Joe Toscano

3CR's Anarchist world does not appear to have been censored yet.

Listen to Dr Joe Toscano's Anarchist World This Week - 9 March 2022

Since 2005 the Reclaim the Radical Spirit of the Eureka Rebellion Celebrations Committee has awarded six Eureka Australia Medals (EAM) at Bakery Hill, Ballarat (the site where the Eureka Oath was taken) on Eureka Day, 3rd December.

The EAM is awarded to people living in Australia who have lived lives that reflect the sentiments expressed in the Eureka Oath which was sworn by miners and their supporters at Bakery Hill, Ballarat on the 29th November 1854 –

“We swear by the Southern Cross to stand truly by each other and fight to defend our rights and liberties”.

It’s time those people (both living and deceased) whose actions have improved the lives of Australians and have been instrumental in changing this society for the better, are recognised.

If you know somebody who should be recognised, not just those people who are well known, please contact me via either

Email: [email protected]
Post PO Box 20 Parkville, VIC 3052

with the following details:
The person’s name
A few sentences on why they should receive the EAM
A contact address for the person you have nominated
Nominations close Sunday 10th November 2019.

See you in Ballarat on Tuesday 3rd December 2019 to celebrate the 165th Anniversary of the Eureka Rebellion.

All the very best,
Dr. Joseph Toscano / Convenor Reclaim the Radical Spirit of the Eureka Rebellion Celebrations
Tel: 0439 395 489

We encourage you to join us in a campaign which, if supported by you, has the potential to force the state government to abandon its plans to privatise the public housing sector. This campaign is being co-ordinated by Public Interests Before Corporate Interests (PIBCI www.pibci.net) and is endorsed by PIBCI, Friends of Public Housing – Victoria and the Wednesday Action Group. We expect many more organisations to endorse this campaign over the coming weeks. Let us know if you wish to endorse the Defend and Extend Public Housing campaign: Send mail to Defend and Extend Public Housing

Thank you.
Dr. Joseph Toscano / Joint Convener Defend and Extend Public Housing
Co-Convenors: Dr. Joseph Toscano / Mr. John Tweg
Committee: Ms. Beryl Jarrett, Ms. Julie Jones, Mr. Roger Pereira, Ms. Fae Roth

Not in our time

We understand the Victorian Labor Cabinet has just endorsed a decision to privatise 70% of Victoria’s public housing stock. Under the guise of improving “community”, “social” and “affordable” housing, in Victoria, they have agreed to transfer the management and ownership of the majority of public housing to “community”, “social” and “affordable” housing groups that are privately owned and run. The transfer of taxpayer funded public housing to non-government organisations deals a death blow to the idea access to affordable housing for all Australians who require it is primarily a state and federal government responsibility.

A strong vibrant public housing sector not only ensures all Australians, who cannot access the private housing market, have access to affordable housing, it also places downward pressure on private rents and helps first home buyers to enter the property market as many investors will sell their private rental properties if rents fall.

Having a strong public housing sector that is owned and managed by government helps to decrease crime and family violence as well as provide a stable environment that gives children the opportunity to access educational opportunities they would not normally have access to. A strong public housing sector can be financed by using a proportion of the revenue raised by land taxes and stamp duty to maintain and update existing stock and build new public housing in Melbourne and regional Victoria.

We will be holding public rallies on the steps of the Victorian State Parliament, Spring St Melbourne, between 11:30am – 1:30pm on:

- Thursday 20th October
- Thursday 17th November
- Thursday 15th December

To demonstrate to the government, the Opposition and the cross benchers in the Legislative Council our opposition to governments outsourcing their responsibility to provide affordable housing for all Victorians to a private and not for profit non-government sector that, at best, will only be able to provide for the needs of sections of the community, not all Victorians.

We encourage you to join us in a campaign which, if supported by you, has the potential to force the state government to abandon its plans to privatise the public housing sector.

Dr. Joseph Toscano / Joint Convener Defend and Extend Public Housing

This campaign is being co-ordinated by Public Interests Before Corporate Interests (PIBCI https://www.pibci.net) and is endorsed by PIBCI, Friends of Public Housing – Victoria and the Wednesday Action Group. We expect many more organisations to endorse this campaign over the coming weeks. Let us know if you wish to endorse the Defend and Extend Public Housing campaign.

You can help by coming along to the rallies that have been planned, writing to or emailing your local, state and federal representative, advertising these rallies among your family and friends and using social media to bring this issue to the attention of as many people as possible. This is a campaign Victorians and all Australians can ill afford to lose – JOIN US NOW!!

See also: United States Militarizing Response to Ebola Crisis While Cuba Pledges Medical Assistance (23/9/14) on Global Research. Update, 25 Sep: The Syrian Girl's Is #Ebola a biological weapon? (11/8/14) video added as an appendix.

Nothing highlights the bankruptcy of the deregulation, corporatisation, privatisation and globalisation revolution that has swept the world over the past three decades than the human and economic devastation caused by the Ebola epidemic in Western Africa. Over a decade ago all the pure research that was needed to embark on a vaccination trial had been carried out, all that was needed was a billion dollars to carry out that trial.

The researchers involved could not convince the private sector of the return to investors as Ebola, a decade ago, was an interesting virus that had only affected a few hundred people. Governments in Africa didn't have the resources or finances to tackle the problem. The United Nations chronic underfunding limited its ability to tackle the issue, although it had been warning the world about the devastating consequences of the virus.

The economically developed world gripped by the profit, irrespective of the human, social and environmental consequences, bug, turned its head the other way as it realised there were no profits to be made from the misery of a few hundred people. Hopefully the current epidemic in Western Africa and its potential spread to the rest of the world will be the impetus needed to create an international organisation under the auspices of the United Nations, funded by its members that can be used to monitor potential infection threats and create vaccines and treatment options before the horse bolts from the stable.

Dr. Joseph TOSCANO / Spokesperson / Anarchist Media Institute
Level 1/21 Smith Street, Fitzroy VIC 3065

Editor's comment: On September 18th 2014 Dr Margaret Chan, Director of the World Health Organisation, gave a speech in which she concluded,

"Distinguished members of the Security Council,
Reports show that more than 5500 people have been infected. Well over 2500 have died. And these shocking figures are vast underestimates. Health, medical, and clinical issues must remain the heart and soul and the spirit of this response.
It will take some time, but the Ebola outbreak can be contained. Look at the stable situation in Nigeria and Senegal. When the first imported cases in these two countries occurred, we knew very well what we were dealing with. Government ownership and leadership supported by CDC, Doctors without Borders, and WHO responded immediately with the right emergency actions.We face a situation of unprecedented population movements criss-crossing west Africa’s porous borders. Other countries will have to deal, in the same aggressive way, with imported cases, especially in this era of unprecedented international air travel."

#ebolaApp1" id="ebolaApp1">Appendix: Syrian Girl: Is #Ebola a biological weapon?

Video originally posted 11 Aug 2014 to the Syrian Girl Partisan's YouTube Channel

The Wednesday Action Group was established in 1999 to take issues that directly affect us as individuals, communities and the nation, directly to the people on the streets. The group is a coalition of concerned reformers, radicals and conservatives who believe the current social, cultural, political and economic needs of the people of this country cannot be met by the economic, legal and political institutions that currently dominate life in Australia. The Wednesday Action Group

The Wednesday Action Group was formed in 1999 to raise important social and political issues on the streets of Melbourne's CBD. Public rights to public space are a major issue for this group. Every Wednesday, over the last 14 years, we have legally assembled on the footpath collecting signatures on petitions that we have presented to the House of Representatives and the Senate in the Federal Parliament and the Legislative Assembly and Legislative Council in the Victorian Parliament.

E: [email protected]
A: P.O. Box 5035, Alphington 3078
M: 0439 395 489

Petition activities on street

Over the years we have collected thousands of names, addresses and signatures on various petitions relating to important political issues of the day. Currently we are collecting signatures on six petitions.

A petition to the Victorian Legislative Assembly and the Victorian Legislative Council calling for a Royal Commission into Corruption in Victoria.

A petition to the Federal House of Representatives and the Senate calling for the establishment of a New People's Bank.

A petition to the Federal House of Representatives and the Senate calling for the introduction of a 1% Stock Market Turnover tax on transactions of over $10,000.

Council bylaw-bullies

Over the years countless hours and millions of dollars of public money has been spent trying to stop us exercising our constitutional rights to use the streets to petition Parliament. During the last three months the Melbourne City Council has regularly been using its bylaws officers to try to force us off the streets claiming we need a Melbourne City Council permit to set up the card table that houses the petitions. Police have been called on every occasion. Two weeks ago 14 police were despatched at the request of Melbourne City Council bylaws officers to try to force us to remove the card table which holds the petitions.

Not a flash in the pan

Unlike Occupy Melbourne, we are not a flash in the pan. We have legally and peacefully exercised our constitutional rights for the last 14 years and will continue to do so irrespective of Melbourne City Council and Melbourne business harassment. The waste of thousands of hours of police time and millions of dollars of public money that has occurred over this issue is unacceptable.

Melbourne City Council is overreaching its prerogative

Allowing the Melbourne City Council to decide how political activity should be conducted on the streets of Melbourne is totally unacceptable. To apply for a permit to set up a card table gives a faceless bureaucracy the power to curtail legal legitimate political activity. It gives Councils, State governments and the Federal government the power to determine what is and isn't peaceful legitimate political activity.

Be a witness on 5 June outside Melbourne Town Hall, 11.30am

There are more than enough laws at the local, state and federal level to regulate political activity in this country. We encourage you to join us outside Melbourne Town Hall at 11:30am on Wednesday 5th June to witness our continuing struggle to exercise our constitutional rights. What may at first seem like a trivial insignificant issue has ramifications for every Australian that goes far beyond whether we need a Melbourne City Council permit to set up a card table to collect signatures for a petition.

Dr. Joseph TOSCANO / Convenor Wednesday Action Group
Steering Committee: Bobbie Burns, Jack Collins, Mick Doran, Simic Juric, Ruth Martin, Beth Matthews, John Murray, Bill Pickering, Jude Pierce, Peter Riley, Rick Simpson, Vasil Tilev, John Zabane

Why?

The Wednesday Action Group was established in 1999 to take issues that directly affect us as individuals, communities and the nation, directly to the people on the streets. The group is a coalition of concerned reformers, radicals and conservatives who believe the current social, cultural, political and economic needs of the people of this country cannot be met by the economic, legal and political institutions that currently dominate life in Australia.

Useful Links:
http://www.anarchistmedia.org http://www.rulebythepeople.org http://www.seditioncharter.org

On every available indicator and every batch of statistics the gap between the powerless and the powerful has grown in Australia. Despite the wealth being generated by a once in a lifetime mining boom, 22 million people living on a continent still have trouble tackling issues that should have been sorted out decades ago. The lid has been kept on dissent through the availability of relatively easy credit for people with investments and jobs.

In the West unaccountable national and transnational corporations have usurped the role of parliament. In the rest of the world the fortunes and power of authoritarian regimes have been bolstered by these same corporations. The changing of the guard in China could not have occurred without Western corporate assistance. The problem isn’t whether the cat that catches mice is white or black, the problem is what happens when the cat becomes too bloated to catch mice as a consequence of its privileged position. The bloated fat cats in the West and countless authoritarian regimes around the world need to be put on a starvation diet and their monopoly on catching mice needs to be rescinded if the significant issues faced by seven billion people trying to survive on a planet with finite resources are to be tackled.

“Every available indicator”

On every available indicator and every batch of statistics the gap between the powerless and the powerful has grown in Australia. Despite the wealth being generated by a once in a lifetime mining boom, 22 million people living on a continent still have trouble tackling issues that should have been sorted out decades ago. The lid has been kept on dissent through the availability of relatively easy credit for people with investments and jobs.

Selling money has become the major industry in Australia. More people are employed in the financial sector than in manufacturing or the mining sector. While financial institutions can sell money and those Australians who buy money can pay it off, the middle classes will never accept their interests are interrelated with the interests of those 40% of Australians who rely on social security benefits to survive. Nothing highlights this more than the negative attitudes among many of those who need to service private debt to survive, to those who rely on government “handouts” to survive.

It’s no accident as increasing pressure is placed on middle Australians to service their debt the “entitlement” debate is being pushed to the fore. As long as the 10% of Australians who control over 70% of the wealth in this country are able to divide and rule the rest of the country the gap between the haves, “aspirational” Australians and the have nots will grow. When parliament becomes the plaything of the rich and powerful and dictates parliamentary policy the only way to close the gap is for people to use extra parliamentary options to push the demands that each and every one of us, irrespective of who we are is born with an inalienable right to share the common wealth.

Joe Toscano

Excerpt from The Anarchist Age Weekly Review No.998

An Anarchist Society is a voluntary non-hierarchical society based on the creation of social and political structures which allow all people
equal decision making power and equal access to society's wealth.

P.O. Box 20, Parkville VIC 3052 Australia

Telephone : +61 0439 395 489

Internet : http://anarchistmedia.org/weekly.html

Email : [email protected]

Anarchist World This Week. Radio Program on the net http://www.3cr.org.au

Joe Toscano is running for Lord Mayor of Melbourne. Toscano is highly educated in political history and economic systems. He is one of the few doctors in Australia who still makes home visits. His ideas and values empower people at local level first and look at quality of life and democracy. Whilst it is true that a Mayor of Melbourne cannot create a peoples' bank, nonetheless, they can raise the idea seriously in some big forums. Listen to Joe on 3CR where he broadcasts weekly. Joe is also publicising a Meeting at 11am near the 8 hour monument, where Australian Anarchists will begin a walk to Human Rights Square, corner of Collins and Swanston (formerly City Square), to reclaim it as public space (because it has been corporatised). From MIDDAY THIS SATURDAY 20th October, as part of a world event known as "Global Noise" there will also be public banging of pots and pans in Human Rights Square.

Note that current Mayoral incumbent, Robert Doyle, is poorly perceived internationally for his decision to call the police on Australian activists when they occupied Melbourne's City Square, which is public space that has been corporatised. Joe Toscano is all about giving power back to people on a local level and has led the popular renaming of City Square as Human Rights Square. Doyle is also the only one of nine Melbourne Mayoral candidates who has not disclosed the amount or source of his funds. A developer who remains unnamed was described by the Age as perceiving that donations to Doyle's campaign could be rewarded with access by developers to the town hall.

Here is what Joe Toscano has to say about a Peoples' Bank

I, like many other Australians, am becoming sick and tired of hearing the Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan telling Australians to change banks every time the privately owned banking cartel refuses to pass on the Reserve Bank’s interest rate cuts. There is nothing more pathetic than one of the most powerful people in government telling Australians he and the government can't do anything in the face of the privately owned banks’ unconscionable behaviour.

Over 100 years ago, in 1911, a Labor government, faced with the predatory behaviour of privately owned banks who acted as if their only responsibility was to their major shareholders, set up the Commonwealth Bank to ensure Australians had the option of banking with a government owned bank as well as privately owned banks. In the 1980’s the Hawke/Keating Labor government, seduced by the privatisation, deregulation, corporatisation, globalisation juggernaut, privatised the Commonwealth Bank removing the only effective brake on preventing the privately owned banks forming a self-serving cartel.

The solution to the privately owned banks unconscionable behaviour is simple. The Gillard led Labor government needs to take a leaf out of the book of the 1911 Labor government and set up a new government owned bank. Faced with some real competition in the market place by a bank that is government guaranteed, it wouldn’t take long for the privately owned banking cartel that currently dominates the financial sector in Australia to disintegrate. This time, unlike in 1911, the people of Australia should be given the opportunity to incorporate the ownership of the new government owned bank in the Australian Constitution so next time the government of the day decides to privatise the people’s bank, it would have to hold a referendum to decide if the owners – the Australian people – want to sell their bank. Considering the palpable anger among the Australian people about the banks’ predatory behaviour, if the Gillard led Labor government had the courage to set up a new people’s bank, it’s re-election in 2013 would be assured.

Local government is the building block of a democratic society

Anarchism is all about relocalisation and face to face democracy. It is not about disorder and competition.

Toscano writes:

In Australia local government is a creature of state government. Local government has no constitutional protections. State governments can dismiss and do dismiss local governments on a whim. In this country power is being increasingly concentrated in the hands of a Federal government that derives its power from its ability to tax. In an anarchist society local government at both the community and workplace level is the sole level of government.

Community councils based on geographical boundaries and workplace councils based on the type of work done, not specific trades, exercise power in an anarchist society. Community and workplace councils form federations to co-ordinate activities at a local, regional and national level. Community and workplace councils make decisions through direct democratic processes. The people involved in a decision make that decision and appoint or elect delegates to co-ordinate decisions at a local, regional and national level.

The ability to freely participate in the decision making process is at the heart of anarchist decision making processes. Whether people choose to participate or leave the work to “somebody” else will ultimately determine the success or failure of a system based on direct democratic principles. We don’t need several layers of government to rule us. We don’t need to hand over power to
representatives. In order to create a secure, stable, viable society we need processes in place that harness the collective wisdom of the people and use the common wealth for the common good.

Today, Wednesday 3 October, Dr Joe Toscano and Dr Jean Ely launched a colourful campaign against a backdrop of Spring flowers outside Melbourne Town Hall. (Video-link below) They made the point that the other 8 candidates campaign as if Melbourne were a business proposition and neglect the 40 per cent of votes that come from non-business people in a uniquely skewed electoral system where some businesses get two or three votes. This vast electorate includes Carlton, North Carlton, Flemington, Kensington, South Melbourne, East Melbourne, Docklands, Parts of South Yarra and West Melbourne. Most public housing is located there but there are many homeless. There are a lot of children but public schools are rare.

Taking the public seriously

Dr Joseph Toscano began the launch by stating that this is a serious campaign for the Lord Mayor Election and the theme is, "Putting Public First."

He said that other candidates talk about running Melbourne as a business, but Melbourne is a community. It is a community of over 200,000 people, with 102,000 on the electoral role. It includes the CBD, Carlton, North Carlton, Flemington, Kensington, South Melbourne, East Melbourne, Docklands, Parts of South Yarra and West Melbourne.

The election should not be about running a business. It should be an election about people, about cities, about how people collectively and individually resolve the problems of having so many people in such a small area - four million in this city.

"We are standing to promote, protect and extend public housing and public schools in the city of Melbourne," said Dr Toscano.

And, "Listening to this election you forget that most of the public housing estates are in the city of Melbourne: North Carlton, Carlton, Flemington, West Melbourne, Kensington. Thousands of people living in public housing."

"So we think that it's fundamental that we look after people through public housing and public schools. What we have seen over the last 30 years is a revolution which has devalued and privatised public housing, public schools and public health."

Ten per cent city revenue to Seed-fund Local Collectives and Cooperatives for secure and satisfying employment

"The second thing is that we are not interested in running the city of Melbourne as a corporate focused city. We want to see the development of an alternative economic system based on cooperatives and collectives, which provide secure, sustainable employment and goods and services for the people of Melbourne. We are not interested in the people having part-time, poorly paid work. We want people to be self-sufficient, to work for themselves, and share the wealth which they create. We would like 10 per cent of the city's revenue to be diverted to provide seed funding to set up collectives and cooperatives, to set up a alternative economic system based on the satisfaction of real, not manufactured, human needs."

Because you do not need billions of dollars to survive, live or prosper. What you need is secure, safe, sustainable employment.

If you go to a bank and say you want to set up a food collective or a carpenters' collective or a plumbers' collective you will find that nothing happens. So 10 per cent of the city's revenue redirected to set up an alternative economic system.

Double rates on multi-million dollar Melbourne properties

Thirdly, some of the richest people and corporations live in the city of Melbourne. Everyone else is talking about reducing rates. We want to double rates for properties worth more than $10m and we want to quarantine the money raised to tackle the perennial problem of homelessness in Melbourne which is swept under the carpet on a year by year basis. We want to use the money to assist the 40 per cent of people who live in the city of Melbourne, who rely on social security benefits to survive.

Monument to honour indigenous people executed in Melbourne

Fourthly, since the last election Dr Ely and myself have been fighting - along with hundreds of other people - for the establishment of a significant monument for Tunnaminnerwait and Maulboyheenner, two indigenous freedom fighters who were executed on the corner of Bowan and Franklin Streets on the 20th of January 1842. Not just as some hsitorical monument, but as a gathering place for indigenous and non-indigenous Australians to learn about the city's unwritten history and to become involved in the struggle to finish the unfinished business that exists between indigenous and non-indigenous Australia. We se this as a tangible way of actually promoting that struggle of kick-starting the stalled reconciliation struggle. We would like to see the whole area with grass, get a monument there, where peple can go and talk and learn about the history.

Re-name City Square "Human Rights Square"

Lastly, want to see City Square renamed "Human Rights Square" to acknowledge the forceful eviction of Occupy Melbourne by police after getting the nod by Premier Baillieu and the Lord Mayor Doyle from that place for peacefully raising the idea that wealth and power should be redistributed.

Obviously we have many other ideas, but these are the five major ones.

Now, why are we standing? Very simply because this statement will be sent to every elector on the Melbourne electoral role, courtesy of the Australian Election Commission, where people can also read the stuff the other candidates put up like, "we want more parking, more or fewer roads ...."

Because we face difficult times, especially young people, because we are moving from a time of relative abundance to scarcity, as Greenhouse increases, human activity increases, as finite resources are used to manufacture goods we do not need to increase company profits and economy is dominated by economically based on the creation of ever more profits irrespective of social and environmental costs, we find that we need radical solutions.

Call to work around the corporate media by using social media

It is very interesting that apart from the local and community media, there is no media here today, despite the fact that we sent over 1000 emails and even some letters.

You are not going to get the government-gelded ABC or the corporate-owned media talking about a public campaign of putting public first. It is unattractive in a corporate dominated world. For us to get any traction we need people here to go to our website at www.anarchistmedia.org, to download the material, send it to your friends, use it for bloggling and in the social media sphere to promote the campaign.

Our statement cannot be beaten. It is a black caviar statement. It is miles ahead of what you will see elsewhere.

Inter-candidate debates ahead

Over the next three weeks I will be debating my colleagues about these issues, but we have two options - we come last out of nine candidates or we come fourth or fifth or third with your assistance on the social media to show people that there is support for ideas, not personalities.

Dr Ely on public housing and public schooling

Dr Ely spoke on the issues of Public Housing and Public Education. She said that there is a lot of homelessness in the electorate, adding that Mayor Doyle had been very quick to take a photo-opportunity with the homeless but that he had actually done nothing about them. She said that Joe and she were determined to give them a voice. She also wanted to encourage people to put more and more pressure on the state government to restore public schools which had been closed under Premier Jeff Kennett. She mentioned that West Melbourne school had been given to the Salvation Army by Jeff Kennett in 1993. "We want it back," she stated. There are children in this city who need government schools."

"That's why we want to campaign to raise rates on properties worth more than 10m," said Dr Toscano.

Dr Ely concluded by saying, "We are the future. We will have to leave the others to wander off into the past. The Fourth Estate is now on the ropes. The Fifth Estate is the Social Media."

Dr Toscano will be debating other candidates (with the exception of the current Lord Mayor, Mr Doyle, who apparently does not debate other candidates) at the Wheeler Centre on 16th of October between 6.15 and 7.30pm.

Melbourne Council's unusual voting system

The City of Melbourne has a very odd voting system where some businesses have two or three votes and it is slanted 60/40 in terms of business votes in relation to residents' votes. It is the only place in Australia where people have multiple voting legally. This system was created was to ensure that somebody from the business community would be Lord Mayor. This is also the only mayoral election where the mayor is elected by the people. In every other city the mayor is appointed by the councillors. The Melbourne system was designed to give the mayor a bit more power than other mayors to promote business interests.

"This is the statement that will be posted to over 100,000 electors by the Victorian Electoral Commission during the Melbourne City Council Election. It encapsulates our political program for the City of Melbourne. Use it as a template for your political struggles, pass it on to all and sundry. Alternatives exist, we need to express them." Dr. Joseph Toscano and Dr. Jean Ely launch a campaign about running the city of Melbourne as a community, instead of as a money making 'business' opportunity for those who take and do not give.Campaign launch midday Wednesday 3rd October, cnr Collins & Swanston St, Melbourne."Let’s not forget that of the 100,000 people on the electoral roll, the majority live in Docklands, Parkville, Flemington, North Melbourne, West Melbourne, South Melbourne, Southbank, Kensington, part of South Yarra, East Melbourne, Carlton and North Melbourne, not the CBD."

Action Box Put Public First

We are standing to promote, protect and extend public housing and public schools in the City of Melbourne.

We want 10% of the City’s revenue to be set aside to provide seeding funding to establish an alternative economic system based on co-operatives and collectives that provides local residents with secure sustainable employment that provides sustainable goods and services to the community.

We will fight to double Council Rates on properties worth more than ten million dollars to provide services for the homeless and residents of Melbourne who rely on social security benefits to survive. We want a significant monument erected at the corner of Franklin and Bowen St to honour the indigenous freedom fighters Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner who were executed on the 20th January 1842 for daring to resist white colonisation.

We will rename City Square Human Rights Square to commemorate the forceful removal of peaceful Occupy Melbourne protesters from City Square in 2012.

Radical changes need to be made to ensure as a city and a community we are in the best position to deal with the four horsemen of an impending 21st century apocalypse: Increasing population growth; increasing greenhouse emissions due to human activity; rapidly diminishing finite resources, and the domination of the world economy by an economic system based on the creation of ever increasing profits irrespective of the human social and environmental costs have created conditions requiring radical change.

Dr. Joseph Toscano – Dr. Jean Ely.
Web Anarchist Media
Email [email protected]
Mobile 0439 395 489

The above is is the statement that will be posted to over 100,000 electors by the Victorian Electoral Commission during the Melbourne City Council Election. It encapsulates our political program for the City of Melbourne. Use it as a template for your political struggles, pass it on to all and sundry. Alternatives exist, we need to express them.

Join us Midday Wednesday 34d October for the launch of the Put Public First Melbourne City Council Mayoral Election Campang outside Melbourne Town Hall, Corner of Collins & Swanston St, Melbourne.

Dr. Joseph Toscano and Dr. Jean Ely,[1] sickened by the possibility the Melbourne City Council elections were going to be a conservative fifty shades of blue affair, have thrown their hat into the rink to raise a few radical ideas during the Melbourne Mayoral and Council election campaign. While everybody else talks about running the city as a business, we talk about running the city as a community. Let’s not forget that of the 100,000 people on the electoral roll, the majority live in Docklands, Parkville, Flemington, North Melbourne, West Melbourne, South Melbourne, Southbank, Kensington, part of South Yarra, East Melbourne, Carlton and North Melbourne, not the CBD.

While everybody else talks about cutting rates, we talk about doubling rates for properties over ten million dollars and using the money raised to tackle homelessness and poverty in the City of Melbourne.

While everybody else ignores public housing and public schools, we put public first pledging to make the public not the private sphere our number one priority. While everybody else is trying to ignore the way Occupy Melbourne was violently evicted by the Victoria Police after being given the nod by the Lord Mayor, we want to rename City Square Human Rights Square and use City Square as a focus for political and social activity, not commercial activities. While everyone else ignores the original inhabitants, we want to see a major monument erected to Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner, two indigenous freedom fighters who were executed at the corner of Bowen and Franklin St on the 20th January 1842 for resisting white colonisation. We want the area where the monument is erected to act as a focal point to help address the unfinished business that still exists between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians 224 years after colonisation began.

Join us, help us launch a Melbourne City Council Mayoral and Council election campaign that will put the cat among the conservative pigeons that stand against everything we stand for.

Joseph Toscano/ Libertarian Workers For A Self-Managed Society.

NOTES

[1] Dr. Jean Ely is a founding member of the Defence of Government Schools movement (DoGS) and is a regular presenter on 3CR's Public Education program. She is the author of Reality and Rhetoric: An Alternative History of Australian Education. She delivered the Lionel Murphy Lecture on October 26th 2000 at the Nindi Dana Quaranook centre in Morwell.

The 774 ABC Jon Faine show was doing a Melbourne By-Election special at the Victoria Markets today Friday 20 July 2012. I rang the show and said that I wanted to hear an interview of Joe Toscano. To give Jon Faine credit, Joe was then interviewed almost immediately and did very well on the subject of the ABC Sheltered workshop for the IPA. He then responded to questions about his platform as a Radical Independent candidate, which I have posted here.

Weak defense of regular IPA presence on ABC Radio

Later discussion on the program about the presence of the IPA, it seemed to me, was cleverly but unconvincingly defended by Jon Faine and someone who sounded like an IPA representative. The argument put forward was that it was very hard to get a free representation of conservative points of view and that the IPA did a good job and had therefore been given a regular position on Jon Faine's show. It was then put that there were many left-wing organisations available for comment on all manner of issues.

What would constitute democratic balance on the ABC

What was missing in this argument was that the IPA represents population growth, econonomic growth, overdevelopment and privatisation as a four horse plank. The ABC has failed to similarly anoint the opposing point of view, which is for a steady state economy with only replacement development and with state-owned and therefore publicly accountable services and assets. The IPA is also not the only pro-growth professional representative: the ABC is a frequent vehicle for a multitude of economic rationalists, but notably for property development organisations and representatives, including the ubiquitous Bernard Salt, who pushes a simplistic pro-growth message in the Murdoch press at State and Federal level.

One-off Faine Conversation Hour population forum 2010 expressed opposite opinion then buried

Having said this, as the counterweight to Steve Bracks, the ex-Premier of Victoria, on the Jon Faine Conversation hour in a Conversation Hour population forum on 19 April, 2010, I personally put this viewpoint strongly, as a population sociologist and as a spokesperson for SPA Victoria on the subject of Victoria's out of control population growth and its undemocratic nature. [Download or listen to the MP3 here.] After the show I was photographed with the ex-Premier and this Conversation Hour Population Forum recording became available for download and comment on its own ABC page. This however was a one-off, despite the huge success of that hour, when the phone lines were innundated with people supporting my point of view and virtually no support for Bracks's, which was pro-growth. Somewhat obviously, I thought, the photograph of me and the ex-Premier was never published on this page. Comments on the page were early disabled and never again effectively enabled, despite my making two written complaints about the matter. I know that many people tried and failed to add their comments to that page.

Government gelded ABC Sheltered Workshop for the Institute of Public Affairs

Joe Toscano wrote, just prior to the ABC Melbourne by-Election thang:

"Nothing highlights the moral bankruptcy of significant sections of the ABC more than Melbourne's 774 local radio’s decision to host a special Melbourne by-election program at the Queen Victoria Markets in Melbourne on Friday morning in which only the more “popular” candidates will be interviewed. Over the past two decades significant sections of ABC television and radio have been little more than commercial clones.

Afraid of its own shadow significant slabs of the government gelded ABC have been transformed into sheltered workshops for the Institute of Public Affairs. Week after week, month after month, year after year debate within the ABC is contained within strictly defined boundaries. While radical right wing opinions dominate ABC television and ABC radio, radical left wing opinions are shunned.

Just two weeks ago I was approached by an ABC television producer to appear on ABC News Breakfast on ABC1 and ABC News 24 to discuss the launch of Communitysavesfairfax.com. Three hours later the same producer, alerted to the fact I had a left wing radical pedigree, withdrew the invitation. Ironically, I had been involved in a debate that lasted over 20 minutes on Sky News Business Breakfast two days previously.

The stacking of the ABC Board with neo-conservative Board members, the appointment of neo-conservative senior bureaucrats to the ABC, the introduction of short term contracts and the outsourcing of production has created a climate of fear within the ABC. The ABC is publicly owned. We all pay our eight cents a day to watch and listen to Aunty. It’s time a thousand flowers were allowed to bloom among the stunted old perennials growing in much of the ABC wastelands."

Dr Toscano adds,

It’s ironic at the very moment Ken Williams, the CEO of News Limited, publicly indicated he would use News Limited’s considerable resources to derail the Gillard government’s legislative attempts to hold the corporate owned media to account, one arm of his far flung corporate empire is involved in crass, crude political censorship. I, like the other 15 candidates standing in the Victorian Melbourne By-election was approached by the Melbourne Leader (which claims it has a readership of 51,000) to provide a “profile” for the Melbourne Leader.

A picture and a fifty word opinion piece on “my plans” for Melbourne. I emailed back indicating I believed a “sullen, angry, disillusioned, disgruntled electorate wants ideas, not profiles”. I was surprised to receive an email that stated the Melbourne Leader would be publishing that I “did not submit the profile as requested”. Any normal reader looking at the article in the Melbourne Leader would think I didn’t respond to their request.

It is both disingenuous and dishonest for the Melbourne Leader to imply I didn’t respond to their request. I sent the newspaper three
emails outlining my position regarding their “profile”. At the very least they should have stated they declined to publish my comments.

What's happening highlights why we need laws to make the corporate owned media accountable. I could take my complaint to the Australian Press Council, a self-regulatory toothless tiger. Even if they found in my favour, it would be months before the matter would be resolved. Everyday hundreds of people across this country are misrepresented in the corporate owned media. They have no effective redress. Making the corporate owned media accountable would bring them into line with current community standards."

You can hear more from Joe Toscano on 3CR in the latest podcast, which is all about the above, and you can go and vote for him, if you wish, at the Melbourne By-Election tomorrow, 20 July 2012. Good luck Joe!

"There is not one independent in the Victorian Legislative Assembly or the Victorian Legislative Council, let alone a RADICAL INDEPENDENT. Power in a democratic society should rest in the hands of the people, not the State, corporate boardrooms or the Government of the day. Real power no longer resides in Parliament, it lies in the hands of unaccountable corporations that increasingly dictate the Legislative agenda. As we move from a period of relative abundance to scarcity as a consequence of the domination of the world economy by corporate capitalism an economic system based on the creation of ever increasing profits irrespective of the human, social and environmental costs, the ever increasing consumption of finite resources, increasing population growth and increasing greenhouse emissions as a result of human activity, we require radical changes to the way we govern ourselves, what we produce, how we produce it and how we live." - Joe Toscano

TOSCANO'S PLATFORM

“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act” – George Orwell
There is not one independent in the Victorian Legislative Assembly or the Victorian Legislative Council, let alone a RADICAL INDEPENDENT. Power in a democratic society should rest in the hands of the people, not the State, corporate boardrooms or the Government of the day.
Real power no longer resides in Parliament, it lies in the hands of unaccountable corporations that increasingly dictate the Legislative agenda.
As we move from a period of relative abundance to scarcity as a consequence of the domination of the world economy by corporate capitalism an economic system based on the creation of ever increasing profits irrespective of the human, social and environmental costs, the ever increasing consumption of finite resources, increasing population growth and increasing greenhouse emissions as a result of human activity, we require radical changes to the way we govern ourselves, what we produce, how we produce it and how we live.

IF ELECTED

- I would use my position in the Legislative Assembly to encourage people to take DIRECT ACTION – protests, occupations, strikes, sit-ins, consumer boycotts, to ensure their interests are put before the interests of the parliamentary puppet masters, that small section of society that currently owns the means of production, distribution, exchange and communication.
- I would fight to ensure affordable housing is a universal right by defending and extending the public housing sector.
- I would use Parliamentary Privilege to raise in the public arena serious issues that are currently ignored because of the threat of legal action if they are raised outside parliament.
- I would support legislation that protects the individual from the arbitrary exercise of State power and protects internet freedom.
- I would agitate to ensure 1% of Victoria’s GST revenue is used to provide seeding funding to set up collectives and cooperatives that would form the basis of an alternative economic system based on co-operation and the satisfaction of real, not manufactured, human needs.
- I would call for a Royal Commission into corruption in Victoria.
- I would agitate for the introduction of a 1% stockmarket turnover tax to ensure the tax base is widened so that sections of society that currently pay voluntary taxation, pay their fair share of tax, so as a society we have enough resources to pay for public education, public health, public infrastructure and public housing.
- I would fight for the establishment of a New People’s State owned Bank to reintroduce competition in the banking sector.
We need to replace Representative Democracy with Direct Democratic institutions where the people make the decisions and elect or appoint recallable delegates to co-ordinate those decisions at a local, regional and Federal level so the collective wisdom of the population as whole can be harvested.

Help needed

HELP NEEDED

40 OR SO SOULS WITH NOTHING BETTER TO DO FROM 8:00am to 6:00pm on
SATURDAY 21st JULY 2012

I'm launching the “Set the Cat Among the Parliamentary Pigeons” campaign. This innovative campaign is
directed at the people participating in the Melbourne By-election which will be held on the 21st July 2012. The
main purpose of the campaign is to engage with people on one of the few days Australians think of politics.
The enclosed/attached leaflet outlines the position I'm putting across during the Melbourne By-election
campaign.

The Melbourne By-election covers the suburbs of Carlton, Melbourne, Kensington, Parkville, North Melbourne,
Flemington, East Melbourne and Docklands. There are 14 polling booths which need to be covered on the
day:

. Carlton Primary School
cnr Palmerston and Drummond Streets
Carlton AWA

. Kensington Primary School
McCracken Street
Kensington AWA

. Carlton North Primary School
Lee Street
Carlton North AWA

. Victoria University - City Flinders Campus
L12/300 Flinders Street
Melbourne AWA

. St. Michael's Anglican Church Hall
14 McIlwraith Street
Princes Hill FWA

. RMIT (Canteen)
Building 8 Bowen Street
Melbourne AWA

. The Hub @ Docklands
80 Harbour Esplanade
Docklands AWA

. North Melbourne Primary School
210 Errol Street
North Melbourne AWA

. Dallas Brooks Centre
cnr Albert and Eades Streets
East Melbourne FWA

. St. Joseph's Flexible Learning Centre
385 Queensberry Street
North Melbourne AWA

. Mt Alexander College
167-175 Mount Alexander Road
Flemington AWA

. University High School - Performance Centre
Story Street
Parkville AWA

. North Melbourne Community Centre
Buncle Street
North Melbourne AWA

. Kensington Community Recreation Centre
cnr Kensington Road and Altona Street
Kensington AWA

AWA - Wheelchair accessible with assistance FWA - Fully wheelchair accessible

If you are interested in helping by distributing the leaflet at one of the polling booths;

Email: [email protected]

Write: PO Box 5035, Alphington VIC 3078

Phone: 0439 395 489

to discuss what polling booth you want to cover, the time frame you can cover (hours between 8:00am-
6:00pm) and when and where I can drop off the leaflets to you.

It’s important I'm able to finalise these arrangements BEFORE POLLING DAY on SATURDAY 21st JULY.

This is one way you can directly bring new ideas to a significant number of people on the one day and have an impact on their thinking. I look forward to you contacting me ASAP

Joseph Toscano

In fortuitous collision of pique, the Greens and Labor have preferenced Radical Independent Dr Joe Toscano ahead of each other in this Melbourne by-election. Toscano has his finger on the political pulse of this nation because he has an in depth knowledge of Australian history and what we have all lost through corporatisation, privatisation, overpopulation and a corrupt public and commercial media. Hopefully many of the public will actually put Joe first. Although Your ABC Radio has shamefully refused to include Joe Toscano or other alternatives in its by-election broadcast from the Victoria Markets on Friday, a parallel but democratic gathering 8.30 to 12pm at corner of Therry and Queen Street, Victoria Markets will give publicity and information about other candidates. Please join it. As the writer of this article and with a strong acquaintance with Joe, I can make no higher recommendation than Vote 1 for Joe Toscano! See below for Joe's platform and how you can help and contact details.

Shameful discrimination against candidates on ABC radio

Amazingly, Your ABC Radio has actually denied Victorians the democratic opportunity to hear Joe or any other alternatives to Greens, Libs and Labor, speak at an ABC organised by-election broadcast from the Victoria Markets on Friday. This writer's surmise is because the powers that be are afraid that the already well-loved long-standing political activist has a good chance of getting in if they just allow the ABC dependent electorate to find out about his existence.

Let's face it; the only reason we are reduced to the pseudo-choice of Lib/Lab/Greens is because of the corrupt media machine that most of us still depend on. Candobetter and other alternatives are so important to break down this monopoly of political messaging.

Two days ago Joe had yet another ABC interview cancelled. Yet Joe is an interviewer's gift. Joe is a medical doctor who visits severely paralysed patients all over Melbourne. He is a leader in events to take back public land, secure housing as a right, and fight the growing economic divide between the poor and the rich in Australia.

Melbourne By-Election Event vital to media democracy

Please therefore come along to the parallel gathering that Joe's supporters will be organizing for 8am to 12pm this Friday 20 July 2012 at the corner of Therry and Queen Street, Victoria Markets. This should be The Melbourne Political Event of the Year but you and I could make it The Melbourne Political Event of the Decade by attending and covering it on every form of alternative media, as well as ringing up the ABC and writing to the papers protesting about their exclusion of a major political force from public coverage.

The title of this parallel gathering is "Government Gelded ABC Sheltered Workshop for the Institute of Public Affairs". If you want to know more about the circumstances that led to this gathering, download today's Joe Toscano podcast. [Check when you go on the site that the podcast is dated July 18; I am writing this as Joe's weekly show goes to air. You may have to wait until later today for the podcast to go up.]

You can verify for yourself Joe's oratorial skills, brains and humour by listening to him on the Anarchist show on 3CR. Anarchism is, as many of our well-educated readers would know, just another name for relocalisation. Joe must be one of few Australian political figures who has an understanding of the importance of different land-use planning systems to democratic and social outcomes.

PLATFORM

“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act” – George Orwell
There is not one independent in the Victorian Legislative Assembly or the Victorian Legislative Council, let alone a RADICAL INDEPENDENT. Power in a democratic society should rest in the hands of the people, not the State, corporate boardrooms or the Government of the day.
Real power no longer resides in Parliament, it lies in the hands of unaccountable corporations that increasingly dictate the Legislative agenda.
As we move from a period of relative abundance to scarcity as a consequence of the domination of the world economy by corporate capitalism an economic system based on the creation of ever increasing profits irrespective of the human, social and environmental costs, the ever increasing consumption of finite resources, increasing population growth and increasing greenhouse emissions as a result of human activity, we require radical changes to the way we govern ourselves, what we produce, how we produce it and how we live.

IF ELECTED

- I would use my position in the Legislative Assembly to encourage people to take DIRECT ACTION – protests, occupations, strikes, sit-ins, consumer boycotts, to ensure their interests are put before the interests of the parliamentary puppet masters, that small section of society that currently owns the means of production, distribution, exchange and communication.
- I would fight to ensure affordable housing is a universal right by defending and extending the public housing sector.
- I would use Parliamentary Privilege to raise in the public arena serious issues that are currently ignored because of the threat of legal action if they are raised outside parliament.
- I would support legislation that protects the individual from the arbitrary exercise of State power and protects internet freedom.
- I would agitate to ensure 1% of Victoria’s GST revenue is used to provide seeding funding to set up collectives and cooperatives that would form the basis of an alternative economic system based on co-operation and the satisfaction of real, not manufactured, human needs.
- I would call for a Royal Commission into corruption in Victoria.
- I would agitate for the introduction of a 1% stockmarket turnover tax to ensure the tax base is widened so that sections of society that currently pay voluntary taxation, pay their fair share of tax, so as a society we have enough resources to pay for public education, public health, public infrastructure and public housing.
- I would fight for the establishment of a New People’s State owned Bank to reintroduce competition in the banking sector.
We need to replace Representative Democracy with Direct Democratic institutions where the people make the decisions and elect or appoint recallable delegates to co-ordinate those decisions at a local, regional and Federal level so the collective wisdom of the population as whole can be harvested.

Help needed

HELP NEEDED

40 OR SO SOULS WITH NOTHING BETTER TO DO FROM 8:00am to 6:00pm on
SATURDAY 21st JULY 2012

I'm launching the “Set the Cat Among the Parliamentary Pigeons” campaign. This innovative campaign is
directed at the people participating in the Melbourne By-election which will be held on the 21st July 2012. The
main purpose of the campaign is to engage with people on one of the few days Australians think of politics.
The enclosed/attached leaflet outlines the position I'm putting across during the Melbourne By-election
campaign.

The Melbourne By-election covers the suburbs of Carlton, Melbourne, Kensington, Parkville, North Melbourne,
Flemington, East Melbourne and Docklands. There are 14 polling booths which need to be covered on the
day:

. Carlton Primary School
cnr Palmerston and Drummond Streets
Carlton AWA

. Kensington Primary School
McCracken Street
Kensington AWA

. Carlton North Primary School
Lee Street
Carlton North AWA

. Victoria University - City Flinders Campus
L12/300 Flinders Street
Melbourne AWA

. St. Michael's Anglican Church Hall
14 McIlwraith Street
Princes Hill FWA

. RMIT (Canteen)
Building 8 Bowen Street
Melbourne AWA

. The Hub @ Docklands
80 Harbour Esplanade
Docklands AWA

. North Melbourne Primary School
210 Errol Street
North Melbourne AWA

. Dallas Brooks Centre
cnr Albert and Eades Streets
East Melbourne FWA

. St. Joseph's Flexible Learning Centre
385 Queensberry Street
North Melbourne AWA

. Mt Alexander College
167-175 Mount Alexander Road
Flemington AWA

. University High School - Performance Centre
Story Street
Parkville AWA

. North Melbourne Community Centre
Buncle Street
North Melbourne AWA

. Kensington Community Recreation Centre
cnr Kensington Road and Altona Street
Kensington AWA

AWA - Wheelchair accessible with assistance FWA - Fully wheelchair accessible

If you are interested in helping by distributing the leaflet at one of the polling booths;

Email: [email protected]

Write: PO Box 5035, Alphington VIC 3078

Phone: 0439 395 489

to discuss what polling booth you want to cover, the time frame you can cover (hours between 8:00am-
6:00pm) and when and where I can drop off the leaflets to you.

It’s important I'm able to finalise these arrangements BEFORE POLLING DAY on SATURDAY 21st JULY.

This is one way you can directly bring new ideas to a significant number of people on the one day and have an impact on their thinking. I look forward to you contacting me ASAP

Joseph Toscano

Eddie Mabo, a Torres Strait Islander from the island of Mer in the Torres Strait, while working as a gardener at Townsville University in the mid 1970’s, realised what was being taught at the University was legal fiction because he knew he and his family owned land on Mer. Here is some background on the Mabo case in Australia.

Article by Joe Toscano, originally appeared in the Anarchist Age Weekly Review, Number 978, 28th May – 3rd June 2012.

Mabo, the background

Despite the importance of the Mabo 1992 High Court decision that found indigenous Australians had rights to land in law, few Australians are aware of the background to this struggle. When the British monarchy claimed the “Great South Land” for itself in 1788, it did it by elying on the legal fiction of “Terra Nullius” – the land was uninhabited. Terra Nullius gave the colonisers the legal right to take the land by force from the original inhabitants without paying compensation for it. The genocide and atrocities that accompanied the colonisation process never legally happened because the land was not officially inhabited.

Despite the Australian people deciding in the 1967 referendum to give the Commonwealth government the power to legislate on behalf of indigenous Australians, it did not change their legal status in elation to the land.

Eddie Mabo, a Torres Strait Islander from the island of Mer in the Torres Strait, while working as a gardener at Townsville University in the mid 1970’s realised what was being taught at the University was legal fiction because he knew he and his family owned land on Mer.

For thousands of years before white colonisation families on the Island used stone markers to mark the boundaries of their land. He started using the University library and started talking to interested academics at Townsville University about the possibility of legally challenging Terra Nullius. At the height of the powers exercised by the racist Bjelke Peterson Queensland government, Eddie Mabo began a series of legal challenges that took over a decade to wind through the Queensland Courts and eventually the High Court which on the 3rd June 1992 led to the High Court recognising that indigenous Australians, both Torres Strait Islanders and Aborigines had rights to land in law because of their prior occupation of this land.

Eddie died five months before the judgement. He, his wife and family paid a tremendous personal cost for his defiance of the Bjelke Peterson government. Even in death he was not allowed any peace. His grave site at Townsville was vandalised by racist graffiti. His family fearing further attacks transferred his body to Mer, his original birthplace, where he now rests in peace. Today, Mabo Day, the 3rd June is celebrated with a public holiday in the Torres Strait.

When will it be celebrated with a public holiday in the rest of Australia?

Joe Toscano comments on education in Australia and the Gonski Report. "It’s no accident Australian education outcomes continue to fall behind comparable countries, we need to import specialised skilled labour and many Australian families are burdened with the problems associated with intergenerational social security dependency. The growing private public education chasm has become the single most important barrier to social cohesion in the country."

Public Private Chasm

No society can afford to put the interests of some of its children before the interests of all its children. In Australia today we have succeeded in creating an education system that is both unwilling and incapable of developing the talents of all of its children. The private, public chasm that has developed as private schools siphon public funds into private education has had a significant impact on generations of Australian children and the country as a whole.

It’s no accident Australian education outcomes continue to fall behind comparable countries, we need to import specialised skilled labour and many Australian families are burdened with the problems associated with intergenerational social security dependency. The growing private public education chasm has become the single most important barrier to social cohesion in the country.

States that refuse to treat all their children equally and make special provisions for those with major physical, intellectual and psychological issues do not do themselves or their citizens justice.

Industry skilled immigration reliance creating social tensions

The continuing reliance on immigration to fill the growing gaps created by an education system that is not geared to develop the talents of all of this country’s children is unsustainable and creates long lasting social tensions within the community. The Gonski Reportoffers a glimmer of hope some Australians are beginning to realise we will continue to short change many of our children and will never reach our full potential as a nation unless we address this critical issue.

Source of article: #10;">Anarchist Weekly Review No.967

The current economic crisis in Europe can be compared to a couple in a street building a three storey mansion in a street made up of one storey dwellings and then forcing the residents of the one storey dwellings to stop paying their electricity and gas bills to meet the mortgage repayments of the couple who built the three storey mansion.

Article by Joe Toscano

The scramble by members of the European Union to appoint technocrats as leaders of Greece and Italy highlights how little input electors have on government policy in the 21st century. Unfortunately they have forgotten what is good for the markets isn’t as most governments believe, good for the people they rule.

The current economic crisis in Europe can be compared to a couple in a street building a three storey mansion in a street made up of one storey dwellings and then forcing the residents of the one storey dwellings to stop paying their electricity and gas bills to meet the mortgage repayments of the couple who built the three storey mansion.

The people of Italy and Greece are seething with uncontrolled anger at seeing governments that theoretically represent their interests squandering their taxes to bolster the fortunes of banks and corporations who found themselves at the pointy end of the Global Financial Crisis because of their greed and unconscionable behaviour.

Irrespective of how many technocrats are appointed to European parliaments, irrespective of how many austerity measures are introduced by parliaments that dance to the tune of the corporate parliamentary puppet masters, irrespective of how many governments of national unity are formed to save corporate capitalism’s bacon the people in the streets will ultimately determine government policy.

The parliamentary puppet masters seem to have forgotten that ultimate political authority in a democracy rests in the hands of the people, not the state, the corporate sector, the bureaucracy or the government of the day. When working up the right channels fails, when the ballot box does not reflect the will of the people, when parliament is hijacked by unaccountable corporations and societies institutions are subverted by that small section of society that owns the means of production, distribution, exchange and communication to maximise their profits, the people are left with no other option but to use direct action to put ultimate political authority back into the hands of the people.

Original Source, Issue No.957 of the Anarchist Age Weekly Review which covers the two week period 21st November - 4th December. Latest issue here.

The violent removal of Occupy Melbourne protestors by Victoria Police on Friday 21st October 2011 from Melbourne’s City Square after being given the green light by the Melbourne Mayor, Robert Doyle, and the Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu highlights how important it is to reclaim open public space for political activity in the City of Melbourne, a city that only gives lip service to the right to protest.

The 11th November has played an important role in radical Australian history. On the 11th November 2011 the Melbourne based Anarchist Media Institute encourages the people of Melbourne to reclaim Melbourne’s City Square to commemorate:

The 11th November 1854, the day 157 years ago when the Ballarat Reform League, the organisation behind the Eureka Rebellion, was formed on the Ballarat goldfields.

The 11th November 1880, the day 131 years ago when Ned Kelly one of Australia's most well known rebels was executed in the Old Melbourne Gaol.

The 11th November 1918, the day 93 years ago that marked the end of World War One, a war fought by workers at either end of a bayonet fo the glory of God, King and Country that resulted in the death of ove
60,000 young Australian men from a population of only five million people.

The 11th November 1975, the day 36 years ago when the Governor General dismissed the Whitlam Labor government, a government that introduced more reforms in four years than every post war Australian government put together has been able to achieve.

Join us - Midday Friday 11th November Melbourne City Square Reclaim the Past to Understand the Present and Change the Future.

Australian Radical History the Eureka Series 2011 No. 10 - Think about it!!

The media reports about the violent dispersal by the Victoria Police of peaceful Occupy Melbourne protestors on the 21st October 2011 is full of justifications for the outrageous actions of the Lord Mayo Robert Doyle and the Premier Ted Baillieu. One hundred and fifty-seven years ago, despite the authorities best effort, the people of Victoria rallied behind the Eureka rebels, not Governor Hotham and Queen Victoria.

Within four months of the rebellion the 13 men charged with High Treason for their participation in the rebellion had been acquitted in the Victorian Supreme Court by a jury of their peers. Within six months a General Amnesty was declared for all those miners and esidents connected with the Eureka Stockade. Within six months a new Electoral Act gave miners the right to vote. Within seven months the notorious gold license was replaced with an export duty on gold and the hated Gold Commission was abolished.

Within eight months Raffaello Carboni, one of the leaders of the Eureka Rebellion, was elected to the Local Court at Ballarat to adjudicate mining disputes. Within eleven months both Peter Lalor, the elected leader of the Eureka rebels and John Humffray, the leade of the passive resistance group within the Ballarat Reform League, were elected to the Legislative Council of Victoria.

The difference between 1854 and 2011 is a free diverse vibrant media that reflects the will of the people not the will of the corporate sector and the government. The Eureka Rebellion did not end on the 3rd December 1854, the Occupy Melbourne protests will not end on the 21st October 2011, they will continue while that small section of society that owns the means of production, distribution and exchange dominates every aspect of our lives.

You can hear Joe Toscano's wonderful weekly radio show on 3CR by podcast. Catch the latest here

"Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott and Bob Brown are in a position to change the political, social and cultural landscape in Australia once and for all. They find themselves in the unique position of having the community support they need to stop the parliamentary puppet masters dictating parliamentary policy. They find themselves in the position to uproot the few stunted perennials that blight political, social and cultural debate in this community and let a thousand flowers bloom by passing parliamentary legislation that forces media monopolies to limit their media holdings to 10% of the privately owned media outlets in a community. They are also in a position to pass parliamentary legislation that alters the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s guidelines so that a variety of opinions, not just the major political parties’ opinions, are brought to the fore in Australia in the publicly funded media sphere." Joe Toscano Anarchist Age Weekly, Number 940, 18th July – 24th July 2011 So, what's stopping them from doing the right thing by Australia?"Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott and Bob Brown are in a position to change the political, social and cultural landscape in Australia once and for all. They find themselves in the unique position of having the community support they need to stop the parliamentary puppet masters dictating parliamentary policy. They find themselves in the position to uproot the few stunted perennials that blight political, social and cultural debate in this community and let a thousand flowers bloom by passing parliamentary legislation that forces media monopolies to limit their media holdings to 10% of the privately owned media outlets in a community. They are also in a position to pass parliamentary legislation that alters the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s guidelines so that a variety of opinions, not just the major political parties’ opinions, are brought to the fore in Australia in the publicly funded media sphere." Joe Toscano Anarchist Age Weekly, Number 940, 18th July – 24th July 2011 So, what's stopping them from doing the right thing by Australia?

Ed. Sheila Newman: This article is based on my transcription from Joe Toscano's seminal podcast about the Australian media and government, to which I have added headings. I have removed some 'you knows' and small repetitions and elisions for clarity. Any mistakes in transcription are my own. You can listen to the original by podcast anytime. It is actually an hour long. The transcribed part is just the media inquiry part.

Power, Wealth, Parliament and the Mass Media - Joe Toscano:

"It's about power and wealth. What's the point in having all the power in the world if you don't have the wealth to make the decisions you've made a reality? And that's what we have in a parliamentary democracy. We go through the ritual every four years to elect representatives to make decisions fo us. Unfortunately what the representatives can and cannot do is determined by the parliamentary puppetmasters. That's all sections of society that owns the means of production, distribution, communication and exchange.

Now it's quite interesting how the Gillard government, facing oblivion at the next election by media sharks who are tearing pieces off its lifeless carcass, can continue wallowing in its own blood until what little credibility it enjoys is completely gone. Or it can bite back.

And those regular listeners in the Anarchist World this week will know that for some time I have been pushing the idea of holding a Royal Commission into the role the Murdoch Empire plays in this country. A royal commission into how the Murdoch media empire actually subverts the will of the people by subverting parliament.

Proposed Inquiry: What Gillard wants and what the Greens want

And I have noticed that now that Ms Gillard's little tête a tête with the Murdoch senior editors has kind of come asunder that she is once again looking at the possibility of holding a media inquiry - a general, nice, little, media inquiry that looks at privacy issues. Yes, you may as well pack it up, put it back in the drawer and forget about it.

Now I notice that, obviously the Greens, who have been one of the major victims of the Murdoch monopoly in this country - I mean, before every election we have huge headlines about the drug addicts running the Greens - how they'are going to subvert the country. You know, it just goes on day in day out. They [the Greens] would like something a little bit wider. They would like a media inquiry into the ownership.

Are newspapers growing too irrelevant to pose much of a threat?

Now people say to me, "Why worry about newspapers, Joe, they're irrelevant."

I'm afraid they're not. Newspapers are not irrelevant in this country. And when you've got some major capital cities with only one
newspaper, and that's a Murdoch newspaper, and you've got other capital cities where you've got two newspapers, it's not irrelevant.

Because, although there may be a decreasing number of people actually reading newspapers, there are more people reading the same papers on the Net. And, more importantly, what newspapers do is they actually set the political agenda for the day. Because, if you think television and radio set the political agenda, they don't.

Television and radio are very, very, very understaffed pieces of technology and they take their running every day from what's printed in the newspapers that morning. And if you want to know what's going to be on you local radio stations that morning or television station that day and that evening, just pick up a newspaper and you will see that, as far as political commentary is concerned, and social and cultural commentary is concerned, that 95% of commentary that occurs on television and radio is directly purloined from the major issues raised by newspapers, and the same major issues are then aised in parliament at the state and federal level. So newspapers still play, although there may be fewer people actually buying the oadsheets and the tabloids, it still plays a significant role in setting the social and political agenda in this country.

So, faced with that dilemma, when one player owns 70% of the newspapers, you can actually see the significant impact it actually has on peoples' thinking and the way issues are approached. And the thing about the Murdoch empire is, as far as I'm concerned, is it's a cancer on civil society. Because it is so huge, all-encompassing, all-powerful. And anybody who thinks holding an inquiry into privacy issues in the media, or even holding a parliamentary inquiry, into media ownership in this country is going to break the back of this monster, they should think again.

We need a royal commission

What we need, and what the Liberal and the Labor Party and the cross-benchers and the Greens should be discussing and negotiating on, is holding a royal commission into the impact that the Murdoch empire has on debate, has on discussion, has on political decisions in this country. Now, you'll see over the next few weeks, the media crying about the fact[2] that there's some Clayton's media inquiry's been set up into privacy issues in the media.

Well, the reality is they're the first ones who jump up and down about holding inquiries into this and into that. I mean, it's about time
the fourth estate [3] was dissected and we had the opportunity to ensure that a thousand voices are able to be heard in this country. Not the same, stunted, old, pathetic arguments, which we hear day in and day out, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Arguments, you know, which support capitalism as the be-all and end-all of economic activity. Activities which media outlets, which actually promote division within this country, which act as a cheer squad for that small section of society that owns the means of production, distribution, exchange and communication, which continues to act as the parliamentary puppetmasters in this country.

I mean, facing political oblivion if the government continues to square dance with the parliamentary puppetmasters, it is time that they turned off the music, isn't it? Isn't it time that they turned off the music and launched a direct legislative assault on the corporate world?

Corporate world really unpopular with Australians

If there is one group that's more unpopular than the Gillard government, it's the corporate world. Australians are beginning to realise the abysmal state of public health, public education, is due to the domination of the economy by a shrinking number of powerful corporations.

Any government, any political movement that is willing to wrest power back from the parliamentary puppetmasters, especially one that currently has a snowflake's chance in hell of being reelected, if it continues on its current political projectory, will earn the respect of an electorate that is becoming increasingly tired of seeing its institutions and its children's future sacrificed on Mammon's altar. And that's what it's about. That's the bottom line that we all forget! That's what the fourth estate is about! It's about creating profits built on other peoples' suffering. It's about creating ever-increasing profits, irrespective of the human, social and environmental costs.

And when you have the fourth estate singing the praises of the corporate world because they are owned by the very same people that dominate economic and political activity in this country, you begin to realise why there is such a lack of debate in this country about any issue, except the very superficial issues that have no bearing on the power of that small section of society that owns the means of production, distribution, exchange and communication is able to exercise.

Obviously we have 'stop presses' and 'exposees' on things which are of little importance to most people, but when it comes to actually looking at the foundations of the society, when it comes to actually questioning the assumptions this society is based on, when it comes to the idea of tackling the major problems that we face as individuals, and as communities within this country, well then, there is no debate, there is no discussion, and those people who put their heads above the parapet and attempt to raise issues that go beyond issues that are currently broached, find themselves being shunned, or worse still, being lampooned, or, worse still, being branded as 'un-Australian', 'terrorists'.

Let's create the momentum to break down the media plutocracy

So, media inquries ... forget about an inquiry!

Let's have a royal commission. Let's watch them squirm. Let's see what happens. Let's create the momentum to break down the media monopolies that exist in this country, whether they'are Murdoch or Fairfax or any other media monopoly that exists in this country. Let's break them down. Let's have legislation passed through parliament that ensures that no one group of people, or an individual, can own more than 10% of the media outlets in one city. And then, maybe we will see those thousand flowers bloom in that stony garden that needs to be fertilised by a range of ideas.

Now, let's move on to the ABC. Because, we've concentrated on the media today, and the reason I've concentrated on the media is very simple, because the thing about living in a technologically savvy society is everybody is exposed to the same set of opinions minute by minute by minute by minute by minute. And we're told in this country that we have the private corporations running the media, well the government gelded the ABC.

The ABC has become a commercial clone

And people say to me, "Well, Joe, what are you complaining about? I mean, forget about it. The ABC gives us an alternative viewpoint."

The ABC is there to do these things but people have forgotten what happened to the ABC during the Howard era, what happened to the ABC during the Hawke/Keating era. They've forgotten that the Australian Broadcasting Corporation has basically become a commercial clone.

Obviously there are a number of programs which continue to exist - not for very long - which provide alanced analysis. But as far as the majority of the information, debate, analysis programs which occur in the government-gelded ABC you find that most of them you can actually find in the commercial setting.

Now, I know this is old news, but you may find it a bit interesting, because I want to draw an analogy here. I remember in 1999 when I had a weekly spot on ABC local radio that examined the week's news from a radical perspective, it didn't take long for the presenter to be asked to get a conservative voice on the half-hour segment. Within two months of one of the most conservative politicians in this country, the former Senator Julia McGorren had been appointed to cross swords with your's truly. The segment, and the presenter, who conducted an overnight show on-air for the ABC for over a decade was also taken off-air. This is during the Howard era. She was never offered an on-air position again and continues to work in the dungeons of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation because she wasn't on a short-term contract.

Lucky her!

Australia's Arts Community

It's no surprise that the Arts community now finds itself in the very same position. The Hoard Government succeeded in destroying the independence of the ABC by ensuring senior managers were appointed that reflected its world view. And the Howard Government openly stacked the ABC Board with some of the most conservative and reactionary figures in Australia, including Mr Windshuttle.

These changes transformed the ABC from a source that provided independent information analysis to an entertainment-focused organisation that needs to focus on ratings. It's all about entertainment. If we want entertainment, there are a million areas we can look for entertainment.

Why did Rudd and Gillard leave Howard's appointees in place?

The Gillard and Rudd Government found themselves in a difficult position because they left all of Howard's appointments in their jobs when elected. They left them all. And that's the tragedy of the 2007 Rudd victory, that all the senior bureaucrats, whether it's the department of immigration and refugees as we are seeing now, whether it was the taxation department, whether it was Human Services, whether it was the ABC. Everyone of those political appointments which were made during the decade that Howard was in powe were left in positions of authority. Left in positions of authority!

So, instead of cleaning out the ABC's Augean stable, they left everything in place. It's one thing having your hands on the levers of
government, it's another thing being forced to use the coordinates of a bureaucracy appointed y Howard and his cronies to steer the ship.

And that's the dilemma! Although the government may have a different agenda, as fa as the senior political appointments that were made by the Howard Regime, they continue to set the coordinates that determine government policy. It's no accident the Gillard Government is faced with a neverending litany of disasters, despite overseeing the 'best economy in the western capitalist world'. I mean, leaving your political enemies in positions of power when you own a position to exercise power is a recipe for disaster. And this is what we've seen in the ABC - although the government changed, senior political appointments, both on the board and the managerial area, didn't change. They continued to push the conservative reactionary agenda. And what we are seeing is even the arts programs are now coming under the axe. We are seeing the ABC lose what little independence it has.

Hardly any local content produced by the ABC

No wonder the ABC has been transformed into a commercial clone that has put people on short-term contracts, turned the ABC into an entertainment-focused organisation that actually relies on outside contracts to provide content - even local content. There is hardly any local content being produced at the ABC. It is produced by privately-owned outside companies that are given contracts to provide content.

And the few ABC in-house programs that have managed to survive over the past two decades are now on the chopping block, because the ABC has been transformed into a paper tiger, into an entertainment-focused organisation that Removes from its programming line-up any program that doesn't meet its board and managers' one-dimensional conservative social and political agenda. And that's the key.

So if you have a private corporate media which acts as a cheer-squad for its owners, promoting corporatisation, deregulation,
globalisation, the corporate sector, and you have a government-gelded ABC, where do people obtain independent analysis and information?

Not everybody has the time to spend hours and hours and hours surfing the net. People like their information in little packages. And what we find is the same, seedy, reactionaries continue to dominate the political agenda in this country - to dominate the social agenda in this country, to dominate the cultural agenda in this country - while the rest of us are expected, you know, to gratefully accept the crumbs that are occasionally pushed our way to stop people from protesting about what's actually happening, not only within the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, but within a corporate-controlled media network which sets the political, social and cultural agenda in this country."

NOTES

[1] Joe Toscano speaks for the Anarchist society and each week, on his show at 3CR he demystifies anarchist principles with this useful definition: "Anarchist society is a voluntary non-hierarchical society which is ased on political and social structures which are based on direct democratic principles. The people involved in decision strong>make that decision and then elect or appoint delegates to coordinate decisions at local, regional and national levels of society. Wealth is held in common and used for the common good."

[2]See, for instance, what passes for intellectual commentary in the Australian Financial Review (owned by Fairfax)in the editorial for the weekend of 17-18 December 2011. The editorial suggests that the basis of the inquiry is exclusively political with the Greens and the Government trying to neutralise criticism. "Any attempt to rein in freedom of the press should be vigorously resisted. Politicians have many avenues to redress perceived bias, not least through Parliament, the wider media and websites. Instead the government would have been far wiser to invest its limited political energy and capital in an inquiry into the much more pressing national economic issue of lagging productivity." Yes, well, if we tried to have an inquiry into how Australia's production is kept uncompetitive on the world market due to the cost of land, as boosted by the Murdoch and Fairfax owned property dot coms and their media-generated mass immigration fueled-demand, those papers would use every weapon they had to suppress, distort and punish debate. They suppress, distort and punish all other debates except the most destructive and puerile. That is why we need to break the media monopoly, so that we can actually have a free media rather than a corporatised commercial media which promotes its own investments against the common interest.

For a good example of suppressing, distorting and punishing debate, see ABC's Media Watch Episode 31, 12 September 2011. Media Watch generally goes after rabbits when it could take down elephants (metaphorically speaking) but this episode was very relevant to central problems of media interference, for corporate commercial reasons, in public debate:

Here is the transcript of Episode 31, 12 September 2011

Biting the hand that feeds

Over in the commercial media, times are tough. Especially in newspapers.

Here's an excerpt from an email sent out by a News Ltd executive in Western Australia.

"Last Sunday we published an article in our real estate section that failed Journalism 101 ... As the Managing Director of The Sunday Times I unreservedly apologise for the article.

— Jason Scott, Managing Director, The Sunday Times, 24th August, 2011"

Goodness! The managing director, no less - it's usually the editor who worries about editorial content. Managing directors of newspapers worry about money. And usually, that means advertisers.

And to whom was this grovel addressed to?

"To our valued real estate clients

— Jason Scott, Managing Director, The Sunday Times, 24th August, 2011"

That's right. Real estate agents. Who, thanks to those endless house for sale ads, account for a sizeable chunk of the Sunday Times's revenue ...

Not to mention what they contribute to realestate.com.au, by far the leading property website in Australia, which is 60% owned by News Ltd.

So what was this abysmal journalism that Mr Scott was apologising for? It was a double-page spread in the Sunday Times's

"Weekend Property

— Sunday Times Weekend, Property, 21-27 August, 2011"

"Home Alone

It can cost more than $20,000 to sell your home through a real estate agent. We speak to two vendors who decided to go it alone.

— Sunday Times Weekend, Property, 21-27 August, 2011"

No! Without an agent? And look at them ... They're positively beaming ...

"Being able to talk directly with the buyers ensured queries could be answered quickly and efficiently

— Sunday Times Weekend, Property, 21-27 August, 2011"

"We saved about $17,000 and put in about 19 hours work in five weeks.

— Sunday Times Weekend, Property, 21-27 August, 2011"

Well, you can imagine how the Sunday Times's 'valued real estate clients' reacted to that piece.

Actually, you don't have to imagine it, because we can show you.

It was kicked off by investment property specialist Mark Hay, with an email addressed to pretty much every real estate agent west of the Nullarbor. It was, as they say, heavy with irony ...

"Fellow Colleagues,
For those of you who use the Murdoch-backed Sunday Times you will have no doubt noted the huge push they gave us as agents in their wonderful article on page four and five this weekend!

— Mark Hay, Investment property specialist, 23rd August, 2011"

Mr Hay didn't mess about.

"Can I encourage you to boycott the paper in light of this, or better still this is a perfect reason why we as agents should build our own web site to challenge realestate.com.au and the others who keep putting the squeeze on us. Anyone interested?

— Mark Hay, Investment property specialist, 23rd August, 2011"

Lots of people were ...

"I am interested in a change from this

David Whiteman
Ray White

— David Whiteman, Ray White, 24th August, 2011"

"It is heartening to see ... the discussion around creating a new industry owned and controlled website.

Geoff Baldwin
RE/MAX W.A.

— Geoff Baldwin, RE/MAX WA, 25th August, 2011"

"The Davey Group would be behind a move to advertise through REIWA.com only.

Andrew Davey

— Andrew Davey, Davey Group, 24th August, 2011"

Mark Hay was over the moon ...

"Wow, the response has been overwhelming! ... By far the huge majority confirm we should crank up REIWA ...

— Mark Hay, Investment property specialist, 24th August, 2011"

REIWA is the Real Estate Institute of Western Australia, which has long had its own property ad website ...

"Feature Properties for sale

— reiwa.com.au"

And has recently teamed up with the Sunday Times's rival, The West Australian, to produce

"WestRealEstate.com.au

— WestRealEstate.com.au"

The West is spruiking its new website for all its worth ...

"WestReal Estate

This exciting new site is offering vendors a free listing when their agent is a current REIWA subscriber ...

— The West Australian, 25th August, 2011"

No wonder the Managing Director of the Sunday Times was freaking out at the thought of all those 'valued real estate clients' jumping ship. Hence his crawling email ...

"I give you my personal guarantee that The Sunday Times will work hard to restore our relationship to the mutual good health and prosperity that we have achieved together over many years.

— Jason Scott, Managing Director, 24th August, 2011"

The problem was, wrote Jason Scott, that the Home Alone piece was unbalanced, because it ...

"... did not contain any response from agents or real estate industry groups and nor did it look at vendors who had tried to sell their houses privately who had then appointed an agent and got the right result.

— Jason Scott, Managing Director, 24th August, 2011"

Well, that's true. And it was a bit of a puff job for one particular do-it-yourself consultancy.

But some of the offended agents weren't going to be fobbed off with a private apology.

Glenn Buckley of Think Pink Realty - yes, that's its name - wrote back to Mr Scott, in a nice pink font ...

"Your apology is noted. However, what is clearly required here is a full rebuttle (sic) in this weeks issue of your newspaper...

— Glenn Buckley, Think Pink Realty, 24th August, 2011"

Well, he didn't get that. But what he did get, in that Sunday's Weekend Property, was a full, double page puff job for real estate agents ...

"Agent wanted

Why are agents worth the money? Following last week's article on private selling, we look at the other side ...

— Sunday Times, Weekend Property, 28th August, 2011"

Three happy clients, and no fewer than seven deeply sincere real estate agents. And why was that published, we asked the acting editor ... well, naturally,

"To balance the one-sided feature that appeared on August 21.

— Bill Rule, Deputy Editor, Sunday Times, 2nd September, 2011"

Balance. The essence of sound journalism. No mention of that other principle of newspaper management: safeguarding editorial from advertiser pressure.

[3]The term, "the fourth estate refers to the media and mass media. It comes from the French Revolution, where the first estate was the nobles, the second estate was the clergy and the third estate was the common people.

The latest Joe Toscano anarchist podcast dissects the reasons why the Murdoch empire needs to be toppled. Great listening and fundamental education. Also wraps up the state of democracy in Australia.

Sorry Julia

I'm sorry to say although I agree with the Prime Minister that much of Australian journalism is complete crap, I don’t agree with her when she suggests the problem is due to the 24 hour news cycle. The problems with Australian journalism and much of the journalism in the Western World has more to do with the concentration of ownership of the fourth estate in the hands of a rapidly shrinking number of players than technological innovation.

It’s no accident parliamentary democracies have traditionally highlighted the important role a free, independent and diverse media plays in the lives of free people while totalitarian regimes of all political hues fight tooth and nail to ensure only one political voice is heard via state controlled channels.

Corporate capitalism and the fourth estate

The emergence of corporate capitalism as the dominant economic force in the 21st century has destroyed the delicate balance that existed between government, the people and the fourth estate creating a climate that rewards political conformity, manufactures community consensus and subverts the idea ultimate political authority in a democratic society rests in the hands of the people not the state, the government of the day or that small section of society that owns the means of production, distribution, exchange and communication. The pathetic nature of political debate today is, to a significant degree, due to a handful of people owning the fourth estate.

Even a cursory examination of the 1854 Eureka Rebellion highlights the pivotal role a free, independent and diverse media plays in political transformation. Ballarat, a town of 20,000, was serviced by two newspapers, The Diggers’ Advocate and The Ballarat Times and Southern Cross while Melbourne, a city of less than half a million, was serviced by The Age, Argus and Herald. The political tsunami that followed the drowning of the Eureka Rebellion in a sea of blood by the colonial authorities would never have occurred if Victoria had not been serviced by a free, independent and diverse media during that period.

Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott and Bob Brown are in a position to change the political, social and cultural landscape in Australia once and for all

Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott and Bob Brown are in a position to change the political, social and cultural landscape in Australia once and for all. They find themselves in the unique position of having the community support they need to stop the parliamentary puppet masters dictating parliamentary policy. They find themselves in the position to uproot the few stunted perennials that blight political, social and cultural debate in this community and let a thousand flowers bloom by passing parliamentary legislation that forces media monopolies to limit their media holdings to 10% of the privately owned media outlets in a community. They are also in a position to pass parliamentary legislation that alters the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s guidelines so that a variety of opinions, not just the major political parties’ opinions, are brought to the fore in Australia in the publicly funded media sphere.

Source and more of this at http://www.anarchistmedia.org/current.html

Along with Dr. Joe Toscano, environmental activist, Jenny Warfe, has decided to stand as a radical independent for the Federal senate in the forthcoming election. Jenny Warfe is well-known in Melbourne (along with her brother Len Warfe), especially along Port Phillip Bay, for a David and Goliath fight she led for years against the shockingly undemocratic and anti-environmentalist channel deepening in the Port. The group of friendly independents, has decided to give their preferences to The Greens. On the senate ballot paper Dr. Joe Toscano will be the lead candidate and Jenny will appear below him as the second of three radical independent candidates. Joining with Dr. Toscano and third candidate Andrew Sadauskas means that the group will be allocated a box ‘above the line’ on the senate ballot paper. Thus voters can Vote 1 above the line for them without having to number every one of the sixty or so boxes below the line.

Why is Jenny Warfe standing and why as an Independent radical?

Jenny says that she has thought about the use of the term ‘radical’ and has decided that she is comfortable with it since she sincerely believes that we do need radical thinking and radical change in order to respond effectively to the huge environmental, climate and population challenges in the 21st Century. She states that she is also happy to be a running partner with Dr. Joe Toscano whose work she greatly admires. Here is her election information page.

Dr Toscano is well known to candobetter.org through his cheerful anarchist media broadcasts. In these broadcasts he shows a strong understanding of the value of relocalisation, local democracy and public space.

Joe Toscano is a medical practitioner specialising in the care of people with spinal injuries. He often travels to see his patients by train and does not dress or act like a money-driven professional. He is loved and respected for his many years of community activism including civil liberties and Australia’s anti-terrorism legislation, Defend and Extend Medicare and the Friends of OUR ABC campaign. He is a source of information on Australian history and activism and is associated with Eureka Stockade commemorations in Ballarat.

Jenny's decision to stand for the senate was made because of years of frustration about the present parliamentary system and the apparent abandonment of any commitment from state and federal major party MPs to actually represent the majority of their community or to consult their constituents before making decisions on many contentious issues.

"In my area of experience - planning and environmental issues – many MPs have championed or at least condoned appalling destruction of our built and natural heritage. Sadly, it seems running rallies, public meetings, collecting thousands of signatures on petitions, requesting meetings with our elected representatives, letter writing campaigns, and even legal action in the Supreme and Federal Courts will not stop a government determined to wreck the environment and determined not to listen. What else can we do?"

She adds that she finds it disheartening that the marvellous efforts of so many good people in so many exhausting community campaigns have largely been ignored by the current decision makers. Instead, she says, "We have been lumbered with so many projects put up by developers/corporations who usually have no discernable commitment to our environment or way of life."

"Inappropriate, unnecessary and unwanted projects have been given unquestioning and fervent support from so many ill informed and/or compromised politicians. They have ignored what their constituents want in favour of what a handful of corporations or developers want."

After observing this repeating theme so often in recent years, Jenny has decided that

"Whatever the effort put in by so many well informed and dedicated people in the community, a perverted system of governance has allowed awful projects to just roll on and over the top of us."

In Jenny's view, the present parliamentary system has been irrevocably altered by the dismembering of what was largely a frank and fearless public service which had generally served us well for decades.

Knowledge and wisdom in many government departments has been jettisoned and instead we now have a shamble of “political advisers” on short term contracts directing decision making.

Added to the entrenched party machinery and the easy opportunities for influential and vested interest groups to purchase favour for whatever they want, our system of governance has changed dramatically.

Concerned citizens or communities are no longer of any interest to the current crop of decision makers. In 2007 Australians elected a new Federal government in large part because they wanted action on climate change. They are still waiting, and will be for some years to come it seems.

Conversely, Australians weren’t even asked their opinion on whether Mr. Rudd’s proposed super profits mining tax should be abandoned but it was, very swiftly, and just because a few billionaire miners made a fuss.

"In Victoria, the Wonthaggi De-Sal, NS pipeline, Peninsula Link freeway through heritage listed Westerfield property, changes to urban growth boundaries, multi storey developments throughout the suburbs, Port expansion, etc. etc. have all been forced on communities who don’t want them by people who don’t know or care. At best, what community input there is has become a formulaic box ticking exercise by government and developers’ consultants. Necessary for them to show that they have “consulted”, but useless for us."

Jenny observes, in her campaign letter, that,

"For the 3 or 4 years of his/her incumbency a politician has no obligation whatsoever to vote in parliament according to how she/he campaigned and was elected, or how the majority of their constituents might subsequently ask them to vote. Once an MP from either major party has been elected, the faceless lobbyists then swing into action to subvert the decisions that we voters have made. We then wait another 3 or 4 years to vote out the politician who has so bitterly disappointed us. And so it goes on."

In her opinion, at the very least, surely our elected representatives should be required to conduct statistically robust polls in their electorate to guide how they vote on any contentious issues before them in parliament. "With the resources MPs have at their disposal (all paid for by us) this should be a simple task," she explains.

She gives the example of Craig Ingram's electoral survey on a contentious question:

"Last year Independent Victorian MP Craig Ingram surveyed his electorate on the abortion reform debate. His electorate overwhelmingly supported reform so that’s the way he voted. Every other MP proceeded with a “conscience” vote without any obligation whatsoever to consult or inform their electorate. As it stands, for most of the time that is precisely what most of them do - ignore almost everyone that voted for them!

Achieving fundamental change to system a huge task

Achieving fundamental change to our system of governance is a huge task, and I don’t really expect to realise my dream for a better and fairer society on the 21st August 2010. But - I do believe that to achieve change we need to persist, perhaps for a long time and perhaps at first we won’t succeed. However, reform always comes from the minority position and change only happens when a concerned group of people ask for it. If a few brave people in history had not thought that way we would still be engaging in slavery and sending children up chimneys wouldn’t we? As Margaret Meade put it: “Never underestimate the power of a small group of dedicated people to change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.”

Hope to kick-start community preparation for a very different future

In standing for election, these radical independents hope to kick start community discussion on a new way to prepare for the very different future we face in the 21st Century. Jenny Warfe is sure many of people will agree that the dominant paradigm is not serving us well at present. For most of the time, debate is steered by the small coterie of influential industry and other corporate groups, ably assisted by a supine media.

"Under these conditions," she says, "Most politicians have become mostly irrelevant to most of us most of the time. But- at election time, there is at least a small window of opportunity to challenge the dominant paradigm, and help set a new course for spaceship Earth."

Each state has 12 senators in Canberra, see: http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/senators/homepages/index.asp?sort=state. At present Victoria has Liberals 6, ALP 5 and Family First 1. That’s a pretty boring mix in my view, capable of maintaining the status quo and not much else.

Election 2010 will elect 6 senators from each state to replace the half whose term expires next year. For Victoria see: http://www.tallyroom.com.au/election-2010/vicsen2010

"Election 2010 is our chance to demonstrate that it’s time for a broader range of views from our 12 senators – and who knows, if political debate became more diverse more people might be encouraged to take an interest in the civic space".

If you want to help what can you do?

Have a look at the attached policy issues which the three candidates have agreed upon. Although you may not agree with all their ideas, perhaps you aren’t happy with much of what the major parties have achieved in the past and are offering for our future either?

If so, take this opportunity to express your dissatisfaction with the status quo and give them your vote. It’s one of the few effective ways left to demonstrate what you really think about our current governance arrangements.

The three candidates will appear something like this, somewhere amongst 60 or so others on the (large white) Senate ballot paper:

If you don’t want to number every box on the large white senate ballot paper and are happy to just Vote 1 for change, just put 1 in the box above the line above the column with our names in it, as shown above.

Remember, if you do vote 1 above the line, your preferences will go to The Greens. If you particularly want to Vote 1 for Jenny, you will need to number ALL the sixty or so boxes below the line in the order you prefer.

So - if you are unhappy with the way things are, please consider using your senate vote to show that you think it’s time for some changes.

You may copy the radical independents' policy statement (see link below), and letterbox it or hand it out before or on Election Day.

You can also help by forwarding this article on to everyone you know in Victoria, and getting that policy statement onto any website you can, and talking about the three radical alternatives on Facebook and Twitter.

Your support may make a real difference to our future.

Links: www.vote1josephtoscanovicotriansenateticket2010.com

http://www.anarchistmedia.org/

http://www.seditioncharter.org/

http://www.rulebythepeople.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Toscano

Eureka Rebellion anarchist ceremony 2009

The 3 December Spirit of Eureka celebrations will be a 12 hour extravaganza. Congregate at 4 am at the corner of Eureka and Stawell Street at the Eastern End of Ballarat. Dawn ceremony goes to daybreak. Those present will form a large circle. And, whilst waiting for dawn to break, everyone present will have the opportunity to say why they are there. The celebration ends at 4pm.

Joe reminds us that Eureka was about direct democracy, with mass meetings of 10,000 people, delegates appointed with specific mandates, direct action and, that great thing, Solidarity.

Eureka 2004 - 150th anniversary. (More details and history here.)

Anarchist invitation to Eureka Rebellion anniversary ceremonies

"The Anarchist Media Institute is inviting everyone who is interested in reclaiming The Radical Spirit of the Eureka Rebellion, to join us on Wednesday 3rd of December at the Eureka Stockade site in Ballarat, in Victoria, to celebrate the 148th Anniversary of the Eureka Rebellion.

JOIN US

Friday 3RD DECEMBER 2004
EUREKA STOCKADE SITE
EUREKA HALL - (CORNER EUREKA & STAWELL STREET, BALLARAT)

4AM to 4PM

* 4AM ­ 6AM Gathering at Eureka Park to mark the 150th anniversary of the battle on the site and at the time it occurred
* 6.00am ­ 10.00am ­ Breakfast Eureka Hall (Bring own food & drinks)
* Further details to be announced

JOIN US - Celebrate the Past by Reclaiming the Present and creating a new future. Join us at Eureka Park /Eureka Hall (cnr Stawell and Eureka Streets, Ballarat)

It's time we reclaimed our history."

People for a Royal Commission into Corruption in Victoria

Email or snailmail for correspondence and petition:
E: [email protected]
A: P.O. Box 5035, Alphington 3078
M: 0439 395 489

Listen to the podcast for more or go to the Anarchist Media website

This week - 25 August 2009 - it's about creating a citizens bank. Joe points out that Australians demanded a peoples' bank in 1909 (after the 1890 depression) and got it. Unfortunately they made it the property of the government, and the Hawk Government sold it off.

"Next time", says Joe, "It needs to be made to belong to us, not the government." Then they won't be able to sell it off without a referendum.

You learn a lot about politics, rights and institutions from Joe. Also about how to conduct demonstrations. And about how we need to be active and let the government know we are out there.

Joe is also wise to big business and unsustainable population growth.

Listen to Joe Toscano here. From anywhere in the world.