En Passant » Is Clive Palmer mining nuts now? #Auspol

via enpassant.com.au

Is Clive Palmer mining nuts now?

http://enpassant.com.au/2012/03/22/is-clive-palmer-mining-nuts-now/

If Clive Palmer had been wandering the streets of Sydney late at night muttering about how the CIA was funding the Greens, and calling them traitors, anything could have happened to him. Who knows, he might have been tasered.

But that doesn’t happen to mega rich nutters – only Brazilian students and indigenous people.

Last week Tony Abbott and the rest of his brain dead crew were making a song and dance about Craig Thomson’s medical certificate and diagnosing him.

Let me offer a little bit of advice to our medical experts in the Opposition. Don’t worry about Thomson’s certificate. At least he has one.

Ask Clive where his is. After all, he is the Coalition’s biggest donor.

But maybe Clive is on to something. Think about it.Rupert Murdoch’s The Australian has been painting some Greens as unreconstructed Stalinists, Trots, commies…

The CIA has been known to support radical nationalists before, the Khmer Rouge for example. If you read The Australian I’m sure you’ll find Pol Pot is alive and well and living as a Greens’ member somewhere.

Why wouldn’t the CIA fund the Greens?

The CIA created Al Qaeda. That worked out well.

They supported, funded and armed Saddam Hussein against Iran. That worked out well.

They engineered a coup in 1953 against the democratically elected Mossadeq Government and installed the Shah. That worked out well.

The CIA supported a coup against the democratically elected Government of Salvador Allende in Chile.

But how very inscrutable of the CIA. Fund the commies in the Greens to destroy the Australian economy. We are of course, unlike China, such a big threat to the US economy.

Those nasty unions could stop Clive’s profits in a moment. What better way to destroy the Australian economy? Come on Clive, maybe the CIA is funding the AMWU, the CFMEU, the MUA. Whaddya reckon?

Of course Palmer’s attack on the Greens was driven only by altruism; there is no self-interest involved. A multi-billionaire mining magnate complaining about the Greens trying to defend the environment? Nah, no self interest at all.

But hang on, if the rhetoric of the miners is to be believed, the biggest threat to mining is not the Greens but the Minerals Resource Rent Tax. Presumably the ALP is also funded by the CIA. Oh, hang on…Come back Mark Arbib, all is forgiven.

You know Clive, we socialists want to destroy capitalism. What better ploy from the CIA than for them to fund us to destroy the Australian economy and make the world wonderful for US capitalism. They’d just better make sure those evil socialist ideas of democracy and production to satisfy human need don’t catch on elsewhere, like in the belly of the beast, eh Clive?

Palmer has spent most of his life getting his own way. Now he’s got a party he funds fulsomely about to be elected in Queensland so presumably regulation of mining will be relaxed.

Palmer is not used to people opposing him digging up the ground for his profit. When he meets this oppositon he is so used to getting his own way he can’t explain it.

So he makes up conspiracy theories.

Someone so divorced from the reality of ordinary working people has delusions – not of grandeur, but of hubris. It’s almost a case of ‘l’etat, c’est moi’ from Napoleon Clive. And maybe for Palmer it is also a case of ’les tartes, ils sont moi.’ Self-evidently his interest is the ‘national’ interest, that is, the interest of all the ruling class.

When the Sun kings of profit get challenged the ideology of their empires is threatened and the nudity of their worth stands for all ordinary working people to see. So having not lived in the real world of work, of labour, they do what they always do – invent a self serving story.

Most of the time is it almost believable. It has resonance with working people because of their lived reality. You know, lies like the mining bosses care about jobs.

But not Clive Palmer.

The difference between you and me and Palmer is that his wealth means that his views are plastered all over the capitlaist media. And his general message – the Greens are dangerous – gets out to all.

Of course, the Greens are the best thing capitalism has going for it – sensible neoliberals. But they threaten the sectional interests of some capitalists to save capitalism itself so the Palmers of the world vilify them.

Ruling in the interests of capitalism over sectional interests of capital used to be a role the ALP performed before it capitulated completely to neoliberlaism. The Greens now seem to be stepping into the breach. Palmer’s outrageous attack is a warning to them not to take on that role.

Unfortunately the Greens won’t actually use their balance of power in the Senate to force the Labor Party to do anything radical.

But their rhetoric threatens the dominance of ideas of the likes of Palmer and some of his activities in a small way and the rentiers like Palmer fear the Greens might one day grow a political backbone.

If the economy worsens or the Greens actually begin to exercise some power instead of being Democrats in waiting, what Palmer said about them will be a small taste of much worse to come as the rich maggots squirm and worm to protect their rotting patches.

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En Passant » This is the one percent’s ‘democracy’ # occupy #OWS

via enpassant.com.au

It was the middle of the night. The billionaire mayor attacked the Wall Street Occupiers. According to one tweet: “Protesters dragged away shoved into trucks, pepper spray, sound cannons, batons, teargas, bulldozers, massive piles of dismantled tents.”

The forces of repression kept out the press. 200 have been arrested.

The police now hold Zuccotti Park, with the Occupiers outside. (As one protester tweeted: “the cops have occupied #Zuccotti Park, we’re just trying to figure out what their demands are …”)

It is unclear what will happen next. But the actions of billionaire Bloomberg highlight the points the Occupiers have been making – society is unequal and the rule of the 1% is undemocratic. It is also brutal and repressive.

The one percent cannot stand any challenge, even a more or less symbolic one like the Occupy movement which doesn’t of itself threaten the productive process.

It however has inspired many and caused them to think about the nature of the society they live in.

The potential for fundamental change is there too, as the movement has begun to link to the working class movement, reaching its apogee in the US in the Oakland general strike and in Australia with the physical support of the Occupiers for the Baiada workers and picket line.

It is this potential which does or could really threaten the one percent. It looks as if the ruling class now wants to smash the movement before it does establish deeper and closer links with trade unions and workers.

Repression is always a dangerous move for the one percent. It can reinvigorate a movement as happened when the cops arrested 700 protesters on Brooklyn Bridge and then when the cops brutally attacked the Oakland Occupation and seriously wounded a young veteran.

The inequality and undemocratic rule of the one percent will not disappear just because police evict the Occupiers. The anger remains. The task for the movement now is to discuss, debate and evaluate the way forward. In the US that will first be the response to the eviction and the battles that arise from that.

It may also involve a process of clarification within the movement itself that the one percent can only be challenged by a powerful force that goes beyond just the act of occupation. The working class has the power to cut off the flow of profits to the one percent and in doing that challenge inequality and the anti-democratic nature of the rule of their rule.

The next few days will be important. As Sherry J Wolf wrote:

Last night’s attack on Occupy Wall Street — in the secrecy of dark, with overwhelming brute force — is symbolic of everything we hate about the 1%. Let’s get as many as we can to come out to the GA today and tonight to mobilize our response, especially the power of labor and students united Nov. 17 for mass direct action.
Here in Australia we too can mobilise against the one percent and their dictatorship.

Barack Obama, the political representative of the American one percent, is talking to our own political class. He will announce closer military ties between Australia’s ruling class and America’s.

Obama is speaking to the politicians of Australia’s one percent on Thursday. That day there is a demonstration against him at Federation Park outside Parliament House in Canberra at lunchtime. Be there to show your support for the Wall Street Occupiers and the protesters around the globe. And for the other members of the Occupy movement across Australia – support the 99% in struggle. Support the QANTAS workers, the Baiada picketers, the maritime workers, the public servants, the nurses, all those fighting for better wages and conditions. That is our future. That is our hope.

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Slavoj Zizek spoke to protesters at Liberty Plaza, "Don't fall in love with yourselves"

via abc.net.au

On October 9, Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek spoke to Occupy Wall Street protesters at Liberty Plaza. The following is a transcript of his speech:

Don't fall in love with yourselves, with the nice time we are having here.

Carnivals come cheap - the true test of their worth is what remains the day after, how our normal daily life will be changed. Fall in love with hard and patient work - we are the beginning, not the end. Our basic message is: the taboo is broken, we do not live in the best possible world, we are allowed and obliged even to think about alternatives. There is a long road ahead, and soon we will have to address the truly difficult questions - questions not about what we do not want, but about what we DO want. What social organisation can replace the existing capitalism? What type of new leaders do we need? The XXth century alternatives obviously did not work.

So do not blame people and their attitudes: the problem is not corruption or greed, the problem is the system that pushes you to be corrupt. The solution is not "Main Street, not Wall Street," but to change the system where Main Street cannot function without Wall Street. Beware not only of enemies, but also of false friends who pretend to support us, but are already working hard to dilute our protest. In the same way we get coffee without caffeine, beer without alcohol, ice-cream without fat, they will try to make us into a harmless moral protest. But the reason we are here is that we had enough of the world where to recycle your Coke cans, to give a couple of dollars for charity, or to buy Starbucks cappuccino where 1 per cent goes for the Third World troubles is enough to make us feel good. After outsourcing work and torture, after the marriage agencies started to outsource even our dating, we see that for a long time we were allowing our political engagements also to be outsourced - we want them back.

They will tell us we are un-American. But when conservative fundamentalists tell you that America is a Christian nation, remember what Christianity is: the Holy Spirit, the free egalitarian community of believers united by love. We here are the Holy Spirit, while on Wall Street they are pagans worshipping false idols.

They will tell us we are violent, that our very language is violent: occupation, and so on. Yes we are violent, but only in the sense in which Mahathma Gandhi was violent. We are violent because we want to put a stop on the way things go - but what is this purely symbolic violence compared to the violence needed to sustain the smooth functioning of the global capitalist system?

We were called losers - but are the true losers not there on the Wall Street, and were they not bailed out by hundreds of billions of your money? You are called socialists - but in the US, there already is socialism for the rich. They will tell you that you don't respect private property - but the Wall Street speculations that led to the crash of 2008 erased more hard-earned private property than if we were to be destroying it here night and day - just think of thousands of homes foreclosed.

We are not Communists, if Communism means the system which deservedly collapsed in 1990 - and remember that Communists who are still in power run today the most ruthless capitalism (in China). The success of Chinese Communist-run capitalism is an ominous sign that the marriage between capitalism and democracy is approaching a divorce. The only sense in which we are Communists is that we care for the commons - the commons of nature, of knowledge - which are threatened by the system.

They will tell you that you are dreaming, but the true dreamers are those who think that things can go on indefinitely the way they are, just with some cosmetic changes. We are not dreamers, we are the awakening from a dream which is turning into a nightmare. We are not destroying anything, we are merely witness to how the system is gradually destroying itself. We all know the classic scene from cartoons: the cat reaches a precipice, but it goes on walking, ignoring the fact that there is no ground under its feet; it starts to fall only when it looks down and notices the abyss. What we are doing is just reminding those in power to look down.

So is the change really possible? Today, the possible and the impossible are distributed in a strange way. In the domains of personal freedoms and scientific technology, the impossible is becoming increasingly possible (or so we are told): "nothing is impossible," we can enjoy sex in all its perverse versions; entire archives of music, films, and TV series are available for downloading; space travel is available to everyone (with the money...); we can enhance our physical and psychic abilities through interventions into the genome, right up to the techno-gnostic dream of achieving immortality by transforming our identity into a software program. On the other hand, in the domain of social and economic relations, we are bombarded all the time by a You cannot ... engage in collective political acts (which necessarily end in totalitarian terror), or cling to the old Welfare State (it makes you non-competitive and leads to economic crisis), or isolate yourself from the global market, and so on. When austerity measures are imposed, we are repeatedly told that this is simply what has to be done. Maybe, the time has come to turn around these coordinates of what is possible and what is impossible; maybe, we cannot become immortal, but we can have more solidarity and healthcare?

In mid-April 2011, the media reported that Chinese government has prohibited showing on TV and in theatres films which deal with time travel and alternate history, with the argument that such stories introduce frivolity into serious historical matters - even the fictional escape into alternate reality is considered too dangerous. We in the liberal West do not need such an explicit prohibition: ideology exerts enough material power to prevent alternate history narratives being taken with a minimum of seriousness. It is easy for us to imagine the end of the world - see numerous apocalyptic films - but not end of capitalism.

In an old joke from the defunct German Democratic Republic, a German worker gets a job in Siberia; aware of how all mail will be read by censors, he tells his friends: "Let's establish a code: if a letter you will get from me is written in ordinary blue ink, it is true; if it is written in red ink, it is false." After a month, his friends get the first letter written in blue ink: "Everything is wonderful here: stores are full, food is abundant, apartments are large and properly heated, movie theatres show films from the West, there are many beautiful girls ready for an affair - the only thing unavailable is red ink." And is this not our situation till now? We have all the freedoms one wants - the only thing missing is the red ink: we feel free because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom. What this lack of red ink means is that, today, all the main terms we use to designate the present conflict - 'war on terror', 'democracy and freedom', 'human rights', etc - are FALSE terms, mystifying our perception of the situation instead of allowing us to think it. You, here, you are giving to all of us red ink.

This transcript was taken from the Verso blog. You can watch a video of the speech on YouTube.

Slavoj Zizek is a philosopher.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3496710.html

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A world without the one percent. That is worth occupying for | #occupy

A world without the one percent. That is worth occupying for.

via enpassant.com.au

Who are the ‘one percent’?

Posted by John, October 11th, 2011 - under Occupations, Occupy Australia, Occupy Wall Street.
There are two main classes under capitalism – the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, the ruling class and the working class, the bosses and the workers.

Workers sell their labour power to survive and have little or no control over their work. Bosses buy our labour and have control over us as a consequence.

There are other classes – a middle class made up of different groups like small business, peasants, managers and the like. It swings its support behind one or other of the major classes depending on the level of class struggle but often it sits in sullen resentment of organised labour and big business. This often makes it the social base of fascism.

Income is not a determinant of class per se.

Mine workers are paid very well compared to those on the average wage of almost $70,000. Yet they are still mine workers. Their job and role doesn’t magically change because they are paid $45000 more than the average wage. In fact their high wages disguise another reality – they are paid so much because they create huge profits for the mining bosses.

According to the ABS their average wage is $117,500. Yet each mining worker generated sales and service income of over $1 million.

According to the ABS, Industry Value Added (IVA) per person employed in mining was $608,200. The next highest was electricity, gas, water and waste services with $300,200 IVA per employee.

IVA per person employed gives us some inkling of the basis of the relationship between labour and capital – we work and they profit.

To give you soem idea of that divide let’s look at a recent analysis of the super rich.

The Business Review Weekly’s (BRW 2010) annual list of the richest 200 individuals and families in Australia shows that:

The combined wealth of the top 200 was $135.8 billion in 2010 (up from $83.37 billion in 2005);
The total represents an increase of 19 per cent from the previous year despite the turmoil in world economies and financial markets;
Only 16 of the top 200 are women.
Table 1: The Australian super-rich top 5, 2010—estimated wealth (AUD$ billion)

Frank Lowy 5.0
Gina Rinehart 4.7
Anthony Pratt 4.6
Andrew Forrest 4.2
Harry Triguboff 4.2

Source: Website to support John Germove and Marilyn Poole (eds) Public Sociology: An Introduction to Australian Society (2nd ed) Chapter 11: Class ands Inequality in Australia, adapted from BRW (2010)

What all of these people have in common is that they own large amounts of capital. They are a tiny minority. While estimates vary, given the interlocking shareholdings and networks between capitalists, Murray suggests that about 2 to 3 percent of Australian society make the major economic economic decisions – what gets done, how many are employed, what wages levels are etc etc. They are the ruling class.

This group owns the means f production, the factories, mines, offices, that mean they can take the surplus value we produce and reinvest it in new plant, machinery and the like. Or lend it out to others who want to do that. Or in the case of the State, take a share of that surplus and use it to defend the elites’ property and fund its armies to protect the national variant of capitalism. Maybe even use to prop up ailing sectors of the economy.

There is clearly a class divide in society. A small minority own the majority of the capital in society. The vast majority have only our labor to sell.

Most times the power of the ruling class appears overwhelming.

But if there is one message coming out of the Occupy movements around the globe it is this - we are many, they are few. Their power is built on our labour. Without our work they are nothing.

That points to a way forward. If we withdraw our labour the ruling class will often be forced to give us concessions. Of course the act of striking opens up a possibility of a new world – one of democracy in which production is organised to satisfy human need. A world without the one percent. That is worth occupying for.

Via: http://enpassant.com.au/?p=11289

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