Now we the people - logo

Home Page

Australia's Political Police

Seminars / Rallies

Letters

Book Reviews

Articles

Forums

Tim Thorne's Views

Links
 
Tasmania

TIM THORNE'S VIEWS

Tim is the spokesperson for NWTP Tamania.

Cuba Fifty Years On

After nearly fifty years, the first cracks have appeared in the USA’s policy of treating the small and relatively poor nation of Cuba as some kind of threat.

From the point of view of all the American administrations from Kennedy to GW Bush, the two main problems with Cuba have been its politics and its proximity. Since the famous missile crisis of 1961, the failed invasion attempt at the Bay of Pigs and various efforts (some ludicrously slapstick) to assassinate Fidel Castro during the same period, the main expression of America’s hostility has been by way of travel and trade embargoes.

President Barack Obama has not entirely lifted these, but he has made the most serious concessions yet. Cuban-Americans can travel and send money to Cuba without restrictions, and telecommunications companies can pursue licensing agreements within that country. There is still a long way to go to the normalisation of relations, and the concessions fall far short of what other Latin American governments would like, but it is a start.

This is, of course, consistent with Obama’s generally less abrasive foreign policy than those of his predecessors, especially that of his immediate predecessor. But it is also indicative of the changed face of Latin America, and of the need for the USA to come to terms with that change. In Venezuela, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Bolivia, Paraguay, Brazil, Nicaragua, Uruguay and most recently El Salvador, governments belonging in varying degrees to the “Left” have come to office in recent years.

What once were, for the most part, brutal dictatorships compliant to the wishes of US-based corporations, have been replaced by democratic regimes whose main concerns seem to be redressing the wrongs inflicted on their own citizens by decades of exploitation and repression. It is worth remembering that it was just such a regime, that of Fulgencio Bautista, that was overthrown by the Cuban people in 1959, thus starting the stand-off.

The days when the dictates of the IMF and the World Bank, imbued as they were with the ideology of neo-liberalism, could hold sway over the lives of hundreds of millions of people in South and Central America would appear to be over. Most economic and political commentators have acknowledged that the policies of these bodies and of their US masters were disastrous, and the people of the region (most of whom have known this all along, through their suffering) are finally using the democratic processes at their disposal to put alternative programs in place.

Cuba has a half century start on these nations. Despite coming off a base of extreme poverty and under-development, it has been at the forefront in such key areas as literacy, health care, housing and gender equality. It could well be argued that what most upset successive US governments about Cuba was the example it was setting to other countries in the region.

Whatever problems there were under long-term President Fidel Castro (replaced last year by his brother Raul) here was living proof that it wasn’t necessary to cosy up to the USA in order to survive. In fact, given the fate of thousands who were slaughtered from Guatemala to Chile over the last half century, under regimes that were very cosy indeed with Washington, that cosiness seems to have been a distinct disadvantage.

How relations between Cuba and the US develop over the years of the Obama administration and beyond is still a matter of guesswork, but we can only be grateful for any move away from belligerent bluster and towards dialogue.

15th April 2009
Download

Outlawing the Outlaws

The recent spate of killings and other violence involving members of bikie gangs in various parts of Australia is something we could well do without. Most people would agree that effective methods to ensure that there are no repeats of such incidents as that at Sydney airport terminal last month would be welcome in the public interest. After all, there is a strong chance that an innocent bystander could be injured or even killed. That is what happened at the Lakemba shootout between rival gangs some years ago, when a teenage girl was killed in crossfire.

The problem is to discover what methods are effective. The recently enacted legislation in South Australia is supposed to deal with this matter, and it looks like being copied in most other states. Only Victoria’s John Brumby has come out against it. Basically what the legislation does is make it illegal to be a member of any gang that the Attorney-General decides to ban. In other words, it will outlaw outlaws.

This is a classic case of politicians wanting to be seen to be doing something, rather than making a serious effort to solve a problem. As well as being a knee-jerk reaction to the more obvious symptoms of a malaise that has been evident in our society for decades, but has been allowed to fester unchecked, it is worse than useless.

In order to be accepted into the kind of bikie outfit we are talking about, a prospective member has to commit a criminal act. The gangs have declared themselves to be beyond the law, accepting neither its sanctions nor its protection. That is the meaning of “outlaw”. Declaring them to be beyond the law is akin to Parliament passing the Law of Gravity — not only totally unnecessary but ridiculous.

There is a parallel with most of our laws concerning terrorism. There is no illegal act that either terrorists or bikies can commit that isn’t already, by definition, against the law. Of course, to police existing laws effectively requires a lot more resources than politicians are willing to commit. Besides, there are not as many votes in acting effectively as there are in making a lot of noise.

What the fatal brawl at Sydney Airport showed, more than anything else, was the lack of real security and the uselessness of the Federal Police, under whose jurisdiction the airport falls. As has been pointed out by other commentators, a bunch of terrorists could have arrived at the êterminal building, slaughtered hundreds of people and gone away again with complete impunity. That no terrorist group has done anything like this in Australia is testament more to the fact that no terrorist group has ever wanted to than to the value of any so-called security measures that have been in force.

The South Australian legislation is not going to affect the way bikie gangs operate, but what is worse is that it gives power to one politician to decide which organisations are to be outlawed. While we would all like to believe that no Attorney-General will administer the Act in a partisan or vindictive way, and there is no evidence to suggest they will, there is no guarantee. Genuine democracy demands more safeguards than this.

It is politicians who think that merely passing an act to outlaw outlaws is sufficient who are really soft on bikie organised crime and its associated violence.

2nd April 2009
Download

2008 Articles

Carbon Trading for Fun and Profit

Apart from reports, Green Papers, policy discussions and a lot of political grandstanding, the Australian Government has not yet actually done anything towards the reduction of carbon emissions......

29th July 2008
Download

Gunns, Jobs and Profits

On Friday of last week Gunns closed down the Tonganah sawmill which they had acquired from Auspine in February this year, dismissing 140 workers and dealing a further blow to the economy and the spirits of the town of Scottsdale in Tasmania’s already depressed North-East......

15th July 2008
Download

Afghanistan: More Deaths, Less Hope

It is twenty months since I commented on this site that the war being waged in Afghanistan was achieving nothing except the deaths of combatants and of Afghani civilians......

29th April 2008
Download

Food Prices

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has been hearing submissions in Launceston on the subject of food and grocery prices. The fact that prices are rising is hardly news to anybody who eats, but the question of what can be done about it seems to be strangely without answers......

15th April 2008
Download

Five Years On: The Iraq War Has Only Just Begun

We have just passed the fifth anniversary of the war against Iraq, and it doesn’t look like ending any time soon......

1st April 2008
Download

Water Problems in the Pipeline

The timing could not have been more ironic. No sooner had the Launceston seminar on "Water: Policy Needs and the Future" been held than it was announced that the State Government was planning to build the pipeline which would supply water from the Trevallyn Dam to the site of the proposed Gunns pulp mill......

11th March 2008
Download

Tell Me Again, Who are the Good Guys?

You know the world (or at least the world of spin) has changed when communists are described in the mainstream Western press as “moderates”......

26th February 2008
Download

Burn, Baby, Burn

Every now and again, like some monster from the primordial slime that won’t quite die, the issue of burning the Australian flag raises its head......

12th February 2008
Download

2007 Articles

Compassion Anyone?

It has been suggested that, with the economy looking a trifle wobbly for the next couple of years, this recent Federal Election was a good election to lose. Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald on November 29, Steve Biddulph said, “...whoever inherited Australia in 2007 inherited a coming economic collapse in globalised trade that would suck Australia and much of the rest of the world down with it.”.....

4th December 2007
Download

The Dilemma of Pakistan

The USA’s bankrupt foreign policy of supporting brutal dictators as long as they look after American interests could be coming unstuck in Pakistan......

20th November 2007
Download

APEC and “Security”

OK, so I was wrong. I suggested on August 21 that John Howard would be likely to use the APEC meeting in Sydney in an attempt to woo back voters by concocting some potential terrorist threat or even by concocting a fake attack. Perhaps I am too cynical.....

18th September 2007
Download

Plantations and Their PALs

Those who would push Australia towards a totally market-driven economy, with the proverbial “level playing field” so loved by neo-liberals, would seem to have been in the ascendancy in recent years. Ever since the previous ALP governments started privatising major taxpayer-owned bodies such as Qantas and the Commonwealth Bank, but especially since John Howard has been Prime Minister, the push has been for Australia to go along with the global trend away from government interference in the market place......

21st August 2007
Download

APEC and the Elections

Although there is still no date set for the next federal election, it cannot now be more than a few months away. Certainly the two major parties are gearing up for it, and the news media are making much of the policies and personalities involved, as well as reporting on the shifts in the parties’ and leaders’ relative popularity according to opinion polls......

21st August 2007
Download

Show Howard No Mersey

As the Federal Election draws closer, it seems that the Prime Minister is escalating his move into panic mode. The latest desperate attempt to buy votes was the announcement last week that the Commonwealth will, at the cost of $45 million, take over the Mersey Hospital at Latrobe in the marginal electorate of Braddon......

7th August 2007
Download

Freedom of Speech?

It seems that it is almost impossible these days for a smallish country to have both oil reserves and a good image. Of course it is difficult to present a good image to the rest of the world when, like Iraq or the Darfur region of Sudan, your inhabitants are being massacred by those who are determined to get access to your oil under the terms most favourable to them......

12th July 2007
Download

Howard and the Problems in Indigenous Communities

There is no doubt that the plight of many indigenous children throughout Australia is desperate in the extreme. The scale of problems in areas of health, sexual abuse, school attendance, substance abuse, the effects of domestic violence, substandard housing and alienation from traditional culture is massive......

28th June 2007
Download

Rich and Poor

It is, perhaps, appropriate today, the day the Federal Budget is to be handed down, to think about money. Some of us, I suppose, think about it more or less all the time, especially those who have barely enough of it to survive, and probably, too, those whose lives are fully devoted to gaining as much of it as they can......

8th May 2007
Download

Guantanamo

After a long and concerted effort on the part on many, many, people, David Hicks finally got to face the charges against him and receive a sentence. He and those who worked on behalf of justice in his case are probably justified in feeling that the Australian Governmnet was playing politics with the whole process......

17th April 2007
Download

Democracy Beaten to a Pulp

I have written in an earlier piece (13 December 2005) about the pulp mill that Gunns propose to build on the East Tamar. Since that time, not only have the worst fears about the dangers to health and the environment caused by the proposed mill been realised, but the attempt to foist it on us has created much more serious and fundamental damage to Tasmania......

3rd April 2007
Download

Two Kinds of Portfolio Don’t Mix

The Australian Stock Market suffered a slight dip last week, and one reason for this just might have been that Federal cabinet ministers were offloading their share portfolios. After all, they wouldn’t have wanted to be in the same position as Senator Santo Santoro......

20th March 2007
Download

Just What the Iraqis Don't Need

That Australian Prime Minister John Howard is one of the few remaining leaders anywhere in the world who thinks that there are not enough people with weapons in Iraq has been clear for some time. He has further demonstrated this by deciding to send another 70 Australian soldiers to act as military instructors out of the US base at Tallil......

20th February 2007
Download

One More Iraqi Death

Reactions from the Australian Government and mass media to the execution by hanging of Saddam Hussein have been such that one might be forgiven for thinking that his death made any difference to the situation in Iraq. Apart, perhaps, from a tiny handful of his closest supporters who might have been optimistic against all odds, nobody had any doubts as to the inevitability of the execution, from the time, over three years ago, that he was captured......

2nd January 2007
Download

2006 Articles

Wielangta Forest Victory

The Federal Court ruling in Hobart this week concerning logging in the Wielangta State forest demonstrates that the separation of powers between the judiciary and the legislature is alive and well in Australia. It also shows how a desperate politician can put a positive spin on even the worst news....

19th Dec 2006
Download

Kevin Rudd and the American Alliance

One of the first public comments made by newly installed federal ALP leader, Kevin Rudd, was that he was firmly committed to the alliance with the United States. Foreign Affairs, of course, has been his area of expertise within the Opposition, so his attitudes in that regard have been a matter of public record for quite a while. To what extent his commitment to the alliance will override his, and the Labor Party’s, stated commitment to a “fair go” for Australians will be worth watching in future months....

5th Dec 2006
Download

Tonga: the Domino Theory Revisited

Those of you who are old enough to remember the Vietnam War will probably also remember the Domino Theory. We were told by the Australian Government at the time that if the Communists won in Vietnam, the neighbouring countries would “fall” one by one until the dreaded scourge reached our own shores....

21st Nov 2006
Download

Stem Cell Research

This week the Senate is debating a bill introduced by former Health Minister, Sen. Kaye Patterson, which will pave the way for legal production of stem cells from human embryonic tissue. Such cells will then be available for use in medical research.....

7th Nov 2006
Download

Is Australia the Regional Bully?

The Australian Government likes to give the impression, both to voters at home and to allies overseas, that it is a benevolent presence in the South-west Pacific, doling out aid and advice to those smaller nations that are newer to the practice of democracy and less able to look after themselves and their citizens....

24th Oct 2006
Download

Pssst, Wanna Buy a Cheap Plane?

A few weeks ago British company BAE Systems sold 72 Eurofighter aircraft to Saudi Arabia. This fact in itself might not be too remarkable in a world where the manufacture and sale of weapons and weapons delivery systems is a crucial part of the global economy, but it takes on an added significance when it is noted who the most active salesmen were who were promoting the deal....

10th Oct 2006
Download

Aussie Values

There has been a lot of talk of late about “Australian values”. Commentators in the mass media, politicians and just about all those who call themselves Australian seem to have their opinions on the subject....

26th Sept 2006
Download

Vandalism at Cataract Gorge

Launceston’s Cataract Gorge has been a place of special significance for tens of thousands of years, and remains the one thing that is the most remarkable about the city. One of Tasmania’s three major tourist drawcards, it has survived a fair amount of degradation over the years in the dubious name of progress....

12th Sept 2006
Download

Remember Afghanistan?

With the recent hostilities in Lebanon, various imagined or real terrorism threats, and the continuing horror of Iraq dominating the headlines in the mass media of late, it is easy to forget that there is an ongoing war being waged against the people of Afghanistan....

29th July 2006
Download

MV Stolt Australia

As I write this the MV Stolt Australia is tied up at the Pasminco wharf in Hobart. Its owners, Stolt-NYK, a Dutch-Japanese company, have decided that they can increase their profits by re-flagging the ship as registered in the Cayman Islands. This, no doubt, will also help the company with its tax bill, as the Caymans are a notorious haven for those who want to escape their social responsibilities in this way....

11th July 2006
Download

The Ten Worst Corporations of 2005

Late last month American journalists Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman released their annual listing of “The Ten Worst Corporations of 1995”. The ten were, in alphabetical order: BP, Delphi, Dupont, ExxonMobil, Ford , Halliburton, KPMG, Roche, Suez and W. R. Grace....

16th May 2006
Download

Death Underground

Last Saturday, April 29, was Workers’ Memorial Day in the United States. The focus of this year’s commemoration was the Sago mine explosion in which twelve West Virginia coal miners died last January, as well as the subsequent Alma Aracoma fire that killed two miners. Here in Tasmania, of course, mining disasters are also in the news....

2nd May 2006
Download

How to Get Rid of Bad IR Laws - French Style

It might have escaped your notice in the news media last week that France's President Chirac announced the scrapping of the proposed change to industrial relations legislation which had allowed for the sacking of young workers without any reason being given....

18th April 2006
Download

Oil and Blood

Is anyone wondering why there has been little news in recent months about the massacres in the Darfur region of Sudan? Are we all assuming that peace has returned and that the Darfurese farmers have gone back to tilling their soil undisturbed by the terror tactics of the Janjaweed militia? ...

4th April 2006
Download

Electoral Laws

The 2006 State Election is now over; the people have spoken, and democracy reigns supreme in this little corner of the world. Or does it? ...

21st March 2006
Download

Elections and Democracy

With elections in the news, especially here in Tasmania, it might be worth pondering the real significance of voting for the government of your choice, and just what that means in relation to the concept of democracy....

7th March 2006
Download

Dude, Where’s My Pay Phone?

So Telstra is definitely going to scrap nearly a thousand public phones and could get rid of up to 5000, on the grounds that they are not profitable....

21st February 2006
Download

The Flag and Freedom

The Victorian police seem to be more assiduous in their pursuit of sedition and terrorism than even our political leaders. Two recent incidents have shown that not even the current laws are sufficient for them....

6th February 2006
Download

Whole-Wheat Alex

A vital part of the neo-liberal philosophy espoused by the Howard Government is the importance of competition. Despite this credo, and despite the efforts of many Australian wheat growers to challenge the monopoly of the Australian Wheat Board, the idea of there being anything of a competitive nature in the marketing of Australian wheat is merely a fantasy....

24th January 2006
Download

The Economic War Against Iraq

Gradually, we are beginning to discover what the war waged on Iraq by the United States and its allies is really all about. Last month the International Monetary Fund provided that unfortunate country with a loan of $685 million on condition that subsidies on the price of oil be removed and that the economy be opened up to further private investment....

9th January 2006
Download

2005 Articles

Racism in Australia

There has been a lot of discussion in recent weeks about the extent to which Australia is a racist country. One piece of evidence has been the behaviour of the crowds at the Perth cricket test match between Australia and South Africa, when sections of the crowd chanted racist taunts at the South African players, especially Makhaya Ntini....

27th December 2005
Download

Not This Pulp Mill

There is no doubt that, leaving aside the questions of how much and which bits of Tasmania’s native forests should be logged, how intensively and for how long, and leaving aside also the whole native forest versus plantation debate, there is an argument to be made for value-adding in the timber industry....

13th December 2005
Download

Nguyen Tuong Van

While the unprecedented publicity given by all sections of the Australian mass media to the case of Nguyen Tuong Van, currently awaiting execution in Singapore for drug smuggling, has effectively pushed the Federal Government’s Industrial Relations and anti-terrorism initiatives off the front pages, it has also brought into focus the issue of capital punishment....

29th November 2005
Download

Why Paris (and Baxter) are Burning

The riots that have taken place throughout France in recent days have been used as an excuse by the racist right either to condemn multiculturalism or to pontificate on the alleged link between terrorism and Islam....

15th November 2005
Download

The Threat Posed by Being Peaceful

One thing that characterises the Howard Government’s legislative response to what it sees as the threat of terrorism to Australia is its linking of dissent and violence. This is not, of course, a new trick; remember the days of the street marches and protests against the Vietnam war, when preparedness to demonstrate publicly one’s opposition to government policy was equated with destructive violence and loudly condemned, whereas support for the bombing, strafing and napalming of innocent civilians and the defoliation of their crops was considered acceptable because we were 'fighting for peace'....

1st November 2005
Download

Iraq - What is the Mission?

Never in the history of international conflict have there been so many different justifications for a war as have been given for the US bombing, invasion and occupation of Iraq. Most of these, as we know, had no substance. There were no 'weapons of mass destruction'; there was no link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, or any other terrorist outfit; Iraq posed no threat to any other country, least of all to the world’s most powerful....

18th October 2005
Download

Of Whom Should We Be Terrified?

Fear has always been a very useful political tool, running about equal with greed as an effective means of motivating people to vote for you. The Federal, State and Territory Governments have just demonstrated this by their recent decision to introduce laws which will increase the powers and reduce the accountability of police and security intelligence officers....

4th October 2005
Download