Socialist Equality Party and Working Class stands Candidates In Federal Election!

Discussion in 'Australia, NZ, Pacific' started by philxx, May 1, 2013.

  1. philxx

    philxx New Member

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    The party of the Australian working class ,annouces its tanding of candidates in the upcoming Federal elections ,in opposition to both Major capitialist parties and the Greens.

    The SEP stands on the only perspective ,based on the Intrests of Workers Youth ,the unemployed ,pensioners and all those disillusioned with the assault on basic rights and living standards .

    The central basis is to form an Anti-War movement to unite the working Class in opposition to the advanced plans of all 'offical 'australian political formations and their radical supporters in the 'so-called left'.

    For the unity of the International Working Class ,and honest democratically minded people .

    Socialist Equality Party to contest Australian federal election

    A socialist program to fight the drive to war

    By the Socialist Equality Party
    26 April 2013


    The Socialist Equality Party, the Australian section of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), will be fielding a team of Senate candidates in five states in the federal elections scheduled for September 14.
    The SEP’s election intervention will be part of a coordinated campaign by the ICFI and its sections throughout the world aimed at uniting the working class in Australia, the Asia-Pacific region, Africa, the Middle East, the United States and internationally in the struggle against the growing danger of war. In the midst of the most serious economic breakdown of world capitalism since the Great Depression, the seeds of World War III have not only been sown, they have already sprouted and are rapidly growing, in the form of the US war drive against China.
    The central objective of our campaign is to develop a broad, international anti-war movement among workers and young people on the basis of a socialist and internationalist program.
    Having launched a continuous series of aggressive wars over the past two decades—in the Balkans, Afghanistan, the Middle East and Africa—in order to try to offset its historic economic decline, US imperialism is concentrating its military might in the Asia-Pacific region, based on the assessment that China’s growing economic power is a threat that must be contained. The inexorable logic of Washington’s agenda is a war that would rapidly assume nuclear dimensions and threaten the very future of civilisation. A study released in April 2013 by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) into the US military’s new AirSea Battle plans bluntly concluded: “The Pentagon has started to ‘think about the unthinkable’: a military strategy for fighting and winning a potential war against China.”
    The Gillard Labor government, with the complicity of the Greens and the full backing of the Liberal and National parties, has placed Australia on the very frontline of these war preparations. Behind the backs of the Australian people, Gillard has extended unconditional support to the Obama administration’s anti-China “pivot” to Asia, signing military agreements while concealing, in tandem with the corporate-controlled media, their extent and implications.
    The upcoming election is being conducted on an utterly fraudulent basis. None of the real issues are being, or will be, raised in the “official” media-backed campaign. The SEP is intervening to tell the working class and youth the truth, and to raise the life-and-death questions they confront. First and foremost, we will expose the accelerating drive to war and insist that all secret deals and agreements be made public. Twice in the course of the twentieth century, the capitalist ruling classes plunged mankind into world war, with devastating consequences. They must not be allowed to do so again!
    The working class must demand and receive answers to vital questions. What secret agreements has Gillard made? What commitments has the Australian military given to its US counterparts? What is the real purpose of the bases that have already been established? What new bases and military deployments are planned? How advanced are the war preparations against China?
    The Labor government’s defence minister Stephen Smith has claimed “there are no US bases in Australia.” He is lying. The bases at Pine Gap and North-West Cape, set up during the Cold War, have played a key role in the US-led wars in the Middle East. They are fully integrated into US military planning for war against China.
    The Darwin US marine base, announced during Obama’s address to the Australian parliament in November 2011, underscores the militarist aims of the anti-China pivot. When fully operational it will house naval, ground and air units for deployment to the immediate north of Australia, in order to blockade the vital sea lanes on which China depends for the supply of its energy and raw materials from the Middle East and Africa.
    Plans are also being developed to establish a base on the Cocos Islands for the use of drones and other military aircraft and for turning the Stirling naval base in Western Australia into a home port for US nuclear-armed warships and submarines.
    Already, the Obama administration has created a series of flashpoints throughout the Asia-Pacific region, any one of which could lead to a military conflict and immediately draw Australia into war.
    *Escalating tensions on the Korean Peninsula have been fuelled by US provocations against the North Korean regime, which China has historically viewed as a strategic buffer.
    *The US has guaranteed military support for Japan in its conflict with China over claims to a series of disputed islands.
    *Vietnam and the Philippines have been encouraged to pursue territorial claims against Beijing.
    *Closer links are being forged with India as a counter-weight to China, while Burma and Mongolia are both being brought into the US fold because of their strategic position in relation to China.
    The growing network of US alliances, and military and diplomatic relations in the region, is a noose being steadily tightened around the Chinese mainland.
    The situation in Asia, where regional conflicts intersect with the interests of great powers, increasingly resembles the pre-1914 Balkans, which provided the spark for the eruption of World War I. The fuel for such a conflagration is being supplied by the deepening hostility of the US to China’s economic expansion. China is not an imperialist power seeking global dominance—it occupies a subordinate position within the geo-political framework established by the major imperialist powers. But its emergence as the cheap labour and manufacturing platform of world capitalism has placed it in conflict with the determination of the US to maintain its grip over key resources, raw materials and markets, in Africa and wherever they are located.
    There is deep opposition to war in the working class and among broad layers of the population, especially the youth. This was expressed in 2003, in the largest demonstrations in Australia’s history, held as part of the historic global anti-war movement that spontaneously erupted against the launching of the Iraq war. That anti-war sentiment has not disappeared. But it can find no outlet within the official parliamentary framework. The SEP’s election campaign will give the widespread opposition to militarism a powerful voice and the means for its conscious political expression. It will provide decisive leadership to the working masses of Australia, China and throughout Asia in the struggle against war.
    Not only do all the parliamentary parties support Obama’s military preparations, they maintain a conspiracy of silence over US policy and Australia’s involvement in it. Indeed, the present Labor government was founded on conspiracy. Gillard has never explained the circumstances that led to the ousting of Kevin Rudd as prime minister in the coup of June 23–24, 2010.
    Rudd was removed not because of his “management style” or opinion poll ratings, but because the Obama administration refused to countenance even the slightest deviation from its anti-China pivot. While remaining a firm supporter of Australia’s alliance with the US, Rudd sought to broker a rapprochement between the US and China. This conflicted with Washington’s confrontational agenda, and he was ousted in an inner-party coup orchestrated by Washington’s Labor “assets”, without the knowledge of the parliamentary Labor Party, let alone the Australian population. From the day Gillard became prime minister, when she pointedly appeared in public with the American ambassador to Australia, she has made crystal clear that her government will march in lockstep with the Obama administration.
    The SEP bases itself on all the vital strategic lessons of the international workers’ movement and specifically draws attention to the strategic experiences of the past 10 years. The inability of the anti-war demonstrations a decade ago to stop the invasion of Iraq demonstrates that the pressure of public opinion, in and of itself, is powerless to stop the imperialist juggernaut. The movement failed not because it lacked support, but because its leaderships subordinated it to the existing political framework, insisting that the United Nations, or placing pressure on one or another wing of the political establishment, could compel the US to change course.
    Since then, the political forces that dominated the anti-war movement have shifted even further to the right. All of them have now directly aligned themselves with US militarism. This shift is marked, above all, by the various pseudo-left tendencies which, having supported the criminal US-NATO intervention in Libya in 2011, have now lined up behind the US-led operation to carry out “regime change” in Syria.
    The position of the pseudo-left is summed up particularly graphically in the insistence of the misnamed Socialist Alternative that it is now necessary to dispense with “knee jerk anti-imperialism.” These anti-war protestors of yesterday have become the most ardent advocates for imperialism today. Their support for the US and other imperialist powers in the Middle East, and their silence on US war preparations in the Asia-Pacific, signify that they are already aligning themselves to back an attack on China.
    The evolution of these tendencies is rooted in deep-going social and economic processes. They speak not for the working class but for affluent layers of the upper middle class, whose material interests are bound up with the rampant financial parasitism that has been the source of the vast wealth accumulated in the upper echelons of society over the past period, and with the drive by imperialism to secure for itself control over vital sources of raw materials and cheap labour, on which that wealth ultimately depends.
    The crucial lesson of the past century is that the struggle against imperialist war can only go forward to the extent that it mobilises the working class, on the basis of a revolutionary socialist perspective, to take political power and overthrow the capitalist profit system, the source of war.
    The development of a genuine anti-war movement requires the unification of the struggles of the working class across national borders. That is why the SEP will place at the very centre of its campaign the struggle against all forms of nationalism, chauvinism and racism. Led by the Gillard Labor government, the entire political establishment is stoking up anti-refugee hysteria while, at the same time, Gillard, her ministers and backers in the trade union bureaucracy denounce “foreign workers” and call for “Aussie jobs.” This rekindling of the foul traditions of Labor’s White Australia policy serves the most reactionary political purpose—to divide the Australian working class, which is comprised of immigrants from around the world, from its counterparts in the Asia-Pacific and internationally.
    On the eve of the outbreak of World War II, Leon Trotsky wrote: “Before exhausting or drowning mankind in blood, capitalism befouls the world atmosphere with the poisonous vapours of national and race hatred.” His warning has lost none of its relevance. The clarion call of the socialist movement, “Workers of the World, Unite!”, is the only basis on which the fight against war can be successfully mounted. Imperialism is a mighty and terrible force that threatens a global catastrophe. It can only be defeated by an even greater force—a united revolutionary movement of the international working class.
    A social counter-revolution

    Imperialist war abroad is inevitably accompanied by class war against the working class at home. Since the global financial crisis of 2008, the savage austerity measures introduced in country after country amount to a social counter-revolution against all the social gains won by the working class in the aftermath of World War II. In Greece, Cyprus, Spain, Italy and other European countries the working class is being driven back to the conditions of the 1930s. In Britain, what little remains of the post-war social welfare state is being systematically dismantled, while American workers confront the worst social and economic conditions since the Great Depression. Having handed out trillions of dollars to the parasites of finance capital, the ruling elites have only one policy: to make the working class pay for the historic crisis of the capitalist profit system.
    The claim that Australia was somehow exempted because of its much vaunted “mining boom” has been torn to shreds.
    The rise in value of the Australian dollar—a product of high mineral export prices and global currency gyrations, caused by the printing of trillions of dollars by the world’s major central banks—has been utilised by the ruling elite to unleash a new round of attacks on the working class. Each day brings news of another factory closure or a new round of layoffs or an economic “restructuring” aimed at slashing jobs and conditions.
    The insistent demand from all sections of the ruling elite and their media mouthpieces is that productivity—intensifying the exploitation of the working class—must be increased to ensure that Australian capitalism remains “internationally competitive.” Entire industries are threatened with extinction as finance capital searches for ever more profitable investments.
    As social inequality deepens, social conditions for the vast majority of ordinary working people are rapidly deteriorating. For many, housing costs have already reached intolerable levels, while household debt has jumped from 94 percent of income in 2000 to 150 percent today. The major banks have been the beneficiaries, amassing profits totalling $25 billion in 2012.
    While finance capital rakes in record profits, social services, health and education are being gutted. The public health system has been stretched to the limit, with waiting lists for so-called elective surgery soaring in every state, and staff numbers being slashed. Gillard’s “education revolution,” aimed at forcing parents to move their children out of under-resourced, “underperforming” public schools and into the private system, is placing more and more teachers in temporary, contract positions. University students face overcrowded lectures and classes, while they work ever longer hours to scrape together enough to live.
    The SEP warns that the assault unleashed so far will pale into relative insignificance compared to the onslaught that will be implemented by whichever government comes to power after September 14. In April 2012, in a speech delivered in London, the Liberal opposition’s treasury spokesman, Joe Hockey, spelt out the agenda being demanded by the corporate elite: transforming the budget deficit into a surplus by ending the “age of entitlement”—i.e., scrapping what remains of the welfare state and essential social services upon which millions of ordinary working people depend.
    The threat of dictatorship

    There is no popular support for such measures, and there is unprecedented hostility and anger towards the official political set-up. The parliamentary parties—Labor, Liberal-National and Greens—are all in a state of terminal crisis. Increasingly the ruling elite, frustrated at its inability to achieve its agenda, will resort to extra-parliamentary, dictatorial measures to impose it, involving fundamental attacks on democratic rights.
    The willingness of the Australian bourgeoisie to dispense with the trappings of parliamentary democracy was demonstrated in the November 11, 1975 Canberra coup. The significance of the sacking of the democratically-elected Whitlam Labor government by forces including the CIA, and of Whitlam's own craven capitulation to his dismissal, was revealed in the subsequent transformation of the Labor Party. The next Labor government of Hawke and Keating abandoned any commitment to social reform, implementing instead a major “restructuring” of Australian capitalism in the interests of the corporate elite, and an unparalleled assault on the working class.
    As only the SEP has warned, the anti-democratic removal of Rudd in the coup of June 23–24, 2010 was an early warning sign that, as social, economic and political tensions rise, the ruling class will once again resort to authoritarian measures to prosecute its class interests. Preparations have already been made. Since 2007, the Labor government, building on the framework established by its predecessor, the Howard Liberal government, and under the banner of the bogus “war on terrorism,” has entrenched and augmented the scaffolding of a police-state, based on the abrogation of fundamental legal and democratic rights.
    The SEP’s election campaign will fight to develop an independent political movement of the working class to advance its own solution to the program of war, social counter-revolution and dictatorship through the fight for a workers’ government and the socialist reorganisation of society.
    The primary task of such a movement will be to establish its political independence from the capitalist two-party parliamentary system, and its Greens and pseudo-left apologists. The pseudo-lefts fraudulently claim that Labor must be supported as a “lesser evil” to the Liberals. Like all lies, this serves a definite political purpose—to paralyse the working class and prevent its struggles from breaking out of the stranglehold of the Labor and union bureaucracies.
    Equally pernicious is the pseudo-lefts’ claim that workers can only fight for their interests through the auspices of the trade unions. The reality is that the unions are in no sense workers’ organisations. Over the past three decades, the globalisation of production has completely shattered their old, limited, reformist programs, based on national regulation, and transformed them into nothing but an industrial police force for imposing the dictates of the major corporations, banks and finance capital. Both Labor and the unions directly serve the interests of Australian and US imperialism.
    The working class can only secure its independent class interests through mass social and political struggle. In the factories and workplaces, the SEP calls for the formation of new rank-and-file organisations—independent of, and opposed to the trade unions—which will fight to defend jobs, wages and conditions. We call, as well, for the formation of committees of action in neighbourhoods throughout the country, to develop mass social and political struggles against the austerity cuts being made by the parties of big business to schools, universities, health facilities and other social services.
    The SEP urges all workers, students, youth, socialist-minded intellectuals and professional people to give our election campaign your maximum support. While calling for the largest possible vote, our primary aim is not winning at the ballot box. Rather, it is to develop a new political movement of the working class and to imbue that movement with scientific socialist consciousness—the understanding that nothing less than the overthrow of the capitalist profit system and the establishment of world socialism is required to end the threat of world war, social devastation and dictatorship.
    This necessitates, above all, the building of a new revolutionary leadership of the working class, in Australia and on an international scale. That is the perspective of the SEP and the International Committee of the Fourth International, the world party of socialist revolution, founded in 1938 by Leon Trotsky. The ICFI is the only party that consciously bases its political work on the great principles and program of revolutionary Marxism, embodied most powerfully in the struggle waged by Trotsky, co-leader with Lenin of the Russian Revolution, against Stalinism and all forms of national opportunism. We urge all those who agree with the necessity for socialism—for social equality and for an end to poverty, exploitation, oppression and war—to participate in the SEP’s election campaign, become regular readers of the World Socialist Web Site, the internet organ of the ICFI, study our history, program and principles, and apply to join our ranks.


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    Its time for the voice of workers and youth to be represented and heard.
     
  2. philxx

    philxx New Member

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    How cynical can it get as the Gillard ALP ,uses the pain and suffering that has NEVER been adressed by ANY government,that being the funding of services specific to people with intellectual and physical disabilities .

    Maklin and Gillards ever second word is 'its up to what opposition leader and the Coalition say now'or 'its up to bi-partisan support',WHO IS THE GOVERNMENT ?


    No,this NDIS 'debate 'is nothing more or less then a cynical ploy called 'wedge politics 'an election slogan in the 'unoffical -offical ' election campaign .

    And nothing to do with the concerns of those that are near totally reliant as has been the case for generations ,on charity and the struggle of family and friends.

    The ALP is preparing an out door with its refusal to legislate in the present government independently of whatever the position of the Lib-Nats .

    Cynical is hardly the word with only pilot schemes being implimented and funding limited to a very small percentage of the profoundly disabled.


    Watch and learn the method of double speak and manipulation of the empathy and compassion of those who truely are concerned .

    Disgusting cynical electioneering and nothing else ,the repeatative 'its up to Abbott and the co-alition' wedge politics dosen't wash the leopard hasn't changed it is spots .

    ask the 9year old kids and their single parents thrown off the supporting parents pension ,onto newstart losing a $100 a week and forced into deepening POVERTY about the 'caring gillard Government' .

    Funding for a NDIS ,TAX THE RICH !

    Your mate Gina Rhinehart has a lazy $ 40 billion JULIA !

    Oh the medicare levy on everyone else but the rich [they pay no tax ]is a sop and at best covers only 40-50 % of what would be required for the most under priviledged and sweeped under the carpet of Australian society,to get the most basic care and support !

    Oh they all are for the 'most vunerable ' when an election is on what has happened for the last 112years ALP?

    Do nothing until the Opposition decides government is no governence at all GILLARD!
     
  3. Recusant

    Recusant Active Member

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    Thanks, an interesting read.

    It got progressively more agitated as it went through and is really written for those who already agree, which is a pity.

    I thought this was a very interesting take on Rudd's removal:
    Possibly a tiny contributing factor, but i honestly think they WAY overstate it. Rudd was pretty pro-US. Sure, maybe he was slightly less so than Gillard and whatnot, but we're talking about a Labor party leader here. He's pro US.
     
  4. philxx

    philxx New Member

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    The question of the removal of Rudd is a change as the 'pivot in Asia' or the hemming in of China is a change ,military bases in Darwin and plans for Perth .

    And the installing of Bob Carr our unelected Foreign Minister sending Rudd ,former Foreign Minister to the back bench!

    Bob Carr!? Why ? Indeed!

    The SEP is no defender of Rudd ,the process and transformation of Australia ,into US Imperialisms 'Pivot in Asia ' has historical precedence ,=WW2,after the fall of Singapore and the withdrawal of US Troops from the Philipines 1942.

    Then Australia was the US Imperialisms pivot and barracks in Asia.Total doormat is what is demanded ,any sweaking from ,Rudd of some independent position in relation to China had to be crushed as it was.

    Bob Carr as unelected imposed in true presidental style ,telling ,a coup against Rudd to discipline any opposition within the ALP ,no matter how whimpy ,telling!

    First time we have had a US style 6month election campaign ,usually over in 6 weeks ,when they say 'Pivot in asia' for US Imperialism read Australian government of any stripe.

    hang on the mistress of flip flop the former industrial lawyer is on me Tele!

    I am no political ally of Kevin 07',but a defender of Democratic due process I am!

    Don't like those backroom coups against elected Prime Ministers !
     
  5. philxx

    philxx New Member

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    Bob Carrs track record in Relationship to his subservience and service to US Imperialism and why he was Gillards right-wing NSW ALP ,man for the Job!

    World Socialist Web Site

    Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI)



    Australian foreign minister outed as long-time US informant

    By Patrick O’Connor
    15 April 2013


    A new round of American diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks has revealed that Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr has been a US intelligence source for nearly four decades. The news sheds fresh light on Carr’s sudden and unusual elevation from retired state premier to unelected federal senator and foreign minister in March last year.
    In 1974 and 1975, Carr was one of a host of Labor Party and trade union figures providing confidential briefings to US embassy officials on the internal discussions, policy differences, and factional rivalries within the Labor government of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam.
    In November 1975, Whitlam was sacked and the government removed from office by Governor General John Kerr. The coup involved the highest levels of the state apparatus, working in collaboration with the US embassy and the CIA. The government’s ousting was orchestrated amid a deepening global crisis of the capitalist system, with Whitlam and his colleagues increasingly unable to contain escalating militancy within the working class, and sharp geo-strategic tensions generated by US imperialism’s defeat in Vietnam. Whitlam had pledged his full support for the US-Australia alliance, and for US imperialism’s unhampered use of military and intelligence bases on Australian soil. But throughout 1975, as the latest diplomatic cables confirm, Washington became increasingly concerned that Whitlam was losing control over the situation.
    Carr was among those feeding inside information to the US as Washington’s destabilisation operations were stepped up before Kerr’s move against the government.
    In 1974-75, Carr was a young and rapidly rising figure within the New South Wales (NSW) Labor Party Right. As well as working as a journalist with the Australian ABC and the right-wing Bulletin magazine, Carr served as president of Labor’s NSW branch in 1970 and national president of Young Labor in 1972. Between 1972 and 1978 he worked in the NSW Labor Council, the state’s peak union body.
    One cable, sent from the US embassy in August 1974, reported on the escalating number of workers’ strikes and described a discussion in which Carr “expressed deep concern over impact of labor disputes on prospects of Labor government.” Another cable sent the same month, headed “Australia’s troubles and Whitlam’s troubles—a gathering crisis,” reported that Carr and John Ducker, then president of the NSW Labor Party, were “concerned by Whitlam’s current tendency to delegate practically everything.” Carr added that “economic policy has never been Whitlam’s bag, but until the present crisis he has been prepared to seek advice and to exert leadership.” In February 1975, another cable reported that Carr had provided information on the NSW Labor “left” parliamentarian George Petersen.
    The full extent of Carr’s discussions with US officials, including CIA personnel, in 1974-75 remains unknown. The diplomatic cables—previously declassified by the State Department but only now digitised in searchable format, through WikiLeaks’ new “Public Library of US Diplomacy” (PlusD)—do not include any details of the CIA’s active operations in Australia at the time, consistent with the silence on such covert activities in all the diplomatic cables.
    Carr last week dismissed the revelations, declaring, “I was in my 20s. I could have said anything.”
    This flippant response was accepted as good coin by the entire political and media establishment. Not a word of opposition was expressed by a single Labor Party or trade union figure to Carr’s role in feeding inside information to the US embassy on the Whitlam government. Likewise, there was silence from the Greens. The media promptly dropped the issue, following initial reports in the Fairfax Press, which was provided advance access to the cables. Not a single question was put to Carr about what else he has discussed with US officials over the past four decades.
    The episode underscores the extent to which Australian imperialism functions as a loyal servant of US imperialism. The Australian state apparatus operates accordingly, and is thoroughly integrated at every level into Washington’s diplomatic and intelligence apparatus. Within ruling circles in Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne—among politicians, corporate executives, journalists, legal personnel and others—it is regarded as entirely natural and uncontroversial to volunteer one’s services as a US intelligence source. As the latest batch of cables makes clear, Carr was only one of a large number of Labor and union figures who informed and collaborated with the US embassy—including Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, both of whom later became prime ministers.
    The extensive US network within the Labor Party and unions was utilised in 2010, 35 years after the Canberra Coup, to remove Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. Soon after Rudd had taken office in 2007, the US embassy had relayed to Washington its hostility toward the prime minister’s attempt to establish a new diplomatic mechanism to mediate between China and the US. This cut across the Obama administration’s “pivot” to the region, which aimed to maintain US imperialism’s domination of Asia and the Pacific by militarily and strategically encircling China. Early on, Gillard was identified as a viable successor to Rudd, having demonstrated her pro-US and pro-Israeli credentials. In June 2010, Rudd was suddenly removed in an inner-party coup, after a group of Labor Party and union factional powerbrokers moved against him. Virtually all the so-called “faceless men”, the WikiLeaks’ cables later revealed, had previously worked closely with the US embassy and were identified as “protected sources”.
    The coup marked a significant shift in Canberra’s foreign policy settings, with Gillard unconditionally aligning Australian imperialism with Obama’s confrontation of Beijing.
    Carr’s installation was bound up with this shift. After ousting Rudd as prime minister, Gillard had been compelled to appoint Rudd as foreign minister in the aftermath of the August 21 federal election. In February 2012, however, Gillard provoked Rudd’s resignation and defeated his attempted leadership challenge. Carr, previously NSW premier between 1995 and 2005, was then suddenly drafted into the position. He was plugged into parliament courtesy of the resignation of another of the embassy’s “protected sources” who orchestrated the 2010 leadership coup, Senator Mark Arbib. One of Labor’s most influential, and ambitious, powerbrokers, Arbib abruptly quit his lucrative and secure senate spot. The stated reason, absurdly, was that Arbib needed to spend more time with his family.
    In reality, the episode marked one US asset carrying out his orders to make way for another.
    The Obama administration undoubtedly regarded Carr as a well-known safe pair of hands. Despite previously publishing tactical criticisms of Washington’s “pivot” to Asia, Carr has since toed the Obama-Gillard line on every issue related to China. He has enthusiastically taken up the role of point man for Washington in its operations in other parts of the world, including the Middle East and Africa.
    On Syria, Carr has been among the most outspoken figures internationally for a stepped up US-NATO intervention against the Assad government. Seeking to promote the bogus “humanitarian” pretext for the regime change drive, Carr has condemned the Syrian regime for massacres that evidence subsequently indicated were carried out by the CIA-backed Islamist opposition militias. He also suggested that the crisis in Syria could be resolved through the assassination of Assad and other senior political figures in Damascus (see “Australian foreign minister suggests ‘assassination’ of Syrian leaders”).


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    Planned and executed by Gillard and co.

    When you see 'Pivot in Asia ' read Australia!
     
  6. Recusant

    Recusant Active Member

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    I agree, but it's a stretch to declare that was a significant reason for his demise. Granted, it's possible the opinion polls were rigged, or at least tampered with. When i spoke to people, there just was not the opposition to Rudd, or the distaste, that the polls suggested. Mind you, i don't exactly have a broad cross-section of people to 'poll'.

    Nor i. I always argued they should have stuck with him - win or lose. But it's not 'undemocratic' in our system. I tell you, it's fascinating talking to one of my cousins - who is a Labor member. She's so detached from reality (Rudd's popularity in comparison to Gillards).
     
  7. culldav

    culldav Well-Known Member

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    Have a young nephew who joined the Green party last year at Uni. Was chatting with him at Xmas time, and discovered he is so detached from reality, that it was staggering. Once they get their political religious pamphlets, and indoctrinated into the party; their brains seem to turn to shyte. I have friends who also have family members and friends who have went this way, and they are not happy or pleased about it.

    Seeing first hand how a once intelligent young man like my nephew has turned into a brainless zombie parroting greens mantra, is the major reason why I am against political party activity and indoctrination at universities. These young people should be given the chance to complete their degrees, and live their lives in the community, before they decide which way they want to vote.

    As a protest toward this bad behaviour by political parties at Universities, I am currently developing an anti-political party pamphlet, that I am going to have distributed at our local University at the next Open Information Day.
     
  8. Recusant

    Recusant Active Member

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    Ultimately, what it comes down to is what sort of person you are, and what you'd like the world to look like. I believe in the principals of universality, which makes me lean far more to the 'left' than the opposite in most areas. My experience with 'right' thinkers is they do not believe in that principal, but in their own moral superiority. Both principals have their limitations and issues in practice, but i personally think universality has fewer contradictions and limitations.

    The most important thing to remember is that not everyone thinks the way you think and that's why we have people like George Bush. It's to protect us against people like George Bush. Unless everyone on the planet is a pinko, or everyone is a thug, we'll always have the polorised views. For good or bad, i think, most people are too busy or distracted to intellectually invest heavily.

    I use "you" in a general sense, not specifically you culldav. Although i will say that simple name calling doesn't cut it in intelligent discussion. At least point to something specific that irks you.
     
  9. culldav

    culldav Well-Known Member

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    To be Frank.

    I understand and appreciate everyone has the unique ability to think differently, but I couldn’t be bothered anymore wasting my time communicating with someone for weeks or months, only to discover they have been pretending, and actually have the intellect of a snow flake.

    I now rely on the quick method of baiting people with “name calling” and only two responses will happen: fight of flight. Fight, they will intellectually challenge my assumptions, and that always leads to a good debate. Flight, they will respond by reciprocating “name calling” and run away.

    It’s a tried and true method I have been using for over a decade, and it really does sort the men from the boys quickly.

    I also have zero tolerance for individuals who deliberately act, or want to be intellectually moronic, without having a genuine mental disability.

    If you understand the above, we will have no problems communicating.


    ******************************************

    So you believe in chaos theory: Butterfly effect? Whereby, I have a tendency toward the theory of determinism. I’m not really sure if right thinkers belong to either theory.

    I consider myself to be in the middle with some socialist ideals. Some politicians from all camps have had some fantastic ideas for the advancement of our society, but the shame comes in incompetent implementation of the qualitative and quantative management of these ideas. This simply should not happen at this level of management.
     
  10. DominorVobis

    DominorVobis Banned at Members Request

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    My God I wish I was as good as you think you are
     
  11. culldav

    culldav Well-Known Member

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    But Ya Ahh, Blanche, ya aahh
     
  12. aussiefree2ride

    aussiefree2ride New Member

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    Just a quick question regarding the "equality" segment of "Socialist Equality Party". Which version of "equality" is being referred to here? Is it the pre 1970`s version, or is it the feminist one?
     
  13. truthvigilante

    truthvigilante Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    We call that delusional! Clamping on to those tweezers hard with gritted teeth by the sounds of it!
     
  14. Recusant

    Recusant Active Member

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    That was amusing. But be nice. He/she was trying to be open and honest.
     
  15. Recusant

    Recusant Active Member

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    Do you remember the "discussion flowchart" i posted ages ago when there was that huge, ongoing discussion about confirmation bias and whatnot? I think that's what you're trying to say.

    Let me see if i can find it...

    Here 'tis:
    http://critical-thinkers.com/2011/0...e-if-yoursquore-having-a-rational-discussion/
     
  16. culldav

    culldav Well-Known Member

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    Thank you for the chart, but critical analysis was covered in Psy 101.

    If you want to communicate with someone who misrepresents the truth and facts, because it doesn’t conform with their personal agenda, then that is your prerogative, but don’t expect me to acquiesce to your liability.

    Some people just get to the end faster than others.


    I’m still waiting after 12 months for Dom V to admit or reject “Mungo Man” as a term of reference in our discussion on Aboriginal affairs. Dom V ran away from the topic, and then six postings later, he mentioned something about racism, which ended the discussion.

    I still have copies of all Dom V’s posting six months ago, about him advocating how he fixes other peoples stuff for free before his own. I am still waiting for Dom to send me his mobile number, which can be given to the people in my area to contact him directly to repair their broken windows for free.

    Gee whiz, what was that sentence again by Dom V - “My God I wish I was as good as you think you are”.

    Dom V needs your link more than me. LMFAO.
     
  17. philxx

    philxx New Member

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    Oh the latest ,Asbestos exists in Telstra communication pits ,gee wiz ,and the ALP just found that one out circa 2013 so we can now add that as a cost to the NBN,as well as the cost to human health we will have to foot the bill for the removal no-one thought about beforehand .for those that think we are dealing with a government with any forward planning ability ,and in no way am I saying that the LIB\Nats are any better or the Greens for that matter ,You are mistaken to think them rational in their thinking.Oh well whats the lives of Workers and their families to the needs of the Lesbian Feminist Cabal of Gillard ,Wong and Maklin.a troika of capitialist reactionaries if ever there was one.
     
  18. aussiefree2ride

    aussiefree2ride New Member

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    Fair comment. How could an "organisation" like the Federal Government NOT factor existing asbestos into their initial equations, when it`s automatically expected, and rightly so, that the smallest sub contractor in the country would cover this issue in his initial quote? The same goes for the insulation flop. The smallest, home based building specifier, is required to select the correct building solution for each application it`s the LAW. Specification of method and material is the responsibility of the PRINCIPAL (Peter Garrett), Garrett and his Dept are responsible for all that happened. It is completely ameteurish irrational to give sub contractors such a dangerously impractical task, as stapling conductive foil over bare wiring. FFS, this equates to the worst of underground mining practices of the 1800`s. Garrett in this instance was the MINE BOSS, the big shot in charge, but when his incompetance was exposed, at the terrible expense of working Aussies, he had the clout of the Federa Govt to hide behind.

    Compliance with Australian Standards, does NOT automaticly cover the building solution requirement. The principal, (BOSS`S / PETER GARRETT`S) job, was to select the safest and most appropriate method of doing the job.
     
  19. DominorVobis

    DominorVobis Banned at Members Request

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    I suppose since you cling to the past so much I had better respond. Firstly, Mungo Man had nothing to do with the Aboriginal situation, if you are trying to prove that the Aboriginals were not the first people here, what does it matter, we still legislated that they (Aboriginals) were not human beings right up until the 60's. Even if Peter Pan and Wendy had of been here before the Aboriginals what right did the Australian government have to declare that a race of people were not human at all. I didn't respond previously as you were leading off on a tangent that had nothing to do with the topic as usual.

    As for my giving you my phone number you must be joking. You are a real piece of work. I say this at the risk of being banned, it would be worth it. I still wish I was half as good as you think you are.
     
  20. culldav

    culldav Well-Known Member

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    He has blood on his hands. I’m not saying my slate is perfectly clean, but I wouldn’t want to die knowing I have that atrocity on my conscience. I wonder how many guilty nightmares he’s had about those innocent young Australians being electrocuted.
     

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