for you and me, when things get really tough the Reserve Bank’s printing presses will print off money until (oops) hyperinflation sets in and the house that Kevin built will come tumbling down.

I wonder how many Victorians share the sinking feeling I am feeling as the state government and the agencies which deal with the current bushfire threat respond to the Victorian Royal Commission’s interim report.  Call me cynical, but I have never had such little faith in what I am hearing.  The words sound alright but the resources that will be needed to fulfil the rhetoric, do not seem to be forthcoming.  Every good will in the world cannot deal with a bushfire threat that will become a normal yearly occurrence as global warming increases unless adequate resources are allocated to the more than one million Victorians that live in bushfire prone regions.

If there is one lesson we can learn from February’s disaster it is the state is woefully ill prepared to meet future threats.  All the warnings and community meetings in the world are of little use if the necessary infrastructure is not in place to protect people from a bushfire threat that many will not be able to escape from.  The state is not only crying out for leadership, agencies that are required to deal with the bushfire threat do not have access to the necessary resources to deal with future bushfires.

Considering just 8% of Victoria’s old growth forests remain, you would think the Victorian State government would continue its seven month moratorium on logging at Brown mountain in far east Gippsland.  You really have to wonder who the Environment Minister Gavin Jennings is kidding when he states “the old growth forest surrounding Brown Mountain is not top grade old growth forest and did not warrant protecting”.

It is hard to know who to believe about the real worth of the old growth forest surrounding Brown Mountain when a VicForests spokesperson says the area to be logged is “exceptional forest” and “seventy five percent will become high-grade saw logs”.  If it is exceptional old growth forest, you would think the state government would be falling over itself to protect it.

Trying to appease some very angry environmentalists, the Victorian Environmental Minister has set aside 400 hectares of old growth forest around Brown Mountain to offset what will be logged.  The only problem is century old trees will be logged while much of the 400 hectares set aside was logged in the 1960’s and 1970’s.  Just in case you think hundreds of privately employed timber workers are going to lose their jobs; the logging will be carried out by the state’s timber arm VicForests.

If God, Queen and Country fame and money doesn’t motivate anarchists, what the hell motivates them?  Well I hate to admit the unpalatable truth “I” “me” “my” – the self is the single most important motivating factor in anarchist thinking.  The catch is (there is always a catch in anarchist thinking) the individual’s welfare is intrinsically woven into the fate of the collective.  Individual freedom, individual security is dependent on collective effort.

Kings, Queens, Presidents, Dictators, Prime Ministers, Popes, Mullahs and Rabbis keep telling us individual freedom and security, like oil and water, do not mix we are constantly told we must give up our rights, freedoms and liberties to experience individual security and pie in the sky.  So who is right and who is wrong?  Considering human history is littered with the corpses of those who rejected the stand over merchants too good to refuse offers of help, it seems the more inalienable freedoms and liberties we give up, the more insecure our existence.

Political activity is as much about changing perceptions and attitudes as it is about change.  It is difficult to get people to take our calls for radical change seriously unless they have a yardstick they can use to measure our ideas against.  Sometimes simple ideas can have an impact that goes far beyond what they practically achieve.

Common store house economics is a difficult concept top grasp for people who use money for almost every transaction they make.  Ideas that demonstrate that we don’t need money to survive can have an impact on society.  Setting up “free” stores has been the traditional way radical activists have challenged the idea money is required to conduct economic activity.  An extension of this idea came to me when I was having a discussion with Julie, from Frankston, last week about kerbside collections.  Every council in Australia has one, possibly two, kerbside collections each year.

People put out material they no longer want.  Second hand shops do a roaring trade going through the material on the kerbside taking what can be resold (although it is illegal to take material once it has been put out on the kerb).  A way you could introduce common store house ideas within the local council context is by proposing that councils develop a service where they will go out to a property and take goods that are useful, that would normally be put out on the kerbside.  These goods would be taken to a council workshop/store where they would be checked, made safe and then be put out in a council store for other residents in the municipality to take if they needed them.  You could stop second hand dealers rorting the system by asking people for identification when they entered the redistribution centre.

The concept could be extended to include services provided by the unemployed and retired people to the community.  the council would check out the person offering their services and would then issue them a yearly license to indicate they are able to safely provide the services for nothing through their local council.  both these ideas provide real practical assistance within a safe setting to people who cannot afford the goods and services they require and simultaneously challenge the idea that money is required to conduct economic activity.

Butler Aspinall, a radical Barrister, was involved in two of the most famous political cases in Australia during the 1850’s and 1860’s.  A brilliant lawyer, he migrated to Australia after he had been admitted to the bar in London in 1853.  He initially worked as the Chief Parliamentary reporter with the Melbourne Argus but gave up the position so he could practise law.  He spoke at public meetings in January 1855 that were organised to pressure Governor Hotham to grant amnesties to the miners involved in the Eureka Rebellion.  When amnesties were not granted he volunteered to act pro bono (without charge) as junior council for John Joseph and Raffaello Carboni, two of the thirteen miners who were charged with High Treason for their part in the Eureka Rebellion.  Aged twenty five he led the defence for John Joseph, a black American from New York, who was the first defendant that came to trial for his part in the Rebellion.  Faced with the impossible task of defending John Joseph against witnesses who claimed John Joseph shot Captain Wise, the deputy commander of the soldiers who stormed the Eureka Stockade, his passionate defence led to the acquittal of John Joseph.  Every one of the thirteen accused, including John Joseph and Raffaello Carboni, were acquitted by Melbourne juries of the charge of High Treason.  Aspinall was elected to the Legislative Assembly as the member for Talbot in 1856 on the back of his success at the Eureka Trials.

He received a criminal brief from Henry James O’Farrell, a resident of Ballarat, who was charged with attempting to assassinate the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Alfred, Queen Victoria’s second son, on the 12th March 1868 at Clontarf, Sydney.  O’Farrell, an alcoholic, had suffered a serious mental collapse the previous year.  Aspinall took on the case and attempted to have the jury find O’Farrell not guilty by reason of insanity.

During the trial, which commenced on the 30th March 1868, just eighteen days after the attempted assassination, Aspinall raised O’Farrell’s mental state and his recent release from a mental asylum, during the trial.  The jury did not buy Aspinall’s legal arguments and found O’Farrell guilty of the attempted murder of Prince Alfred.  O’Farrell was hanged on the 21st April 1868 despite Prince Alfred (who had made a full recovery) trying to intercede on the poor man’s behalf.  Interestingly, it seems the Prince’s life had been saved by his braces as the bullet which was fired into his back was deflected by the metal in his braces.

Prince Alfred only spent two weeks in hospital.  Nursed by six nurses who were trained by Florence Nightingale, he made a speedy recovery.  Two years later, Aspinall became Victoria’s Solicitor General.  Plagued by ill health he returned to England and died, aged 45 on the 4th April 1875.  His wife, Marguerita Carmichael, died in Melbourne six days later.

This little book attempts to answer the big questions in life “where did the Universe come from?”, “will it end?”  Obviously, unless you believe God made the Universe in six days and rested on the seventh, the answers to these questions are shrouded in mystery despite the best attempts of men and mice.  Fortunately for you and little me (I always feel small when I think about the Universe) Richard Osborne has attempted these questions in this little book.

This surprisingly entertaining book is, according to its author, a book that even Homer Simpson could get something out of.  Written in a simple personal style, Richard Osborne attempts to make accessible to you and me the ideas that underpin human thinking about the Universe.

De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (The Revolutions of the Heavenly Orbs) published in 1543, the same year Copernicus died, set the cat among the religious pigeons forever changing humanity’s understanding of their place in the Universe.  This tiny 123 page book divided into seven condensed chapters details our understanding of the Universe from that fateful year.  My favourite chapter, Holes, Bangs and Curvature: Eternity Gets Bigger, tries in sixteen pages to describe what has bamboozled me for decades – the big bang theory.  Things get worse in Chapter Seven, the final chapter “Epilogue: More things you hadn’t thought of”, Black holes pop up.  If we accept the scientific arguments and many of us including myself, are still sceptical, it seems according to the 21st century understanding of the hows and whys of the Universe it will all be over in another five billion years or so.

This book like all human attempts to explain where the Universe came from and where it is going has a few holes in it (sorry for the poor pun)  this little book is a good read if you want to think about your place in the scheme of things.  If thinking gives you a headache, you're better off watching Days of our Lives than wasting a few hours of your life trying to find answers to questions you and I will never know the answers to.  The Universe is a thoroughly entertaining book (if you’re sick of fart jokes) that will stimulate those few cerebral neurones that are still functioning after lifetimes immersion in the “real” world.

I have been thinking for some time about starting a new religion.  I can hear a pin drop as you digest this earth shattering news.  Well, why not?  Religions in Australia have a lot going for them.  They don’t pay taxes, rates or GST.  Elderly people who drop off their mortal coil leave them large amounts of goodies in their wills, governments throw money at them and as God’s gatekeepers to heaven, they’ve got all the followers they need to have a bit of sexual hanky panky with.  In the modern vernacular a win, win situation.

Unfortunately I have a problem.  I have been toying with this idea for over forty years but cannot seem to find the necessary hook to reel in full fee paying devotees into this new congregation.  As the new boy on the block, all the best ideas have been taken by imposters who claim they run God’s franchise, on Earth.  Eternal life gone, gone, gone.  Every religion worth its salt promises eternal life, some even add thirty six or is that seventy two, virgins to the mix to entice people to the fold.  One with the Godhead gone, gone, gone.

Reincarnation has always been a popular choice, for all those folk that seek a low tech approach to the afterlife.  An elephant in this life, a microbe in the next.  Enlightenment is also another popular goal, reach enlightenment and hey presto it is all over, free for all eternity.  Ron Hubbard, faced with the same dilemma I'm facing today, was able to fuse science fiction with a little bit of psychological mumbo jumbo to come up with a 20th century variation on the problem I am currently facing.  We need a 21st century solution to my dilemma.  Eureka!  I’ve got it!!  Cryogenics holds the solution to my dilemma.  I could snap freeze devotees like peas in cryogenic chambers, liberate them of all their earthly goods and use the money I make to televangelise new devotees.  Today the empty church down the road, tomorrow a cryogenic chamber in every suburb (ring me if you want to buy a franchise), the holy grail, every child gets a brand new made in China cryogenic chamber at birth if their parents turn over all their earthly goods to the Church of Everyday Cryogenics.

It is difficult to say exactly what drove Eddie Travaglia to take his life and the lives of his two sons, “what drove a doting father to kill?”, Sunday age (23/8).  What’s not difficult to understand for somebody involved in the medical care of people with severe physical disabilities (quadriplegia and paraplegia) as a result of trauma for the last thirty years is what contributed to the mindset that drove Mr. Travaglia to make that decision.

Federal and State programs that are designed to provide funding for the care of people with physical and intellectual disabilities are cumbersome piecemeal and fragmented.  Care packages for both institutional and home care are outsourced to both profit and not for profit care providers who use up to 30-40% of the resources allocated to cover the organisation’s running costs.

The problem is compounded by the relatively poor wages, the difficult physical, intellectual and emotional nature of the work involved, the indifferent training and the lack of a career pathway for the carers.  More and more service providers are being forced to employ people who have no interest in the work they are asked to do, and no understanding of the intimate nature of the work involved, who are doing part time work while they are studying.

The case for dredging Port Phillip Bay was argued on the basis of economic benefits. We were told "The project will ensure the long-term efficiency of the Port of Melbourne and therefore reduce the cost imposed on imported goods and enhance the competitiveness of export industries." Up to 3000 jobs, moreover, are to be created from both the construction and operational phases of the project.

We have no way of measuring or determining it's economic success unless the Premier, John Brumby, allows the Victorian Ombudsman's office to monitor and audit, annually, the performance of the CDP.

Given that the Victorian waterfront has a history of anti-competitive behaviour and is currently dominated by a cartel that has opposed the introduction of further competition on the waterfront, it is vital that an independent authority monitor and report on the commercial progress of the CDP. In view of the fact that the Victorian Panel members were provided with evidence which argued that previous productivity and efficiency gains had not been passed on to both businesses or consumers, the case for independent monitoring is compelling.

Yet another in a long queue of caricature/exploitation productions this time combining "@narchy" and bikies...

Commodity Details

    * Actors: Charlie Hunnam, Katey Sagal, Mark Boone Junior, Kim Coates, Tommy Flanagan
    * Directors: Allen Coulter, Bill Gierhart, Charles Haid, Guy Ferland, Gwyneth Horder-Payton
    * Format: Box set, Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, Subtitled, NTSC
    * Language: English, Spanish
    * Number of discs: 4
    * Rating: "exploitation"
    * Studio: Twentieth Century Fox-News Ltd-Rupert Murdoch
    * DVD Release Date: August 18, 2009
    * Run Time: 594 minutes (you could have spent better perhaps!)

Product Description
The writer of the Shield and the producer of the Sopranos take you deep in the world of this outlaw Californian Motorcycle Club as its members struggle to balance family life and weapon-trafficking business

www.fxnetworks.com/soa/ridefreeordie/            en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sons_of_Anarchy

The gritty Law & Order spectacle of testosterone fuelled stand over, corrupt cops of the Shield may be  gone from TV, but Kurt Sutter seems to have taken it upon himself to carry on its legacy with Sons of Anarchy,..it takes viewers through a world marked by violence, double-dealing, and racial division, with an emphasis on the ambiguous morality and personal and familial baggage that come with a life lived between the straight world and the criminal one. The machinations of the characters and the twists of the plot are almost operatic, but the show remains rooted in the harsh realities of gangland.

The premise is sort of Hamlet-meets-the-Sopranos: youthful biker and new dad Jax Teller (Charlie Hunnam) finds himself trying to balance work with personal life as the Vice President of the Sons of Anarchy Motorcylcle Club Redwood Original (aka SAMCRO), a gun-running biker gang co-founded by his late father and now run by his stepfather Clay Morrow (the ever-swaggering Ron Perlman), who's married to Clay's widowed mother Gemma (Katey Sagal, in pretty much the biggest departure possible from her Married With Children days).

From the somewhat hippie-ish beginnings envisioned by Jax's father, SAMCRO has evolved into a criminal powerhouse, especially in their central California base of Charming, where they're practically a small-town Mafia. These guys may not be as bad as the Hell's Angels, but the show makes it clear that they're far from harmless nonconformists, as we see them running guns, committing murders and (in one particularly stunning scene) burning off the tattoo of a perfidious former member.

Single-episode plots focusing on the gang's efforts to turn a profit and get away with it are mixed with longer arcs dealing with the constant conflicts of gangland life and the mounting tensions within the club. As the season progresses, it increasingly develops into a battle of viewpoints between Clay's world-weary cynicism and Jax's (relatively) idealistic leanings and pangs of conscience. Inconclusive so stay tuned for series 2 (at a Murdoch profit of course)

In parallel with The Shield, the show's writing gets progressively more complex and nuanced as the season goes on, giving the cast, a nice assemblage of recognizable (but not household) names, a lot of room to work. Further cementing his status as Hollywood's leading Jewish tough-guy actor, Perlman is impossible not to watch as Clay, the club leader who walks a fine line between toughness and ruthlessness. Clay's a classic antihero in the Tony Soprano-Vic Mackey mould, whose occasional moments of decency don't quite compensate for his myriad of bad acts, but he's practically a softie compared to his wife.

Taking the concept of standing by her men very seriously, Gemma's the very picture of steely determination, willing to say and do anything to safeguard her family, and she shares both Clay's ability to perceive all the angles and his lack of reservations in doing what needs to be done.

For his part, Jax is certainly no saint, but he hasn't quite been won over to the Machiavellian value system championed by his mother and stepfather. Constantly tugging at his conscience are the newly-discovered writings of his late father John, a somewhat intellectual type who didn't necessarily intend for the club to become a crime syndicate. The voice-over narration of John's journal is a bit of a contrived device in a show largely devoid of them, but it does nicely frame the struggles that come to define the season. This season also sees a succession of great supporting turns from recognizable faces--Jay Karnes as a twisted ATF agent with a thing for Jax's ex, Mitch Pileggi as a vicious Nazi meth lord, Ally Walker as an enjoyably amoral Fed who vows to take the Sons down--that only serve to up the entertainment quotient. Even the law-enforcement officers--the shady, compromised Chief Unser and the more principled, by-the-book Deputy Chief Hale--eventually emerge as multi-dimensional characters in their own right.

SoA seems to have flown under the radar a bit while shows like Mad Men and Breaking Bad get all the acclaim...

Fund of ink
drip following drip
protecting the path
of my sense and nonsense
like the scan highlighted
while the body screens on
in its signature of ruin

Improved
if your metabolism volcanically
dropped on a page, rubbishing
it in a green celestial body
Improved
if that mark garnered
my scribbling building
no wisdoms
a hard knock
wordless

No rusty, mildew-infested chains from the dank cell of
Victorianism could hold this nimble tongue from a thinned,
Vegetarian body as deeply rooted in brimming gray matters

As the cherry orchard which granted asylum to infinite
Rebellious lava pouring from gaping mouths at the
Speaker’s Corner where free thoughts could breathe in
Peace and comfort upon the breast of lush, green
Meadows seduced by an array of prismatic wild flowers;
This wildly, red-haired, charcoal-bearded prophet, arrayed
In archaic and anarchical raiment, was a sanctuary against the

Chilling winds from the fashionable blockhouses of cheap
Inventions rusting in dried minds with designed icy-cold
Fingers to strangle the photosynthesis out of greening
Thoughts as sweetly scented as the pink blossoms of
Springtime and as fertile as the bosom-shaped hills and valleys
Of the Midland Plateau resting upon the River Thames
Visited by oarsmen and graceful swans upon the nearby
Serpentine; a sparkplug powering this sentiment as a
Natural law of the human heart unchained by any scaffold and
To improvise with his own mind and body out of harmony
With the rest of the band with a syncopation of his own! an

Intense cornet to move either the body of the majority or the
Body of the minority to scent and brood over his catholic
Doctrines on his scale of notes and to execute the wanton
Robbers and murderers of conscience!  and lastly, that his
Song of dissent was not some alien hymn to unknown gods

Regardless of what soloist or choir sang it.  

1. If you receive the Anarchist Age Weekly Review by post and have access to the internet, you can receive it by email instead of post.
   Saving us postage and printing costs. Just send your details to anarchistage@yahoo.com and we will put you on the email list..

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   Even if you send us a book of ten every two months this will go a long way to eating into our postage costs. Send them to P.O. BOX 20 PARKVILLE 3052 AUSTRALIA..

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4. Take out a subscription to the Anarchist Age Weekly Review for yourself, your friends, your enemies, your local library – 50 dollars for 50 issues. Make cheques or money orders out to LIBERTARIAN WORKERS and send to P.O. BOX 20, PARKVILLE 3052 AUSTRALIA.

Stamps make up a significant part of our costs because we continue to send out the Anarchist Age Weekly Review by snail mail to people who can’t or don’t want to download it from the internet. 

Send us a book of ten or twenty 55 cent stamps every month.  It will go a long way to helping us meet our postage costs.

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PO Box 20
PARKVILLE 3052
Melbourne

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Corruption, Climate Change, Constitutional Human Rights, The Right to freely distribute political material in open public space and much more...

JOIN THEM Wednesday 2 September 11:30am-12:30pm

outside MELBOURNE TOWN HALL
(cnr Swanston and Collins St, Melbourne)

People for a Royal Commission into Corruption in Victoria
People for Constitutional Human Rights
JOIN THEM, change your life

E: people@wednesdayactiongroup.com
A: P.O. Box 5035, Alphington 3078
M: 0439 395 489

MUTINY, No.40 July 09, A paper of Anarchistic Ideas and Actions, PO Box 4, Enmore 2042, AUST
www.jura.org.au/mutiny  -  back issues
mutineers@graffiti.net

ANARCHO-SYNDICALIST REVIEW No.52 Summer 09, PO Box 42531, Philadelphia PA 19101, UNITED STATES.
Web: www.syndicalist.org   Email: syndicalist@iww.org

SICILIA LIBERTARIA No.286 July/August 09, Giornale anarchico per la liberazione sociale e l’internazionalismo, Via Galileo Galilel, 45-97100 Ragusa, Sicily ITALY
Email : info@sicilialibertaria.it  Web: www.sicilialibertaria.it

THE POWER OF RECALL – Electors having the constitutional right to recall parliamentary representatives in between elections

CITIZENS INITIATED REFERENDUMS – The people having the power to initiate constitutional change through referendums

DIRECT DEMOCRACY – Electing delegates with limited mandates, to co-ordinate decisions that have been made by the people, not electing representatives to make decisions for us.

(We Currently Have 123 Paid Up Members)

DIRECT DEMOCRACY NOT PARLIAMENTARY RULE - www.rulebythepeople.org

An anarchist analysis of local, national & international events. Tune into your local community radio station to listen to the Anarchist World This Week. If they don’t broadcast it, ask them why not! If they’re one of the 150 community radio stations around Australia that are affiliated to the National Community Radio Satellite, they are able to broadcast the Anarchist World This Week.

MULTI-COLOURED GLOSSY A3 POSTER AVAILABLE FOR 20 50c STAMPS.
(Price includes packaging, poster in secure cylinder and postage anywhere in Australia)

Has been awarded to the big four banks for keeping their record profits to themselves despite the public (government) guarantees they enjoy.

God, Queen and Country – the Battlecry of the Zombie Armies

Go to www.3CR.org.au to access the podcast.

Anyone can enjoy the benefits that believers derive from faith, without having any religious belief, according to a popular author on neuroscience.  Andrew Newberg, M.D. is an Associate Professor of Radiology and Psychiatry in the School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.  His book, 'How God Changes Your Brain', says that intense prayer or meditation can strengthen regions of the brain that focus the mind and foster compassion, while calming those linked to fear and anger.  However, he also says that it is irrelevant whether the subject has any religious belief.  "In essence, when you think about the really big questions in life...your brain is going to grow" he said. (Source: MX, Wikipedia)

 Kevin Rudd's government has increased funding by 50 percent, to a group that he called a cult while in Opposition. In 2007, schools run by the Exclusive Bretheren were receiving just over $9 million in funding from the Howard government. But Greens MP John Kaye says funding for Bretheren schools around Australia has risen to $13.9 million this year. He said that it is "scheduled to go to about 17.2 million by 2012." Peter Flinn, a former member of the Exclusive Brethren, says he is disturbed by the increase in funding but not surprised. He said that they "have been the recipients of great generosity from various governments over the years...it's out of all proportion to the number of students. But they are very good at negotiating and lobbying governments." In the 1990s, two of the main Brethren schools were granted special status known as 'Category 12'. Michael Bachelard, author of Behind the Exclusive Brethren, says under the old funding model Category 12 was reserved for Aboriginal schools for children with particular needs. The Bretheren gain funding partly by treating new schools as campuses of existing schools, allowing them to keep the funding levels of the parent school. A Bretheren school at Meadowbank in Sydney has 'campuses' as far away as Albury, 600 kilometres to the south. The Brisbane campus of the Brethren's Agnew school has been granted $1.65 million to build a library. To qualify for this level of funding, the school must have between 151 to 300 primary students on site, but the school has only 57 primary students on site. (Source: ABC News website)

Children and adults on a remote Australian island have been punished for speaking their own language. The Cocos Islands, northwest of Perth, became part of Australia in 1984. Most of the 550 islanders' first language is Cocos Malay, a dialect unique to the island. At the Home Island school, students take turns monitoring non-English speakers. 'Classroom police' have been given an old Federal Police shirt or cap to wear for the day. Niza Alan, age 8, was recently made to pick up rubbish after she was caught speaking Cocos Malay in class. The punishments, which have included being made to stand facing the wall, are now the subject of a complaint to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. Workers for the local shire council were similarly forbidden to speak Cocos Malay at work. Workers would accrue demerit points and would have to provide morning tea for colleagues if they were caught speaking Cocos Malay 10 times.
An email from corporate services director Melinda Lymon states: "Jamill will be the enforcer this week and will keep a record of each time English is not spoken - everyone is to assist by notifying the enforcer if English is not being spoken. After 10 marks for someone - then morning tea it is!!"  (Source: The Australian)

QUOTE OF THE MOMENT: "No one can earn a million dollars honestly." - William Jennings Bryan