White Australian "Civilisation"

The migrants Australia don't hunt down

We have grown accustomed to the tragic news of the migrant boat-people and their desperate attempts to reach the safety and security of Australia, which the Australian government is determined to frustrate.

But little appears to be said about the “flood”, as the BBC puts it, of  young Europeans on temporary working visas is squeezing young Australians out of the jobs market. Most arrive on one-year working holiday permits, which can be extended or upgraded to longer employment visas that can lead to residency and eventually citizenship although the process can take years.

"If we look at between 15-19-year-olds, we have 14.5% unemployment. Still well below many other places in the world but still significant enough to say that we aren't absorbing and giving skill opportunities to many young Australians, so the government has failed to get the balance right," says Tony Sheldon, from the Australian Transport Workers Union. "That means that labour has been brought in as an alternative, which is being more exploited, has less rights and is seen as a cheap form of labour but also an exploited form of labour." He fears that foreigners could also be under-paid and mistreated by unscrupulous bosses.

Academics now worry that a lack of training could increasingly leave young Australians unable to compete with temporary foreign workers especially in low or unskilled jobs.

 Michaela Kelly, from Drogheda, earns twice as much working in an office in Sydney than she did in Ireland. Like many Irish backpackers Michaela is well qualified with a degree in business.But with youth unemployment so stubbornly high in Australia, soaring up to 40% in parts of its major cities does she feel guilty that she could be taking a job from a local? "Is that bad if I say no?" she asks. "Irish workers come over here to work and they work hard because at home you are made to work hard, whereas Australians over here are just so laid back, they put things off and don't do it, basically. So, I don't feel bad."

Where are all the detention camps set up in Papua New Guinea to deter those, dare Mailstrom, say it - white Anglo-Saxons. Isn't it time for a fair deal for the peoples of all the world to better their lives?

Bill Casey

From our history , stolen from comrade's blog here

An extract from obituary :-
" [ Bill ] Casey was expounding the S.P.G.B. position and as the Bolsheviks had just gained control in Russia, he lost no time in analysing the position. Probably aided by articles in the "S.S.", he became a caustic critic of the "Neo-Communists." He was delegate to represent the Seamen at an International T. U. Conference in Moscow. This, being one of the earliest "Missions to Moscow" was beset with difficulties all the way. Passports were forged; passages were "stowing away," Dutch, German, Polish and Russian frontiers had to be "hopped." Guides were often un-reliable; "go-betweens" were often in the pay of both sides; sometimes both had to be discarded until bona-fides were definitely established, a delicate job under the conditions then prevailing on the continent. The ultimate arrival in Moscow, after much suffering, danger and perseverance, was hailed as a masterpiece of undercover work. Once at the gates of the Kremlin, most delegates became insufferable Bolshevik "Yes-men" whereas Casey and his co-delegate, Barney Kelly (another adherent of the S.P.G.B.) soberly tried to obtain a truthful estimate of the position. A few days sojourn in Moscow drew the following observations from Casey:
"Production was in a straight-jacket, lethargy and indifference permeated the whole economy; the people were entirely lacking in a sense of time. Without the normal industrial development of production and some measure of buying and selling (war-communism was the order of the day) drift and indifference would gradually strangle the economy of the Soviet".
These observations were greeted with disgust and dismay by the other delegates. However, before they left Moscow, Lenin introduced his "New Economic Policy" which, in essence, provided for the very things which Casey opined was needed to stabilize the Russian economy. In contrast to their hostile reception of Casey’s prognostications, the "yes-men" cheered and echoed Lenin’s belated pronouncements. Back in Australia, he submitted his report to Tom Walsh (then a leading Communist and foundation member of the Australian Communist Party), General President of the Australian Seamen’s Union. Walsh rejected the report and refused to publish it on the ground that it criticized the Bolsheviks and the Russian system. "

Once more , proof that when the WSM described Russia as state capitalist , it was not from simply an abstract theoretical position but an empirical one of eye-witness evidence .

Sheriff of Asia

John Pilger , the hard-hitting journalist , has written a biting article on Australia .

That Australia runs its own empire is unmentionable; yet it stretches from the Aboriginal slums of Sydney to the ancient hinterlands of the continent and across the Arafura Sea and the South Pacific...Like the conquest of the Native Americans, the decimation of Aboriginal Australia laid the foundation of Australia’s empire. The land was taken and many of its people were removed and impoverished or wiped out...This is the only developed nation on a United Nations “shame list” of countries that have not eradicated trachoma, an entirely preventable disease that blinds Aboriginal children. Sri Lanka has beaten the disease, but not rich Australia...

... The Northern Territory is where Aboriginal people have had comprehensive land rights longer than anywhere else, granted almost by accident 30 years ago. The Howard government set about clawing them back. The territory contains extraordinary mineral wealth, including huge deposits of uranium on Aboriginal land. The number of companies licensed to explore for uranium has doubled to 80. Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of the American giant Halliburton, built the railway from Adelaide to Darwin, which runs adjacent to Olympic Dam, the world’s largest low-grade uranium mine. Last year, the Howard government appropriated Aboriginal land near Tennant Creek, where it intends to store the radioactive waste. “The land-grab of Aboriginal tribal land has nothing to do with child sexual abuse,” says the internationally acclaimed Australian scientist and actvist Helen Caldicott, “but all to do with open slather uranium mining and converting the Northern Territory to a global nuclear dump.” ...

...In 1975, Australia’s then ambassador in Jakarta, Richard Woolcott, who had been tipped off about the coming Indonesian invasion of then Portuguese East Timor, secretly recommended to Canberra that Australia turn a blind eye to it, noting that the seabed riches “could be much more readily negotiated with Indonesia . . . than with [an independent] Timor”. Gareth Evans, later foreign minister, described a prize worth “zillions of dollars”. He ensured that Australia distinguish itself as one of the few countries to recognise General Suharto’s bloody occupation, in which 200,000 East Timorese lost their lives.When eventually, in 1999, East Timor won its independence, the Howard government set out to manoeuvre the East Timorese out of their proper share of the oil and gas revenue by unilaterally changing the maritime boundary and withdrawing from World Court jurisdiction in maritime disputes...Alkatiri demonstrated that he was a nationalist who believed East Timor’s resource wealth should be the property of the state, so that the nation did not fall into debt to the World Bank. He also believed that women should have equal opportunity, and that health care and education should be universal. “I am against rich men feasting behind closed doors,” he said.... When a group of disgruntled soldiers rebelled against Alkatiri’s government in 2006, Australia readily accepted an “invitation” to send troops to East Timor. “Australia,” wrote Paul Kelly in Murdoch’s Australian, “is operating as a regional power or a potential hegemon that shapes security and political outcomes. This language is unpalatable to many. Yet it is the reality. It is new, experimental territory for Australia.”... From Canberra, Prime Minister Rudd announced the despatch of more Australian “peacemakers”. In the same week, the World Food Programme disclosed that the children of resource-rich East Timor were slowly starving, with more than 42 per cent of under-fives seriously underweight – a statistic which corresponds to that of Aboriginal children in “failed” communities that also occupy an abundant natural resource.

Full article here


...

"They never told us that it would kill you,"

A story of working class courage

It is estimated that up to 56,000 Australians will be affected by asbestos-related illnesses by 2020 . Asbestos was mined in Western Australia until the 1960s and widely used in building products – until the dangers of exposure to its dust became clear. Australia has one of the world's highest rates of asbestos-related disease.

Some people submitted to their fate, but not Bernie Banton, who led a protracted international battle for proper compensation for himself and his fellow victims. Yesterday, the man who became the human face of a struggle for justice – a familiar figure who breathed with the help of an ever-present portable oxygen bottle connected via tubes to his nose – died of an asbestos-related cancer . He had fought James Hardie Industries, a multinational building products company and Australia's biggest asbestos manufacturer, earned him admiration from many. He battled to the very end. In 2001, the company bowed to pressure and set up a foundation to compensate victims of diseases caused by its products. But the sum it set aside – A$293m (£123m) – was laughable. When that fact was pointed out, the company refused to increase the fund. Then it moved its headquarters from Sydney to the Netherlands, saying this was for tax reasons. Critics accused of it of trying to avoid lawsuits.

Just last week, knowing he had only days to live, Bernie was still fighting for compensation for other sufferers from his hospital bed. "What a wonderful opportunity I've had to represent all those victims out there, and to be able to fight for them who were not well enough to do it," he told the assembled media.

The large plant where Bernie worked was one of Hardie's deadliest work environments. Of his 137 fellow employees, who included his two brothers, fewer than 10 are still alive.

John Howard's Health minister, Tony Abbott, was forced to apologise to Mr Banton last month after accusing him of staging a "stunt" when he handed in a 17,000-name petition to his office. Mr Abbott also suggested that Mr Banton's motives were "not pure". The petition requested a government subsidy for a new palliative drug for mesothelioma – the disease with which Mr Banton was diagnosed in August and which was ultimately to kill him.

Aussie Poverty

We have commented on the poverty of the United States of America , so how do the other promised lands compare .

Using an international measure that defines the poverty line as 50 per cent of median income, the report found the number of Australians living in poverty rose from 7.6 per cent to 9.9 per cent of the population between 1994 and 2004.

That is two million Australians are living in poverty .

It is the oil - Australia

Australia has admitted that securing oil is a key factor behind its continued troop deployment in Iraq. It is the first time such an admission has been made. Defence Minister Brendan Nelson said that maintaining "resource security" in the Middle East was a priority for the government in Canberra.

"The defence update we're releasing today sets out many priorities for Australia's defence and security, and resource security is one of them," he said. "Obviously the Middle East itself, not only Iraq but the entire region, is an important supplier of energy, oil in particular, to the rest of the world...it's extremely important that Australia take the view that it's in our interests, our security interests, to make sure that we leave the Middle East, and leave Iraq in particular, in a position of sustainable security."

Australian Aborigines again

More on this racist onslaught on the Australian Aboriginal peoples and what is perhaps the real motive behind the undeage sex abuse scandals .

Was it an all-Aborigine problem ? One of the cases referred to in the report is an account of local police officers turning a blind eye to a “rampant informal sex trade” between young Aboriginal girls and non-Aboriginal workers from an unnamed mining company. Another case, which is currently facing the courts, involves a non-Aboriginal health worker who is assumed to have exchanged goods, drugs and attention to a number of local children for sex. The inquiry was told that a non-Aboriginal man took young Aboriginal girls from a remote community to Darwin where he traded sex with them for drugs. In onother town a non-Aboriginal man gave cannabis to young girls in return for them being taped doing sexual acts. The victims' hairs were tipped blond so they could be identified as "his girls". One community claimed that it took seven years before a known child-sex offender was arrested. "Because of the perception that he got away with it because he was white..."

Nor could all the sex abuse be classed as abuse . The inquiry was told that a high rate of sexually transmitted infections in teenagers aged between 12 and 16, and a high rate of teenage pregnancy, could be "attributed to the high rate of consensual sex between children".

So has there been another reason for the military occupation of aborginal land ?

Aborigines in the Northern Territory will be given the opportunity to buy their own homes when the federal Government's emergency intervention ends in five years Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough said .

Indigenous people in Territory communities need not return to communal title -- the existing system under which all land is jointly owned by the local community. They would instead be given the chance to buy their homes on 99-year leases. The requirement for non-residents to obtain permits to enter public areas of indigenous communities was also lifted . The mining industry also yesterday agreed to expand a work and housing program for indigenous communities, jointly funded with the commonwealth, as part of the plan.

Former Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islnder Commission chairwoman Lowitja O'Donoghue said the move would force indigenous people to sign up to 99-year leases thinking it is the only way to obtain tenure over their properties.

"People will sign up thinking it's the only way to get better housing," she said. "They are trying to pull the wool over our eyes and the people in our community ... it is about a land grab ... eventually we will lose all our community title."

Ms Turner , a former head of the now defunct Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission and a former senior official in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, said “That's why the Prime Minister called it a national emergency. Because in the national interest he can move on the Northern Territory land rights Act. We are not stupid, we didn't come down in the last shower,” she said.

Asked why the PM would want the land she said: “For future development purposes and for Aboriginal ownership of housing on Aboriginal land which is absolutely totally ridden with problems. It hasn’t worked in America, it has not worked on Indian land and it will not work here.”

A United Nations expert has warned that the federal laws overhauling land rights in the Northern Territory are unwise and unworkable. The UN Special Rapporteur on adequate housing Miloon Kothari says the laws could be unworkable. Mr Kothari, says the move is unwise. "I'm quite sure that it's not going to work," he said. Mr Kothari said home ownership arrangements for non-indigenous Australians were not necessarily suitable. "I think you have larger issues of self-determination, you have issues of community title, land titling, you have issues of just the sheer lack of family or community resources to be able to engage in the housing market," he said.

It’s been 0nly 40 years since the Australian Aboriginals were first recognized as official human beings – going from the ‘flora and fauna’ of Australia to it’s inhabitants now capitalism is indeed intent on co-opting the Australian Aborigines into the private property system and destroy whatever is still surviving of their ancient communist communal society .

When will it ever end ?

I have previously drawn attention to the plight of the Australian Aborigines here and celebrated one of their rare victories here . The recent racist plans from Howard left such a bad taste in my mouth that i refrained from commenting . A socialist view on them can be found at the Official SPGB Blog .

But I now read that the Australian government are now deploying troops to be stationed in the Northern Territories outback to enforce Howard's crack-down . The first soldiers will start arriving in remote desert settlements in the sparsely populated Northern Territory starting Wednesday, backed up by police, social workers, and government officials. One of the 60 communities to which troops and police reinforcements will be deployed is Mutitjulu, located in the shadow of Uluru, also called Ayers Rock.

"I fear there will be another case of Stolen Generation children because they will be taken away from their mothers and fathers and aunties and uncles," said Aborigine Barbara Swan from the Tangangera Council in Alice Springs . The Stolen Generation refers to the forced removal of Aboriginal children from remote communities so they could be brought up in white homes. The failed assimilation policy ran for decades until the late 1960s. The movie Rabbit-Proof Fence depicts true events of those legally kidnapped youngsters .

"We believe that this government is using child sexual abuse as the Trojan horse to resume total control of our lands," said Pat Turner, who represents 13 central Australian community groups

Howard said he sent soldiers to Afghanistan to save Afghans from Afghans , troops to Iraq to save Iraqis from Iraqis , now he sends the army to save Austrialian Aborigines from Australian Aborigines . It is no wonder we all question the sincerity of his motives .

Alienated Aborigines

Health standards among Australia's Aborigines are as poor as those among the white population before the advent of penicillin nearly a century ago, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Dr Jackson Pulver, from the Indigenous Health Unit of the University of New South Wales:-
"Indigenous babies born today can expect to live only as long as people in Australia 100 years ago. The Aboriginal people are dying at the same kind of rates that people did 100 years ago"

Aborigines still suffered from leprosy, tuberculosis and rheumatic heart disease, all of which were eradicated decades ago in other developed nations. Life expectancy among white Australians was 76.6 for men and 82 for women. In Aboriginal communities it was 59.4 for men and 64.8 for women. In some parts of New South Wales the average life expectancy for Aboriginal men was 33.

Dr Pulver goes on to explain:-
"It is acknowledged by the government that Aboriginal Australians have poorer health, educational, employment and social outcomes, however the solutions to address these issues have little to do with the underlying causes." These were "a combination of material deprivation and psycho-social stressors related to stress, alienation, discrimination and lack of control". and that she believes believes the after-effects of colonisation and injustices such as the forcible removal of Aboriginal children from their families were still having an impact. The factors included "people being alienated from their country, land, language and culture".

I think we can safely say that many of the indigenous peoples around the World face the same problems and suffer the same inequalities as Australia's Aboriginal peoples . At least 350 million people worldwide are considered to be indigenous. Most of them live in remote areas in the world. Indigenous peoples are divided into at least 5000 peoples ranging from the forest peoples of the Amazon to the tribal peoples of India and from the Inuit of the Arctic to the Aborigines in Australia.