Adelaide People Gather Round For Palestinians

Written by: Ned K. on 9 April 2024

 

Sunday 7 April, marked 6 months of fortnightly rallies and demonstrations in Adelaide in support of Palestinian people oppressed by Zionist Israel regime and its imperialist backers, particularly the USA.

The rally on steps of Parliament House gathered around guest speaker Nasser Mashni (above),  President of the Australian Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN).

Nasser is a Palestinian Australian and despite the devastation and loss of over 30,000 Palestinian lives including over 13,000 children, he was full of optimism about the heroic struggles of the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank.

Many passers-by on their way to AFL Gather Round game at Adelaide Oval that afternoon stopped to hear what Nasser had to say. There were Hawthorn and Collingwood scarves and jumpers among those at the rally.

Nasser said that the bombing of aid worker vehicles and the killing of aid workers was a tragedy but it was no accident. Nasser explained that it was part of a familiar Israeli Defence Force (IDF) playbook. He said that the main purpose for the bombing of the aid workers and their vehicles was because one element of the Zionist regime strategy is to use starvation to add to Palestinian deaths, as part of their overall strategy to eliminate Palestinians from Palestinian land altogether.

Nasser said that soon after the bombing of the aid workers, a ship containing food supplies and other aid that was headed for Gaza turned around. The bombing of aid workers also took the spotlight off the slaughter of Palestinian health workers and patients in the largest hospital in Gaza.

Nasser said that finally Albanese and Wong showed some anger towards the IDF and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. However Albanese and Wong and their Government still supported Israel as a “democracy”.  They failed miserably by siding with colonial oppressor rather than with the indigenous Palestinian people. Nasser said there was a lot in common between the struggles of the Indigenous people of Australia and Palestinians.

Nasser gave the example of the recent multi-million dollar contract the Albanese government signed with an Israeli owned defence company, Elbit Systems.

Before people at the rally commenced their street demonstration, Nasser urged Palestinians living in Australia to hold their heads high as they had the support of the overwhelming majority of the peoples of the world, including non-Palestinians living in Australia.

Nasser also noted the presence of Unions at rallies across Australia he had been part of.

 

As Australia aids Israeli genocide, Elders say it’s time to target Pine Gap.

Written by: Lindy Nolan on 8 April 2024

 

Above: Peltherre Chris Tomlins at the Frontier Wars protests in Canberra on 25 April, 2018. Mr Tomlins has opposed Pine Gap for decades and is a staunch anti-Zionist. Last month he stepped down as Greens' candidate for the seat of Araluen in NT, after being falsely accused of anti-semitism.

While Palestinians are deliberately murdered and starved, Australia aids Israeli genocide, through Pine Gap near Mparntwe Alice Springs. 

At a recent online forum on Pine Gap and Palestine, Professor Richard Tranter from Nautilus Institute made clear Pine Gap is Australia’s biggest contribution to US and Israeli wars.

In 2003 John Howard declared war against Iraq, against the wishes of 94 percent of our people. Back then, Pine Gap guided missiles to strike Iraq. Now its surveillance and targeting means Australia is at war with Palestine, without declaring it.

First Peoples know undeclared wars are as deadly as any other. The Frontier Wars are proof.

Forum speaker, Aunty Barbara Flick called for a protest at Pine Gap near Mparntwe Alice Springs, like the huge mobilisation she joined in the 1980s. Such a protest would bring allies to Mparntwe when its First Peoples’ communities and their young people most need it. 

Parallel surveillance, parallel genocide
Associate Professor Kathryn Gilbey, an Alyawarre woman, spoke of the two-week Mparntwe curfew, exposing a parallel to Pine Gap’s mass surveillance systems targeting Palestinians with the escalating surveillance of First Peoples, since the 2007 NT Intervention. Its fifteen-year genocide, particularly of children, went almost unreported in mainstream media.

She mentioned the lies against Palestine and lies triggering the Intervention. The key trigger was on ABC’s Lateline where an “Uluru youth worker” falsely alleging “paedophile rings run by Elders”, actually worked for Howard’s Aboriginal Affairs Minister. Truth uncovered didn’t stop further lies. “The little children are sacred” report is still frequently cited as the Intervention’s cause. Yet both report authors vehemently opposed the Intervention.

The “Emergency” legislation to “save children” didn’t mention the words ‘child’, ‘children’, ‘young’ or ‘youth’. It was full of map coordinates. Entry permits were removed and white businesses replaced successful Aboriginal-run projects in communities and towns. Mining and gas corporations were given land rights with no custodian vetoes. 

Young Aboriginal Peoples were swept from the safety of now defunded and disempowered homeland communities, where elders and culture had been strong, into crowded and unsupported regional centres.  

Children of the Intervention
Last year Vanguard said of a Saturday Paper expose, “In Children of the Intervention, Gurnaikurnai Wotjobaluk journalist Ben Abbatangelo gives voice to those central desert Peoples who have yet again been blamed. “He writes, ‘This desert town has been depicted as a war zone and its people as alien-like problems that need to be solved.’

“Of the so-called out-of-control young people, Abbatangelo says, ‘Dispossession and displacement lives within each of these kids. Most adolescents at the centre of the firestorm are also the grandchildren of the Stolen Generations and the great-grandchildren of those who were herded onto missions or massacred.’

“Aranda woman and Ntaria/Hermannsburg community organiser Que Nakamarra Kenny told him, ‘What’s clear is that no one cares more about Aboriginal people than Aboriginal people themselves. We’re at the tail end of the Northern Territory Intervention and these children are a product of that. They are the children of the Intervention who have grown up watching their parents be demonised and rejected.’”

Making clear links
For fifteen years, Elders like Aunty Elaine Kngwarraye Peckham and the late Harry Jakamarra Nelson, and younger leaders like Aunty Barbara Shaw trekked thousands of kilometres from Mparntwe and elsewhere to tell Intervention stories. They did this, even as they lived under the daily brutality of its regime, tried to support their people, especially their children. 

Right now, when genocide in Palestine is mirrored by ongoing genocide against First Peoples, it’s time to make links clear, and return some immediate support and truth telling for those parallel sacrifices. 

It’s time to create to hope through another convergence of allies at Mparntwe, and at the murderous US war base at Pine Gap. 

Developers’ divisive dream: First Peoples’ lands to feed real estate bubble

 

Written by: Lindy Nolan on 6 April 2024

 

(Above:  Collage of demolition of Redfern's Block, which began in 2011. All of the original buildings including the flag mural have been removed. Wiki Commons)

Capitalism must constantly expand. Government decisions on when, where and how to develop Australia have always served it.

Brilliant new research, Unshackled, reminds us how 160,000 convicts created colonies and wealth here for British capitalists. On stolen lands. 

Two centuries later, NSW governments led and fed the current residential real estate explosion. To link distant potential housing estates, they sold public assets to fund a spaghetti of tollways under and over the Sydney basin, and freeways on its north and south coasts.

Transurban, which grew from Macquarie Bank, purchased the government-subsided tollways with guarantees of ongoing mega profits. Transurban’s top security holder is Unisuper Ltd, but combined its three bigger US-owned runners up – State Street Corporation, Blackrock Group and The Vanguard Group – could easily outvote it.

This expansion is underpinned by high immigration. While governments locked up or locked out desperate refugees, and living costs soared, immigration also drove up rents and house prices. A review means soon only skilled migrants, earning $135,000 per year, will get visas (or afford housing).  

Last December ABC’s Nassim Khadem wrote Australian residential real estate value “has hit $10.3 trillion”, around three times bigger than superannuation holdings ($3.5 trillion) or listed stocks ($2.8 trillion). It’s a bubble. 

The cry is now ‘More LAND for housing!’ Ten per cent of NSW, including national parks, will soon be transferred to local Aboriginal lands councils. Corporations aim to grab it.

Land is wealth

In 2017, my Driving Disunity, the Business Council against Aboriginal Community revealed the Business Council backed Darkinjung Local Aboriginal Land Council against custodians. The custodians opposed selling sacred lands for real estate.

Westpac had trained Darkinjung to claim protected environmental land on the NSW Central Coast. It then sold what’s now a massive coastal resort and suburb, Magenta Shores, to BCA member Mirvac, despite huge local resistance. For all this, plus two other developments where 208 lots were sold, just 30 Aboriginal homes (including mobile ones) were built.

Darkunjung now has 1000 potential land claims, but other big coastal and Hawkesbury River headwater developments have already started. Meanwhile, Custodians and allies mobilise to defend sacred lands.

Westpac shared its template for removing environmental land caveats to 119 other NSW lands councils and claims are multiplying across the state. On Botany Bay, for example, Mirvac has been in talks with La Perouse custodians.

Separate to this, in Sydney Harbour, Goat Island was given to Sydney Metropolitan Lands Council, initially excluding local custodians, who protested. Future plans for Cockatoo Island with First Peoples’ involvement include a  hotel.

Likewise, the Block in Redfern was a famed 1970s Aboriginal public housing project. Despite a 29-month Tent Embassy occupation, it was redeveloped for the Aboriginal Housing Authority for 24 storeys of fee-paying overseas’ student accommodation. The Embassy won 62 affordable housing apartments for First Peoples including families, at 80 per cent of market rent. It excludes those displaced.

'The wealth is in the land’

This story told about NSW flowed on, though with some differences, nationwide.

Native title is not land rights. While its punishing process can provide benefits to individual First Peoples, successful applicants can’t veto mining and gas projects.

On other projects including real estate, proving custodian heritage can be extremely difficult without research skills and ongoing funding. With corporate backing, such problems dissolve, leaving greater division and dispossession, as the BCA-Darkingjung “partnership” shows.

The famed IATSIS map of Aboriginal Australia is based on public sources up till 1994. It shows what it calls ‘Darkinung’ lands in NSW to the west of coastal Awabakal and Kuring-gai lands of the Central Coast. While, among other things, the map emphasises it’s “not suitable for native title and other land claims”, the shift which eliminated Kuring-Gai claims is telling.

Some First Peoples who have faith in corporations will try to share benefits. But, once some environmental land is sold, pressure will be on to sell the rest. Capitalism will pave the world without remorse.

As Kuku Yalanji man John Hartley points out, “The wealth is in the land. Once it’s sold, it’s gone.”

When the bubble bursts, Australian governments will prop up profits not our peoples’ needs.

Unshackled reveals how often convicts rebelled. So too today. First Peoples and their allies will not give up. Our joint enemies become clearer day by day. As strong as they seem, their foundations are starting to crumble. Injustice breeds resistance.

 

Haiti: for thousands of new Louvetures

Written by: Alan Jackson on 4 April 2024

 

Above: Portrait of  Toussaint Louverture -artist unknown    Wikimedia Commons

Haiti is a country that has a rich history in revolution and has been an inspiration to revolutionaries across the world ever since the Haitian revolution in 1791, that roared until 1804 when Jean-Jacques Dessalines declared independence of Haiti. 

Deeply inspired by the French revolution, in a French colony once called Saint-Domingue, the enslaved masses stood up and crushed their slave masters. Haiti’s revolution is far more significant today considering this was a slave revolution and Frances’s revolution was a bourgeois revolution.

I’m not discrediting the historical significance and necessity of the French and other bourgeois revolutions but when we look at what Marx and Engels’s vision of the proletariat is, that “The Proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains, they have a world to win”, (1) we can see very clearly the masses of Haiti that were subjected to slavery literally had nothing to lose but their chains. Sadly, they couldn’t win the world but Toussaint Louverture the revolutionary general of the Haitian revolution and the Haitian masses won a piece of the world in the Haitian revolution of 1791. 

 

Today is a different story though. On the 11th of March 2024, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken “announced an additional $100 million to finance the deployment of a multinational force to Haiti following a meeting with Caribbean leaders in Jamaica to halt the country’s violent crises.” (2)  “The Bahamas, Bangladesh, Benin and Chad have also formally notified the United Nations of their intent to contribute personnel to an international force to help Haitian national police fight armed gangs.” (3) With the history of US Imperialism and the destruction and interference that has followed, it is almost certain that if successful, Haiti will become another puppet government and proxy state like so many other third world countries US Imperialism and their imperialist running dogs have sunk their teeth into. 

 

Before the revolution Haiti was under French occupation and the masses of Haiti were enslaved. The enslaved being “Afro-Haitians” being imported from West Africa by slavers to the colony and the Indigenous population called Taino. Haiti was very much a typical case of settler-colonialist terror with treatment being horrific and harsh. Even freeman who were Black or what was then known as “Mulatto” were treated with the utmost discontent and exploitation. The Slavers and Plantation owners didn’t even want to permanently reside in Haiti and saw France as their true home country. 

 

Seeing their time in Haiti is a lag time in the colonialist’s mindset also led to the degradation of any infrastructure that wasn’t purely for profit. Haiti and its people were overworked and not paid at all. They truly had nothing to lose but their chains. Haiti being a French Colony was inspired when it saw the French masses rise in the French revolution in 1789. Toussaint Louverture was inspired by the Jacobins and Robespierre particularly and rallied the masses of Haiti to overthrow their French slave masters. They were successful and unstoppable. The power of the masses was truly unleashed on their French Colonial occupiers. 

 

Toussaint and the revolutionaries of Haiti were supported by the French revolutionaries until 1799 when Napoleon Bonaparte ordered a coup d’etat that lead to the counter-revolution both in France and Haiti. Louverture was assassinated and 50,000 troops were sent to Haiti to cement the counter-revolution and reinstitution of slavery. Napoleon the person who would be put into the books of history as one of the greatest and most destructive conquerors, could not defeat the revolution. Napoleon was defeated and the masses of Haiti were victorious. The Haitians After many wins and setbacks, officially declared independence in 1804 under Dessalines. 

 

Haiti is the first and only case of a successful slave rebellion leading to the seizure of the old and establishment of a new independent state. This victory of the once toiling and enslaved masses would inspire the oppressed, the world over for centuries to come. 

 

It is important to know that the labour power wasn’t the only economic resource colonialists and imperialists sought in Haiti. Haiti is extremely rich in all resources, timber, copper, hemp, soil, sugar, rum, flour, coal, tobacco and much, much more. Its environment allowed for very profitable resources to flourish. The strongest rising economic power at the time realised this in 1915 and wanted to capitalise from it. This imperialist power was the United States. 

 

On the insistence of the National City Bank of New York, President Woodrow Wilson sent troops to Haiti at this time to take control of its political and economic resources and institutions. This led to an ultra-violent, colonialist occupation and subjugation of the Haitian masses for dominance of the region and resources for U.S Imperialism. 

 

Although the U.S officially withdrew from Haiti in 1934 it continued to interfere with Haiti’s political and economic climate through Haiti’s Bureaucrat Capitalists and U.S Neo-Colonialism. This situation remains to this day and is flaring up dramatically with a multi-national force being readied for deployment in Haiti. If all goes to plan for the U.S, this will result in occupation and overthrow of Haiti’s Government and the establishment of a puppet regime to secure interests for U.S capital. 

 

As Australians we can not save Haiti. Haiti is to be liberated by thousands of new creative and socialist Louvertures and the Haitian masses. The only way we as Australians can help is by overthrowing capitalism at home and establishing socialism in Australia. 

 

Australia as it is, is a running dog for U.S Imperialism. If we can break our leash and become an independent, socialist Australia, we can take pressure off Haiti and stop our support of U.S Imperialism.  

…………….

For an amazing resource on the Haitian revolution I strongly suggest reading C.L.R James – The Black Jacobins. 

 

Sources – 

(1.) Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels – The Communist Manifesto (Chapter 4)

(2.) - https://apnews.com/article/blinken-haiti-jamaica-prime-minister-gangs-ff6b76b6ba9a9d7b8f95fbf95a1d462c

(3.) - https://www.thestkittsnevisobserver.com/barbados-defence-force-getting-ready-for-haiti/US 

MUA HERE TO STAY - supporting their members and the Palestinian people

Written by: Ned K. on 27 March 2024

Above: NSW MUA Branch Secretary Paul Keating was one of 17 arrested at the ZIM blockade.   Photo: UnionistsforPalestine

The members and the leaders of the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) are leading the way in working class action in support of the Palestinian people in their struggle against imperialist backed Israeli Zionist regime.

Last Sunday, there was a demonstration against the unloading of an Israeli ship at Port Botany in NSW. Fifteen people including the MUA NSW Secretary, an MUA Organizer and MUA rank and file Delegates were among those arrested on the usual "nonpolitical" charges of obstruction of vehicles and failing to comply with police directives to move off roadways and the like. 

The hundreds of people at the demonstration peacefully assembled at the Patrick Terminal at Port Botany.

They demanded that federal and state governments ban Israeli ships owned by Israeli shipping company Zim from all ports in Australia.

They also demanded the federal government action broader sanctions against the Israeli Zionist government.

The MUA is leading by example in support of the Palestinian people. It is far in advance of many official union leaderships who remain silent, presumably because they do not want to go public against the ALP government. History will not judge their silence well. They will fade away as irrelevant while unions that take a stand against oppression will be like the MUA - HERE TO STAY!

 

Philippines Constitutional change: lingering spirits and the ghosts of the past

Written by: (Contributed) on 29 March 2024

 

Above: Filipinos rallying in February 2024 against Changes (“Cha”) to the Constitutional Charter (“Cha”)

 

Claims by political opposition figures in the Philippines that the presidential administration of Ferdinand Marcos Jnr. is conspiring to make changes to the constitution in order to enable the president to serve longer terms of office, are an indication of US foreign policy complicity inside the Philippine political system. 

The Philippines has long been considered a vital strategic part of US regional defence and security provision with the Marcos oligarchy widely regarded as puppets with Washington and the Pentagon pulling the strings.

The US is still haunted, even in the aftermath of the previous Duterte presidential administration, from when the Philippines democratically distanced itself from the US and sought a more stable diplomatic position toward China; the US do not want a re-run of the problem in any forthcoming elections. Philippine democracy is seen as an obstacle.

On the 18th and 19th March, US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken visited Manila for high-level diplomatic talks with the presidential administration of Ferdinand Marcos Jnr. It was Blinken's second such visit to Manila, highlighting the move by the US to push the Philippines into the front-line of US-led regional foreign policy and diplomatic hostilities with China. 

The diplomatic talks were accompanied with officially prepared media releases which contained no ambiguity. It was officially announced, for example, the diplomatic visit was 'to strengthen the US-Philippine alliance in pursuit of common interests ... with … Marcos' desire to be closer to Washington'. (1) The announcement that 'the deepening of Washington and Manila ties had also led to expanding cooperation with neighbours in the Indo-Pacific', was also acknowledgement the Philippines was officially linked into the US-led Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS). (2)

The US-led IPS is based on the US-Japan alliance as a global strategy, resting upon the so-called 'Quad' of the US, Japan, India and Australia, effectively hemming in China on four sides. (3) It is, therefore, not coincidental to note forthcoming high-level diplomatic relations scheduled in Washington next month include those between Blinken, Marcos and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishada. (4) 

Surprise agendas are unlikely. The IPS has evolved from a previous hardening of US-led attitudes toward China; over a decade ago Japanese diplomatic officials who actually spoke Chinese and had direct contact with counterparts in China were 'removed from the front-line of diplomacy', laying the basis for the present Cold War position. (5)

Two serious considerations have arisen: claims by Philippine opposition figures that the Marcos administration is planning to alter the constitution to extend single six-year presidential terms of office; an official acknowledgement that Blinken's second visit to Manila took place to track 'a serious regional crisis and probably armed conflict'. (6)

The former is a particularly sensitive issue for most Filipinos; the 1987 constitution was designed to deal with the legacy created by Marcos' father who governed the country by dictatorship and repression. For many, the move to alter the constitution remains reminiscent of the 1973 move by Ferdinand Marcos Snr. 'that indefinitely extended his term of office, leading to rampant corruption, human rights abuses and extra-judicial killings'. (7)
The US, nevertheless, would clearly like the present presidential administration to continue to remain in office for as long as possible, in the name of 'US interests'. (8)

One of the most vocal of the critics of Marcos Jnr. has been former president Duterte, who pursued a more independent foreign policy toward China. His presidential administration was subsequently regarded as problematic for both Washington and the Pentagon, and they were glad to see his demise and the rise of Marcos as more in line with traditional regional hegemonic diplomatic positions.

President Marcos Jnr. has already proposed a referendum to take place alongside mid-term elections next year about the proposed constitutional changes which he announced 'was not written for the globalised world … to enable … greater foreign investment'. (9) Foreign investment into the Philippine economy is at present limited to forty per cent of ownership, and the US is only too pleased to further increase their foothold into the political system; the moves can best be viewed as diplomatic manoeuvres akin to a puppet and puppet-masters. The present Marcos presidential administration, for example, has already been noted as 'the new darling of the West because of its principled and robust stance it has taken on China and its expanding security cooperation with western partners and allies'. (10)  

The latter is a problem which has emerged following flawed intelligence assessments that China, the main imperialist rival to the US, has systematically embarked upon 'grey-zone activities in the South China Seas', and been pursuing unclear political and military agendas. (11) In recent years, using the Marcos Jnr. presidential administration, the US has extended its military presence in the Philippines from five to nine bases, including some in the northern part of the country facing Taiwan which they regard as a potential 'theatre of war'.

The US has been concerned about the growing imbalance of power across the Taiwan Straits for over a decade, and a recent announcement that the US were training Taiwanese troops on 'outlying islands that would be on the front lines of a conflict with its neighbour', has coincided with recent developments. (12) One of the islands concerned, Kinmen (Jinmen in Mandarin, meaning “Golden Gate”), has military facilities for amphibious soldiers; it is only ten kms from the Chinese city of Xiamen in Fujian Province, while being 187 kms from Taiwan. Kinmen's beaches have been noted as having numerous anti-invasion spikes, military posts and bomb shelters. (13) The fact US troops are officially based so close to China must be regarded by Beijing as extremely provocative. Moves by many Kinmen residents to push for a de-militarised zone and peace island, with a bridge constructed to link the island with mainland China, has been ignored by the ruling DPP presidential administrations in Taipei, revealing their intention of following Cold War US regional foreign policy. (14)

These are worrying developments, increasing the likelihood of real-war scenarios
in the Indo-Pacific region, with serious implications for Australia:

                                           We need an independent foreign policy!

(Important extra reading -  a statement by Compatriots of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines.)  

1.     Blinken's second Manila visit, The Philippine Star, 15 March 2024.
2.     The reasons behind Washington's push for GSOMIA., Hankyoreh, 12 November 2019.
3.     Ibid.
4.     Philippine Star, op.cit., 15 March 2024.
5.     Choppy weather in the China Seas, Le Monde Diplomatique, December 2012.
6.     Marcos accused of grab for power, Australian, 19 March 2024; and, Grey-zone response a way to call China's brinkmanship bluff, Australian, 22 March 2024.
7.     Australian, op.cit., 19 March 2024.
8.     See: The Objectives of the US., The Guardian, 6 August 2003.
9.     Australian, op.cit., 19 March 2024.
10.   Ibid.
11.   Australian, op.cit., 22 March 2024; and, See: Pentagon plays the spy game, The Guardian Weekly (U.K.), 7 December 2012.
12.  US trains Taiwanese troops on islands, Australian, 21 March 2024.
13.   A China-Taiwan DMZ., CNN., 1 June 2023.
14.   Ibid.

  

On the introduction of supermarket security checkpoints

 Written by: Comrade Swanston on 3 April 2024

 

First introduced in mid-2023 to combat the rising number of incidents concerning shoplifting and what the talking-heads of the bourgeoisie have declared to be a sudden and unprovoked “rise in aggression” against their employees in Australian supermarkets, Coles’ and Woolworths’ anti-shoplifting programs demonstrate plainly the bloated and disconnected hubris of the bourgeoisie. 

These programs demonstrate a ruling class that is becoming more severed from the lived experiences of the working-class and working-poor with each passing day. It demonstrates a class with such little awareness of its conditions that it ignorantly believes that its own lies it tells to cheat us will simply be taken as fact: by both employee and customer alike. By those it exploits through undercutting wages, and by those it endlessly price gouges out of every dollar. 

Yet this lie that they repeat, this lie that they are introducing these means to protect some of Australia’s most vulnerable workers, is acknowledged by all those who toil day to day for what it is! As a sham! As a maliciously crafted excuse which has but one true purpose: to protect capital, From South Melbourne to Carrum Downs, from street to street this is acknowledged earnestly by all people. 

One emergency service worker recalled to me that Woolworth CEO Brad Banducci’s panopticon makes them feel as if “everyone is presumed to be a criminal”, and a young single mother told me that ever since those gates first came up in South Melbourne (along Clarendon Street) that she has only seen one thing change. That those “blackshirts” as she calls them, the corporate security of these shopping-centres, have only become ever more energised to brutalise and abuse those they deem “to look too poor” to shop. 

To hide behind excuses of fighting crime and to force people to come behind cameras and into that dreaded back room. To come into that back room and face the consequences of surviving and being able to live another day. This is the reality of these programs. This is the reality of the class conflict. 

Such measures such as the introduction of so called smart gates, of anti-theft fog and security databases, such measures such as the expansion of security teams and of the trolley-lock system only harm those within working-class suburbs. They do not even affect the wealthy and well-off, the bosses, nor the bureaucrat. 

This is even evident in where they place these measures. For what connects South Melbourne to Carrum Downs, what connects my own suburb to all the suburbs chosen for this program is that they are predominantly and historically working-class and host a large population who sit underneath the poverty line. A large population which relies on welfare payments and who reside in public housing. A large population who has long been exploited and shamed by the capitalist system and its supporters.

Like all things in the class conflict, this issue has not remained stagnant over the course of a few months. For it must be acknowledged that this attack has not been one that has been strictly led against consumers, but as ever has been expanded against these corporations’ hard-working employees. 

For as reported by several worker-representatives of the Retail and Fast-Food Worker Union, Coles has further expanded this campaign upon its own workers. That is, Coles now again will harass and coerce its employees alongside customers with their “blackshirts”, who will gleefully collaborate and undoubtedly restrain their hardworking and underpaid retail-clerks for but a suspicion of theft. Likely with threats of reporting them to management if they do not comply. With threats of loss of job and livelihood! 

These scenes though will be ironic to those who know of Coles’ long history of blatant wage theft. For Coles and Woolworths: the happy hypocrites who cry ‘thief!’ as they rob their workers of their rightful wages have always with a crocodile’s smile attempted to cast blame on others. 

They would not dare admit that their employees are being unpaid and should have the ability to shop where they work! They would not admit that the statement from the Retail and Fast-Food Workers Union (RAFFWU) could be true. That as Josh Cullinan, Secretary of RAFFWU puts it, that “the reason they’re bag checking is because they know that their own workers are forced to think about stealing because they can’t afford food”. 

For these corporations and their bosses would rather sit lying between their teeth with yearly salaries so high (collected from all their robbery) that the average person could not achieve such in a lifetime.