My 10 Predictions for 2012 (sort of)

This is the time of year when overpaid windbags in the service of their corporate overlords make predictions for the coming year with less accuracy than a blindfolded and intoxicated orang-utan throwing darts. So, I thought I’d do the same thing…but for free.

So here’s my list of ten predictions for the coming year in the form of a retrospective on 2012:

1. Martin Ferguson is revealed as a double agent for both the mining industry and the Greens

The Member for Batman, is revealed to be leading a triple life as a Labor Minister, mining industry operative and deep cover Green plant. In an ironic twist Ferguson’s conflicting loyalties were only revealed after he ordered intensive monitoring and surveillance of Green groups.

“We had our suspicions when some senior members of various environmental groups referred to a Federal Government mole known only as Robin.” Stated Senior Detective Sergeant Smith of the AFP. AMMA were reported to be livid when news of Ferguson’s Green loyalties emerged, a spokesperson said “We definitely thought he was our man. Honestly, we don’t know what has happened to the sanctity of market transactions in this country.”

An unnamed Greens source has said that Ferguson’s antics as a Minister were part of a plot to ensure that the Federal Seat of Batman went to the Greens, “I was amazed with how long we could get away with it. I would have thought the Labor Party would have cottoned on to the damage they were doing to their brand having Ferguson represent the peoples of Brunswick, Northcote and Thornbury?”

2. The Australian comes out as a  satirical news publication

“I looked at Chris and said, ‘mate let’s see how long we can get away with this shit.’” Clive Mathieson in an exclusive Fairfax interview. Mathieson went on to outline amongst other things that columnist Paul Kelly is actually singer song writer Paul Kelly. “We just slapped on a photo of my dad who lives up in Tweed Heads for the byline and told Paul to make shit up. If you go through his columns carefully you see coded references to Aussie Rules, Aboriginal Rights and how Melbourne kicks Sydney’s arse.”

The news devastated The Australian‘s 5 online and 14 paper subscribers .

3. Grooveshark is a Republican Party Trojan Horse

Karl Rove is understood to have set up the front after carefully going through demographic data. Seeing the Republican base shrink as rich old people die off – he came up with the Great White Shark project. Grooveshark, set up with GNC funds, worked by pumping through subliminal Republican messages. News of the fraud was broken on Twitter when a lapse in the program actually made a group of college students genuinely bat-shit crazy rather than just Republican voters. Karl Rove was despondent when his scheme was discovered, “How else are we going to convince people to destroy the environment and lose all their assets? The old stuff’s just not working anymore.”

4. The end of the Mayan Calendar on 21 December 2012 causes great confusion

Although this is only because the local butcher who puts out the Mayan calendar was a day late in delivering it.

5. A new mental disorder hits the news – Rich Old White Men Syndrome

This follows hot on the heels of the revelation of The Australian being a satirical publication. When an inquiry into The Australian-gate fiasco finds that the prank lasted so long only because the readers were exclusively rich old white men. A treating clinical psychological to one of the subscribers stated, “They used the paper as a crutch so they didn’t have to deal with reality. I mean who wants to be told that they hold positions of privilege and influence in a system that is basically destroying the planet, and with it any hope of a functional prosperous civilisation? Rather than deal with the choice, they used the paper  to retreat into a make believe world where science doesn’t exist and money is always right.”

6. Ben Lee makes a good album again

“Look, I’ll admit it now – Ripe was a steaming pile of dung. I just thought that everything I did was perfect after the reception I got for Awake is the New Sleep. I realised it was time to start actually making music again.” Ben Lee said in a publicity interview for the new album called Damaged Fruit.

7. Alan Jones is possessed by the ghost of FDR

After playing FDR in the musical Annie, Alan Jones underwent an emotional breakdown. “I’d been repressing myself for so long that I’d forgotten what it was like to care about people, but sitting in the wheelchair of this inspirational figure and getting into his mindset just released all those pent up feelings.” (This is an excerpt to Jones’ forthcoming autobiography)

8. Tony Abbott is replaced as Liberal Leader

Allegedly it was because Abbott was just not extreme enough. “With the Labor Party the state it’s in, we’ve got a once in a generation opportunity to really fleece the people.” Said an unnamed senior Liberal source, “I mean they just lost the by-election in Batman. So it was time to flick Tony out and draft in Rick Santorum.”

The move was controversial given that Santorum was not yet an Australian citizen but Campbell Newman’s successful transition to LNP Premier in Queensland provided the inspiration.

9. President Obama announces that he really is a Socialist

“They kept calling me one, and I won the 2012 Presidential election. So I thought why not flick the switch to Marx?” – President Obama, 13 December 2012.

10. The Rapture comes

After returning to Earth, Jesus Christ trawls through the data to find that culturally the more secular a society the more Christian economic and social outcomes it produces. ” I decided I needed to carry out radical action. I  needed to take 144,000 of my most motherfucking craziest followers, and get them off this planet. I mean humanity deserves a chance right? The crazies will be alright – my cribb is so huge it’s pretty much a kingdom and there’s a corner where they can believe they’ve won forever.” (I’d like to thank Rolling Stone for allowing me to reprint this quote from their interview with JC)

A Minor Christmas Rant

At this time of year I like to take stock, it’s much cheaper to get something off the back of a truck than in the Boxing Day sales.

Anyway, it’s fashionable, almost a right of passage, in left circles to dismiss religion, God and all that. After all, it is the opiate of the masses.  However, highlighting how organised religion is used as a tool of hegemonic control does not mean we should just abandon the field. The history of religion is as much the history of revolutionaries, radicals and heretics as it is the history of reactionaries, conservatives and ideologues. Besides, how can we win the war of position without claiming some of the religious ground?

And today is supposed to be JC’s birthday. Christmas, now though, functions as a celebration of consumerism. We are encouraged to consume. Buy commodities.  Eat them. Give them to others. Give them to yourself. Wallow in glorious overconsumption as you have completed your duty to grow the economy and inflate retail sales. Nominally it’s supposed to be the celebration of the birth of the Messiah (I’m sure some very naughty boys were also born on this day too). That probably ended around the time Coca-Cola marketed a big fat guy in a red suit distributing commodities, and more commodities. Only the real ones though.

Although, having this major Christian feast so close to the winter solstice is surely no accident. In pagan times this was also a major winter festival around the time of the northern hemisphere’s shortest day of the year. The darkest depths of winter were a period of starvation. So on the day the night was longest you’d sacrifice a lamb or two to get you through the long nights – the sacrificial lambs died so the village may live on (sound familiar). It was also helpful that the alcohol you brewed in the summer was ready about now. It also helps that life (Easter) is reborn around spring time in the northern hemisphere.

Today we are left with a celebration of capitalism, founded on the birth of the Messiah built on an ancient celebration of the winter solstice – your wine had fermented and you culled the cattle to get through the depths of winter so why not have a celebration? But we should not abandon the symbolism, texts, stories and traditions of pre-capitalist times. While they are not the signs of proto-utopian societies, if we stretch our minds past our present way of seeing and into the past, it can provide a way of slinging us into the future.

Take this Jesus guy. Whether Messiah, historical teacher or a collection of stories there is some interesting lessons in accounts of his life written well after his life. Take for example the story of the money changers in the Temple. He was outraged at the usury going on his Father’s temple – that traders could be profiting off people’s worship that he overturned their tables. He took violent direct action against the exploitation of ordinary people. That’s not something you hear evangelical preachers talking about that often when they tell your money is a reward for your morality (and that God hates fags).

Another example is the feeding of the 5,000. We can’t really be expected to think that 5,000 people were fed with a handful of loaves and fishes. But it’s a powerful account of how far a little bit of sharing and generosity can go towards making sure there’s enough for all of us. Today for me though it feels as if every time I go to drink some water it’s actually magically wine (read beer).

If I’ve learned anything over the course of the year though, is that if you want to advance the cause of justice then you have to have blatant disregard for the world of Caesar.

If Christmas teaches us anything it is this – we need to be prepared to give up all worldly attachments in the fight for justice. Sitting in the Supreme Court of Victoria, being accused of a union thuggery and violence I never felt more just in my life. I was at peace with losing any meagre possessions I had. It’s not that I’m sort of super moral aesthete – it’s that I came to realise that you should enjoy worldly experiences while they’ll slip past you pretty quickly as you keep going down the river of life.

If we really count ourselves as serious about creating change, we must be prepared to sacrifice our possessions, our property and our bodies. Without being prepared to give up everything we cannot hope to gain anything. We must be prepared to enjoy the feast before the long famine of the dark night.

For the only way to win the world is to be prepared to lose it.

A response to @pollytics

I recently read Possum Comitatus’ latest post, “Australian Exceptionalism”. And it’s been troubling me for a few days now, which must be the sign of a good post. Possum is a far more skilled blogger than I so I’ll leave it to the marsupial to give you the guts of the argument that Australia is:

[a] low tax nation with high quality, public funded institutions. A low debt nation with world leading human development and infrastructure. The wealthiest nation in the world where even though our rich get richer, our poor have income growth so extraordinary that it increases at a faster rate than the rich expect to experience anywhere else in the world but Australia. A nation where we enjoy the highest minimum wages in the world.

Kroger blasts pickets and #baiadastrike

I don’t know if you’ve seen the Herald Sun today (if you’re like me you probably don’t make a habit of reading it) but Kroger has come out blasting the #baiadastrike. It’s as if I was actually onto something with my last blog post (for a change).

I’m highly doubtful, as Kroger appears to suggest,  if Victoria Police beating up on workers is a just solution to the whole tent monster fiasco at #omel though!

Lessons from the #baiadastrike about the 1%

I don’t know when, if ever, I’ll be able to write about what happened on the ground at the Baiada strike in Laverton. However, the events over the last few weeks were the first time I’ve had any significant position of responsibility in a campaign where the 1% had definitively turned up and started batting for the other team. What I’d like to share are a few of my preliminary thoughts on taking on this network of elites across private industry, public relations, parliament and the law.

To borrow a line from a classic of the cinema, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Predator, “If it bleeds, we can kill it” (metaphorically and non-violently of course). The 1% are ultimately a coalition/network of individuals in positions of considerable (but limited) influence. They are vulnerable and can be stopped. To push this Predator metaphor for all its worth, the first challenge and purpose of today’s post is to highlight in broad daylight this otherwise invisible network of predators picking off ordinary hardworking people in our society.

Tanya Cirkovic/Stuart Wood SC

Cirkovic and Wood targeted me personally with an injunction in the Supreme Court of Victoria. I guess the idea was to make me fearful that I might lose everything I had in terms of possessions – which doesn’t really work when (a) you don’t have money to begin with, and (b) you don’t care what you lose anyway. Cirkovic goes way back with Michael Kroger and Peter Costello on the right of the Liberal Party in Victoria. Wood, appears to be a player in the Liberal Party as well.

You see Wood is Chairman of Great Southern Press (GSP). It mainly publishes industry based material such as The Australian Pipeliner for the petrochemical industry. His Managing Director is Chris Bland, President of the University of Melbourne Liberal Club in 1999. And former The Australian Pipeline Editor of 8 years (he left in June) as well as GSP Sales and Marketing Manager, and Executive Director is none other than Life Member of the University of Melbourne Liberal Club, Scott Pearce (he was also Club President in 1998).

The Kroger connections extend beyond just Baiada’s litigation team and into its Public Relations team.

Jason Aldworth/Hamish Jones – Civic Group

Andrew Crook has already written extensively on the Jason Aldworth and Hamish Jones’ foray into the Baiada campaign. Hamish Jones is yet another former member of the University of Melbourne Liberal Club, while Aldworth is a  CIS Research Scholar and a known Krogerite in the Victorian Liberal Party, who was very close to becoming the Member for Higgins. Interestingly, Aldworth was involved with Imperial, British American Tobacco and Philip Morris’ ill-fated “Alliance of Australian Retailers” campaign against the Federal Government’s cigarette plain packaging legislation. While Wood worked at a six-month placement with Philip Morris in the mid-90s. I’d wonder if I bothered to trawl through Wood’s list of cases if I’d find more tobacco related work?

The involvement of the Liberals, however, extends into those who actually managed to successfully enter Parliament.

Senator Eric Abetz – Shadow Minister for Employment and Industrial Relations

I’m fairly sure that Abetz’s office has been monitoring this dispute for awhile. He came out early on Thursday 10th November with a press release condemning union violence on the picket line. Although if you actually watch the footage of the incident you’ll see an NUW official (me) running into the middle of the incident to separate the unmarked security guard from the members after he drove into the workers a second time. But there’s a reason the Liberal and National Party are in Coalition.

Peter Ryan MLA – Police Minister/Minister for Regional and Rural Development/Leader of the Nationals in the Victorian Parliament

Peter Ryan is Leader of the Victorian Nationals. I don’t know for sure what role he played during the dispute but I can’t help but think that his dual role as Police Minister and Minister for Rural Development was well and truly noticed and called upon by the Krogerite network. After the Supreme Court injunction against NUW officials, employees and agents as well as myself was issued on the afternoon of Friday 11 November 2011 the police presence was increased significantly. I remember rushing out to the site after the proceedings as more and more police cars and vans arrived. I remember pleading with the police present but it was of no avail – they appeared to have orders that they were bound to carry out. I’ll never forget speaking with one police officer, and as I looked around seeing another officer calmly put on his gloves. The rest was on the front cover of the Herald Sun where lines of migrant workers and community supporters standing their ground against a phalanx of 80 advancing police officers was described as a ‘clash’.

Some may hold grudges against the police. I don’t. They will always carry out their orders and to believe otherwise is folly. But that Friday night was a significant operation, and while I don’t claim to understand the chain of command within the police force, I can’t help but suspect that the Minister played some sort of role. In addition, you didn’t hear a lot from the farmers during the dispute but there is strong reason to believe thatmany of the chicken farmers are doing it tough as well. I wonder what role the Nationals played in attempting to placate the farmers?

News Limited/Miranda Devine

Interestingly the only press photographer who was there on Friday night was from the Herald Sun. Who tipped them off? I’m really not sure but I know it wasn’t the Union. Interestingly both ends of Pipe Road were blocked off only after the photographer arrived. What was truly fascinating was how a Herald Sun journalist arrived on site the next day to speak with the workers about their stories and experiences, all of which was sidelined in the Sunday paper the next day. Clearly that must have been an editorial decision.

Miranda Devine also had an opinion piece ready to go about union thuggery for the Sunday edition. Somehow we were endangering the very existence of a $1 billion company. Although Devine’s article does highlight how absurd the politico-industrial nutter complex had become, while attacking union violence on the one hand and having to mention on the other:

“Baiada, the main supplier of chickens to Coles, has had a string of terrible accidents in the past six years, including the decapitation of 34-year-old Sarel Singh last year while cleaning a processing line.”

This is where this network continually ran into trouble though. By drawing attention to the dispute no one could ignore the fact that this was a site where a worker had been decapitated. That one  single fact implies a lot. These were the people that the big end of town were continually attacking. Workers who had played by the rules – worked hard and paid their taxes. Only  to see themselves get injured and go backwards,and others get richer. What this highlights is that these people are still using the same basic strategy as the 1980s  - the world has changed since then. We have changed. It’s a different playing field now with different conditions and dangers.

The Krogerite network’s ultimate power is as gatekeepers to power, money and influence. They control whether you are acceptable to the big end of town. This only matters if you care about being accepted by the big end of town. Me though, I don’t care about my seat at the table but in making sure the millions without a voice crack open the secret places where all the decisions are made.

I’d also like to apologise to the Predator, it is bound by a strict code of honour, and it does not exploit or kill innocent bystanders or the vulnerable.

As a post-script Miranda Devine has shifted position somewhat in her News Limited column today going after both Unions, Coles and Woolworths in defence of squeezed processers and farmers. I doubt this article would have been written without the #baiadastrke and now News Limited is participating in a (very limited) discussion about corporate power in Australia. There is now some division in the 1% – interesting, very interesting. What do you make of it?

Normal service returning soon

After the #baiadastrike concluded yesterday, normal service will be returning soon to this blog.

I should be writing up a post on Sunday morning at the latest.

#Baiadastrike

I have not been able to post regularly lately as I’ve been extremely busy with Baiada Poultry in Laverton for my day (and now all night) job.  So I would like to apologise for not posting more regularly.

On Friday afternoon Baiada sought and was granted an injunction in the Supreme Court of Victoria against two defendants; (1) the National Union of Workers, and (2) myself as an individual. As such I will not be blogging, until I receive any advice otherwise, about this dispute either.

If you would like to educate yourself about all the issues over and above vulnerable migrant workers being called “union thugs” go to www.nuw.org.au

The Precariat: the new dangerous class

The Precariat is infuriatingly interesting. Its author Guy Standing, a Professor of Economic Security at the University of Bath, has set out to explain the rise of a new class, “the precariat”, and explore the social/political implications of this ‘class-in-the-making’. The Precariat’s originality lies in the journey which Standing takes the reader on. Standing’s start point is simple enough; his understanding that we cannot return to a mythical Keynesian capitalist Golden Age where (nearly) everyone had a decent job. Although the journey can be challenging and takes some unexpected directions, Standing has written a book that is vital to understanding the workings of contemporary global economy.

#OccupyWallStreet will lead to #globalchange and here’s why

From www.occupymelbourne.org

I had great fun yesterday during the @OccupyMelbourne protest running around in a chicken suit. Being a B-grade serial pest, I’ve been to a few protests and what not over the years but this one felt different. It wasn’t just that we were only one of 951 other occupations around the world. It wasn’t just the family friendly atmosphere with kids running around making signs (incidentally a good friend of mine’s daughter painted 99% Angry on a pink sign). It wasn’t just the food or diversity of different groups and people who showed up. It was that it felt like a beginning. It’s like we met, nervously at first, and decided we’d take a journey together.

Anyone who tells you they know what will happen as a result of these occupations is either a fool or deluded.  One thing is certain though, things will be different if and when the Occupations end. And here’s why. Within this broad feeling of a new beginning lies the organising principles and methodology that is driving the Occupy Movement  to build a better world.

Do you remember the Iraq War protests? I do. Millions of us around the world turned out on message for peace. We made our point loud and clear. Then we went home and the war started. With the occupation though we decided against going home. And if you’re going to hang around anywhere you need to find a way to make it work. And as media theorist Douglas Rushkoff points out, the occupation itself models an alternative economic system. It might well be the first large scale example of a real world wiki community. The occupation demonstrates “a post-market, collaborative approach to creating and exchanging value”. Appeals for assistance are sent out via Twitter. Participants donate their own time, resources and skills to building the occupation. Professors teach classes, tradespeople ply their craft and artists entertain. All for the good of the organic whole of the occupation that in turn supports the participants.

The building of a distinct alternative to the prevailing system of extreme corporate power based on solidarity is the operating meta-principle but there’s a number of ways in which this plays out across  worldwide occupations.

#OccupyOz because Wall St is everywhere

Change might be constant but there will always be haters. And with the growing #occupywallstreet movement, it’s no different. There are those who criticise the Wall St Occupation because there is no clear demand, or that the occupiers are somehow hypocrites for using the goods and services of corporations. Both criticisms miss the point. Attacking an occupier because they are taking photos with a digitial camera or talking on a smartphone would be like attacking a Parisian revolutionary in 1789 for eating produce that was grown on the land of an aristocrat. Like fish we can only swim in the system we live in, but unlike fish we can change it.