Time to go to war with your country? : Melbourne Indymedia

Employment service providers will be encouraged to work with the Australian Defence [WAR] Force (ADF) to help more people take on a militant death?

The initiative is part of the Federal Government's billion-dollar overhaul of recruitment and retention schemes in the ADF.

Workforce Participation Minister Sharman Stone says the six-month trial will provide new opportunities for those who cannot find a job elsewhere.

But she says the unemployed will not be forced into the ADF.

"It wouldn't be smart to force anybody into a particular job, say in defence, if it wasn't at all of interest to them, it's not where their aptitudes were lying," she said.

"But certainly if someone is keen, they're familiar with what the career involves, we'll do everything to help our unemployed be job-ready for that particular position."

Ms Stone says the initiative will encourage employment agencies to offer advice about a career in the ADF.

She says the scheme will provide opportunities to unemployed people who would not otherwise have considered a job in the ADF.

"A lot of our unemployed aren't aware of the changes in our criteria, for example you can now be up to 55, you're no longer necessarily barred from joining just because you've got a tattoo," she said.

"So it's important that anyone, but particularly our unemployed, are aware of the criteria."

Source: http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200704/s1895801.htm

Don't go to war for your country go to war against you country. Your country that is trying desperately to exploit you!

Related:

Opposition:

Where was the opposition to Social Services Reform? Desperate and disabled to work? 6 week social security payments cut off's? Work for the dole instead of not getting better education and skills for better employment opportunities?

Where was the opposition to rorting the social security system by corporate greed?

The Real Dole Bludgers

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2007/03/142867.php

Where is the opposition to war?

Afghanistan war political slaughter

Former British serviceman opined that most of what British troops do in Afghanistan is not constructive at all and it only works to further alienate Afghan population.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2007/04/143316.php

THE ANZAC MYTH - PART 1

"Hundreds of thousands bitterly opposed Australia's participation in WWI"

The ANZAC myth has become an integral part of Australian folklore, as the last living witnesses to the carnage that occurred cannot personally challenge the idealised sanitised accounts that are being trotted out each ANZAC Day...

http://perth.indymedia.org/index.php?action=newswire&parentview=54774

FasciSm is Coming to town

you better not shout,
you better not cry,
Or try to lash out,
i’m telling you why:
Fascism is coming to town.
they’re making a list
With all sorts of names.
and if you’re on it
then you’ll be detained.
Fascism is coming to town.
they know when you are sleeping;
they know if you’re awake;
they set the rules what’s bad or good
So be good for your safety’s sake.
you better not call
For justice for all
Or you will be heading for a
mighty big fall.
Fascism is coming to town.
Be alert and alarmed,
keep fighting the fight.
there’s nothing to lose
But our civil rights.
Fascism is coming to town.
they hear you when you’re speaking
upon the telephone.
they’re sorting through your e-mail
and they know when you’re alone.
you better not shout,
Or raise an outcry
Or try to dissent
i’m telling you why:
Fascism is coming to town.
Oh, Fascism is coming to town.
yes, Fascism is running our town!
FaSCiSM
IS COMING TO TOWN

Courtesy: Song by Sue Gibney to the tune ‘Santa Clause is
coming to town’ - Australian Peace Committee SA Branch
January 07

We suggest that if people wanting to become Australian citizens are to be tested,
they should be asked questions such as:
• Where is the hungry mile?
• Where did the Eureka Stockade take place?
• ln Melbourne there is a monument with 888 on it.
What does 888 signify?
• What happened in Wonthaggi in 1949?
• Draw the Eureka flag and print the oath under the flag.
Do you agree with this oath?
• To what does the slogan ‘MUA - here to stay!’ refer?
• Why and when, did 500,000 people walk together over the Sydney Harbour Bridge?
• What happened at Wave Hill, why? and when?

That’s just a beginning.

HOUSING - A HUMAN RIGHT
The news that the French government has drafted a law
to give everyone a legally enforceable right to housing
should be of interest to the 100,000 homeless people
in Australia.

While great attention is given to home ownership
in this country with 70% of Australians owning or
purchasing their own homes, the lack of affordable
rental accommodation is ignored.

The main cause of homelessness is insufficient public

housing (where rents are normally fixed at 25% of
income) and the limited number of private rental
properties available being let at around $300 a week
- for a two-bedroom unit and $350 a week - for a three
bedroom home – all beyond the reach of low-income
earners or those receiving unemployment or disability
allowances.

The misleading public perception that the homeless
have only themselves to blame for their plight or
that a homeless person is a male and an alcoholic to
boot denies the homeless public sympathy and allows
politicians to do little to remedy the situation.

Yet the evidence shows that homelessness is not
a lifestyle choice. Such people are in fact the most
vulnerable in our community - they are the unemployed,
the disabled, women and children fleeing domestic
violence and sexual abuse and those suffering mental
illness.

Statistics reveal that 42% of the homeless are women
(half under the age of 24) and 50,000 children are
among those seeking a roof over their heads.

The French government`s endorsement of Article 25
of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is worthy
of emulation as it links adequate housing for all with the
health and welfare of people as a human right.

Those without a dwelling in which to reside have the
added risk of going hungry, being assaulted (if sleeping
on the streets) and never having a secure, private space
so important to self-esteem and wellbeing.

While here in Australia we willingly encourage
governments to allocate taxpayers funds to provide
hospitals and schools for all, it is a serious anomaly that
the provision of shelter for all is overlooked.

Federal governments do not leave it to the market
to dictate property trends as they continue to grant
billions of dollars to housing investors by way of negative
gearing and reduced capital gains, tax concessions. (In
2005 tax deductions claimed on rental property were
$20.5 billion.)

Therefore, with a change of policy on such inequitable
taxation concessions and subsidies, funds could be made
available to increase affordable public housing stock
(either by way of construction or by the spot-buying of
existing dwellings), at the same time involving insurance
and superannuation companies in worthwhile rental
housing projects as is the case in some other countries.

Those of us who have the security and enjoyment of
owning our own home or are struggling to pay a high
mortgage must demand that governments provide
secure, affordable housing for the unlucky Australians
– the homeless.

In this way we will be upholding a basic human right
for all.
Keith McEwan ACT

A very sly way of slowly introducing conscription?

Theoretically you don't have to take any job that IPA or other Centrelink agencies offer you but if you don't you're more than likely off the dole.

About 150 ships off the Queensland and New South Wales coasts are waiting to be loaded with coal.

The Queensland Resources Council says it is costing tens of millions of dollars and the Federal Government says the states have failed to provide adequate infrastructure.

Qld Govt rejects criticism over port delays
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200704/s1894682.htm

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JOHN PERKINS: Basically what we were trained to do and what our job is to do is to build up the American empire. To bring -- to create situations where as many resources as possible flow into this country, to our corporations, and our government, and in fact we’ve been very successful.

(snip)

...my real job was deal-making. It was giving loans to other countries, huge loans, much bigger than they could possibly repay. One of the conditions of the loan–let's say a $1 billion to a country like Indonesia or Ecuador–and this country would then have to give ninety percent of that loan back to a U.S. company, or U.S. companies, to build the infrastructure–a Halliburton or a Bechtel. These were big ones. Those companies would then go in and build an electrical system or ports or highways, and these would basically serve just a few of the very wealthiest families in those countries. The poor people in those countries would be stuck ultimately with this amazing debt that they couldn’t possibly repay. A country today like Ecuador owes over fifty percent of its national budget just to pay down its debt. And it really can’t do it. So, we literally have them over a barrel. So, when we want more oil, we go to Ecuador and say, “Look, you're not able to repay your debts, therefore give our oil companies your Amazon rain forest, which are filled with oil.” And today we're going in and destroying Amazonian rain forests, forcing Ecuador to give them to us because they’ve accumulated all this debt. So we make this big loan, most of it comes back to the United States, the country is left with the debt plus lots of interest, and they basically become our servants, our slaves...

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man:
How the U.S. Uses Globalization to Cheat Poor Countries Out of Trillions
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/09/1526251

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Well here we go again. Stay at home? Or jump into the willie willie.

What's a few hundred more troops for Uncle Sam?

It's just a down-payment.

A very quick way to die young?

Costello's 'reform' will destroy the society I think.

Cause you know, those who're getting the family benefit with young children, they have to work(money job) rather than volunteering here and there.

That could be a real problem because many mothers help at their children's schools at the canteen or in classrooms etc.

Also, when you open up paper, there are cries for help i.e. volunteers with no pay, cause the governments don't spend the money where it's needed.

But now this change comes in, those volunteers have to work for money(I believe this applies with unemployed when it was acknowledged as eligible before). So the society will lose its vital volunteers, therefore it will simply get degraded and probably devastated.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=26&ItemID=10351

Unionism and Workers' Liberation
by Tom Wetzel May 31, 2006

Class struggle wasn't a figment of Marx's imagination. A struggle between workers the classes that dominate them is a consant, an on-going reality. This struggle happens because of structures in society that give certain groups power over other groups.
Class is about power that arises in the system of social production. Apart from work that we do at home for ourselves and members of our own families, there is a vast network of work relations where people are doing things for other people. This is what I mean by social production. This isn't just manufacturing. Transporation, systems of tele-communications, public utilities, retail stores, health care and other services — these spheres of work are all part of social production.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=19&ItemID=12568

Columnist Bill White of the Allentown Morning Call pictures Circuit City CEO Philip J. Schoonover getting a warm welcome to hell - very warm. Satan tells him, "This place is full of overpaid, outsourcing, golden-parachuting, employee-abusing worms like you." Schoonover's sin? Laying off 3400 employees because they had been around for too long and needed to be replaced by minimum wage workers.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=10375

A Guided Tour of Class in America
Barbara Ehrenreich interviewed by Tom Engelhardt

June 04, 2006 Tom Dispatch

You turn into a middle-class, suburban housing project on the periphery of Charlottesville, Virginia, and at a row of attached homes, you pull up in front of the one with the yellow "for sale" sign on the tiny patch of grass. Ushered inside, you take in an interior of paint cans, a mop and pail, and cleaning liquids. On the small porch that overlooks a communal backyard, workmen are painting the weathered wood railings a nice, clean white. Later, when they're gone, we step out for a minute, on a balmy late spring afternoon, and she says, "You know what I need out here? Flowers!" And it's true, the nearest neighbor's small porch is a riot of red, orange, and purple blooms, while hanging from her railing are three plant holders with only dirt and the scraps of dead vegetation in them.

http://www.chinapost.com.tw/news/archives/asiapacific/2007413/107059.htm

Over 1,000 protest pay in Vietnam
2007/4/13 HANOI, dpa

More than 1,200 workers were on strike Thursday at a Chinese-owned garment factory in central Vietnam to protest low salaries and treatment of workers, a union official said.
The workers at the Quinmax International Vietnam Co. want their salaries raised from an average of 760,000 dong (US$48) per month, barely above the minimum level set by the government.
"The strike began yesterday with 700 workers and now the number of workers joining the strike has risen to 1,200," said Phan Trung with the Trade Union of Thua Thien Hue province, 600 kilometers south of Hanoi. Trung said many workers protested the factory's policy of searching workers to prevent theft.
Quinmax officials could not be reached for comment Thursday.

There are now 12 foreign-invested companies operating in Thua Thien Hue province with 3,500 workers. Quinmax International Vietnam Co. alone has 1,400 workers. No other strike is reported at any other foreign-invested companies in the province.
Vietnam in recent years has become a magnet for low-wage industries such as garment and shoe manufacturing, but since last year tens of thousands of workers have staged strikes for higher pay, most recently over the lunar new year holiday in February.