Neoliberalism in a nutshell

The political scene in Australia has been corrupted in the last 30 years, starting with the election of Bob Hawke in 1983, which signalled the beginning of a new destructive ideology in mainstream Australian politics: neoliberalism. This ideology, which was passed down to Labor and Liberal governments alike, has now found its way into the most totalitarian government in Australian history: Tony Abbott’s Liberal administration.

This government, dedicated to building an society of two Australias, one for the rich and upper class people, where you don’t have pay taxes and because you have money, you can afford things like deregulated healthcare and private education, and the other Australia which is the reality for most in this country, where you get left behind if you didn’t inherit copious amounts of money from your parents. It is this idea that fuels this Liberal government and influences each and every policy decision Abbott and his henchmen make. It is the idea behind the hideous $7 GP co-payment and the lack of means testing which pushes the poor further behind.  We can’t let the next generation live in a worse Australia than we do at the moment. Neoliberalism must be destroyed and we need it destroyed quickly.

Unfortunately, neither Labor nor Abbott’s Liberals will destroy or want to destroy it because they are the ones who profit from it. These two parties and the ruling bourgeois class are the ones who are driving this destruction of humanity. Socialists, social democrats and just people who care about the future of humanity and equality need to stand up and take action in destroying the two party system which drives this terrible anti-proletariat ideology they call neoliberalism.

Death to the NCAA

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), since its formation in 1910, has arguably been the world’s premier national amateur sport organisation. Only now, in the wake of the Northwestern players union dispute and the O’Bannon vs. NCAA court case, is it being exposed for what it really is: a greedy and exploitative capitalist organisation, whose revenue is made on the back of effectively slave labour. The NCAA makes a killing in profits each and every year and yet the workers at the bottom of the food chain, the players make nothing apart from scholarships provided by universities. If they were a listed company, they would be found guilty of paying below the minimum wage, but because the NCAA is a “non-profit” they get away with it. Worse than this, the NCAA in their rulebook state that student athletes are prohibited from working for a wage, even though a normal student, even an academic scholarship one can work. This means that for many students living in poverty, their only hope is to be a star and make it big time into the NFL. This is a stunning example of the failure of our capitalist system of which sport is a microcosm.

My take is that the level of the NCAA’s exploitation is such that the players have become modern day slaves with such oppressive rules that a player can’t be given money from a friend for lunch or clothes. This is a scandal that must be resolved with the players in mind. Any other resolution would lead to more oppression of players already burdened with studies and caring for themselves and often families. The NCAA’s control of players’ identity through video games and merchandise is beginning to be tempered only now through the fight by people like Ed O’Bannon, a former UCLA Bruin basketballer.

The widespread crimes committed and the shocking retrograde rules put in place by the NCAA have led me to believe that the NCAA should be destroyed and collegiate sports should no longer be the pathway to professional sport. Through a club-oriented system as opposed to a school-oriented system, the lead-in leagues would be professional but with lower pay than the top flight leagues, a massive improvement on the dreadful conditions faced by student athletes in America today.

Finally, having been a massive Alabama Crimson Tide football fan before I saw the harrowing oppression that goes on in collegiate sports around the USA, it made me want people to know that their innocent amateur sport they love so dear is anything but innocent and just another part of the fascist capitalist world we live in.

 

Ferguson Blues

Much has been said in the past week or so in the media about the tragic events in Ferguson, Missouri in which unarmed black man Michael Brown was shot multiple times and killed by police officer Darren Wilson. This terribly tragic event has led to protests by the African-American community ever since, which brought into question the caution taken by police officers around the United States when it comes to using potentially lethal weapons. In fact just two days later in Los Angeles, Ezell Ford, another unarmed black man was shot dead by the police. The issue of excessive force by police and policing figures is an issue that has surfaced here in this country too, with a 15-year-old girl being dropped brutally on her head by a Flinders Street station on July 31, 2013. Here was a defenceless girl being attacked rugby-style over what apparently was just a ticketing violation.

My take on this is that these are all examples of the same problem: people in highly ranked, powerful positions attacking the vulnerable and less well off. The African American community in the United States knows this all too well with the recent high profile case of George Zimmerman fatally shooting Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager whose case bears striking resemblances to Brown’s.  Of course, even this example pales with the list of times that well-off, generally white people have taken to killing African Americans, which includes such events as the transatlantic slave trade, the Ku Klux Klan and the court systems which many a time have conspired to sentence a black man to death. In this country we too had a genocide, one in which Aboriginals were killed, treated as flora and fauna and as a community, had their land taken on the basis that no one had been living there. These are major atrocities against people who were living good and decent lives until foreigners from imperialist countries came to impose their tyrannical regime on the country they were invading.

The whole idea of all powerful, imperialist government is that it seeks to expand its power, expand its wealth and destroy systems in which less well off people get helped. This is the definition of fascism, an ideology with which capitalism and imperialism fit in nicely with. Socialists need to understand this and spread this message, because many people just think it is the particular people in power who commit these atrocities. It isn’t, instead it is the blood-thirsty system that we call imperialism that fosters criminals to take power and inflict pain and suffering on so many people. No person is perfect, that is certain, but if the idea of government was inclusion, like it is under real socialism, then maybe the leaders among us would not evil, maybe they would be a friend and someone that, if you were in need would give you a helping hand.

The Future of Batting

Watching India capitulate to an abysmal 94 all out last night, it got me thinking about why top class cricketers, seem to have such difficulty playing in the Test match arena in conditions that are not perfect. Even Virat Kohli and Cheteshwar Pujara, possibly two of the finest young batsmen in the world right now, looked out of their depth against James Anderson, Stuart Broad and the other English bowlers.

The problem with all of these players seems to be an over-tendency to play strokes and feel for the ball before they are set in. This, more often than not leads to an edge and an easy catch for the keeper. This has become more apparent in recent years as players have not put as higher price on their wicket as in previous years. The easy solution to this is for batsmen to see off their early deliveries to get their eye in. The more difficult problem is the putting a high price on their wicket, which comes from many factors, the most glaring of which is the amount of One Day and T20 cricket that players play around the world these days, which allows players to put in a few shocking performances as long as they entertain the crowd with big hitting, all the while making thousands and millions of dollars doing it.

Maybe a less obvious problem, but to my mind almost more important is that so few Test players play domestic first-class cricket, for so many years the stepping stone into the big time. Now, the stepping stone is just as likely to be the Big Bash or just being a talented player, which means you don’t really have to prove yourself before starting your career. Another reason for first-class cricket’s importance is that many pitches on the domestic scene are under-developed and bowling wickets and thus teach players about how to tough it out on tricky pitches, the sort that players like Jack Hobbs were known for their play on. Even the Sheffield Shield pitches now are batting paradises that are used for Test cricket like the Adelaide Oval and Brisbane. If we want our cricketers to truly be the best in the world, we would make our Shield games be played on suburban tracks rather than the best. This might teach our kids on the values of playing a ball on its merits and being cautious rather than slogging. It is no surprise to me that out of the top ten players with the all time test highest batting averages, four are English players who had long and illustrious County cricket careers (Sutcliffe, Paynter, Barrington and Hammond), who would’ve played on all sorts of pitches that swung and spun prodigiously and were unpredictable in bounce, which forced them to play each ball how they saw it and defend for long periods if they had to, which would’ve taught them well for Test matches.

One Day and Twenty20 cricket need to have a diminished role in the future of cricket if the standard of batting is going to improve, because the fundamentals can only be found in a longer form of cricket where runs and longevity are valued more than fun and entertainment. Money and fun can only go so far in sport, and to my mind with the current leadership of the sport, batting and real batsmen who see off the new ball and don’t worry about run rate will soon be something of the past.

 

My Take: The Palestinian Situation

The war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas has been going on now for about a month now, and has been perhaps the biggest event to take place in that time. This conflict has to me been, unfortunately, a war that many would believe was inevitable, given the fact that both Israel and Hamas are led by nationalistic leaders, who believe that war and the destruction of the other side is the way forward in the region. This has led to the outbreak of war in the region, which has led to one main loser, the Palestinian people who in this conflict alone have lost in excess of 1,700 members including at least 296 children. To put this in context, more Palestinian children have been killed in the current conflict than have Israeli soldiers in conflicts since 2006. This is a dreadful loss of lives given this is just the latest in a long line of conflicts involving Palestinian land of recent times. These dreadful figures are the result of the fight between Palestinian self-determination and an Israeli leadership that has made it clear that it will do anything it can to stop the Palestinians from getting their sovereignty.

My take on this issue is that the only way for this endless cycle of conflict and bloodshed to end is for Palestine to be freed from its rulers and given its sovereignty. If this was the case, in my opinion, there would be less need for a ultra-nationalist group like Hamas to be the main military force in Palestine because the nation would have its army and Hamas, would indeed be just a terrorist organisation, rather than the militant nationalist force it currently represents. This however is a very difficult proposition currently, due to the level of support for an Israel-only solution from countries such as the USA, Australia and a large majority of liberal democracies across the globe. It is the exception rather than the rule when major world leaders speak out in favour of a Palestinian state, with two of the most prominent supporters being the late Nelson Mandela, the former South African leader and the late Hugo Chavez from Venezuela. The left-wing forces in Australia and throughout the world need to continue to support the oppressed in Palestine because very few groups nowadays are not a part of the Western ultra-Zionist lobby who are the imperialist rulers in the region. We need to provide a voice, like we always have for people in awful situations like the one people in Gaza and the West Bank have faced for long time. It has been shown for a long time that no-one in the mainstream can provide that voice because of the strength of the imperialist forces in making politicians and journalists tell their side of the story.

We must be active in our support for the oppressed people in Gaza and the West Bank living in such horrible conditions during this conflict that has destroyed so many lives and against both Israel and Hamas who brutally murder innocent Palestinian people in order to justify their destructive aims. Finally, our end goal must be the freedom of Palestine and their sovereignty

My Take: The Middle Class: an integral part of liberalism

The first mentioning of the middle class was in James Bradshaw’s 1745 pamphlet “Scheme to prevent running Irish wools to France”. The term in Bradshaw’s world meant the people in the class hierarchy in between the proletarian peasants and the bourgeois nobility. However, this term came to mean the petite bourgeoisie, people who are educated, have qualifications and work in professional industries like business and managing roles. In theory, this seems like a best of both worlds scenario, with the education and fiscal security of an upperclassman without the image of an aristocrat, however, in modern politics, of the ideologies currently in the worldwide political arena, only one has a vision that includes the middle class as its centrepiece: liberalism. While many libertarians and neo-liberals see the class struggle as between the rich and the rest (also called social Darwinism) and many socialists see the struggle as between the working class and ruling class, modern liberalists sees no class struggle and a utopian harmony where the upper, middle and lower classes live in peace. Unfortunately for liberals, neoliberal ideology is ascendant in many countries including Australia, where both major parties have spread neoliberal ideas such as privatisation of state assets and deregulation and the United Kingdom. These ideas have put our respective middle classes in grave danger. In the United States, while the ultra-obstructionist Republican Party continue to pass bills attacking the middle class, President Obama continues to simply sprout lines on why the middle class needs to be saved rather than actually acting on it at a time when poverty rates are at 15% and rising ever higher and the percentage of people not in the labor force is at a 36 year high and continues to rise. The most shocking stat is that just 44% of people consider themselves to be middle class as people start to realise that their dreams of living the high life and the American Dream are just a dream. The middle class in the west will continue to shrink so long as liberalism doesn’t defend it. The problems of poverty and unemployment were the same problems that were the triggers for the Arab Spring revolution.
With all the talk on liberals and conservative neo-liberals, seemingly the mainstream political ideologies today, it maybe time we think about the socialists, whose concept of the working class proletariat rising up to form one “middle class” is a concept that is foreign to the liberal view of the middle class being the educated, aristocrat-like group it has become.
My take is that the middle class is a concept that in its current form is fabricated by liberals to keep the class struggle between proletariat and bourgeois away from the limelight and that really their efforts to keep a flourishing middle class will be undermined, by both the neoliberals, who are the default ideology under capitalism, and the socialists, the radical fringe, who won’t back down from the working class, rather than the middle class being the answer to inequality. Within 50 years, whether we are governed by capitalism or socialism, the middle class in its present form will be a forgotten concept, never to be seen again, or if it does exist it will be a group, not a class.

My Take: The Left’s troubles with unity

Ever since the very first political party, approximately 1500 years ago, the issue of unity, has been a key part of the battle for power. In Australia, with the most recent Labor government from 2007-13, we saw disunity raise its ugly head with two elected Prime Ministers knocked from the party leadership, some of which due to bad poll numbers, but mostly because of selfish traitors, namely Simon Crean and Bill Shorten who put their own promotion ahead of the team and it’s ability to govern and gain support. At 2013 Federal election, Labor was smashed winning just 55 seats to the more unified Coalition’s 90, much of this was put down to the crippling disunity that destroyed its reputation and dropped Labor’s first preference vote to its lowest point since 1934. The Coalition has had its disunity troubles too, namely recently when Malcolm Turnbull attacked Prime Minister Abbott’s best media buddies Andrew Bolt and Alan Jones, but their troubles are nothing like Labor’s.
While this lack of unity behind political leaders is a major issue, my take is that the bigger issue is the unity or disunity on policy issues, otherwise known as ideology. Again, Labor comes across to me as a party that aims stridently for ideological unity, an impossible idea when your party has 44,000 independently thinking members. This has led to two main factions, the Left and Right and further factions have sprung from these. In recent years, these factions have been in a bitter brawl, with the Right faction generally dominant. The difficulty for the Left is that on the conservative side of politics there are certain policy views that a large majority share, like low taxes, capitalism, low spending on services and small government. Now, of course, there are differences, but they are the exceptions not the rule. There are so many different positions, for higher taxes for the rich, for lower taxes for all, for small-l liberalism, for democratic socialism and so on. On the Left, differences are the rule, not the exceptions. This is why unity of thought will always be difficult, particularly for left-wing organisations. Why doesn’t the Left, like Socialist Alternative, value their differences and not try to always unify with a party that is similarish, because in modern left-wing politics, purity of thought should be everything.

My Take: Where’s the Vision?

With the Australian Labor Party ahead of the Liberals in the polls at both state and federal government levels, you would think the future of Labor couldn’t be rosier. However, the party’s status as the social democratic party of Australia, coming under threat with such inhumane policies as their take on asylum seekers, and a lack of leadership and vision from their leaders. The issue of particular focus in this article is the lack of vision. Every successful political party, whether on the left, centre or right needs an understanding and a vision of what their perfect country would look like. The centre-right Liberal Party of Australia sees an Australia which adheres to laissez-faire capitalism, a land where individual wealth isn’t taxed, and people who can’t pay for services are left behind in society. The middle left Greens sees an Australia where the environment is preserved for future generations. Who knows what Labor wants? One minute they’re passing the carbon tax, next minute, when Liberals attack it, they just let it die a miserable death. Gough Whitlam, when he was elected in 1972, had the vision of a multicultural social democratic country, with healthcare for everyone with Medicare and an Australia that controlled more of its resources through the failed nationalisation of mining and other resources. Bill Shorten and the modern Labor party have become the party without a vision, apart from simply attacking the Liberal Party.

My take on Labor is that under its current caucus and senior leaders, it will not become a party of vision, like the one Whitlam was a part of. Ever since the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd fiasco it has constantly tried to simply restore its reputation, rather than take the opportunity to revitalise the party and revamp its image. Politically, they have been the whipping boy for the Liberals and a party that even though it is the biggest in Australia, its vision means right now the political landscape is very much favouring the party in blue. This is seen, most clearly by the barrage of attacks on everything from workers rights to the environment to education and healthcare. Right now, the party with a vision to change the world isn’t the Labor party, it’s the Liberals.

My Take: Cochran vs. McDaniel, Mississippi Senate 2014

Establishment Republican Thad Cochran’s recent win over Tea Party firebrand Chris McDaniel in the Mississippi Senate Republican runoff, isn’t getting much press in Australia. Not surprising given the lack of coverage on U.S events full stop, but this could be one event that is interesting to note, given yesterday’s strange alliance between Clive Palmer and former VP of the U.S.A Al Gore.
The reason this is interesting was Thad Cochran’s strategy of reaching out to African American voters, a demographic that overwhelmingly votes Democrat. During the original primary, Chris McDaniel got 49.5% of the vote, to Cochran’s 49%, which forced a runoff due to no candidate getting 50%. In the runoff, Cochran got 50.9% to McDaniel’s 49.1%. The runoff had 60,601 extra voters than the original, many of these African Americans who didn’t want to see the Tea Party gain ascendancy in the state.
My take is that there are two things to take away from this:
1) The major party’s blatant attempt to attack third parties in any way they know how.

2) The people’s willingness to keep the major parties in power

Now the Tea Party might well one of the largest third parties in terms of popularity worldwide, and certainly the largest one in the United States, but still the Republican Party sees the need to cheat or at least push the boundaries of the rules. In most primaries, including in Mississippi, you are supposed to vote in the primary of the party you are going to vote for in the general election. This makes the large surge of African American voters, up to 40% in some counties, look awfully suspicious. One last point is that even with all of Thad Cochran’s enticing and political game playing, voters still had go to the booth and maybe put in a vote for a party and a person they had never voted for before. Imagine if we had public primaries in Australia, and there was a crazy radical leftie, running for let’s say, the Australian Labor Party nomination, and because this socialist could get in, Liberals started putting their vote in for a more moderate Labor member. This is what happened in Mississippi and it goes to show the power of a grassroots movement, like the Tea Party, that it can scare the stuffing out of a mainstream party to such an extent, that they had to cheat.

Quick Wrap: A Sad Day for Journalism

Yesterday in a Cairo court, Al Jazeera journalists Peter Greste, Mohamed Fahmy and producer Baher Mohammed were given 7-10 year sentences for what can only be described as responsible journalism. The Egyptian government, with Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has made its intentions clear from the outset, to eliminate all traces of the formerly ruling Muslim Brotherhood party from public life. They have already given a death sentence to 182 of the group’s followers, and Mohamed Morsi, the party’s leader, is currently on trial for murder, inciting deadly violence and espionage. What, in effect, el-Sisi is trying to do in ridding Egypt of the ruling party and its followers, is to do to the Muslim Brotherhood what the United States under George W. Bush did to the Ba’ath party in Iraq during the war from 2003, through imprisoning and killing members, including Saddam Hussein himself. This, in Iraq’s case just led to more sectarian violence and a situation now, where Barack Obama has to face a similar situation as President of the U.S as Bush did back then. All I’ll say is, for the sake of the Middle East, I hope history doesn’t repeat.