If your news is coming from the Murdoch stable, you’d be forgiven for believing that university campuses across Australia and around the world are in absolute turmoil with students establishing “no go” zones and scaring off Jewish students with endless rounds of pro-Hamas slogans. In fact, the opposite is true. Peaceful protest camps have been attacked by violent Zionist mobs, only some of them in police uniforms.
If you see the Murdoch papers in your city or town, or you watch Sky News, then you’d know that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese thinks the call “from the river to the sea” is <a href="https://www.skynews.com.au/australia-news/politics/anthony-albanese-issues-strongest-condemnation-yet-of-antiisrael-slogan-from-the-river-to-the-sea-in-interview-for-josh-frydenbergs-new-documentary/news-story/4cc00e220ad78e67bc1cc4181e2f0250">violent antisemitic speech</a>. But you probably wouldn’t know that for the past two weeks, the Israeli military has been bombing Rafah, the last safe haven in Gaza, killing dozens more civilians to add to the staggering numbers of dead bodies piling up outside the bombed-out hospitals, schools and mosques.
If you read the ruling-class opinion pieces in Newsweek, your head might actually explode. Here’s a headline from a column by Josh Levs published on 7 May, seven months after the start of what looks like an endless bloodbath—you might say “genocide”—that has killed more than 40,000 Gazans: “<a href="https://www.newsweek.com/mainstream-media-biased-against-israel-i-know-i-was-part-it-opinion-1898058">The mainstream media is biased against Israel. I know I was part of it</a>”. It is staggering that a semi-celebrity American columnist could believe such a thing in 2024, but here we are. You won’t be surprised to know that <a href="https://www.instagram.com/joshlevs/?hl=en">Josh Levs is a Zionist propagandist</a>.
Now, I don’t know what media Josh is consuming, but everywhere I look across the mainstream media, all I see is pro-Israel apologetics, inflammatory articles that call anti-genocide campaigners antisemites and editorials demanding the police throw students off campus for standing up against Zionist aggression.
The world’s biggest media brands—the New York Times, the Washington Post, Le Monde, Bild and Die Welt in Germany, alongside Fox News, CNN and even the BBC—have amplified every lie uttered by the Zionists: “Oh we didn’t bomb the hospital, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2023/10/26/gaza-hospital-blast-evidence-israel-hamas/">it was a Hamas rocket</a>”, “Hamas <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/unverified-allegations-beheaded-babies-israel-hamas-war-inflame-social-rcna119902">beheaded 40 babies</a>”, “<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-middle-east-67754837">tunnels, tunnels, tunnels</a>”, “Hamas is <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/14/hamas-human-shields-tactic/">using human shields</a>”, “<a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-04/gaza-aid-convoy-air-strike-visual-analysis-photos-israel/103662942">it was an accident</a> that we bombed that aid convoy/ preschool/doctor/journalist”, on and on and on it goes. 
The Australian media, and that includes the Age, the Guardian, the Saturday Paper
and the ABC, is no better. There have been massive protest marches in Melbourne and Sydney every weekend for seven months, but they’re apparently not newsworthy anymore. Protest action has been constant and widespread—perhaps the most significant mobilisations against war and oppression since the Vietnam Moratorium protests some 50 years ago. Unfortunately, the wise editors at Australia’s major media outlets can’t see past the latest press release from the Zionist Federation of Australia. They don’t seem to notice they’re missing the story of the decade.
There’s <a href="https://news.berkeley.edu/2024/01/10/images-of-war-are-shocking-they-also-can-strengthen-our-humanity">plenty of war-porn</a> on offer—casualty figures and carefully designed graphics showing where the Gazan population has been pushed to in recent days—but this is not designed to explain what’s actually happening. For the last eight months, the Israeli massacre in Gaza has been framed in the media as <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/eu-affirms-israels-right-to-self-defense-within-international-law/">an act of self-defence</a>. Sure, journalists are obliged to report <a href="https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&amp;&amp;p=bb098eeb5c6b95bcJmltdHM9MTcxNTEyNjQwMCZpZ3VpZD0yN2MzNjIyOS02MzdlLTY2NDktMWI2Ni03MDVlNjJhYjY3MGYmaW5zaWQ9NTMwNA&amp;ptn=3&amp;ver=2&amp;hsh=3&amp;fclid=27c36229-637e-6649-1b66-705e62ab670f&amp;psq=penny+wong+grave+concern+gaza&amp;u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc2t5bmV3cy5jb20uYXUvYnJlYWtpbmctbmV3cy9wZW5ueS13b25nLWlzcmFlbC1tdXN0LWFiaWRlLWJ5LWludGVybmF0aW9uYWwtbGF3LWV4cHJlc3Nlcy1yYWdlLW9mLXRoZS1uYXRpb24tdG8taXNyYWVsaS1jb3VudGVycGFydC9uZXdzLXN0b3J5LzE2NGVlMTllODUxYmY5ODU1YjdmZDMxNjVlM2FkODZi&amp;ntb=1">the occasional guilty utterance from Penny Wong</a> or Joe Biden that Israel should “<a href="https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&amp;&amp;p=d8359f3a575ba0dcJmltdHM9MTcxNTEyNjQwMCZpZ3VpZD0yN2MzNjIyOS02MzdlLTY2NDktMWI2Ni03MDVlNjJhYjY3MGYmaW5zaWQ9NTIzNA&amp;ptn=3&amp;ver=2&amp;hsh=3&amp;fclid=27c36229-637e-6649-1b66-705e62ab670f&amp;psq=Biden+tells+israel+to+be+careful&amp;u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly9lZGl0aW9uLmNubi5jb20vbWlkZGxlZWFzdC9saXZlLW5ld3MvaXNyYWVsLWhhbWFzLXdhci1nYXphLTEwLTExLTIzL2hfNzc3OGU1ZmY0ZjAyOGNkODdkZWNjNzg4NDQzYTg5ODM&amp;ntb=1">be careful</a>” where it drops its 2,000 pound bombs and try to “minimise” civilian casualties, but there’s so much that journalists are obliged not to report on.
From day one of its military operation in Gaza the Israeli military has been committing war crimes of unspeakable horror: murdering journalists, doctors, aid workers and over 15,000 children. In recent weeks, we found out that hundreds of people—medical staff, civilian adults, and children—had been <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/4/25/signs-of-torture-as-nearly-400-bodies-found-at-gaza-hospitals-mass-graves">handcuffed and shot at point-blank range</a> in the back of the head before being buried in hastily dug ditches. In the Western media at least, news of this tends to be buried along with the corpses.
It is war reporting reduced to spectacle and sanitised for Western audiences. Far from being anti-Israel, the mainstream media is complicit—through its actions or its silence—in one of the most horrendous acts of barbarism since the US bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the 6th and 9th of August 1945.
Anyone with eyes to see has witnessed the horror. We’ve seen the broken limbs, the bloody faces and the lifeless toddlers covered in cement dust. We’ve seen the women and children being pulled from the collapsed apartment blocks. We’ve seen the rotting flesh and protruding bones of the innocents murdered and dumped in the mud by bloodthirsty, murdering cowards. We’ve seen the rows and rows of body bags, the grieving fathers, the lists of the dead, the maimed and the starving. We see all this every day in our social media feeds. 
The mainstream media tends to shy away from the harsh truth of the horrors in Gaza. Journalists and editors like to think that they sit above it all. Aloof and able to decide, like Solomon of the Biblical fable, who gets to see and hear which bits of information.
But it’s not like that at all. The mainstream news media is, above all, a business. Journalism is just another line on the balance sheet for media companies. For all the noble talk of a fearless Fourth Estate that holds the powerful to account, journalism is complicit in power. This has consequences too for the politics of the coverage that we see, not just of this war but of all wars and any conflict between the oppressor and the oppressed.
Israel’s genocide in Gaza has the blessing of governments in the West, from Washington to London, Paris, Berlin, Ottawa and Canberra. What ties these governments together—from conservative to liberal or social democratic—is their material interest in the system of imperialism. Media companies benefit from imperialism too, and they ensure that the journalists they hire will conform to similar ideological beliefs. This is why the horror is sanitised and the political explanation reduced to propaganda.
Reporters and editors who step out of line don’t last long; they get <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-11/antoinette-lattouf-abc-sydney-fair-work-commission-/103573364">blacklisted and sacked</a>. Zionist groups campaign against them to ensure they’re silenced. This is happening all over the world right now. Reporters, artists, prominent academics and anybody who dares to speak up against Israeli aggression is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/mar/15/jonathan-glazer-oscars-speech-condemned-by-son-of-saul-director-laszlo-nemes">labelled an antisemite and hounded from public life</a>.
Of course, in the upside-down world in which Josh Levs thinks the mainstream media is to blame for Israel’s bad publicity, silencing anti-Zionists is righteous and moral. It could even be considered <a href="https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinian-campus-protests-columbia-congress-df4ba95dae844b3a8559b4b3ad7e058a">a defence of free speech</a>. This is the exact argument being put out by the Murdoch media about campus protests here in Australia and around the world. It might seem bizarre, but Murdoch columnists are actually attempting to convince us that the students’ Gaza solidarity encampments are an attack on free speech.
Governments have seen the power of the student protests that were set off a few weeks ago in New York, and they are doing everything in their power to crush this new anti-war movement before it overwhelms their lies.
A similar line of reasoning is being put forward about social media and, in particular, TikTok. The US Congress is demanding that TikTok be banned in America because, supposedly, it presents a threat to national security. It’s an absurd argument about how much data TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, collects and allegedly passes to the Chinese government (the hypocrisy here is mindboggling—all the US-owned social media companies regularly share data with the National Security Agency). 
In Australia, the heads of ASIO and the Federal Police have also come out against social media, describing it as a cesspit of hate speech and terrorist indoctrination. What these officials in Washington and Canberra are really worried about is that TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and WhatsApp are platforms where young people can talk to each other and share ideas outside of the control of teachers, preachers, parents, politicians and mainstream editors.
Politicians, bureaucrats and Murdoch editors hate the fact that the majority sentiment on TikTok and some other social media platforms is on the side of the Palestinians and making a mockery of the official pro-Israel propaganda.
As Josh Levs himself acknowledges, the growing awareness of young people about Israel and Palestine is dangerous for the imperialist status quo. Levs supports imperialism, so his solution is for <a href="https://www.aap.com.au/news/pm-concerned-by-social-cohesion-after-uni-protests/">governments to crack down on the sources of dissent</a>, what Levs calls “dangerous, violent radicalisation” on university campuses.
Our solution is the exact opposite. We celebrate the campus protests as a festival of the oppressed. We learn to read between the lines of the mainstream media and to recognise their constant lies and propaganda. We share the TikToks and the videos that make it out of Gaza so that we know, so that we understand, and so that we can act to end the barbarism of imperialism, once and for all.

Marty Hirst

Swimming against the mainstream on Palestine

<a href="https://www.banyule.vic.gov.au/About-us/Councillors-and-Council-meetings/Council-meetings/Council-meeting-agendas-and-minutes/2024/18-March-Ordinary-Council-meeting">Banyule City Council</a> has become the eighth metro council in the Melbourne area to formally call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
The Banyule Palestine Action Group has welcomed this decision as conveyed by the mayor, Tom Melican, at a council meeting on 18 March. However, BPAG has also said that the council statement does not go far enough.
While the mayor was speaking, more than 200 Banyule residents held a peaceful rally outside the chamber for the second time in a month.
Victorian Socialists members have been central to the organising efforts of local Palestine activists in Banyule, which covers the area from West Heidelberg to Watsonia, Greensborough, Macleod and Ivanhoe.
Speaking to Red Flag, Victorian Socialists member and BPAG activist Lucas Moore said the group had worked hard to mobilise the community. “We’ve had stalls in shopping centres every weekend and leafleted the transport hubs. There’s posters everywhere across Banyule too.”
The mayor’s statement comes after six weeks of campaigning by BPAG, including collecting more than 1,600 signatures on a petition. “Our petition now holds the record for the most signatures collected on a petition in Banyule”, Moore said.
The most important news in the mayor’s statement is a commitment to write to the prime minister and the foreign minister expressing Banyule’s support for an immediate “humanitarian ceasefire” and “pursuit of a permanent ceasefire”. The mayor also said that his correspondence with the Australian government would include ensuring “assistance to those who arrive in Australia after fleeing the conflict”, “an unconditional release of all hostages”, and “safe and unimpeded humanitarian access to the people of Palestine and Israel”.
BPAG welcomed the mayor’s statement but noted that it does not condemn Israeli genocide or the deliberate starvation of civilians, does not call for Israel to withdraw from the Occupied Territories, does not address issues of Banyule City Council divesting from any contract with businesses that support the Israeli government, does not call on Australia to stop the shipment of weapons and military hardware to Israel and does not mention the prosecution of war crimes by Israeli occupation forces in Gaza.
“The statement is a good start, but we’re going to continue lobbying council”, Moore said. 
Moore added that council also needs to say something about the weapons industry in Banyule. A local company in Greensborough, <a href="https://www.lovittech.com.au/">Lovitt Technologies</a>, is the only global supplier of a particular part for the F35 stealth bomber that Israel has deployed in Gaza. 
“The war in Gaza might seem to be distant from Banyule, but the Zionist war machine uses parts manufactured here to kill and maim thousands of civilians”, Moore said. “Our campaign is determined to shut down weapons manufacturing in Banyule. The equipment at Lovitt’s factory can be used for lots of other things but the company is profiting from death and destruction.”
BPAG is calling on Banyule City Council to take a stronger stand and to recognise the resolve of Banyule residents to denounce Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Several Banyule councillors have told BPAG that they are worried about a Zionist backlash if they push too hard. “Council needs to show some courage”, Moore said. “A debate in the council chamber will give Banyule voters a clear picture of where their representatives stand, or where they’re trying to hide.”
The Banyule Palestine Action Group has also announced that it is planning to stand candidates across Banyule in this year’s local government elections.
“Victorian Socialists is working with the BPAG activists to put together a progressive ticket in Banyule”, Moore said. “The plan is to stand in all nine wards on a community-oriented platform.”
Banyule Palestine Action Groups has called on Banyule City Council to build on the mayor’s statement and take much stronger motion to the next council meeting.
“We want council to fly the Palestinian flag, to condemn genocide, to join the international Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, and put more pressure on the Australian government to stop arms sales to Israel”, Moore said. “It’s the minimum they should be doing.”

Another council calls for Gaza ceasefire

Nachshon Amir looks like a military man. It’s decades since he served in the Israeli military, but with his shaved head, fit physique and rugged demeanour, it might also seem that he has just been demobbed.
Today, he’s an activist with Free Palestine Melbourne, which is quite a turnaround from how he lived life in the Middle East.
Raised in a Zionist family, Nachshon says his earliest memories are of growing up believing that Israel was the Jewish homeland as ordained by God, that the separation of Jews from their Palestinian neighbours was normal and just, and that Zionism was as natural as breathing.
“I remember going with my father into the West Bank as a 10-year-old. We stood on a hill with other Israelis shouting, ‘This is our land!’.” Years later—during the First Intifada (1987-93)—Nachshon went back to the West Bank as a member of the occupation forces.
Nachshon did his compulsory national service in a tank regiment but signed up for two extra years as an officer. In his mind, the military was protecting Israel from potentially hostile neighbours, Lebanon and Syria. But he also says that most of the time he was intimidating and subduing Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
He is no longer proud of his time in the military and seems reluctant to talk in much detail about what he did day to day. But he is clear that his role was to discipline the Palestinian population through relentless—and often pointless—intrusions into their villages and homes.
Nachshon tells a story about going to one house and waking the elderly occupants to make them come outside and paint over Arabic graffiti on the wall of their compound.
“I don’t even know what was written, I don’t speak or read Arabic”, he says. “We just made them do it because we could. If we saw a good house on a hill, we would go and kick out the Palestinians and take it over. It would be our base for the next three months.”
There is embarrassment and sadness in Nachshon’s voice. Harassing Palestinians on behalf of the Israeli state was his life. It was all he knew, and it wasn’t something that he questioned at the time.
“I mean, you go to the streets and you go in a village where there’s no Jewish people or traffic, because they’re in the settlements around the area. But you just go there to instigate and just to keep the Palestinians down so they won’t have any thoughts of uprising.”
In this Zionist world view, the Jewish settlers are the “good guys” and the “Arabs”—“we didn’t even call them Palestinian back then”, Nachshon says—are the “bad guys”. The other soldiers were taught to think that each Palestinian kid they encountered could grow up to be a “terrorist”.
A fervent nationalism and sense of superiority permeated every aspect of life. Nachshon believes that the Israeli education system completely locks down people’s minds. This indoctrination is perhaps we’re seeing so many Israeli soldiers broadcasting on TikTok and Instagram their own war crimes—everything from running over children with tanks to blowing shit up for fun and petty thieving. 
Nachshon seems puzzled by this type of activity from rank-and-file soldiers. “There’s no-one to stop them”, he says. But he’s also not surprised: “They don’t punish anyone for anything, so nobody has paid a price even for much worse, like killing someone they didn’t have to kill”.
Nobody in Nachshon’s family or circle of friends questioned Zionism or Israeli policy towards the Palestinians. “If you try to tell them it’s apartheid in Israel, they get angry, and say: ‘No, this is a democratic Jewish state’. The perception is: ‘This is our country’. They don’t talk about the other thing. They just put the borders where they want. When you grow up in such an environment, and this is your whole truth, you have no way of knowing anything else. So you want to serve your country and be a hero. Only later did cracks form in my consciousness.”
After leaving the military, Nachshon says he switched off from politics. While doubts about what Israel was doing began to creep in, he put them to the back of his mind for another decade. 
“I can’t say I was unaware of the crimes being committed against Palestinians, but I said: ‘I’m not putting my head into politics’”, he says, recounting that he stopped reading the papers, watching the news and voting in elections.
It’s not uncommon for former soldiers to switch off; particularly those with physical and psychological scars from battle: “I hardly remember the Second Intifada (2000-05). I remember it happened, but I didn’t care”. 
This is where Nachshon’s story takes a twist. His wife is a medical professional, and in 2009 the family came to Australia for the first time while she pursued work opportunities. It was the multicultural nature of his daughters’ school that first sparked Nachshon’s soul-searching.
“My daughters went to school with Hindus and Christians and all sorts and it’s normal. In Israel, we only have Jewish schools and separate schools for Palestinians.”
In 2014, the family returned to Israel and Nachshon became interested in the plight of North African refugees who had begun turning up in Israel in large numbers. “I saw there were tens of thousands of refugees in Tel Aviv with no rights. With nothing. I didn’t look at it before, but I was shocked at the racism”, he says.
After a long journey, with many detours, Nachshon found himself becoming a social justice activist. This led him to begin questioning the Israeli government he had been loyal to for so long. “I moved to the Palestinian cause.”
The decision cost him dearly. He was socially isolated in his support for Palestine. Nachshon divides his ex-friends into two groups: “the more liberal camp” that thought the West Bank should be Palestinian but who were “not willing to do anything about it”, and the more conservative set who “were committed to the concept of Israel from the river to the sea”.
After 7 October, friends of 30 years began to question Nachshon’s views. Previously, they might have been indifferent, but now “it drives some of them crazy about me”, he says.
“I’m saying the same things now that I said to my friends six years ago, and they said to me: ‘I don’t want to be your friend any more’. They don’t want to hear what I have to say.”
At some point, Nachshon found himself wanting to leave Israel again. The family returned to Australia in January 2019, and he took up the refugee cause here, while also studying the history of his birth country.
“I learned the real history. I discovered that all I knew was false stories, myths that Israeli society tells itself. I learned that the story of Palestine is very similar to what happened in other places around the world.”
Nachshon has joined the dots and now recognises that the colonial system in Israel is similar to the story of South Africa and Australia: “People who came from Europe decided that this land would be theirs at the expense of the local indigenous residents. A structure known as settler colonialism”.
This is how Nachshon now explains the Nakba (catastrophe) of 1948, when Zionist terrorists, helped by the British, pushed the Palestinians off their land in a violent pogrom. “The Zionists wanted a Jewish state in Palestine. And for that, it was necessary to remove the indigenous people from the land. This is precisely what happened during the Nakba in 1948.”
On 26 February, this year, Nachshon spoke at a rally outside Heidelberg Town Hall, organised by the Banyule Palestine Action Group to put pressure on the council to support a ceasefire. Nachshon seemed nervous—perhaps because he was speaking in front of a crowd including about 40 people from the West Heidelberg mosque. Maybe he didn’t know how people would react to someone with his history.
He needn’t have worried. Nachshon got a huge round of applause and, on the finish of the speech, the local imam, Sheikh Alaa, approached and warmly shook Nachshon’s hand. 
At that moment, as the two embraced, I realised that it takes more courage to be an Israeli Jew who champions the Palestinian cause than it takes to fire shells into Palestinian homes from the turret of a military tank.

An unlikely ally of Palestine

The Banyule Palestine Action Group has collected more than 600 signatures on a petition calling on Banyule City Council, in Melbourne’s north-east, to pass a motion supporting an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, in line with motions passed in other councils across Australia.
On 2 February, four Banyule Palestine Action Group members, including Imam Alaa of Elsedeaq Heidelberg Mosque and Lucas Moore of the Victorian Socialists, met with Banyule Council CEO Allison Beckwith and Mayor Tom Melican. After a brief discussion, these officials rejected the petition, claiming that the matter is “outside of the duties, functions and powers of the council”.
Yet in previous years, the council has endorsed support actions on a range of international issues, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. So their claim it is outside of their jurisdiction is obviously a sham.
The Banyule Palestine Action Group believes the council’s response is no more than a cop-out. Banyule is home to a large multicultural community that has taken a strong interest in the unfolding humanitarian disaster in Gaza. Elected councillors have a responsibility to listen to the concerns of citizens who submit a petition to the council following BCC’s own policies and procedures.
The council also has a moral duty to consider the feelings of the community, many of whom are grieving or have personal connections with the land and people of Gaza and at the moment feel ignored by their council representatives.
Banyule is also home to one of the many Australian companies contributing technology and expertise to the global weapons industry. <a href="https://www.lovittech.com.au/military/">Lovitt Technologies in Greensborough</a> is part of the worldwide supply chain for F-35 Joint Strike Fighter components as well as parts for several other military aircraft.
“We are building a Palestine solidarity movement in Banyule to put pressure on the council and also to draw attention to the role Lovitt Technologies plays in supporting the Israeli military machine with Australian-made components”, Moore said, speaking to Red Flag outside the Heidelberg Mosque.
He and other BPAG members were leafleting the mosque with flyers promoting a 26 February protest outside the council offices.
“The imam gave a great speech at Friday’s lunchtime prayer service. He’s encouraging everyone at the mosque to join our rally. We handed out hundreds of flyers and got a great reception”, he said.
Banyule Palestine Action Group is calling on Banyule City Council to agree to table the “Banyule Council Palestine Solidarity with Palestine” petition at the next council meeting on 26 February. 
It also wants the council to pass a motion calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, in line with motions passed in other councils.
Join the BPAG rally
WHEN: 6pm Monday, 26 February
WHERE: Outside the council meeting, 275 Upper Heidelberg Road, Ivanhoe

Banyule Council should oppose genocide

In the face of overwhelming horror, it can seem almost impossible to fight back in any meaningful way. Many people are feeling like that now in response to Israel’s unrelenting and murderous attacks on the Palestinian populations of Gaza and the West Bank.
Activist groups have been quick to organise protest marches and rallies, and they have been huge all around the world. There are many actions we can take to build local solidarity movements and put political pressure on governments to stop supplying Israel with weapons and to end imperialist political support for apartheid Zionism.
The working class has a special role to play in this movement because it is the only group with the power to paralyse and even overthrow global capitalism. 
So it is vital that the trade union movement acts in solidarity with the Palestinian cause.
The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) has <a href="https://twitter.com/unionsaustralia/status/1714893183736487940">issued a statement</a> calling for an immediate ceasefire, the lifting of the siege and the delivery of emergency aid to Gaza and the West Bank. However, the statement does not go far enough, and it’s not mobilising trade union members to join the solidarity movement.
Instead of helping to channel the anger of workers who are rightly horrified by Israel’s actions it engages in a lot of “both sides are to blame” and merely makes passive calls aimed at a government that has shown—in its words and actions—that it is willing to allow Israel to continue murdering Palestinians as long as they do it “humanely”.
The workers’ movement in the Middle East provides some clues as to how union members in Australia might make their solidarity active and more meaningful. The Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions has <a href="https://twitter.com/workersinpales1/status/1713908923848130880">called on unionists in the West</a> to help stop the global arms trade that provides the Zionist armies with their weapons of mass destruction.
The Palestinian unions are calling on unions around the world:
<ul>
<li>To refuse to build weapons destined for Israel. </li>
<li>To refuse to transport weapons to Israel.</li>
<li>To pass motions in their trade union to this effect.</li>
<li>To take action against complicit companies involved in implementing Israel’s brutal and illegal siege, especially if they have contracts with your institution.</li>
<li>To pressure governments to stop all military trade with Israel, and in the case of the US, funding to it.</li>
</ul>
There are practical steps that trade unions in Australia could take, such as divesting union funds from financial institutions that deal with the global arms industry. This is a simple and direct action that could happen immediately. Rank-and-file unionists can begin to raise this issue in our workplaces and unions by passing motions, having lunchroom conversations and doing a bit of research.
We have history on our side. As the Palestinian unions note, trade union boycotts have been successful in the past in helping to topple fascist and racist regimes. 
Australian unions also have a proud record of active solidarity. In 1938, wharfies in Port Kembla refused to load iron onto a ship that was going to transport it to Japan. The wharfies argued that pig iron going to Japan was to be used to manufacture bullets and bombs that were killing peasants in Japan’s brutal invasion of China.
The unions lent their weight to the anti-Vietnam-war movement and were instrumental in Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s decision to end conscription. Trade unions and rank-and-file workers were also key to the Australian wing of the anti-apartheid movement that helped to end white rule in South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s.
Today, it is important for trade unions and rank-and-file activists to connect with <a href="https://bdsaustralia.net.au/">Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement</a> to coordinate action against Israeli companies operating in Australia and to isolate the Zionist state.
When workers take collective action, they set in motion the great levers of historical change. Socialists have always argued for this perspective: to unite workers all over the world against imperialism and to put an end to the rotten capitalist system once and for all.

Workers and Palestine

The political establishment in many imperialist Western countries is worried that young people are not buying into the narrative that Israel is the victim in the current wave of Middle East violence. Students are often on the frontlines of protest in many cities around the world. In recent days, they have taken to the streets and campuses to protest in solidarity with the Palestinian cause. This has been met with repression—from banning marches or campus meetings, disciplinary action against students who speak out, and moving to outlaw pro-Palestine groups.
A group of students who organised a solidarity action at the School of Oriental and African Studies in central London has been suspended by university management. Of course, the university denies taking action to silence the protest on political grounds; it instead cites “procedures” and “protocols” that it says the students did not follow. 
British Home Secretary Suella Braverman is saying the quiet part out loud when it comes to voicing ruling class opinions on pro-Palestine protests. She has suggested that waving the Palestinian flag or using pro-Palestine chants at protests could be made criminal offences. Thousands defied her by marching in London and other cities. For now, the British ruling class hasn’t got the courage of its convictions. But if the protests intensify, Braverman may get her way.
The German government has banned on spurious grounds the local activities of the international Palestinian prisoner support group Samidoun. The German chancellor basically ruled that any expression of support for Gaza is a “celebration of Hamas”.
Writing in Rupert Murdoch’s trashy tabloid the New York Post, columnist Kirsten Fleming lambasted Gen Z college students for refusing to jump on the pro-Israeli bandwagon in the aftermath of the Hamas border incursions and attacks on settlements inside Israel. Instead, Fleming moaned that young adults view Hamas “through rose-colored glasses”.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Everybody with an ounce of compassion has condemned Hamas’ attacks on civilians. But people are also capable of recognising that Israeli war crimes are unfolding in real time as the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and pogroms against Palestinian settlements in the West Bank continue.
Gen Z students and workers are also smart enough to realise that their own governments are defending Israeli atrocities, offering them more deadly munitions, and doing absolutely nothing to rein in the genocidal rampage unleashed by the Netanyahu government on Palestinian men, women and children.
Kristen Fleming went on to complain about solidarity actions that continue to take place across the United States and the rest of the world. Not only, she writes, should Gen Z shut up and toe the line of their political leaders, they should not express contrary opinions or call for solidarity with the embattled people of Gaza and the West Bank.
There has been a backlash against many student groups that have come out in support of besieged Palestinians. The aim of columns like the one Kristen Fleming wrote is to portray pro-Palestinian protesters and organisers as anti-Semitic and/or in favour of terrorism. To that end, quite innocuous statements of support for the people of Gaza or criticising Israel’s long history of ethnic cleansing have been attacked as anti-Semitic or pro-terrorist.
For example, at Harvard University in the US, a statement from a Palestinian support group that merely pointed out the obvious—”We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence”—and that did not even mention Hamas was immediately condemned and signatory groups pressured into rescinding their support.
Signatories to the statement are being targeted and doxed. Some wealthy donors to the university have begun to withdraw their largesse and several prominent companies that regularly recruit Ivy League students are demanding that anybody who was involved with the support statement be blacklisted from future employment. 
This campaign is being supported by other sections of the right-wing media, including the notorious Daily Mail. Students at Penn State University are also facing a backlash for holding pro-Palestine rallies on campus.
So much for free speech on campus, eh? The reality is that the Israeli government spends a small fortune on its Hasbara global propaganda efforts. In recent years, it has targeted campus-based groups around the world to counter the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign, which is working to isolate the Zionist regime. BDS has been particularly successful in isolating Israeli academics who support the ongoing occupation of Palestinian land.
In the current situation, Zionist efforts to build their own propaganda forces on university campuses are having results. In New York, pro-Palestine actions on the City University campus were met by counter-protesting pro-Israeli student groups.
The situation for pro-Palestine activists in France is also very difficult. There is no doubt that fascist and anti-Semitic elements are using the cover of the Gaza attacks to come out of the shadows. However, without any evidence, the French authorities have explicitly attempted to link Nazi graffiti on synagogues and Jewish schools to pro-Palestine groups. Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin told the French media: “Most of the incidents are graffiti of swastikas or slogans like death to the Jews and calls for [Palestinian uprising].”
The murder of a teacher at a school in the northern French city of Arras has also been tenuously linked to events in Gaza. The killer was a Chechen national known to police. President Emmanuel Macron was quick to call the incident “Islamist terrorism” despite police saying there is nothing linking it to the situation in Gaza.
All pro-Palestine demonstrations and rallies have been banned in France on the pretext that they might lead to anti-Semitic violence. When protesters defied the ban in Paris, they were attacked by the cops and dispersed with tear gas.
There has not been such a backlash yet on Australian campuses. But left-wing students at La Trobe University in Melbourne have been warned not to put pro-Palestinian posters up on the campus.
This attack on the right of students and workers to protest against ongoing Israeli war crimes should not come as a surprise. Western rulers rely on Israel to be its watchdog in the Middle East. When the beast slips the chain, as Israel has done now, the imperialist ruling class attempts to shut down opposition in its own population at the same time as it tries to justify mass murder by its client state. This is part of the ideological and political support that imperialism gives to Israel. By vilifying the Palestinian cause in the imperialist heartland, it makes any discussion of alternate viewpoints seem beyond the pale. 
It’s important to say that we won’t be going quietly. In the UK, Labour leader Keir Starmer is facing a rank-and-file revolt of party members for his appalling endorsement of Israeli terror. The militant rail workers’ union has endorsed pro-Palestine protests and is raising humanitarian aid for Gaza. Across the world, tens of thousands are defying anti-protest orders to express their solidarity with Palestine. Our only choice is to continue raising our voices and taking action against our own ruling class to demand that it stop supporting Zionist atrocities in Palestine.

It’s right to stand with Palestine

Editorial staff from the Fairfax newspapers took wildcat strike action last week to protest against the latest round of job cuts at the financially challenged publishing company.
The three-day stoppage was called in response to a Thursday afternoon email from management, which outlined a series of forced cuts that will result in around 120 members of the journalists’ union (MEAA) losing their jobs.
The striking journalists, from the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age and the Financial Review, were rightly disgusted.
Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance “CEO” Paul Murphy described the cuts as a “body blow” to Fairfax. However, the irony of a union leader being referred to as CEO seems lost on Paul.
Insiders estimate that Fairfax is going to shed the equivalent of one full newsroom – adding to the 600 or so jobs that have been sliced out of the company over recent years.
In August, Fairfax imposed savage cuts on its regional newsrooms, which also led to a brief strike, but that did not stop the cuts. At the same time, the company announced up to one-third of staff in its community newspapers would also be sacked.
Last year, Fairfax announced a half-year profit of over $27 million – but it seems that the only really profitable part of the business is its real estate advertising division, Domain, which has been supporting the news operations. Now that might be about to stop.
Fairfax may split itself sometime in the near future, with profitable divisions kept and the loss-making newspapers either shut down completely (leaving only online mastheads) or sold off.
We must applaud the action of the striking journalists who didn’t wait for a Fair Work Commission hearing before walking off the job – effectively making the walk-out an illegal strike under current (Labor-crafted) industrial relations laws.
The union also launched an online petition calling on Fairfax to reconsider the cuts. But that sort of symbolic action will not force Fairfax management to reverse the job cuts and it certainly won’t secure the jobs of the remaining journalists.
The CFMEU promptly offered its support to the Fairfax workers and there was a big social media campaign to encourage a boycott of Fairfax products during the strike period. This was welcome and it showed publicly that most of us are loyal to the journalists and what they do rather than to the various Fairfax mastheads or to the company itself.
To reverse the cuts and put pressure on Fairfax bosses not to make further cuts requires a campaign against newsroom cuts that encompasses the whole of the news industry.
The cuts are not limited to Fairfax. While you won’t read about them in the Murdoch press, News Corporation’s titles are not immune from job losses. Nor are the commercial broadcasters, the ABC or the SBS. Job cuts are right across the board as the entire news industry undergoes a massive shake up.
The problem is that the bottom line in the news industry is, well, the bottom line.
Media is like any other business – news is a commodity produced for a profit by capitalist entities. And profit, not public interest is the driving force behind the journalism industry.
The same rules apply at the state-funded broadcasters. The ABC and the SBS are forced to compete within the “for-profit” culture of the media business and they are subject to the same pressure to commercialise their output.
Not even the legendary left-liberal Guardian is immune from these pressures. In the same week as the Fairfax strike, the Guardian, which is owned by a not-for-profit trust, also announced hundreds of job losses globally.
These are the reasons why the Turnbull government is considering forcing a merger between ABC and SBS, pressuring the ABC to take advertisements, and, at the extreme end of Liberal party rhetoric, the eventual privatisation of public service broadcasting.
The government is also proposing media ownership changes to prop up the ailing media giants. When legislated, the changes will allow News Corporation to get bigger at the expense of its rivals and to move into television through the potential acquisition of the Ten network.
Once these moves are underway, there will be more job cuts in newsrooms around the country.
The Fairfax strike – while it won’t result in a victory that saves the journos’ jobs – is an important indicator of the way forward and should be a rallying call to news workers across the nation that they too must gear up for a fight over jobs.
The MEAA leadership is unlikely to draw the same conclusions. They will try to reach a resolution of the dispute through dialogue with Fairfax and not rock the boat anywhere else in the meantime.
This is obvious in the language Paul Murphy used in a press release. As one CEO to another, Murphy called on Fairfax bosses to consider “smarter ways of identifying business efficiencies as a way of lowering costs so that it can continue to produce the high standard of journalism its audience wants”.
He also offered business advice to Fairfax, rather than rallying his members to fight back. “Constantly cutting away swathes of the very people who create the journalism that is the reason your audience buys your product makes no sense”, Murphy said.
Apart from the petition, which is easy to ignore, the MEAA has launched a campaign it calls “Fair Go, Fairfax”, but the campaign website <a href="http://www.fairgofairfax.org.au/">fairgofairfax.org.au</a> merely bounces back to a petition at the MEAA site.
We have to be brutally honest and say that this is a pathetic response.
Senior Fairfax staff have reported that the whole workforce is “seething with anger” at the way they’ve been treated. If this anger were properly harnessed then a real campaign against the job cuts could be mounted.
Unfortunately, it is more likely that the anger will turn to disappointment, disillusionment and abandoning the struggle.
In the absence of a coordinated and militant fightback by MEAA members, the slow death by a thousand cuts will eventually wipe out Fairfax and possibly other news media outlets.
When that eventually happens our democracy will be poorer, there will be less public accountability for politicians, bosses and bureaucrats and fewer radical voices will be heard in the mainstream media.

Fairfax journos strike, but more will be needed to save news media

"We stand for freedom and will be freedom's bulwark against the encroachments of an unworthy and dishonourable government"
– Tony Abbott, 2012.
There is something deeply and disturbingly ironic about Australian prime minister Tony Abbott meeting Egypt’s military dictator Abdel el-Sisi and <a href="http://cached.newslookup.com/cached.php?ref_id=111&amp;siteid=2104&amp;id=8469136&amp;t=1411685068">urging the blood-soaked general</a> to release Al Jazeera journalist Peter Greste from jail. Greste was convicted of spreading “false” news that harmed Egypt’s national interest, in a sham trial that resembled a Monty Python script rather than the heights of judicial intelligence.
The meeting between the two leaders took place at the United Nations general assembly in New York. Leave out the grotesque parody of the encounter and what are we left with? Two leaders who claim that it has become necessary to reduce freedoms in order to keep their citizens free.
In Egypt, el-Sisi is terrorising the population with arbitrary detentions, the arrest of activists and death sentences handed out 600 at a time to alleged members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. Journalists and TV presenters are among those persecuted and gaoled for speaking out against el-Sisi’s coup and the farcical recent elections.
In Australia, Tony Abbott leads a government that is also slowly <a href="http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/09/22/australias-counter-terror-laws-will-restrict-our-free-speech-and-free-press">destroying our freedoms and political democracy</a> so hard won over generations.
In a speech to Federal Parliament, Abbott laid out his anti-democratic agenda, couched in the faux-Churchillian tones of his political hero, John Howard: “Regrettably, for some time to come, the delicate balance between freedom and security may have to shift. There may be more restrictions on some so that there can be more protection for others.”
Who are the “some” and who are the “others” in this Orwellian doublespeak?
Well, that is becoming clearer as the days pass and Abbott’s anti-freedom agenda becomes clearer.
The first category of the “some” and the ones in most danger are members of Australia’s Muslim community. Their freedoms are less precious to this nasty rightwing government than the freedoms of the rich and powerful.
But the net is widening and the “some” is expanding as Abbott takes us ever closer to another war in Iraq.
Under the Big Brother-esque and ominously named <a href="http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/billsdgs/3361366/upload_binary/3361366.pdf;fileType=application%2Fpdf">National Security Legislation Amendment Bill (no. 1) 2014</a> (PDF), new categories of offence have been created and the “some” enlarged to cover journalists, whistleblowers and anyone who exposes secret anti-terror operations to public scrutiny.
The penalty for anyone guilty of exposing a shadowy “special intelligence operation” is 10 years in jail – that’s longer than the sentence imposed on Peter Greste by Egypt’s military dictators.
Worse still, the exact nature of a “special” police operation is not specified. It could be anything that the government, ASIO and the federal police want to keep away from the public’s gaze.
Nobody should be surprised by Abbott’s grab for secret powers and the government’s push to hide its war against Australia’s Muslims behind a veil of secrecy. This is the same government that has consistently refused to disclose information about its murderous war against asylum seekers.
This is the same government that lied its way into office and is now cutting funding for social services, health and education while letting the big polluters and the mining industry off the hook.
This is the same government that promised no cuts to the ABC or the SBS, but that is subjecting the public broadcasters to death by a thousand slow cuts.
This is the same government that is attempting to destroy workers’ rights by cutting off the trade union movement at the knees through a thoroughly politicised Royal Commission that allows the crimes of the bosses to go unpunished.
This is the same government that is spending billions on a new “war on terror” at home and abroad while crying “budget emergency”.
It is the same government that has used draconian powers of “preventative” detention for the first time to hold people who haven’t been charged with any crime.
Now this government wants to silence whistleblowers and threaten journalists who dare to challenge its power with 10 years in jail.
The Abbott government is the most serious threat to Australian democracy since Kerr’s coup against Gough Whitlam in 1975.
Yet, at best, the criticism from senior journalists has been mild. Despite the thundering headline on his News.com.au column (“<a href="http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/our-free-press-is-under-siege/story-fni0fha6-1227072053944">Our free press is under siege</a>“), all that Laurie Oakes could muster as a challenge to Abbott was the following lame paragraph: “The Government should be pushed to frame anti-terrorism laws in a way that minimises the infringement on press freedom.”
The Guardian’s deputy political editor, Katherine Murphy, also <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/26/the-acid-test-australian-journalists-must-ask-what-agenda-they-serve">raised her voice in complaint</a>. In the end, however, Murphy’s response was as muted as Oakes’. It’s all about “asking” the government to be more accountable. That’s not going to cut it.
The journalists’ union, the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, has <a href="http://www.alliance.org.au/meaa-says-national-security-law-an-outrageous-attack-on-press-freedom-in-australia">condemned the security measures</a>, arguing that they criminalise the day-to-day work of journalists and restrict the flow of information about vital national security issues.
The union is right about this. We need a serious fightback against the legislation – perhaps starting with journalists imposing a boycott on all government media announcements until the law is repealed.
[Martin Hirst is a 25-year member of the MEAA.]

Tony Abbott’s crimes against democracy

Dirty Secrets: Our ASIO Files, edited by Meredith Burgmann, is a who’s who of former and current radicals, agitators and old communists.
One of the best pieces is the chapter about Communist Party member and author Frank Hardy, written by his son Alan. Another is that of retired High Court judge Michael Kirby. His file was created when he was 12 years old. Members of his family – in particular his father’s mother and her friends – were members of the CPA in the 1940s and 1950s, and young Michael was dragged along to protests and meetings at which he was photographed. Another entry mentions the child of one subject as being a seasoned kindergarten militant at the unlikely age of four.
Several contributors make the point that reading their own files made them distinctly uncomfortable. That’s one reason I have not yet accessed my own ASIO records. The writers also make the point that the files are disjointed, disorganised and riddled with mistakes. They also contain photographs, some taken as part of routine surveillance, but, more disturbingly, some obviously taken and submitted to ASIO by informants. For example, the only photos of Verity Burgmann (now an academic at Melbourne University) are of her in a bikini during an April 1978 International Socialists’ summer camp at Kempsey in NSW.
It is horrible to think that there are rats in the ranks, but these files make it clear that the spooks routinely recruit people to infiltrate protest movements and organisations.
No limits
In one story, the “subject” of the file finds out 40 years after the event that ASIO broke into her flat, rummaged through her personal items and wrote down for its files the titles of books and magazines she had in her bedroom. In several chapters the subject discovers that ASIO attempted to interfere with their job by trying to have them sacked, or intervened to make sure they were not employed. It seems that the spooks routinely make inquiries with employers when checking up on surveillance targets.
But it gets even more personal. Penny Lockwood, the daughter of journalist and Communist Party member Rupert Lockwood, recounts how her heart was broken when a man she loved revealed to her that their affair had been part of his job as an ASIO informant. She’s not the only one to receive such a shock: Peter Murphy mentions that he was in a relationship with an informer in the late 1970s while both were in the CPA.
In 2011, a British case revealed that a police undercover officer had infiltrated an environmental group, befriended and then married another member, eventually having children with her. We should perhaps not discount that such infiltration is still happening.
We have no reason to assume that ASIO does not engage in infiltration, break-ins, creepy snooping, false attempts at intimacy, covert photography and video collection, contacting employers or telephone tapping today.
There is a very interesting chapter by historian and activist Gary Foley. Gary has been active in left wing and Indigenous politics for more than 40 years. He first came to ASIO’s attention in the early 1970s. Perhaps the first time was 26 January 1972, when the inaugural Aboriginal Tent Embassy was established on the lawns of Parliament House (the old one) on the shore of Lake Burley Griffin.
ASIO had been interested in radical Aborigines for at least 20 years. The concern was that Aboriginal political networks had been infiltrated by the CPA, which – in ASIO’s fevered hive mind – meant that Indigenous activists were “dupes” and “stooges” for the communists and ripe to be influenced by Soviet agents.
Wendy Bacon’s file provides insight into how ASIO dealt with the emerging new left. Bacon was an anarchist student at the University of NSW when she came to the notice of the secret police in 1968. Her brother Jim (later Labor premier of Tasmania) was a member of the Maoist CPA-ML (ML stood for “Marxist-Leninist”), and he too came to the attention of ASIO while a student at Monash University.
Bumbling
For students of modern espionage, the stories told here also are interesting because the main picture of ASIO that emerges from the pages of Dirty Secrets is that Australia’s premier domestic spy agency is a bumbling clutch of Inspector Clouseaus backed up by a squad of Keystone Cops who couldn’t find their arses if they were on fire.
An entry from Alan (son of Frank) Hardy shows just how stupid some of ASIO’s informants really were: “1. Alan Hardy is a blond haired, tattooed truck driver working for Dalgety’s. 2. Alan Hardy is very thin, lives with another boy in Kings Cross and is VERY interested in theatrics.”
Many of the 26 prominent Australians who’ve shared the secrets of their ASIO files in this collection recount that the entries made over a period of 40 years by spies and their informers are riddled with mistakes, misspelled names, dates and times wrongly recorded and physical descriptions that bear no resemblance to any person living or dead, yet purport to be of the file’s “subject”.
Unfortunately, this bungling of simple details, like personal descriptions of individuals, gives a rather comical impression of what is essentially a well-funded, disciplined and aggressive formation of political police.
Still in business
It is a mistake to see ASIO, various state police Special Branch agencies and other collections of Australian spooks as benign, incompetent, out of touch or out of date. ASIO is the Australian government’s dirty secret. We know little of its current operations – which no doubt continue to have stupid code names like “Operation Whip” – and little of its political targets beyond the usual suspects.
Today those usual suspects are mostly – but by no means limited to – alleged Islamic radicals, so-called “home grown” terrorists and the sort of young men who are most likely to venture outside Australia on “jihad” to Syria, Iraq, northern Africa or Pakistan.
We hear almost nothing today about ASIO’s spying on non-Islamic groups. We don’t know whose phones, email and Facebook communications they are monitoring. We don’t know the extent of ASIO’s files on left groups. We don’t know if the private security firms who have been caught infiltrating anti-fracking groups are contracted to ASIO or if they just happily coexist, sharing personnel and “intel” on protesters and agitators.
Backtracking
The disappointing aspect of the book is that most of the writers are now 30 years older and 30 years more conservative. They portray an image of radicals and leftists in the 1960s and 1970s as idealistic youngsters who were playing at being revolutionaries.
Many of them give the impression that what they did was mostly harmless fun.
They make fun of their arrests on ridiculous charges of disturbing the peace. They joke about discovering through the files that the phone taps that they thought were all part of dressing up as subversives 30 years ago were actually in place and being used to keep tabs on them.
Worst of all, many of them now describe their youthful convictions as folly. They lament the wasted hours spent in “endless” and “boring” meetings discussing politics, tactics and revolution.
Michael Kirby is one who complains with hindsight that he should have been out partying instead of spending hours in the committees of the Council for Civil Liberties and other causes.
Even Verity Burgmann, who was in the International Socialists in the 1970s and early 1980s, says that she now regrets her involvement as a waste of time.
In the end, this is the reactionary message at the heart of this book. It is a shame that many of the contributors – who were pioneering members of the CPA, inspirational leaders of the women’s movement, foundation members of Gay Liberation, militants in the anti-Vietnam War campaign and the anti-apartheid struggles of the 1970s – now think that maybe Australia does need a competent and well-managed domestic surveillance agency to help keep “us” “safe” from … well, “From what exactly?” is the question I am left with.
That is why it is unfortunate – and profoundly apolitical – that so many of the contributions to this book end with the lament that from the 1940s to the 1980s ASIO seemed so unprofessional and incompetent in its espionage efforts. This comment, from the late Joan Bielski, is typical and disappointing – coming as it does from the pen of a radical and militant leader of the early women’s movement:
“As taxpayers, Australians have a right to expect a more sophisticated, politically astute security service … Recent cases made public suggest that ASIO is not such an organisation.”
ASIO can never be an organisation that “respects human rights” or “the right to differ and to advocate for a cause or an idea”, as Joan Bielski might have wished for.
The ruling class is still the ruling class and ASIO – like the army, the police and the courts – is an institution established, funded, directed and managed in order to ensure that modern day subversives do not get the upper hand.
So while Dirty Secrets is a good read and a fascinating insight into the surveillance of radicals – at least up until 1983 – it is not an effective guide to fighting back or resisting the predations of ASIO or other spy agencies into the left today. If the spooks were interested in the women’s movement and the gay rights struggles of the 1970s-80s, we should assume they are just as interested in today’s activists.
The most salient comment in this regard comes from renowned jurist Elizabeth Evatt, the daughter of the famous Clive Evatt, the NSW politician and lawyer who successfully fought the Menzies government’s attempt to outlaw the CPA in the 1950s:
“In this age of fear of terrorism, restrictive security legislation and security services concentrating on the prevention and punishment of politically inspired violence, we would do well to remember that judgments about potential subversion and security risks are not always based on reliable grounds.”
Let’s not have any illusions that organisations like ASIO are in any way “necessary” for our protection. Their job is to protect the interests of Australian capitalism and the state that serves it. Our job is to continue the struggle.
[Dirty Secrets is published by NewSouth Books.]­­

ASIO's dirty secrets

The journalists’ union, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA), has recently decided to change its formal structure to create the position of appointed CEO, instead of having its leadership directly elected by members.
This is a backward step for a once progressive union and removes decision making from the hands of the rank and file, putting it firmly in the pockets of unelected officials.
The MEAA represents journalists, actors and people who work in the entertainment industries. An amalgamated union, it’s made up of the former Actors’ Equity, the Australian Journalists’ Association and the union representing stage hands, riggers and theatre crews.
The move to having an appointed CEO is another step in the corporatisation of the MEAA. Supporters of the move argued it would bring the union into the 21st century and that having a leader elected from the ranks of the union was anachronistic. This is a mistaken view. The idea that any union should “go to the labour market” to find its leader is absolutely wrong.
Unions are political organisations, not business entities; the leadership of the union should be committed to advancing the collective interests of the membership, not running the organisation on principles of efficiency or value for money.
It is a sad indictment of a once proud industrial organisation that its leading members – the national council – would vote to reduce the voice of members in the union, rather than preserve and extend it.
In what is perhaps a sign of things to come inside the MEAA, the federal secretary, Chris Warren, refused to allow a campaigner against the corporatisation, Marcus Strom, to distribute an open letter to members in NSW.
Marcus wrote that the future of the union is on the line over this issue: “Our industries and crafts are changing and we must change with them. But the bedrock of that change must be members’ involvement and democratic accountability.”
It is a pity that this warning was not heeded. Instead the council opted for so-called “merit-based selection” of all senior management positions in the MEAA. This opens the way for careerists and political hacks to set the direction of the union and removes any power that members once had to hold an elected federal secretary to account.
One horrified MEAA member has suggested setting up a rank-and-file reform group inside the union. This is good idea and one that should be supported by all members who see this corporatising move as an anti-democratic and backward step for the union.

Swimming against the mainstream on Palestine

Another council calls for Gaza ceasefire

An unlikely ally of Palestine

Banyule Council should oppose genocide

Workers and Palestine

It’s right to stand with Palestine

Fairfax journos strike, but more will be needed to save news media

Tony Abbott’s crimes against democracy

ASIO's dirty secrets

Two steps backward for the MEAA

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