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The Greek uprisings, deaths of Alexis, Michel, and November 17
– Mo'lem La'veh
by Gerry Georgatos
A youth uprising spread throughout Greece after the December 6 killing by a police officer of fifteen year old Alexandros Grigoropolous, in one of the poorest Greek suburbs, Exarcheia . Alexis threw a firebomb at a police car and one of two police officers, Epaminondas Korkoneas retaliated. A few days later in Melbourne, Australia, a youth, same age, who pulled a knife was shot dead by police officers. There is no such thing as the Greek Silence. Greece is still enduring riots, protests, rallies and more importantly riveting discourse. In Australia, aside the Australian Silence, most quarters accepted the death of the Melbourne youth as the warranted keeping of the peace.
In Greece, accountability has led to the arrest of the police officers, the resignation of officials and a Minister (it was not accepted), the possibility of the Government's toppling. Some nations tie their government accordingly to the events of the civic and social tapestry. Civil and social order is a governmental function, and when they aren't functioning the government is held responsible without recourse to mitigating arguments as are often held up to their constituents for instance in Australia.
Greece is the country that delivered the notion of democracy, where government became about the people, and therefore the people became government, hence the electorate and constituency. The redistribution of the land, of the economy, of wealth came with this democratising. Greece unfolded the first bona fide universal human rights language, and tried to refine it through Solon and Pericles, harnessed by Dracon, and obsessed by Plato and Aristotle. This unfolding human rights language has never left the Greek identity. Even while usurped by centuries of oppression under the Romans, Ottomans and the western Europeans, Greeks obsessively continue to identify with the alleged beauty and romance of their historical founding of policies of social inclusion qualified in subsequent notions of equity, equality, and justice, further underwritten by the pursuit of understanding what is right, what is good, what is universal, what is ontological and teleological.
Most newspapers in Greece have names associated with the aspirations of the unfolding human rights language, such as the Eleftherotypia (free press, with 'free' derived from freedom). Newspapers are the most prodigious business in Greece. If you travel to Greece you will find Greeks everywhere talking to each other, strangers, about the state and the human condition, at train stations, in piazzas, as if all Greece is a political agora.
Greece is a very westernised nation, with its eleven million resident Greeks very different to the many more millions of Greeks who live overseas and who identify with a past Greek experience that is not contemporary on the thousands of Greek islands and the rugged mainland. Most resident Greeks do not have religious weddings, rather civil agreements and all Greek women keep their maiden name. Greek families average only one child.
Greece has tried to move with the western world's capitalist presence, with meritocracy, in overture to the multinational overlords. Nevertheless, Greek citizenry, though its conservative past has been relaxed, patriarchy demolished, has refused to exclusively universally identify with capitalism and its contemporary excesses. Greeks cling to what here in Australia and in the USA people scoff as unrealistic, and that is the universal human rights accords pursued by the ancient Greek democrats. Demos are the people, and democracy is intended as a state for the people, not as a state for multinationals and the demos as their workforce.
On the 17th of December banners hung from the Acropolis, declaring solidarity, “WE WILL DETERMINE OUR HISTORY OURSELVES...” On the 19th of December Greek citizens, deemed as anarchists by the western press, hijacked a state television station. Greeks have a contemporary history of resisting capitalism's influences and their overlords. Greece is the only country where the CIA station chief, Richard Welch, was assassinated (1975). Greece recognises Palestine and Israel, and whether it has a left wing or less than a left wing government it will not deny Palestine's right to statehood. The US Congress has not been friendly to Greece because of these types of conscientious decrees and at one time George Bush had Greece on his nemeses list.
During the last year we have watched some of the world's governments describe the financial collapses of the share market. Most governments have separated themselves from the collapses and purport to be victims, rather than perpetrators. The Rudd and Obama Governments use the global financial crises as to excuse everything they do. The reality is that governments are responsible for them, even if they are pressured by the forces of influential multinational companies and institutions. It is governments that implement governance and structures, that enact legislation. The Greek Government has accepted some responsibility for the actions of its police force and therefore has been what other governments in terms of the global financial crisis have not been, accountable for their laws, for their civil governance.
All of Greece rose into riots at the killing of 15 year old Alexis Grigoropoulos: Athens, Thessaloniki, Patras, Larissa, Heraklion, Chania, Ioannina, Volos, Kozani and Komotini, all the major centres. Alex represents poverty, and all poverty is induced. Poverty is often kept from challenging the affluent through cruel and brutal means. Alexis is the world's symbol of the profound systemic economic crisis that can only be addressed by a redistribution of the world's resources and wealth. The response to the death of Alexis represents the distrust by the people in the institutions of the state.
In a capitalist world, arguing meritocracy, every nation state is corrupt, because corruption, the circumvention of justice, is the only way to oppress the poor. In nation states such as Australia, the corruption is worse, because the police state that Australia is, is so right wing and viciously hierarchical, that it deceives its people through multinational company owned media. They determine the lead politicians and policies of this country, where dissemination is severely limited not to threaten the illicit gaining elites. In Greece where the media is freer, the brutality is often a physical one rather than the worse one we psychologically endure in this country through the subversives of silence and delusion.
For Greek governments to protect institutions as the multinationals do in Australia through a subservient mainstream media, they at times have to regress to brutal force. There is some sort of cryptic cruel honesty in brutal force, that they are not hiding their intentions and hence damaging the psyche as deeply as ours is. In Australia, South Africa and the USA the governments, media and academia deceived their people regarding Indigenous peoples and their civil rights. It may be better, cathartic, to be a warrior than an automaton. In 1963 the outspoken Dr Grigorios Lambrakis was gunned down by the pending Greek police state, the coming junta of 1967-73. The CIA enabled its puppet government, that bashed the people's right to freedom of comment. Even in those difficult times Greeks throughout Greece wrote Z on walls all over the country. Z has the phonetic murmur of the Greek word, '(he) lives'. I visited Greece for the first time during the height of the junta, in 1971. I was nine years old. I often wondered about Z, and what it really means, that even in the face of brute force, in the face of oppression the truth is omnipotent and the pursuit of justice prevails. Grigoris Lambrakis marched alone in the banned Marathon to Athens Peace Rally on Sunday, April 21st, 1963, one month before his assassination. Lambrakis, was a physician and politician, a pacifist who opposed the Vietnam war, he was left leaning without being a Communist. His funeral turned into a massive demonstration, with 500,000 of Greece's 8 million population turning out.
Alexis represents to the Greek people the worst economic indice in the last hundred years, where aspirations to live capable of select freedoms are no longer possible for most Greeks. Students want to be assured of jobs upon completion of a tertiary education but more than half will not find appropriate work for up to 20 years, and many will be unemployed their whole lives. What the world needs to notice about the Greek riots, which have spread in Europe, and intellectually throughout the world, is that the protests are larger than usual, and this is indicative of the capitalist market failures during the last year. Governments of the world are losing their legitimacy with the people. The last killing by a young person in Greece was in 1985, Michel Kaltezas, and the ranks of revolutionary organisations such as November 17 swelled. It is now worse (or better). The movement for change in Greece is immense and it threatens to export itself to the rest of the world.
Mikis Theodorakis, the famous Greek musician, composer and politician once said, “Greece is this little country, but it has been subject to very serious historical pressures. Everyone in Greece becomes politically committed.” This is what may happen to the rest of the world if the pressures are perceived as endemic and unrelenting. Theodorakis, born in 1925, lived through the Nazi occupation of Greece but he considered the brutal police state that Greece became in 1967 as the worst ordeal. He was arrested and imprisoned. Theodorakis said, “...the dictatorship of the colonels was unexpected. I was 50 years old and had two children. I was proud to be imprisoned but ashamed for Greece.”
Greece had been, since April 21, 1967, under the dictatorial rule of the military, a regime which abolished civil rights, dissolved political parties and exiled, imprisoned and tortured politicians based on their political beliefs. Right wing states such as Australia mob through silence or ridicule those who speak contrary to them and this because they so evilishly and rigorously control and limit discourse to their agenda driven leanings only. Hence, they do not have to impose physical martial law, martial law covertly exists. The subterfuge influence of politics and the oppression of civil liberties in Australia, where we are not able to disseminate freely, where we are not able to engage in legitimate discussion, where boards of directors deny policies of equitable inclusion, where we are not allowed to freely coalesce and mobilise protests and rallies ensures only those that rule over us, the overlords, harass an education. It was boards of directors that ensured the Stolen Generation and Apartheid in Australia occurred for two centuries. Greece has never been so evil, only at times the nesciently evil have foolishly by brute force gripped reins.
On February 21, 1973 Greek law students went on strike and barricaded themselves inside the buildings of the Law School of the University of Athens, in the centre of Athens, to have laws repealed. On November 14, 1973 students at the Athens Polytechnic went on strike and started protesting against the military regime and police state. Thousands of workers and youth joined them protesting inside and outside of the Athens Polytechnic. In the early hours of November 17, 1973, a hysterical government sent a tank crashing through the gates of the Polytechnic. 24 civilians were killed outside the campus. 45 died that day. The Greek revolutionary group November 17, terrorists to others, took its name from the date. November 17 is a holiday in Greece, schools and universities close. It is also ironic that the Zapatista Movement from the poorest state of Mexico formed itself as a revolutionary group on a November 17. The Zapatista slogan is "Everything for everyone, and nothing for ourselves."
November 17 was an organisation, possibly disbanded after being discovered several years ago, made up of doctors, lawyers and academics. They opposed what they alleged American imperialism and the undermining of a democratic economic establishment. I was in Greece in September 1989 when they assassinated political leader Pavlos Bakoyannis who they considered a puppet. Their assassinations and bombings stretched for thirty years and focused on the CIA and the American embassy. After the imprisonment of November 17 leaders, a group calling itself Revolutionary Struggle appeared, and on January 12, 2007 claimed responsibility for a missile attack on the American embassy in Athens.
Prime Minister Karamanlis of Greece wrote to Alex Grigoropolous' family, "In these difficult moments please accept my condolences for the unfair loss of your son. Like all Greeks I am deeply saddened." The 1985 killing by police of Michel Kalazis led to many years of ill-feeling and vendettas between Greek youth and the police. The Grigoropolous killing has resulted in large demonstrations outside Greece where solidarity has been defined: The Hague, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Berlin, Frankfurt, Paris, London, Dublin, Rome, Bordeaux, Seville, Barcelona, Nicosia, Paphos,. Many European critics have described the escalating rioting resultant from the general perception of inefficient and corrupt governments that continue to fail addressing the economic crises, and the rising youth unemployment. George Washington Bush is known for his fears that the the poor will be so problematic that they will threaten the peace and security of the affluent and their means to affluency. George has been bent on arguing for efficient separation of these people, the poor classes from the rich.
What many have missed in the arguments of the students and civilians in Greece, and to whom I have been talking with, such as my many academic friends and cousins in Greece, is that we have intellectual crises and not just economic crises. Greece has a more genuine University education than what Australian Universities have. For two thousand years we have been unfolding a human rights language levied by the study of political ideologues, by philosophy, by our expanding vocabularies. We are educating people who need to be nourished in what is good, what is right, what is universal, what is the meaning of life. Increasingly we are not happy to just live our lives in wage slavery and drudge through mere pecuniary gains. We want more. We want to understand justice, equity, equality and to live it in its phases as we argue its unfolding. This is obviously inextricably linked to what we need to understand as economics. We do not want to live in lies, and in cruelty and the continual atrocities and ills we plague upon one another. It is about our inhumanity that we are fighting back at, not mere unemployment and the inability to have what others have and deny us, what others flaunt. We want happiness, and that can only arrive from honesty.
If what happened in Athens occurred in Perth it would mean the Perth CBD would have had its central streets seriously damaged, and the downtown area hit by violent rioting on a daily basis. Tear gas and fires. On December 6, within an hour of the killing, rioting broke. By dawn 30 police officers had been injured, scores of shops and banks damaged, cars overturned. On December 7, in Athens alone 22 rioters were arrested, and this continued everyday for three weeks. On December 8, in Thessaloniki 63 protestors without Greek nationality were arrested. Hundreds were arrested daily throughout Greece throughout December's last weeks. The Greek department of Amnesty International canceled the scheduled celebrations on 10 December for the 60th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in response to the police violence in Greece. That same day the crisis deepened when a one day general strike paralysed the country and hence highlighted the economic ideological route of the riots.
On December 11, 4,000 students in Athens marched against police with some throwing fire bombs. On December 12, students attacked police outside the parliament and police fired tear gas in response. On the same day Greek police issued an appeal for more tear gas after supplies ran low. On December 14 at least four radio stations were occupied by protestors, and students marched in solidarity throughout Greece. By December 15 more than 600 schools were under occupation by students and over 150 university faculties were taken over by students. All this was only the beginning. Unions throughout Greece marched all over the country. Unions, civilians and students marched throughout Europe. The occupation of Universities in Greece only ended on December 31st, but the protests continued on a daily basis. On January 5, police officer, 21 year old Diamandis Matzounis, was shot outside the Greek Ministry of Culture by masked gunpersons when they fired 20 rounds of bullets.
On January 9 an education protest took place in Athens rallying against police repression, corrupt politicians, and against a system that offers little hope for the many. Unlike most of the rallies it turned violent. Some hooded protesters broke away from thousands of students and threw stones and flares at police who retaliated with tear gas and flash grenades. Some 60 people were arrested and among those were 14 lawyers. The Union of Journalists for Athens Daily Newspapers did what no Australian media group would do, they protested to the Ministry for the Interior and Public Order about the police's brutal attacks and beatings.
International Monetary Fund Managing Director, Dominque Strauss-Kahn, warned that there was a risk of social unrest spreading unless the financial sector shared wealth more evenly.
In Greece, as in most regions of Europe, though there is little public support for street violence and the destruction of property, whether private or public, there is a deep well of tolerance for demonstrations, where the right to protest is held protectively. During 2006 there were massive protests throughout Greece in its universities and schools in terms of protecting free education and the improved remuneration of staff. Free education is prized so dearly that it was protected by the strikes and occupations that closed universities for up to four months. On June 1, 2006 university lecturers launched an indefinite strike against the Government's measure to introduce private universities and break up the state system of higher education. On June 9, 350 of Greece's 456 university faculties were under occupation by students. On June 27 students and political groups demonstrated outside of the OECD Education Conference, where the world's Education Ministers were meeting in Athens. I remember an arrogant then Australian Federal Minister for Education, Julie Bishop delivering a speak to 300 Murdochites in our KBLT Lecture Theatre. She spoke of the privatisation of Universities and that it was up to Australian Universities to start fending more and more for themselves and to raise funding from Alumni and the corporate sector. She had made reference to the OECD Conference in Athens. I asked her a couple of questions from the audience which she was incapable of coherently answering and I remember even her admirers in our Vice Chancellery noting her failure as I exposed her. I noted to her that Greece, where she attended the Conference, provides free education right down to tuition and all books, and it was about the national consciousness and an informed society, and that it was unlikely they would shift to fee paying education. She emphatically stated they would, and that it was the only way, and that while she was there she had witnessed the shift from free education to private. Well, two and half years later Julie Bishop is still wrong. Australia's tertiary education is now so low in standard and purpose that it is almost pointless, this is what happens when it isn't prioritised for funding by our governments and thrown to the wolves, that is the corporate sector and the contemporary management systems that describe themselves as Vice Chancelleries. You cannot oppress into outcomes as Australia has when there is such freedom as experienced in Greece as compared to Australia in terms of Greece's freer press. Australia does not have a free press, rather it is a police state, with its governance built around managing information, the big brother that Noam Chomsky believes exists, where consent is manufactured, where we do not see what Greeks are allowed to see on their televisions and hear on their news broadcasts. We live in an Australia where our ability to discover the truth is outstripped by the ability to manifest deceit.
I have been to Greece more than 40 times, and in most years there have been long strikes that have closed banks, businesses, schools, universities, and the city centres. I keep in touch with my relatives, friends and colleagues in Greece and the protests are not just about the injustice of a singular loss of life, or about economic inequity, or the masses starving, they are inextricably linked to a pursuit of meaningfulness. People know that justice will not be wrought by some measures and reforms, they know that unless there is a radical redistribution of the economy, underwritten by dramatically different principles that much of the same will continue. In Chile, on May 30, 2006 high school student protests culminated when 790,000 students joined strikes and marched throughout the country. The problems of the world's failing capitalist market are increasing and unless George Bush's vision comes true, a moat between the increasing poor and the rich, and the USA has historically evidenced itself as a country harsh on its poor, horrendous conflicts between peoples seem evident during the decades to come.
“...freedom is not a property of the human being, but the other way around: the human being is at best the property of freedom... the essence of the human being is grounded in freedom.” (Schelling)
FOOD SHOULD BE OUR MEDICINE
By Gerry Georgatos
By Gerry Georgatos
Wisdom is to know what to do. Virtue is to do it. We live in a world of lies, a world quickly devolving into the unsustainable in terms of human life.
Poverty is induced, stress manufactured. We argue for change in the most insignificant ways. Our politicians are our only hope, and what a terrible dependency this is in hoping to move humanity away from becoming unsustainable.
Scientists do not know enough about what they're discovering. Before they have any idea of short and long term consequences their discoveries become part of capitalism's opportunistic production processes. Today, there are some 60,000 chemical compounds in production. More than 10,000 of these are used in the production of food. Many are neurotoxic and carcinogenic. With most of them we are yet to know their long term consequences. With GMO 'foods' we do not know the long term consequences from the various genes spliced into these 'foods'.
What sort of humanity are we living in when we know benzene is a carcinogen and where studies show higher leukaemia rates amongst petrol station workers? The benzene levels in our environment are dangerously high. Fluoride which ravages our auto-immune functions is banned in 9 European countries but not in Australia.
Nine tenths of what is consumed from our supermarkets are toxic - physically and mentally. They are addictive and hence in terms of over production unsustainable consumption as the earth's resources are decimated for pure misguided opportunism. Food should be our medicine, as it had been for most of the history of all organic life.
One hundred years ago the reported cancer rate amongst humans was less than 3% and now it is over 30%. Heart disease was rare. Arthritis was rare. Diabetes was rare. Organ failure was rare. Strokes were rare. The types of depression we now know of were rare. To believe that we correct something by amputating a limb or surgically removing tissue or an organ is ludicrous. Food was once our cause for health and for healing. What is on offer in supermarkets and stores is debilitating and deathly toxic matter, with chemical compounds and gene splicing that we do not have sufficient published evidence of their long term consequences.
This is the mistake that we are making not only with food, but with all forms of radiation, nuclear and uranium energies, with water resources, with the decimation of natural habitats, with congested urban planning. We are moving with such rapidity into events and more so for the purpose of monetary gain for the few, that we dismiss with immoral bravado the need to understand that which we venture into.
I could go into detail and provide the long list of horrific diseases and deformities associated with our expedient rapture into introducing new chemical compounds and the ability to harness energies into humanity; for instance the diseases associated with genetically engineered tryptophan and the excess radiation levels that we do not see but affect us.
Only extensive long-term tests can ensure minimal long term consequences. Gene therapy is a greater problem. With tryptophan we could not foresee the side-effects of the genetic manipulation of simple bacteria. How on earth then can we foresee the consequences of inserting genes from animals, including humans, into foods?
The multinational companies, and the excessive self interest groups will not consider sustainability before profits. The tobacco industry to this day continues on with its damaging effects and lies. We need politicians who will stand up to the selfish and the crazed scientists and tell them 'stop', and let us be considered and thoughtful.
We cannot save humanity without radically moving away from the insanity we have shifted ourselves into. If we look at we consider food, we may discover health, and through this address and reform the health industry and the ability for governments to fully fund it. Through this we will address needless over consumption and radicalise our sense of economics and hence have the capacity for distributive and egalitarian economics and be able to appropriately feed everyone. We will hence have less need to rapaciously decimate the earth's resources and our habitats. We need this philosophy to address all understandings, planning and policies in all our domains. Everything else is cowardice and gibberish, and an impossible pathway to save humanity, to make it egalitarian and a healthy, worthwhile one.
Poverty is induced, stress manufactured. We argue for change in the most insignificant ways. Our politicians are our only hope, and what a terrible dependency this is in hoping to move humanity away from becoming unsustainable.
Scientists do not know enough about what they're discovering. Before they have any idea of short and long term consequences their discoveries become part of capitalism's opportunistic production processes. Today, there are some 60,000 chemical compounds in production. More than 10,000 of these are used in the production of food. Many are neurotoxic and carcinogenic. With most of them we are yet to know their long term consequences. With GMO 'foods' we do not know the long term consequences from the various genes spliced into these 'foods'.
What sort of humanity are we living in when we know benzene is a carcinogen and where studies show higher leukaemia rates amongst petrol station workers? The benzene levels in our environment are dangerously high. Fluoride which ravages our auto-immune functions is banned in 9 European countries but not in Australia.
Nine tenths of what is consumed from our supermarkets are toxic - physically and mentally. They are addictive and hence in terms of over production unsustainable consumption as the earth's resources are decimated for pure misguided opportunism. Food should be our medicine, as it had been for most of the history of all organic life.
One hundred years ago the reported cancer rate amongst humans was less than 3% and now it is over 30%. Heart disease was rare. Arthritis was rare. Diabetes was rare. Organ failure was rare. Strokes were rare. The types of depression we now know of were rare. To believe that we correct something by amputating a limb or surgically removing tissue or an organ is ludicrous. Food was once our cause for health and for healing. What is on offer in supermarkets and stores is debilitating and deathly toxic matter, with chemical compounds and gene splicing that we do not have sufficient published evidence of their long term consequences.
This is the mistake that we are making not only with food, but with all forms of radiation, nuclear and uranium energies, with water resources, with the decimation of natural habitats, with congested urban planning. We are moving with such rapidity into events and more so for the purpose of monetary gain for the few, that we dismiss with immoral bravado the need to understand that which we venture into.
I could go into detail and provide the long list of horrific diseases and deformities associated with our expedient rapture into introducing new chemical compounds and the ability to harness energies into humanity; for instance the diseases associated with genetically engineered tryptophan and the excess radiation levels that we do not see but affect us.
Only extensive long-term tests can ensure minimal long term consequences. Gene therapy is a greater problem. With tryptophan we could not foresee the side-effects of the genetic manipulation of simple bacteria. How on earth then can we foresee the consequences of inserting genes from animals, including humans, into foods?
The multinational companies, and the excessive self interest groups will not consider sustainability before profits. The tobacco industry to this day continues on with its damaging effects and lies. We need politicians who will stand up to the selfish and the crazed scientists and tell them 'stop', and let us be considered and thoughtful.
We cannot save humanity without radically moving away from the insanity we have shifted ourselves into. If we look at we consider food, we may discover health, and through this address and reform the health industry and the ability for governments to fully fund it. Through this we will address needless over consumption and radicalise our sense of economics and hence have the capacity for distributive and egalitarian economics and be able to appropriately feed everyone. We will hence have less need to rapaciously decimate the earth's resources and our habitats. We need this philosophy to address all understandings, planning and policies in all our domains. Everything else is cowardice and gibberish, and an impossible pathway to save humanity, to make it egalitarian and a healthy, worthwhile one.
CORRUPTION AND ANTI-CORRUPTION
preface – THE LEHMAN BULL
By Gerry Georgatos, Written 28.12.2008
By Gerry Georgatos, Written 28.12.2008
No longer does anything cease to amaze to me. When Lehman Brothers collapsed on the premise of a default into a hasty en masse bankruptcy filing I wrote an unpublished letter to the editor.
I noted that I did not understand why they defaulted into the bankruptcy filing. As soon as the federal government did not approve further assistance to them in an almost child like way, as if virulently spoiled, they filed for an unplanned bankruptcy.
Very poor, and reckless, therefore gross misconduct, executive management may have got them into trouble. Nevertheless when in trouble they continued this poor executive management at the 11th hour. They could have restructured to minimise the fallout rather than cry at not being bailed out again.
Executive management promises to maintain a duty of care to all its creditors and stakeholders. The bankruptcy needed to be planned. I did not understand why they didn't produce a substantive bankruptcy plan and file under the structured Chapter 11 bankruptcy. By immaturely rushing into bankruptcy they generated gross hysteria, and grossly devalued their shares, portfolios and derivatives.
According to external auditors they could have forestalled this with a planned bankruptcy and responsibly managed the value of the company and sold off available assets and returned more to creditors and stakeholders than will be returned, less than 10 cents in the dollar to most of them. It's the old story, bail out and forget about those who propped it up.
The US Government's Pension Benefit Guaranty, which is a pension insurance arm, has little likelihood of any real return.
The Executive management bailed out, paid themselves out, paid out the Federal Reserve what it was owed, $63 billion, as if to protect themselves with the Government! and hastily sold off devalued assets to Barclays. It only makes you wonder about the close knit circle of big business. I questioned all this at the time and what I perceived as a lack of propriety and lack of adherence to obvious management fundamentals.
It is frustrating to read that external auditors, they who also charge bloated millions for these audits, are stating the obvious. They state it will take years to unravel the company. It seems companies spend more time working on veneers and disguised trails than on transparency. Maybe there should be no such thing as an internal audit. It didn't work for WA Inc and Rothwells, nor Lehman's, nor thousands of others.
During the last several years I have come into close contact with many 'big business' types, many of our high profile executives, government and their highest office bearers and to my surprise they are just not that smart. Not that smart in that which they manage and govern is not rocket science, is not that hard to do. They make things hard by hiding behind protocols and the abuse of what today is termed as good governance and small manageable Executive Boards. The expertise they are being paid in the hundreds of thousands as government officials, as high level bureaucrats, as 'public' institutional executives, including universities and hospitals, and the ridiculous millions to corporate executives, just isn't there. We are paying for nothing. The expertise required to manage and govern is grossly exaggerated.
Pay people properly at all levels, and at the top pay them no more than what they're worth. No executive deserves a million dollars. All of a sudden they may start managing rather than worrying about their personal remuneration, payouts, profiles and how to hide their gross mismanagement.
first chapter – THE ROAD TO HELL
By Gerry Georgatos, Written 1.4.2009
By Gerry Georgatos, Written 1.4.2009
The ways we have gone about trying to address, and in reality merely recycle, the 'global financial crisis' are crazy. The Czech President said it best in terms of the 'stimulus packages'; that they are the 'road to hell'.
Let us remember that four/sixths of the world are always in crisis, in poverty, a poverty imposed by us who are now whelmed by this so-called financial crisis. Let us understand that half the world has no idea of what this financial crisis is about and that half the world has not been touched by it. Most of our global citizenry do not own a home, have no savings, have nothing to do with banks and financial institutions. They are perennially disregarded.
The 'global financial crisis' is a 'global "credit" crisis'. This "credit" is not one of merely advanced payments to people with an alleged capacity to pay them off with interest over a long period of time. This "credit" crisis is one of fabricated valuations, such as through property, capital equity, debentures, shares and other stock and about what people are worth in the workplace. It is about goods and services intentionally over valued in the ugly pursuit of greed.
CEOs and Boards of Directors should be held responsible for their greed and their complicit silence in the pursuance of greed. This greed has become a culture of pervasive intrusion into the 'western world's
organisational culture of 'big' and 'small' businesses and entrepreneurship. Goods and services are inflated beyond their real value, and thus at some point, as has happened again and again, we enter financial recessions, depressions and other associated crises. Borrowings cannot be met in order to meet the continuum of irresponsibly valued equity and commodities. When values crash borrowings are complexified by the drop of false values to realer values. Corruption is responsible for false valuations.The stimulus packages serve no other purpose than to recycle the over inflated valuations that have kept us in trouble. The stimulus packages are short term measures to distract humanity into a false sense but they cannot fix the endemic problems. Impossible. In only less than one century our economic system through this credit and valuation crisis, which deny equitable policies of social inclusion, has endured a baker's dozen recessions and crises. These management failures have demonstrated that our economic understandings are misplaced and
unachievable. We are heading into hell.Obama and Rudd do not know what they're doing, other than supporting desperate bids by the IMF, the Reserve Banks, and the multinationals to prop up the toxic economics that serve only the ugly interests of the very few.
It is disgraceful that people are being set up for failure. People are being enticed into buying homes with 14K to 21K first home buyers grants. Most are buying them at 400K. Will they be worth 500K in five years, accommodating CPI and repayment schedules? What if property prices crash to their real values,
then the mortgagee is in trouble, ala the homebuyers crisis in the USA?Should people be mortgaging for their first home, paying up to 50% of their income in repayments, for say a 380K mortgage that by the time it is repaid in say 23 years will have cost them close to a million dollars at today's rates alone? What if unemployment rises, and wages stagnate but CPI and bank lending interest rates rise, how will the mortgagee cope and what will be their quality of life, in this one off life that we have?
And what in heaven's sake are the banks and financial institutions doing in exploiting further credit card and personal loan lending to people?
So what are the real purposes of the stimulus packages throughout our 'westernised world'? To set up through the en masse misery of the people the selfish hopes of the once cashed up over valued multinational enterprises? It is a disgusting comment by Rudd to declare that the economy may be doing well because the stimulus package improved last December's revenue for instance for Coles and Woolworths! This is not how a good economy works, by no means.
Senator Bob Brown of the Greens, in a token gesture at our Senate, was correct when he argued we should reign in executive management's remuneration. It is powerfully indicative of what is wrong with our economic systemology. He is correct in terms of minimum and maximum remuneration, standards, behaviours and practices. This is good economics. It is about responsible valuation and budgeting. No one person is worth a thousand times more than another and no bona
fide economic structure can afford this ugly avarice and only through ugly exploitation can it sustain this greed for an extended period.Who will rise to the occasion and bring
justice and method to the economic order of things? Those who will rise to exact change must first understand the underwriting to systemically good economics. We have been failed by our politicians, who don't seem to have a real clue, and who fail to appropriately regulate and audit multinationals and big business, and by our Unions, and I am a Union member, who thuggishly argue the member's interest only rather than good practices and who make little positive difference in economic management other than to improve remuneration practices and working conditions, and our media who does not investigate the problem itself but focuses on the effects. Rather than trap more people into misery we
have to bite the economic bullet. We have to revalue property to real values, and revalue all capital equity and goods and services. They have to be affordable to everyone in order to ensure a sound management system devoid of financial collapses and radically shifting GDP, CPI and all forms of inflation. These horrific sways and troughs ruin people's lives and perpetually exclude the poor, let alone induce poverty. Australia is
heading to economic disaster. Germany and Japan are in deep recession and doing it tough. Maybe they'll pull out quicker into a more sedate economic order for a while but Australia will linger into real recession long after some of the other countries pull out into a recycled economic steadiness, then boom and then the repeated collapse. In the end, the collapses can only go on for so long. So many have occurred in only a short time, and a century is a very short period. As we are, we are not sustainable.Marx,
and I am not Marxist, in Das Kapital was correct about the collapse of this excessive capitalism. It is not sustainable if it is not founded in affordability, in equity, in real valuations and in appropriate remuneration. Yes, we have to recost the values of property, and yes many will lose values they presumed they once had. The banks and financial institutions must be reshaped to accommodate these revaluations. We have to better understand investment including debentures and other stock and value them accordingly and have them regulated, and yes we have to ensure appropriate minimum and maximum standards in remuneration and expenditure practices. We have to limit enterprises to a reflection of their capacity so as not to stress the economic potential of the enterprise especially in terms of job security. By going down the way of economic truths not only will life improve for more people in western countries but also in the presumably developing, and thus far excluded, nations of the world, who harbour four/sixths of acute and chronic poverty. Economic truths, if applied, will benefit everyone.
second chapter - THE CORRUPTION AND CRIMES COMMISSION and the Parliamentary Inspector
By Gerry Georgatos, Written 30.1.2009
The CCC is an imperative, we cannot do without it and certainly should not coalesce to agree to it being part time or ad hoc. The Parliamentary Inspector is necessary. Both should be separate to each other in order to ensure bona fide good and just governance.
Separation of powers should be defined as ensuring no influence can be exerted as to the assessment of dissemination by any involved parties, that is the complainant and respondent, their vested lobbyists and hired lawyers.
It is ludicrous to believe that we live in moral ideals that have all forms and levels of government and their public institutions and public concerns above reproach.
We cannot forget WA Inc. We cannot forget the collapse of Rothwells and its clear links to the highest offices not only in WA but the Commonwealth. We cannot forget the history of our police, not only in WA, but Australia. The Norris and Costigan Royal Commissions may not have proven anything but they did unearth extraordinary allegations which over time are slowly proving that they could have been true. We will never read the highly sensitive materials because even with the Freedom of Information Act many are not available for 75 years since the convening of the Commissions.
We should never forget the Royal Commission into Deaths in Custody. We should not forget the Wood Royal Commission, and the links between Government and 'big' business. We should not disregard the fact of the number of 'colourful' identites we constantly read about in the media who are involved with 'big' business, the State and the Commonwealth, and who seem to be above the intentions of the law.
We should never forget that two of this State's highest office bearers, O'Connor and Burke, were convicted and incarcerated. O'Connor at one time was also the Minister for Police.
How can anyone ever state that we do not need the CCC, even if it is flawed, as all things are? Structures are people. Committees are people. Governance is interpreted by people. We need as many checks as possible. The WA Liberals and Laborites have former Ministers under question, Malborough, Crichton-Browne, Bowler, D'Orazio and others. This is the contemporary crop. Research the history of every State.
High Offices have been found to have had prominent decision makers with either themselves or their spouses involved in maintaining establishments of gambling and licentiousness. I have read this State's history and many of you have lived it.
WA Inc took over this State, with investments, and levels of control, in over 1000 corporations. Even our media in order to survive gained leverage by being conservative. The Western Mail of the 1980s collapsed because it tried to be independent in its views and commentaries.
Whisteblowers do not yet have their voice and appropriate protection in this State. During 2003 a well meaning Attorney General Jim McGinty spoke in Parliament about the courage of whistle blowers and that new legislation would protect them. Yet, only a year later, three major whistle blowers warned others that conditions were not protective.
Government, on all levels, and public concerns, even those 'corporatised', have not heeded the lessons, the witness. There are many who rule executively, who circumvent protocols and procedures, who abuse the intentions of prescribed pathways, who turn Boards into tools, who create Executives and Boards with likeminded individuals or those bent on self interest.
Many WA institutions still follow what should be the outdated examples of power bases, cliques and unwarranted excessive executive power. They have not learned from WA Inc, and the near decimation of the State. They only work harder to appear that they follow prescription and even harder to make themselves less transparent. Public and Private Sector standards are not above reproach. Internal audits are exactly that and no external audit is full proof. We know this from the media's discovery of collapsed councils, corrupt councillors, of corporate collapses, of governmental mischief and misdeeds.
Governments and Institutions do not have a demonstrated tendency to compensate the victims and seek clear solutions, rather they have demonstrated a tendency to discredit whistleblowers, to mob them, to abuse them by silence or ostracisation, and to neglect the victims, whether individual or groups or the State.
The late Professor of Politics at UWA, Patrick O'Brien wrote, "Executive government determines salaries from the Governor down and has the power to award honours and social status. It determines who shall be Queen's Counsels in the legal profession and thereby who shall be among the highest and most privileged income earners in the state.
It appoints members of the governing councils of universities, hospitals and other 'public' institutions. No monarch of old had such powers of patronage. When it is considered that most of these powers can be exercised without reference to parliament, it can be said that the real and potential powers of the office of Premier are literally awesome.
Moreover, in combination with its vast powers of patronage, the subtle but decisive shift of power to the executive government has the potential of transforming our system into a mammoth favours dispensing machine in which those who have been given the right entry cards or who have paid sufficient dues to the ruling party have every chance of punching jackpots for themselves until the general revenue is exhausted. Thus, and without exxageration, government in Western Australia can easily become a giant 'pork-barrel' greased by the Premier and cabinet; an instrument for serving not the public interest but private and even corrupt interests."
We need a CCC that is powerful, and we need a Parliamentary Inspector with the right to make public reports. It is not a problem to question one another but it is a problem to do away with either or both. The FOI Act needs to be amended and all materials should be made available to the public and all members of government sooner rather than what much of what is classified is currently unavailable till.
One strong indicator to when organisations should be scrutinied without delay is when their CEOs and Executives are major shareholders and when they are afforded extraordinary remuneration. This historical indicator has often proved an inextricable link to not necessarily outright fraud and theft but rather a moral corruption of process and intentions. In the end deep at heart we all know that no CEO or Executive office bearer is worth millions, there are only so many hours in the week, and only so much expertise that any one person has. It is a myth that the best minds and expertise will be attracted only by significant remuneration to a calling in Government or to an Executive position in a public concern. When money is the driver there is much lost. The most significant contributors in history have provided their passion and expertise at minimal financial cost to the State or the public concern.
Instead of ridding ourselves of balances and checks we should be concerned as to how to improve them, how to separate them from conflicts of interests, and how to best protect whistle blowers, how to encourage conscientious objection and justice.
the next chapter – JUSTICE, WHERE THE BLOODY HELL ARE YOU?
By Gerry Georgatos, Written 1.9.2009
As always this is up to all of us. As overwhelming as the forces against one another are we are only as good as our example and our preparedness to disseminate, to dissent and to conscientiously ensure our conscience and our lived experience are in line with another. Example is our only immortality. If enough rise, change happens.
“A theologian said that all will be well with me and all permitted to the degree that I obey the Council, and he added, 'If the council were to declare that you have but one eye, despite the fact that you may have two, it is your duty to agree with the Council.'
I replied to him:
'Even if the whole world were to affirm that, I, utilising whatever reason I may possess, I could not acknowledge such a thing without a rejection of my conscience.'” (K.Kosik)
The political calling - an insight into the Greens WA, the 2009 Willagee by-election, the Ecological, Social Justice and Aboriginal party, and the love of social justice.
by Gerry Georgatos
"If we do not change our ways, then the ways do not change."(Gerry Georgatos, NY, 1993) I have long believed that if you are good person, and if you live your life consciously examining the mind hence the nourishing freedom of conscience and its awareness-raising will nay be distant. It can be argued that very little real harm should come to you. Primum Non Nocere - First Do No Harm.
On November 28th, 2009, I contested the Willagee by-election as an Independent. I knew I had no chance of entering Parliament. My conscience guided me to a stance and to the warrant of dissemination.I enjoyed during the campaign in terms of talking to people. The result of 9% of the primary vote was a solid one. Prior to my nomination as an Independent I was the endorsed Greens candidate for the seat of Willagee. I threw open my preselection, when I did not have to, in the trusting desire to actuate participatory democracy amongst the Greens membership, who I considered my colleagues. I had been spoken to by Greens MLA Lynn Maclaren. She spun a yarn of why I should do this. I knew I was the best candidate and I am one person who understands politics as a callingrather than as a career. However Lynn Maclaren was sadly dishonest and did not represent the real reasons behind her proposition. It is now history that I was shockingly deceived. Though there are no wounds to nurse to this day I am still hurt by what the Greens did.
In WA, simmering with the wide definition of corruption, unashamed nepotism, the dispensing of favours, unheralded elitism and arch conservatism, the hidden attitudes that underwrite all these and other anathema ensure that whistle blowers where they cannot be abruptly silenced or placated are viciously persecuted. The persecution seeks to immolate initiative and to deter the many who may have followed. The hidden attitudes with their schoolyard politics bully and harass those who believe in the perennial pursuit of truth and honesty as noble and of human worth.
The Greens WA were the first major political force I joined. I resisted joining Labor though my upbringing was founded in left wing Labor politics having been born and bred within the working classes. During the years I resisted Labor's approaches for me to consider pursuing endorsement as a Labor candidate because I am not aptly capable of 'caucusing' and religiously towing the party line. This does not mean I am not a team player - I am. I believe in the right to think for myself and you can do this without necessarily moving away from consensus generated values. Democracy can only exist if it allows for freedom of thought during its conversations. The ancient Athenian Solon believed in this, Dracon did not. I believe in a free thinking society rather than having our words managed for us. It is not a naive moral proposition for us to insist on this, rather it is regressive to not struggle for this. The right to conscientious objection should not be subtracted from any equation. The German philosopher Schelling once said, "...freedom is not a property of the human being, but the other way around: the human being is at best the property of freedom... the essence of the human being is grounded in freedom."
In this article I will describe what happened with the Greens Willagee preselection and how the Greens can ensure their future prospects as a credible and honourable political force. Towards the end of this article I will introduce you to the newest political party, a party of Independents, coalesced by the pursuit of social justice and unfolding human rights - The Ecological, Social Justice and Aboriginal Party.
Lynn Maclaren met with me to discuss a proposal for me to open up my preselection, 8 months after my endorsement and which I would have for at least 12 months. Lynn lied to me as to the reasons, hiding them from me and therefore denying me rights of reply, natural justice and procedural fairness. During her lies she claimed that by opening up preselection we could encourage the Greens to get right behind the campaign by having them once again involved in a democratic process even though it meant me taking a risk with my preselection. I was for this, as no one person owns anything. She claimed that I'd probably get up again, however it did not bother me if I did or did not in the event there was a better candidate than me, which I did not believe there was. During her lies she tried to seduce me with the promise of Federal endorsement, however this is not how I work. She claimed that I was a big picture, big issues person and that maybe State politics was too small for me! I focused her back on the needs of Willagee.
I had faith in my candidature, in my deep knowledge, in my capacities, in my demonstrated passions, in my intentions. Lynn expected Brad Pettitt to lose the Fremantle mayoral election, believing he could not capture the vote of the 'seniors', and that he too would put up his hand for the Willagee endorsement, if I opened it up. Of course I expected Brad to storm in the Fremantle mayoral election and declared that to Lynn.
Lynn never told me that she, and one of the convenors, and a couple of others, whom I shall not name, had bought into negative comments about me regarding my outspokenness with a institution I had taken on in pursuit of what I perceived as propriety issues. I have taken on a number of institutions, organisations, government agencies and others while advocating on behalf of others, settling grievances on behalf of others or in pursuit of eliminating perceived wrongs and inequity. Once I have exhausted the appropriate forums and prescribed mechanisms pursuing the correction of wrongs I am known to stand up and just go hard. I am known for having little hesitation in exposing exploitation, for standing up for the vulnerable and the fear mongered, for exposing the circumvention of good governance protocols. I am known for strongly advocating on behalf those who without this advocacy would most certainly slip through the cracks of our management systems. I am proud of my strong social justice record, and for the many outcomes I achieved, sometimes generated or leveraged for others to deliver. It is types like me, who in the end are persecuted, ostracised and defamed, who because they led so far out from the front that the leverage exists for the fence-sitters to negotiate outcomes. I do accept that I polarise people and that there are those who feel aggrieved however wherever I have been I have been trusted and respected by the majority.
Recently I attended the National Symposium on Racism only to listen to the speakers demand the type of outspokenness and stances that I have often demonstrated. Those that clapped the loudest and dined with these speakers are those who either never stand, who cower and those who are the problem and who persecute people like myself. We all walk amongst each other, and profoundly we must consider this as positive in terms of the benefits from such close interaction to potentially bridge the divides. The Australian Human Rights Commissioner, Graham McInnes and WA's Human Rights Commissioner, Yvonne Henderson spoke of the need for such required valour. An advisor to Barack Obama, Sylvester Gates spoke of such suffering as requisite in overwhelming injustices as he made comparisons to American civil rights movements.
Who did Lynn Maclaren listen to? She listened to my detractors, who just happened to be the aggrieved, who had lost to my conscientious objections and subsequent campaigns. They obviously consider I had rubbed them up the wrong way. I rub up no one the wrong way. This is their problem to remedy. Why did Lynn not engage with me about any perceived concerns? The principles of the Greens WA sermonise policies of equitable social inclusion? What happened to the Greens prescribed social justice values? Yes they are hypocrites and of the worst kind.
A secret whispers campaign was conducted by some of the hypocrites within the Fremantle/Willagee Greens and hence unbeknown to me I stood no chance at the Willagee preselection. The debate between myself and the kind Hsien Harper was won by myself by many country miles. I feel sorry for Hsien, as she and I live for many of the same the principles and values however our potential camaraderie and teamwork has been damaged by what neither of us knew we had bought into. Lynn Maclaren and a few others who conducted the secret whispers campaign culminated their effort by grounding down those left in support of me at the preselection debate. Why put me through a debate with Hsien if I was to stand no chance? Yes, there was some branch stacking, all the whisperers were there. I brought no-one to support me, it's not my style and it is not right to do so. This defeats everything the Greens espouse. I am a stickler for propriety. Maclaren ensured she had the last say at the preselection and closed the deal. Upon our return after sharing a coffee and chat at the Hilton Hotel Hsien and I were stunned with the outcome.
As I was leaving the preselection meeting I received many apologies and several members all of a sudden regreted their weakness in not stopping Lynn Maclaren's agenda. Well, it's sort of too late at this point. I realised that I am not a Greens and that it was a mistake to join them. I had been encouraged to join them however my intuition and experience of them was that aside many positive sweeping statements and some substantive advocacy and many shared views that however they are party in shambolic ways built on party dues, allegiances and therefore no different to the Labor and Liberal machinery. They too are political opportunists, obsessed with public relations and spin instead of being grounded in propriety and participatory democracy. You can only be grounded in social justice values if your example is actually of exemplary behaviour. They too have a shameless will to power and tragically because these inconsistencies the best candidates are not supported. The Greens WA are careerists, elitists and self-regarding and they too view politics as a career rather than a calling.
The encouragement by others for me to join the Greens was so strong that I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt. I paid the penalty with this investiture of faith. However I cannot regret it rather only understand the hurt. In all honesty, and in hindsight, the Greens WA disgust me more than the Labor and Liberal parties. The others don't hide who they are and how they go about their business. The Greens WA do hide their real selves and this taboo is damaging. During the preselection aftermath I felt for many within the Greens membership who did not know what to do other than to degenerate to clingy hopes that what had happened did not happen or if it did happen that it had more to do with me than them and to shamelessly delude themselves as to not burst their bubble. The best thing that could have happened to the Greens, and what needs to happen, in order to save the Greens is for the voters to not vote for them in coming elections, send them the slap on the wrist, so as to mend their ways, to change for the best and give to the voters the exemplary behaviour they once promised. "Example is our only immortality." (Gerry Georgatos, 1991)
Only Alison Xamon of the Greens WA had the propriety and honour to support me and present her disgust at what had occurred. The others have hid behind silence. Lynn Maclaren and I met at Fidel's cafe in Fremantle as she tried to quell the damage to her 'reputation'. I let her speak at length so I could qualify the truth. She can revise everything all that she likes however she knows I consider her a 'dirty politician'. I wish Lynn learned something however she did not and therefore I believe she should resign from Parliament in lieu of the fact that she does not represent the prescribed principles of the Greens WA.
I resigned from the Greens WA within a week of their treachery. In line with whom I am, even when persecuted, for the sake of the Greens WA membership and for the Greens as a growing political balance and check I contacted the other Greens parliamentarians. I contacted Giz Watson, their nominal parliamentary leader. I asked of them to ensure a robust process to investigate the Willagee preselection. I still remember Giz saying to me "I hear you Gerry, I hear you."Giz had a chat with the party room and with Lynn Maclaren. This is it and no more. Giz phoned me back to declare that the matter was at an end! Where was the participatory democracy, natural justice and robust procedural fairness? I was in shock, the same type of shock I was in after the Greens preselection outcome when I was driving home on an empty South Street lost in puzzled wonder, demoralised and disillusioned. As far as I am concerned, though Giz and I greet each other at rallies and campaigns, Giz is not the type of leader I appreciate, as she delivered the type of blow to me I've come to expect from corporate bullies. I am stunned by Giz Watson, I am stunned by the hypocrisy of the Greens and by their shameful culture. I must stunned that Giz Watson and the Greens WA do not understand that "...to be moral is to be prepared to give reasons of a certain kind for one's actions; in particular those actions affecting the interests of others persons."
I wanted the Greens WA to realign themselves, admit their mistakes and ensure remedies so as to truly respect their valued principles. I wanted this not only for the Greens WA and their future prospects, not only for their membership and not only for the voters however also for myself, so I could continue with some belief and hope in them as a just political force and not despair into a context that argues that they too are from being just. The Greens membership has few checks and balances in terms of monitoring and auditing their parliamentarians. Once you are elected as a Greens parliamentarian it's as if you are unaccountable and have a blank cheque. There is little scrutiny of the parliamentarians as the membership present at meetings and the AGM merely accepts everything they say as Gospel and with a warm and fuzzy ambience just claps around the clock.
I contacted the Fremantle/Tangney convenors so I could speak at a branch meeting about the Willagee preselection debacle. I wanted them to protect the future prospects of the Greens WA with a robust consideration of what occurred at Willagee. However the convenors rejected this and suggested I should write to the three of them. How could I when one of them was one of the secret whisperers? I left the Greens shattered by their shambolic processes and inexcusable imperialistic and at times plutocratic weaknesses.
Freedom of thought, speech or action by individuals or groups even if interpreted as criticising the government should not be ruthlessly eliminated. Without freedom the human spirit, all that we really have, must perish. The highest social principle, as the language of equitable human rights unfolds, can be argued from each according to their ability, to each according to their need. We are only free if we are allowed to have a view of the world, and this is enshrined when the views of others are heard.
I am one person who wants the Greens WA to find their way, and if it means they need to change their ways to accommodate their prescribed values then this is what I hope they do. If they do not then they shall remain as phoney baloney as the Liberal and Labor parties. The Greens should be careful in promoting themselves as change agents and in presuming that they have been responsible for the 8% of the vote that has carried their formal representation into parliaments. They have been carried by the work of others, by the cultural waves typified by Carlson's Silent Springs (1962) and Suess's The Lorax (?). The increasing unnecessary impacts on the environment are on the minds of many throughout our world and in most countries the ecological or green parties pick up between 3% to 10% of the vote. They don't even have to work for this voter turnout merely just be there. I argue that the Greens in WA and Australia have devolved from the consistent eco-warriors they once were and like the former Democrats are not what they originally intended and promised. The Greens are not a left wing progressive party rather a middle of the road group of information gatherers. They do hold many good views keeping with burgeoning cultural waves however they are weak on policies, weak on deep knowledge and without policies on economic management systems. Like other Australian Senators, they are an embarrassment on Senate Committees where for instance Glen Stevens, Ken Henry, the Reserve Bank and the ATO rung rings around them. If they were to govern they would be no different to Labor and Liberal governments, and would be blindly guided by the Reserve Bank, the ATO, the multinationals and mainstream think tanks and media. To challenge these institutions the Greens need to underwrite their views with viable economic management systems - and believe in them.
I argue that it is not only the Labor and Liberal parties who have seemingly converged in ideologues, I argue that Greens have compromised themselves to converge towards the extreme right wing ideologues of the contemporary Labor and Liberal parties. The difference between all three parties, Greens, Labor, Liberals, is sadly diminishing as they converge, with the fallacy of working constructively with each other, to extreme right wing management systems and other politics. Throughout Australia Greens parliamentarians are increasingly voting against their own principles and prescriptions. They sold out arts and culture in Victoria, do preferences with the Liberals and Labor in an unashamed will for power rather than stepping back from preferences altogether. I gave my nominal preferences in the Willagee by-election however I did not run a How-To-Vote-Card. I will not insult the constituent.
IIncreasingly many Greens political aspirants are about themselves rather than any cause and once in Parliament they do no more than profile themselves. You can say all the right things and be loved by your supporters and actually do nothing!
I do not know whether the Ecological, Social Justice and Aboriginal party (the Eco/Socials) will wax and wane. However we will give it every conceivable shot. We have 900 members and every indication is we will achieve membership in the thousands. We now have more members than the Greens WA, and are only a few thousand behind the other two major parties. We are a party of Independents and we will represent every issue that concerns Australia. We will ensure that our Aboriginal brothers and sisters will have their right to self-determination, to their own voice, an undiluted voice, and to achieve this we will run as many Aboriginal candidates as we can. The WA Labor Party has only two Aboriginal parliamentarians, both reigned in by Labor caucus, ala Peter Garrett, and the Liberals and the Greens have not one Aboriginal parliamentarian. Recently, a Greens parliamentarian disgusted me when challenged by a potential Aboriginal candidate for the Eco/Socials about the Greens' poor history with Aboriginal candidates with, "Well we once had an Aboriginal person, a long time ago, volunteer in our Greens office." Oh my God!
Affirmative actions have brought on more women, and their voices, into our Parliaments, we must now address the two real issues of under representation - 1) Aboriginal representation in Parliament, 2) The best candidates into Parliament and not those delivered by party dues, nepotism and allegiances. Achieve these and we will deliver social justice like it has never before been known.
We need to be soldiers of the mind where our greatest strength is not to fight but to rise, to stand, and to make our voices heard. We must bring to Parliaments exemplary change agency, transformative attitudes, and never to compromise on policies that will only continue to allow people to slip through the faults in our inequitable management systems. We must bring on our example to fellow politicians, and educate to them that politics is a calling. We must be the cultural waves and we must lead from as far out from the front, knowing full well that the frontiers can be ugly, rather than cowering in self-regard.
People are basically full of trust, they need to be, and hence they do follow the policies and views of their politicians. We invest modicums of trust in government. We must ensure that the political debate is an honest one so as to protect humanity's unfolding. We must speak truthfully on all issues rather than pander to fear campaigns and educate society by disseminating for instance the fact there are no threats to Australians from asylum seekers, from refugees, those very few who reach our shores. Politicians have a responsibility to educate people that people have a right to protect themselves from persecution, poverty and other unwarranted harm and that people have a right to transmigrate, to go wherever in the world. Politicians have a responsibility to educate Australians that most of our Aboriginal brothers and sisters continue to live in the horrific consequences of an evil Apartheid that was imposed upon them. Politicians need to educate Australians of the universal fact that we do require a Human Rights Charter, that we do need regard each other as equal an affirm their needs and their capacities, that we do need to radicalise the redistribution of capital and liquid equity to nourish the many social benefits that will deliver us from the inequity of inappropriate class divisions, that we do need to regard one another and not only merely ourselves, that the ecological natural systems of our Earth are finely balanced and that we need to protect this fine balance, and that there is magnificent personal, social and collective benefits from leading meaningful lives, honest ones, ones free the from the ugly pursuit of over consumption and as the education grows, unfolds and becomes erudite that it may free us from the brute force of competing with one another.
I have seen more than what most have, having witnessed abject poverty, and we need to truly respect, and be emotively hurt by the sincere realisation that 5/6ths of the world lives in the brute of poverty while 1/6th enjoys 9/10ths of the world's resources. We need to continue unfolding a morality that asks us to question our actions when they affect the interests of others. As we achieve this we will change our ways, and hence the ways will change - and just maybe we will move away from blind obedience to major political parties, and return to the intentions of the Commonwealth Constitution by providing numerous Independent voices in Parliament in order to ensure bona fide and cherished and long await discussions, conversations, examinations and a real ethos of care. Good policies and equitable and inclusive social justice will arrive when discussions are unfettered by the excessive self interests and allegiances that cripple major parties. Historically and contemporaneously such monopoly has proved dangerous.
I hope this article helps those who think about many of the issues I think about. A Czech philosopher, Karel Kosik, once wrote, "A theologian said that all will be well with me and all permitted to the degree that I obey the Council, and he added, 'If the Council were to declare that you have but one eye, despite the fact that you may have two, it is your duty to agree with the Council.' I replied to him: 'Even if the whole world were to affirm that, I, utilising whatever reason I may possess, could not acknowledge such a thing without a rejection of my conscience.'"
The Political Calling - Edited
by Gerry Georgatos
If we do not change our ways, then the ways do not change." (Gerry Georgatos, 1993) I believe if you are a goodperson, if you live your life examining your mind hence the nourishing freedom of awareness-raising will nay be distant. Very little real harm should come to you. Primum Non Nocere - First Do No Harm.
On November 28th, 2009, I contested the Willagee by-election as an Independent. I knew I had no chance of being elected. My conscience guided me to a public stance. Prior to my Independent candidature I was the endorsed Greens candidate for the seat of Willagee. I threw open my endorsement when I did not have to. I did this in the trusting desire to actuate participatory democracy amongst the Greens membership, who I considered my colleagues. I had been spoken to by Greens MLA Lynn MacLaren. She spun a yarn of why I should do this. I knew I was the best candidate and I do understand politics as a calling. However Lynn was sadly dishonest and she did not represent the real reasons behind her proposition. It is now history that I was shockingly deceived. Though there are no wounds to nurse I was hurt by what the Greens WA did.
In WA, simmering with the wide definition of corruption, unashamed nepotism, the dispensing of favours, unheralded elitism and arch conservatism, the hidden attitudes that underwrite these and other anathema ensure that whistle-blowers, where they cannot be abruptly silenced or placated, are viciously persecuted. Persecution seeks to immolate initiative and to deter the many who may have followed. The hidden attitudes, with their schoolyard politics, bully and harass those who believe in the perennial pursuit of truth and honesty as noble human worth.
The Greens WA were the first major political force I joined though I have been a member of the Socialist Alliance. I resisted joining Labor though my upbringing was founded in left wing Labor politics having been born and bred within the working classes. I resisted Labor's approaches for me to consider pursuing endorsement as a Labor candidate because I am not aptly capable of 'caucusing' and in religiously towing the party line. This does not mean I am not a team player - I am. I believe in the right to think for myself. Democracy can only exist if it allows for freedom of thought during all its conversations. The ancient Athenian Solon believed in this, Dracon did not. I believe in a free thinking society rather than having our words managed for us. It is not a naive moral proposition for us to insist on this, rather it is regressive to not struggle for this. The right to conscientious objection should not be subtracted from any equation. The German philosopher Schelling once said, "...freedom is not a property of the human being, but the other way around: the human being is at best the property of freedom... the essence of the human being is grounded in freedom."
In this article I will describe what happened with the Greens' Willagee preselection and how the Greens WA can redeem their future prospects as an honourable political force. Towards the end of this article I will introduce you to the newest aspirant political party, a party of Independents, coalesced by the pursuit of social justice and the unfolding human rights language - The Ecological, Social Justice, Aboriginal Party - founded by myself and my fellow Deaths In Custody Watch Committee (WA) members Marianne Mackay and Glenn Moore.
Lynn MacLaren proposed to me to open up my preselection, 8 months after my endorsement and which I would have for at least 12 months. Lynn lied to me as to the reasons, hiding them from me and therefore denying me rights of reply, natural justice and procedural fairness. During her lies she claimed that by opening up my endorsement we could encourage the Greens to get right behind the campaign by having them once again involved in a democratic process. I was for this as no one person owns anything. She claimed that I'd probably get up again, however it did not bother me if I did or did not if in the event there was a better candidate than me. Strangely, during her lies she tried to seduce me with the likelihood of a Federal seat endorsement, however this is not how I work. She claimed that I was a big picture, big issues person and that maybe State politics was too small for me! I directed her back to Willagee.
I had faith in my candidature, in my deep and diverse knowledge, in my demonstrated passions and in my intentions. Lynn expected Brad Pettitt to lose the Fremantle mayoral election, believing he could not capture the vote of the 'seniors', and that he too would put up his hand for the Willagee endorsement if I opened it up. Of course I expected Brad to storm in the Fremantle mayoral election and I noted this to Lynn.
Lynn never told me that she, and one of the Fremantle-Tangney conveners, and a couple of others, whom I shall not name, had bought into perceived negative comments about me regarding my outspokenness with a particular institution, one of several I had taken on in pursuit of remedying what I perceived as wrongs and improprieties. I have challenged and worked with a number of institutions, organisations and government agencies while advocating on behalf of others, settling grievances on behalf of others or in pursuit of eliminating perceived injustices and inequity. Once I have exhausted the prescribed mechanisms in order to eliminate wrongs I am known to stand up. I am known for having little hesitation in exposing exploitation, in supporting the vulnerable and the fear-mongered, for exposing the circumvention of good governance protocols. I am known for strongly advocating on behalf those who without this advocacy would most certainly slip through the cracks of our management systems. I am proud of my consistent social justice record, and for the many outcomes I achieved, sometimes generated or leveraged for others to finalise negotiations. It is types like me, who in the end are persecuted, ostracised and defamed, who because they led so far out from the front that the leverage exists for the seeming fence-sitters to clinch outcomes. I do accept that I polarise some people and that there are those who feel aggrieved however wherever I have been I have been trusted and respected by the majority.
Recently I attended a National Symposium on Racism only to listen to the speakers demand the type of outspokenness which I have often demonstrated. Those that clapped the loudest and dined with these speakers are those who either rarely stand up or who cower. Amongst them were those who are the actual problem and who persecute people like myself. We all walk amongst each other, and profoundly we must consider this as positive in terms of the possibilities from such close interaction to potentially bridge the divides. The Australian Human Rights Commissioner, Graham McInnes and WA's Human Rights Commissioner, Yvonne Henderson spoke of the need for such required valour. An advisor to Barack Obama, Sylvester Gates spoke of such suffering as requisite in overwhelming injustices as he made comparisons to American civil rights movements.
Who did Lynn MacLaren listen to? She listened to my detractors, who just happened to be the aggrieved, who had often lost out to my conscientious objections and subsequent campaigns. They obviously consider I had rubbed them up the wrong way. I rub up no-one the wrong way. This is their problem to remedy. Why did Lynn not engage with me about any perceived concerns? What happened to the Greens prescribed social justice values? Yes they are hypocrites and of the worst kind.
A secret whispers campaign was conducted by hypocrites within the Fremantle/Willagee Greens and hence unbeknown to me I stood no chance at October's Willagee preselection. The debate between myself and the kind Hsien Harper was won by myself by many country miles. I feel sorry for Hsien, as she and I live for many of the same principles and values however our potential camaraderie has been damaged by what neither of us knew we had bought into. Lynn and the secret whisperers culminated their effort by grounding down those left in support of me during the post-debate group discussion. Why put me through a debate with Hsien if I was to stand no chance? Yes, there was some branch stacking and all the whisperers were there. I brought no-one to support me, it's not my style and it is not right to do so. I am a stickler for propriety. Lynn managed the last say at the preselection and closed the deal. Upon our return after sharing a coffee and chat at a nearby pub Hsien and I were stunned with the outcome.
During my departure after the surprise result I was stopped by a number of apologetic members who all of a sudden regretted their weakness in not stopping Lynn's agenda. Well, it's sort of too late! I realised that I am not a Greens and that it had been a mistake to join them. I had been encouraged to join however my intuition and experience of them was that aside many positive sweeping statements and some substantive advocacy and many shared views that they are built on shambolic party dues, allegiances and therefore are no different to the Labor and Liberal machinery. They too are political opportunists, obsessed with public relations and spin instead of being grounded in propriety and participatory democracy. You can only be grounded in social justice values only if you live them. They too have a shameless ugly will to power and tragically they too do not view politics as a calling.
The encouragement by others for me to join the Greens was so strong that I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt. However I cannot regret everything rather only understand. The Greens disappoint me more than the Labor and Liberal parties. The others don't hide who they are and how they go about their business. The Greens do hide their real selves and this taboo is damaging. During the preselection aftermath I felt for many within the Greens membership who did not know what to do other than to degenerate to clingy hopes that what had happened did not happen or if it did happen that it had more to do with me than them and to shamelessly delude themselves as to not burst their bubble.
What needs to happen to the Greens in order to save the Greens from their continuing devolvement from who they once were is for the voters to not vote for them in coming elections. They need to mend their ways. "Example is our only immortality." (Gerry Georgatos, 1991)
Only Alison Xamon of the Greens WA had the propriety and honour to support me. The others have hid behind silence. Lynn and I met at Fidel's cafe in Fremantle as she tried to quell the damage to her 'reputation'. I let her speak at length so I could qualify the truth. She can revise everything all she likes however she knows I consider her a 'dirty politician'. I wish Lynn learned something however she did not and therefore I believe she should resign from Parliament as she does not represent the prescribed values of the Greens.
Within a week of their treachery I resigned from the Greens. In line with who I am for the sake of the Greens WA membership and for the Greens as a growing political balance and check I contacted the other Greens parliamentarians. I contacted Giz Watson, their nominal parliamentary leader. I asked of them to ensure a robust process to investigate the Willagee preselection. I still remember Giz saying to me "I hear you Gerry, I hear you."Giz had a chat with the party room and with Lynn. This is it and no more. Giz left me a phone message to declare that the matter was at an end! Where was the participatory democracy, the natural justice and robust procedural fairness? I was in shock, the same type of shock I floundered in after the Greens preselection outcome while driving home on an empty South Street lost in puzzled wonder, demoralised and disillusioned. Giz and I greet each other at rallies and campaigns however Giz is not the type of leader I appreciate, as she delivered the type of blow to me I've come to expect from corporate bullies. I am stunned by the hypocrisy of the Greens and by their shameful culture. I am stunned that the Greens WA do not understand that "...to be moral is to be prepared to give reasons of a certain kind for one's actions; in particular those actions affecting the interests of others persons."
I wanted the Greens WA to admit their mistakes and ensure remedies so as to truly respect their values. I wanted this not only for the Greens WA and their future prospects, not only for their membership and not only for the voters however also for myself, so I could continue with some belief and hope in them as a just political force. I don't want to despair that they too are phony baloney.
The Greens membership has few checks and balances in terms of monitoring their parliamentarians. Once you are elected as a Greens parliamentarian it's as if you are unaccountable and have a blank cheque. There is little scrutiny of the parliamentarians as the membership present at meetings and at the AGM merely accepts everything they say as Gospel and with a warm and fuzzy ambience just sycophantically clap and clap.
I contacted the Fremantle-Tangney conveners so I could speak at a branch meeting about the Willagee preselection debacle. I wanted them to protect the future prospects of the Greens with a robust consideration of what occurred at Willagee. The conveners rejected this and suggested I should write to them. How could I when one of them was one of the secret whisperers? I left the Greens shattered by their shambolic processes.
Freedom of thought, speech or action by individuals or groups even if interpreted as criticising authority or government should not be ruthlessly eliminated. Without freedom the human spirit, all that we really have, must perish. The highest social principle, as the language of equitable human rights unfolds, can be argued from each according to their ability, to each according to their need. We are only free if we are allowed to have a view of the world, and this is enshrined when the views of others are heard.
I am one person who wants the Greens to find their way, and if it means they need to change their ways to accommodate their prescribed values then this is what I hope they do. The Greens should be careful in promoting themselves as change agents and in presuming that they have been responsible for the 8% of the vote that has carried their formal representation into parliaments. They have been carried by the work of others, by the cultural waves typified by Rachel Carson's Silent Springs (1962) and Dr Suess's The Lorax (1971). The degradations of the environment are on the minds of many throughout our world and in most countries the ecological or green parties pick up between 3% to 10% of the vote. They don't have to work for this basic vote merely just be there. I argue that the Greens in WA and Australia have devolved from the eco-warriors they once were and like the former Democrats are not who they originally were. The Greens are not a left wing progressive party rather a middle of the road group of information gatherers. They do hold many good views in keeping with burgeoning cultural waves however they are weak on substantive policies, weak on deep knowledge and they are without policies on economic management systems. As with other Australian Senators, they are an embarrassment on Senate Committees where for instance Glen Stevens, Ken Henry, the Reserve Bank and the ATO run rings around them. If they were to govern they would be no different to Labor and Liberal governments, and would be blindly led by the Reserve Bank, the ATO, the multinationals and mainstream right-wing think tanks and media. To challenge these institutions the Greens need to underwrite their views with viable economic management systems - and believe in them.
I argue that it is not only the Labor and Liberal parties who have seemingly converged in ideologues, I argue that the Greens have compromised themselves to converge towards the right wing ideologues of the contemporary Labor and Liberal parties. The doctrines between all three parties, Greens, Labor, Liberals, are sadly converging, blinded by the fallacy of working constructively with each other. Throughout Australia Greens parliamentarians are increasingly voting against their principles and prescriptions. They sold out arts and culture in Victoria, refused to endorse the Stop War marches in NSW, do preferences with the Liberals and Labor, and the Family First party, in an unashamed will for power rather than stepping back from preferences altogether. I gave my nominal preferences in the Willagee by-election however I did not run a How-To-Vote-Card. I will not insult the constituent.
Increasingly many political aspirants within the Greens are about themselves rather than any cause and once in Parliament they do no more than profile themselves while being dismissive of their former hardened styles, which had worked for them. You can say all the right things and be loved by your supporters and actually do nothing!
I do not know whether the Ecological, Social Justice, Aboriginal party (the Eco/Socials) will wax and wane. However we will give it every conceivable shot. We have 930 members and every indication is we will build membership in the thousands. We now have more members than the Greens WA, and we will pass the other two major parties. We will ensure that our Aboriginal brothers and sisters will have their right to self-determination, to their own voice, an undiluted voice, and to achieve this we will run as many Aboriginal candidates as we can. The WA Labor Party has only two Aboriginal parliamentarians, both reigned in by Labor caucus, ala Peter Garrett, and the Liberals and the Greens have not one Aboriginal parliamentarian, though all of a sudden both endorsed an Aboriginal candidate. There you go, the Eco/Socials have made an impact! Recently, a Greens parliamentarian disgusted me when challenged by a potential Aboriginal candidate for the Eco/Socials about the Greens' lack of history with Aboriginal candidates with, "Well we once had an Aboriginal person, a long time ago, volunteer in our Greens office." Oh my God!
Affirmative actions have brought on more women, and their voices, into our Parliaments. We must now address the two major issues of under representation - 1) Aboriginal representation in Parliament, and 2) The best candidates into Parliament and not those delivered by party dues, nepotism and allegiances. Achieve these and Australia will deliver social justice like it has never before known.
We need to be soldiers of the mind where our greatest strength is not to fight but to rise, to stand, and to make our voices heard. We must bring to Parliaments exemplary change agency, transformative attitudes, and never to compromise on policies that will only continue to allow people to slip through the faults in our inequitable management systems. We must educate to politicians that that politics is a calling. We must be the cultural waves and we must lead from as far out from the front, knowing full well that the frontiers can be ugly.
People need to trust and hence they do follow the views and policies of their politicians. Most of us invest modicums of trust in government. We must ensure that the political debate is an honest one so as to protect humanity's unfolding. We must speak truthfully on all issues rather than pander to fear campaigns and we must educate society by disseminating for instance the fact there are no threats to Australians from asylum seekers, from refugees, those very few who reach our shores. Politicians have an educative responsibility that people have a right to protect themselves from persecution, poverty and other unwarranted harm and that people have a right to transmigrate, to go wherever they may so choose in our world. Politicians have a responsibility to educate Australians that the majority of our Aboriginal brothers and sisters continue to live in the horrific consequences of an evil Apartheid that was imposed upon them. Politicians need to educate Australians that we do require a Human Rights Charter, that we do need to prescriptively regard each other and affirm our rights, that we do need to radicalise the redistribution of equity to nourish the many social benefits that will deliver us from the inequity of inappropriate class divisions, that we are more than just the sum of ourselves, that the ecological natural systems of our Earth are finely balanced and that we need to protect this fine balance, and that there is magnificent personal, social and collective benefits from leading meaningful lives, honest ones, ones free the from the ugly pursuit of over consumption, and as the education grows, unfolds and becomes erudite that it may free us from the brute force of competing with one another.
Having witnessed abject poverty we need to truly respect, and be emotively hurt by the sincere realisation that 5/6ths of our world coldly lives in the brute of poverty while 1/6th wrongly covets and enjoys 9/10ths of the world's resources. We need to continue unfolding a morality that asks us to question our actions when they affect the interests of others. As we achieve this we will change our ways, and hence the ways will change. We need to move away from blind obedience to major political parties, and live the intentions of the Commonwealth Constitution by providing numerous Independent voices in Parliament in order to ensure bona fide conversations, examinations and a real ethos of care. Good policies of equitable and inclusive social justice will arrive when discussions are unfettered from the excessive self interests and allegiances that cripple major parties.
I hope this article helps those who think about many of the issues I think about. A Czech philosopher, Karel Kosik, once wrote, "A theologian said that all will be well with me and all permitted to the degree that I obey the Council, and he added, 'If the Council were to declare that you have but one eye, despite the fact that you may have two, it is your duty to agree with the Council.' I replied to him: 'Even if the whole world were to affirm that, I, utilising whatever reason I may possess, could not acknowledge such a thing without a rejection of my conscience.'"
40% mining tax - the few verse the many
by Gerry Georgatos
AUSTRALIAN DEATHS IN CUSTODY - 1,442 between 1980 to 2000. 601 from 2000 to 2007 and counting.
- more deaths in custody in Australia than during the peak of Apartheid in South Africa.
by Gerry Georgatos
I am a Committee member of the Human Rights Alliance and a Trustee of the Deaths In Custody Watch Committee WA, and through both during the last couple of years I have been stunned by the fact that Australia has one of the world's worst deaths in custody records. More people die in custody in Australia than all deaths in custody in South Africa during the peak of Apartheid. There are more non-Aboriginal deaths in custody in Australia than Aboriginal deaths however there are more Aboriginal deaths in custody in Australia than there were all deaths in custody during the peak of Apartheid in South Africa!
I am so appalled with Australia's record that I will do a PhD in Australian deaths in custody. We need to definitively document the reality so we can exact genuine remedies and the saving of lives. I have been educating Human Rights groups and even my own Deaths in Custody Watch Committee, who had not realised the extent of deaths in custody in Australia. My God, it is 601 deaths in custody in Australia from 2000 to 2007 alone and the same rates continue. These 601 deaths in custody over 8 years compares badly with the horrific tally between 1980 and 2000 where Australia recorded 1,442 deaths in custody. It is increasing!
The 99 Aboriginal deaths in custody from 1980 to May 1989 which led to the 1991 Royal Commission Reports into Deaths in Custody do not describe the total numbers of Australian deaths in custody. They do not describe the obviously bottom of the barrel sub-standard custodial services, whether police or prisons. Aboriginal deaths in custody inhumanely continue at the same rate, twenty years after the Royal Commission Reports. 339 recommendations arose from those Reports however in terms of police and prison custodial handling and services the majority of recommendations have not been implemented or substantively budgeted for. Non-Aboriginal deaths in custody have blown out to despicably unacceptable and inhumane terms. We have a scandal-in-waiting. A Royal Commission into Australian Deaths in Custody is urgently required. Our Australian Senators, 76 of them, are derelict in their Constitutional duties in having failed to call for and implement such a Commission, and derelict in having failed to educate the Senate and the House of Representatives of the horrific statistics in terms of Australian deaths in custody. I have educated a number of Senators and politicians to the facts. It seems many politicians are inspired to act only when the community at large is aware of a horrific wrong. Our politicians need to oblige their moral duties and not be guided by the polls. With the Human Rights Alliance and the Deaths in Custody Watch Committee we are beginning public talks so as to educate community in order to 'inspire' our parliamentarians into action.
Of the 1,442 deaths in all forms of custody between 1980 to 2000, 1,367 were males, with 75 being females. 248 were Aboriginal deaths in custody and therefore 18% of all deaths in custody. Of the 75 female deaths, the Aboriginal female deaths were 32%. These correlate closely to incarceration rates. There are higher incarceration rates of Aboriginal persons in terms of proportion of Aboriginal people to total population. This indicates that systemic racism to Aboriginal people does not directly underwrite their deaths in custody and rather that deaths in custody are the direct result of the poor and substandard treatment towards prisoners in addition to the probable accompaniment of prejudices towards the incarcerated that the criminal justice system and Australians in general may have. Therefore discrimination can be argued as en masse against all prisoners rather than targeted to only Aboriginal prisoners. Systemic racism can obviously be argued as underwriting the disproportionately high Aboriginal incarceration rates. Deaths in custody appear proportionate to incarceration rates in terms of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal incarceration rates. An Aboriginal person is eleven to twelve times more likely to be incarcerated than a non-Aboriginal Australian. It varies from state to state, however in WA 68% of incarcerated juveniles are Aboriginal.
In 1991, in the year of the Royal Commission Reports, there were 70 deaths in custody, with 13 Aboriginal deaths in custody. Ten years later there were 87 deaths in custody, with 19 Aboriginal deaths in custody. For both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians nothing improved, and the statistics worsened. In 1997 there were a record 105 deaths in custody. During 2007 there were 74 deaths in custody with 9 Aboriginal deaths in custody. Every year has been thereabouts similar. There has been an Aboriginal death in custody somewhere in Australia every month of the last 18 months. For each Aboriginal death in custody there are thereabouts eight to ten non-Aboriginal deaths in custody. How can Australia have more deaths in custody than peak Apartheid South Africa, and one of the world's worst records? The time has come for us to have a good look at ourselves and find out what is going on, and on this occasion empower any Royal Commission to ensure the recommendations are implemented, and that they monitor prescribed remedies and report annually to the Australian Senate.
We cannot turn a blind eye. Our prisons are filled with the poorest amongst us, and with people from the working classes. The middle and upper classes are not the majority of prisoners and generally serve less time for similar offenses and for their predominant white collar crimes. We maybe turning a blind eye because the majority have taught to be harsh on the poor, and on our Aboriginal brothers and sisters who suffered under Australia's own Apartheid practices. We need to invest in services that assist those souls incarcerated from amongst our poorest classes to rise above their lot and we need to treat them fairly when judging and sentencing them. However foremost we need to improve the police and prison services, their protocols, manuals, procedures and their supervision, handling and treatment of all prisoners. We need Australia to ensure that it is a just and civil society.
Gerry Georgatos
On November 28th, 2009, I contested the Willagee by-election as an Independent. I knew I had no chance of entering Parliament. My conscience guided me to a stance and to the warrant of dissemination.I enjoyed during the campaign in terms of talking to people. The result of 9% of the primary vote was a solid one. Prior to my nomination as an Independent I was the endorsed Greens candidate for the seat of Willagee. I threw open my preselection, when I did not have to, in the trusting desire to actuate participatory democracy amongst the Greens membership, who I considered my colleagues. I had been spoken to by Greens MLA Lynn Maclaren. She spun a yarn of why I should do this. I knew I was the best candidate and I am one person who understands politics as a callingrather than as a career. However Lynn Maclaren was sadly dishonest and did not represent the real reasons behind her proposition. It is now history that I was shockingly deceived. Though there are no wounds to nurse to this day I am still hurt by what the Greens did.
In WA, simmering with the wide definition of corruption, unashamed nepotism, the dispensing of favours, unheralded elitism and arch conservatism, the hidden attitudes that underwrite all these and other anathema ensure that whistle blowers where they cannot be abruptly silenced or placated are viciously persecuted. The persecution seeks to immolate initiative and to deter the many who may have followed. The hidden attitudes with their schoolyard politics bully and harass those who believe in the perennial pursuit of truth and honesty as noble and of human worth.
The Greens WA were the first major political force I joined. I resisted joining Labor though my upbringing was founded in left wing Labor politics having been born and bred within the working classes. During the years I resisted Labor's approaches for me to consider pursuing endorsement as a Labor candidate because I am not aptly capable of 'caucusing' and religiously towing the party line. This does not mean I am not a team player - I am. I believe in the right to think for myself and you can do this without necessarily moving away from consensus generated values. Democracy can only exist if it allows for freedom of thought during its conversations. The ancient Athenian Solon believed in this, Dracon did not. I believe in a free thinking society rather than having our words managed for us. It is not a naive moral proposition for us to insist on this, rather it is regressive to not struggle for this. The right to conscientious objection should not be subtracted from any equation. The German philosopher Schelling once said, "...freedom is not a property of the human being, but the other way around: the human being is at best the property of freedom... the essence of the human being is grounded in freedom."
In this article I will describe what happened with the Greens Willagee preselection and how the Greens can ensure their future prospects as a credible and honourable political force. Towards the end of this article I will introduce you to the newest political party, a party of Independents, coalesced by the pursuit of social justice and unfolding human rights - The Ecological, Social Justice and Aboriginal Party.
Lynn Maclaren met with me to discuss a proposal for me to open up my preselection, 8 months after my endorsement and which I would have for at least 12 months. Lynn lied to me as to the reasons, hiding them from me and therefore denying me rights of reply, natural justice and procedural fairness. During her lies she claimed that by opening up preselection we could encourage the Greens to get right behind the campaign by having them once again involved in a democratic process even though it meant me taking a risk with my preselection. I was for this, as no one person owns anything. She claimed that I'd probably get up again, however it did not bother me if I did or did not in the event there was a better candidate than me, which I did not believe there was. During her lies she tried to seduce me with the promise of Federal endorsement, however this is not how I work. She claimed that I was a big picture, big issues person and that maybe State politics was too small for me! I focused her back on the needs of Willagee.
I had faith in my candidature, in my deep knowledge, in my capacities, in my demonstrated passions, in my intentions. Lynn expected Brad Pettitt to lose the Fremantle mayoral election, believing he could not capture the vote of the 'seniors', and that he too would put up his hand for the Willagee endorsement, if I opened it up. Of course I expected Brad to storm in the Fremantle mayoral election and declared that to Lynn.
Lynn never told me that she, and one of the convenors, and a couple of others, whom I shall not name, had bought into negative comments about me regarding my outspokenness with a institution I had taken on in pursuit of what I perceived as propriety issues. I have taken on a number of institutions, organisations, government agencies and others while advocating on behalf of others, settling grievances on behalf of others or in pursuit of eliminating perceived wrongs and inequity. Once I have exhausted the appropriate forums and prescribed mechanisms pursuing the correction of wrongs I am known to stand up and just go hard. I am known for having little hesitation in exposing exploitation, for standing up for the vulnerable and the fear mongered, for exposing the circumvention of good governance protocols. I am known for strongly advocating on behalf those who without this advocacy would most certainly slip through the cracks of our management systems. I am proud of my strong social justice record, and for the many outcomes I achieved, sometimes generated or leveraged for others to deliver. It is types like me, who in the end are persecuted, ostracised and defamed, who because they led so far out from the front that the leverage exists for the fence-sitters to negotiate outcomes. I do accept that I polarise people and that there are those who feel aggrieved however wherever I have been I have been trusted and respected by the majority.
Recently I attended the National Symposium on Racism only to listen to the speakers demand the type of outspokenness and stances that I have often demonstrated. Those that clapped the loudest and dined with these speakers are those who either never stand, who cower and those who are the problem and who persecute people like myself. We all walk amongst each other, and profoundly we must consider this as positive in terms of the benefits from such close interaction to potentially bridge the divides. The Australian Human Rights Commissioner, Graham McInnes and WA's Human Rights Commissioner, Yvonne Henderson spoke of the need for such required valour. An advisor to Barack Obama, Sylvester Gates spoke of such suffering as requisite in overwhelming injustices as he made comparisons to American civil rights movements.
Who did Lynn Maclaren listen to? She listened to my detractors, who just happened to be the aggrieved, who had lost to my conscientious objections and subsequent campaigns. They obviously consider I had rubbed them up the wrong way. I rub up no one the wrong way. This is their problem to remedy. Why did Lynn not engage with me about any perceived concerns? The principles of the Greens WA sermonise policies of equitable social inclusion? What happened to the Greens prescribed social justice values? Yes they are hypocrites and of the worst kind.
A secret whispers campaign was conducted by some of the hypocrites within the Fremantle/Willagee Greens and hence unbeknown to me I stood no chance at the Willagee preselection. The debate between myself and the kind Hsien Harper was won by myself by many country miles. I feel sorry for Hsien, as she and I live for many of the same the principles and values however our potential camaraderie and teamwork has been damaged by what neither of us knew we had bought into. Lynn Maclaren and a few others who conducted the secret whispers campaign culminated their effort by grounding down those left in support of me at the preselection debate. Why put me through a debate with Hsien if I was to stand no chance? Yes, there was some branch stacking, all the whisperers were there. I brought no-one to support me, it's not my style and it is not right to do so. This defeats everything the Greens espouse. I am a stickler for propriety. Maclaren ensured she had the last say at the preselection and closed the deal. Upon our return after sharing a coffee and chat at the Hilton Hotel Hsien and I were stunned with the outcome.
As I was leaving the preselection meeting I received many apologies and several members all of a sudden regreted their weakness in not stopping Lynn Maclaren's agenda. Well, it's sort of too late at this point. I realised that I am not a Greens and that it was a mistake to join them. I had been encouraged to join them however my intuition and experience of them was that aside many positive sweeping statements and some substantive advocacy and many shared views that however they are party in shambolic ways built on party dues, allegiances and therefore no different to the Labor and Liberal machinery. They too are political opportunists, obsessed with public relations and spin instead of being grounded in propriety and participatory democracy. You can only be grounded in social justice values if your example is actually of exemplary behaviour. They too have a shameless will to power and tragically because these inconsistencies the best candidates are not supported. The Greens WA are careerists, elitists and self-regarding and they too view politics as a career rather than a calling.
The encouragement by others for me to join the Greens was so strong that I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt. I paid the penalty with this investiture of faith. However I cannot regret it rather only understand the hurt. In all honesty, and in hindsight, the Greens WA disgust me more than the Labor and Liberal parties. The others don't hide who they are and how they go about their business. The Greens WA do hide their real selves and this taboo is damaging. During the preselection aftermath I felt for many within the Greens membership who did not know what to do other than to degenerate to clingy hopes that what had happened did not happen or if it did happen that it had more to do with me than them and to shamelessly delude themselves as to not burst their bubble. The best thing that could have happened to the Greens, and what needs to happen, in order to save the Greens is for the voters to not vote for them in coming elections, send them the slap on the wrist, so as to mend their ways, to change for the best and give to the voters the exemplary behaviour they once promised. "Example is our only immortality." (Gerry Georgatos, 1991)
Only Alison Xamon of the Greens WA had the propriety and honour to support me and present her disgust at what had occurred. The others have hid behind silence. Lynn Maclaren and I met at Fidel's cafe in Fremantle as she tried to quell the damage to her 'reputation'. I let her speak at length so I could qualify the truth. She can revise everything all that she likes however she knows I consider her a 'dirty politician'. I wish Lynn learned something however she did not and therefore I believe she should resign from Parliament in lieu of the fact that she does not represent the prescribed principles of the Greens WA.
I resigned from the Greens WA within a week of their treachery. In line with whom I am, even when persecuted, for the sake of the Greens WA membership and for the Greens as a growing political balance and check I contacted the other Greens parliamentarians. I contacted Giz Watson, their nominal parliamentary leader. I asked of them to ensure a robust process to investigate the Willagee preselection. I still remember Giz saying to me "I hear you Gerry, I hear you."Giz had a chat with the party room and with Lynn Maclaren. This is it and no more. Giz phoned me back to declare that the matter was at an end! Where was the participatory democracy, natural justice and robust procedural fairness? I was in shock, the same type of shock I was in after the Greens preselection outcome when I was driving home on an empty South Street lost in puzzled wonder, demoralised and disillusioned. As far as I am concerned, though Giz and I greet each other at rallies and campaigns, Giz is not the type of leader I appreciate, as she delivered the type of blow to me I've come to expect from corporate bullies. I am stunned by Giz Watson, I am stunned by the hypocrisy of the Greens and by their shameful culture. I must stunned that Giz Watson and the Greens WA do not understand that "...to be moral is to be prepared to give reasons of a certain kind for one's actions; in particular those actions affecting the interests of others persons."
I wanted the Greens WA to realign themselves, admit their mistakes and ensure remedies so as to truly respect their valued principles. I wanted this not only for the Greens WA and their future prospects, not only for their membership and not only for the voters however also for myself, so I could continue with some belief and hope in them as a just political force and not despair into a context that argues that they too are from being just. The Greens membership has few checks and balances in terms of monitoring and auditing their parliamentarians. Once you are elected as a Greens parliamentarian it's as if you are unaccountable and have a blank cheque. There is little scrutiny of the parliamentarians as the membership present at meetings and the AGM merely accepts everything they say as Gospel and with a warm and fuzzy ambience just claps around the clock.
I contacted the Fremantle/Tangney convenors so I could speak at a branch meeting about the Willagee preselection debacle. I wanted them to protect the future prospects of the Greens WA with a robust consideration of what occurred at Willagee. However the convenors rejected this and suggested I should write to the three of them. How could I when one of them was one of the secret whisperers? I left the Greens shattered by their shambolic processes and inexcusable imperialistic and at times plutocratic weaknesses.
Freedom of thought, speech or action by individuals or groups even if interpreted as criticising the government should not be ruthlessly eliminated. Without freedom the human spirit, all that we really have, must perish. The highest social principle, as the language of equitable human rights unfolds, can be argued from each according to their ability, to each according to their need. We are only free if we are allowed to have a view of the world, and this is enshrined when the views of others are heard.
I am one person who wants the Greens WA to find their way, and if it means they need to change their ways to accommodate their prescribed values then this is what I hope they do. If they do not then they shall remain as phoney baloney as the Liberal and Labor parties. The Greens should be careful in promoting themselves as change agents and in presuming that they have been responsible for the 8% of the vote that has carried their formal representation into parliaments. They have been carried by the work of others, by the cultural waves typified by Carlson's Silent Springs (1962) and Suess's The Lorax (?). The increasing unnecessary impacts on the environment are on the minds of many throughout our world and in most countries the ecological or green parties pick up between 3% to 10% of the vote. They don't even have to work for this voter turnout merely just be there. I argue that the Greens in WA and Australia have devolved from the consistent eco-warriors they once were and like the former Democrats are not what they originally intended and promised. The Greens are not a left wing progressive party rather a middle of the road group of information gatherers. They do hold many good views keeping with burgeoning cultural waves however they are weak on policies, weak on deep knowledge and without policies on economic management systems. Like other Australian Senators, they are an embarrassment on Senate Committees where for instance Glen Stevens, Ken Henry, the Reserve Bank and the ATO rung rings around them. If they were to govern they would be no different to Labor and Liberal governments, and would be blindly guided by the Reserve Bank, the ATO, the multinationals and mainstream think tanks and media. To challenge these institutions the Greens need to underwrite their views with viable economic management systems - and believe in them.
I argue that it is not only the Labor and Liberal parties who have seemingly converged in ideologues, I argue that Greens have compromised themselves to converge towards the extreme right wing ideologues of the contemporary Labor and Liberal parties. The difference between all three parties, Greens, Labor, Liberals, is sadly diminishing as they converge, with the fallacy of working constructively with each other, to extreme right wing management systems and other politics. Throughout Australia Greens parliamentarians are increasingly voting against their own principles and prescriptions. They sold out arts and culture in Victoria, do preferences with the Liberals and Labor in an unashamed will for power rather than stepping back from preferences altogether. I gave my nominal preferences in the Willagee by-election however I did not run a How-To-Vote-Card. I will not insult the constituent.
IIncreasingly many Greens political aspirants are about themselves rather than any cause and once in Parliament they do no more than profile themselves. You can say all the right things and be loved by your supporters and actually do nothing!
I do not know whether the Ecological, Social Justice and Aboriginal party (the Eco/Socials) will wax and wane. However we will give it every conceivable shot. We have 900 members and every indication is we will achieve membership in the thousands. We now have more members than the Greens WA, and are only a few thousand behind the other two major parties. We are a party of Independents and we will represent every issue that concerns Australia. We will ensure that our Aboriginal brothers and sisters will have their right to self-determination, to their own voice, an undiluted voice, and to achieve this we will run as many Aboriginal candidates as we can. The WA Labor Party has only two Aboriginal parliamentarians, both reigned in by Labor caucus, ala Peter Garrett, and the Liberals and the Greens have not one Aboriginal parliamentarian. Recently, a Greens parliamentarian disgusted me when challenged by a potential Aboriginal candidate for the Eco/Socials about the Greens' poor history with Aboriginal candidates with, "Well we once had an Aboriginal person, a long time ago, volunteer in our Greens office." Oh my God!
Affirmative actions have brought on more women, and their voices, into our Parliaments, we must now address the two real issues of under representation - 1) Aboriginal representation in Parliament, 2) The best candidates into Parliament and not those delivered by party dues, nepotism and allegiances. Achieve these and we will deliver social justice like it has never before been known.
We need to be soldiers of the mind where our greatest strength is not to fight but to rise, to stand, and to make our voices heard. We must bring to Parliaments exemplary change agency, transformative attitudes, and never to compromise on policies that will only continue to allow people to slip through the faults in our inequitable management systems. We must bring on our example to fellow politicians, and educate to them that politics is a calling. We must be the cultural waves and we must lead from as far out from the front, knowing full well that the frontiers can be ugly, rather than cowering in self-regard.
People are basically full of trust, they need to be, and hence they do follow the policies and views of their politicians. We invest modicums of trust in government. We must ensure that the political debate is an honest one so as to protect humanity's unfolding. We must speak truthfully on all issues rather than pander to fear campaigns and educate society by disseminating for instance the fact there are no threats to Australians from asylum seekers, from refugees, those very few who reach our shores. Politicians have a responsibility to educate people that people have a right to protect themselves from persecution, poverty and other unwarranted harm and that people have a right to transmigrate, to go wherever in the world. Politicians have a responsibility to educate Australians that most of our Aboriginal brothers and sisters continue to live in the horrific consequences of an evil Apartheid that was imposed upon them. Politicians need to educate Australians of the universal fact that we do require a Human Rights Charter, that we do need regard each other as equal an affirm their needs and their capacities, that we do need to radicalise the redistribution of capital and liquid equity to nourish the many social benefits that will deliver us from the inequity of inappropriate class divisions, that we do need to regard one another and not only merely ourselves, that the ecological natural systems of our Earth are finely balanced and that we need to protect this fine balance, and that there is magnificent personal, social and collective benefits from leading meaningful lives, honest ones, ones free the from the ugly pursuit of over consumption and as the education grows, unfolds and becomes erudite that it may free us from the brute force of competing with one another.
I have seen more than what most have, having witnessed abject poverty, and we need to truly respect, and be emotively hurt by the sincere realisation that 5/6ths of the world lives in the brute of poverty while 1/6th enjoys 9/10ths of the world's resources. We need to continue unfolding a morality that asks us to question our actions when they affect the interests of others. As we achieve this we will change our ways, and hence the ways will change - and just maybe we will move away from blind obedience to major political parties, and return to the intentions of the Commonwealth Constitution by providing numerous Independent voices in Parliament in order to ensure bona fide and cherished and long await discussions, conversations, examinations and a real ethos of care. Good policies and equitable and inclusive social justice will arrive when discussions are unfettered by the excessive self interests and allegiances that cripple major parties. Historically and contemporaneously such monopoly has proved dangerous.
I hope this article helps those who think about many of the issues I think about. A Czech philosopher, Karel Kosik, once wrote, "A theologian said that all will be well with me and all permitted to the degree that I obey the Council, and he added, 'If the Council were to declare that you have but one eye, despite the fact that you may have two, it is your duty to agree with the Council.' I replied to him: 'Even if the whole world were to affirm that, I, utilising whatever reason I may possess, could not acknowledge such a thing without a rejection of my conscience.'"
The Political Calling - Edited
by Gerry Georgatos
If we do not change our ways, then the ways do not change." (Gerry Georgatos, 1993) I believe if you are a goodperson, if you live your life examining your mind hence the nourishing freedom of awareness-raising will nay be distant. Very little real harm should come to you. Primum Non Nocere - First Do No Harm.
On November 28th, 2009, I contested the Willagee by-election as an Independent. I knew I had no chance of being elected. My conscience guided me to a public stance. Prior to my Independent candidature I was the endorsed Greens candidate for the seat of Willagee. I threw open my endorsement when I did not have to. I did this in the trusting desire to actuate participatory democracy amongst the Greens membership, who I considered my colleagues. I had been spoken to by Greens MLA Lynn MacLaren. She spun a yarn of why I should do this. I knew I was the best candidate and I do understand politics as a calling. However Lynn was sadly dishonest and she did not represent the real reasons behind her proposition. It is now history that I was shockingly deceived. Though there are no wounds to nurse I was hurt by what the Greens WA did.
In WA, simmering with the wide definition of corruption, unashamed nepotism, the dispensing of favours, unheralded elitism and arch conservatism, the hidden attitudes that underwrite these and other anathema ensure that whistle-blowers, where they cannot be abruptly silenced or placated, are viciously persecuted. Persecution seeks to immolate initiative and to deter the many who may have followed. The hidden attitudes, with their schoolyard politics, bully and harass those who believe in the perennial pursuit of truth and honesty as noble human worth.
The Greens WA were the first major political force I joined though I have been a member of the Socialist Alliance. I resisted joining Labor though my upbringing was founded in left wing Labor politics having been born and bred within the working classes. I resisted Labor's approaches for me to consider pursuing endorsement as a Labor candidate because I am not aptly capable of 'caucusing' and in religiously towing the party line. This does not mean I am not a team player - I am. I believe in the right to think for myself. Democracy can only exist if it allows for freedom of thought during all its conversations. The ancient Athenian Solon believed in this, Dracon did not. I believe in a free thinking society rather than having our words managed for us. It is not a naive moral proposition for us to insist on this, rather it is regressive to not struggle for this. The right to conscientious objection should not be subtracted from any equation. The German philosopher Schelling once said, "...freedom is not a property of the human being, but the other way around: the human being is at best the property of freedom... the essence of the human being is grounded in freedom."
In this article I will describe what happened with the Greens' Willagee preselection and how the Greens WA can redeem their future prospects as an honourable political force. Towards the end of this article I will introduce you to the newest aspirant political party, a party of Independents, coalesced by the pursuit of social justice and the unfolding human rights language - The Ecological, Social Justice, Aboriginal Party - founded by myself and my fellow Deaths In Custody Watch Committee (WA) members Marianne Mackay and Glenn Moore.
Lynn MacLaren proposed to me to open up my preselection, 8 months after my endorsement and which I would have for at least 12 months. Lynn lied to me as to the reasons, hiding them from me and therefore denying me rights of reply, natural justice and procedural fairness. During her lies she claimed that by opening up my endorsement we could encourage the Greens to get right behind the campaign by having them once again involved in a democratic process. I was for this as no one person owns anything. She claimed that I'd probably get up again, however it did not bother me if I did or did not if in the event there was a better candidate than me. Strangely, during her lies she tried to seduce me with the likelihood of a Federal seat endorsement, however this is not how I work. She claimed that I was a big picture, big issues person and that maybe State politics was too small for me! I directed her back to Willagee.
I had faith in my candidature, in my deep and diverse knowledge, in my demonstrated passions and in my intentions. Lynn expected Brad Pettitt to lose the Fremantle mayoral election, believing he could not capture the vote of the 'seniors', and that he too would put up his hand for the Willagee endorsement if I opened it up. Of course I expected Brad to storm in the Fremantle mayoral election and I noted this to Lynn.
Lynn never told me that she, and one of the Fremantle-Tangney conveners, and a couple of others, whom I shall not name, had bought into perceived negative comments about me regarding my outspokenness with a particular institution, one of several I had taken on in pursuit of remedying what I perceived as wrongs and improprieties. I have challenged and worked with a number of institutions, organisations and government agencies while advocating on behalf of others, settling grievances on behalf of others or in pursuit of eliminating perceived injustices and inequity. Once I have exhausted the prescribed mechanisms in order to eliminate wrongs I am known to stand up. I am known for having little hesitation in exposing exploitation, in supporting the vulnerable and the fear-mongered, for exposing the circumvention of good governance protocols. I am known for strongly advocating on behalf those who without this advocacy would most certainly slip through the cracks of our management systems. I am proud of my consistent social justice record, and for the many outcomes I achieved, sometimes generated or leveraged for others to finalise negotiations. It is types like me, who in the end are persecuted, ostracised and defamed, who because they led so far out from the front that the leverage exists for the seeming fence-sitters to clinch outcomes. I do accept that I polarise some people and that there are those who feel aggrieved however wherever I have been I have been trusted and respected by the majority.
Recently I attended a National Symposium on Racism only to listen to the speakers demand the type of outspokenness which I have often demonstrated. Those that clapped the loudest and dined with these speakers are those who either rarely stand up or who cower. Amongst them were those who are the actual problem and who persecute people like myself. We all walk amongst each other, and profoundly we must consider this as positive in terms of the possibilities from such close interaction to potentially bridge the divides. The Australian Human Rights Commissioner, Graham McInnes and WA's Human Rights Commissioner, Yvonne Henderson spoke of the need for such required valour. An advisor to Barack Obama, Sylvester Gates spoke of such suffering as requisite in overwhelming injustices as he made comparisons to American civil rights movements.
Who did Lynn MacLaren listen to? She listened to my detractors, who just happened to be the aggrieved, who had often lost out to my conscientious objections and subsequent campaigns. They obviously consider I had rubbed them up the wrong way. I rub up no-one the wrong way. This is their problem to remedy. Why did Lynn not engage with me about any perceived concerns? What happened to the Greens prescribed social justice values? Yes they are hypocrites and of the worst kind.
A secret whispers campaign was conducted by hypocrites within the Fremantle/Willagee Greens and hence unbeknown to me I stood no chance at October's Willagee preselection. The debate between myself and the kind Hsien Harper was won by myself by many country miles. I feel sorry for Hsien, as she and I live for many of the same principles and values however our potential camaraderie has been damaged by what neither of us knew we had bought into. Lynn and the secret whisperers culminated their effort by grounding down those left in support of me during the post-debate group discussion. Why put me through a debate with Hsien if I was to stand no chance? Yes, there was some branch stacking and all the whisperers were there. I brought no-one to support me, it's not my style and it is not right to do so. I am a stickler for propriety. Lynn managed the last say at the preselection and closed the deal. Upon our return after sharing a coffee and chat at a nearby pub Hsien and I were stunned with the outcome.
During my departure after the surprise result I was stopped by a number of apologetic members who all of a sudden regretted their weakness in not stopping Lynn's agenda. Well, it's sort of too late! I realised that I am not a Greens and that it had been a mistake to join them. I had been encouraged to join however my intuition and experience of them was that aside many positive sweeping statements and some substantive advocacy and many shared views that they are built on shambolic party dues, allegiances and therefore are no different to the Labor and Liberal machinery. They too are political opportunists, obsessed with public relations and spin instead of being grounded in propriety and participatory democracy. You can only be grounded in social justice values only if you live them. They too have a shameless ugly will to power and tragically they too do not view politics as a calling.
The encouragement by others for me to join the Greens was so strong that I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt. However I cannot regret everything rather only understand. The Greens disappoint me more than the Labor and Liberal parties. The others don't hide who they are and how they go about their business. The Greens do hide their real selves and this taboo is damaging. During the preselection aftermath I felt for many within the Greens membership who did not know what to do other than to degenerate to clingy hopes that what had happened did not happen or if it did happen that it had more to do with me than them and to shamelessly delude themselves as to not burst their bubble.
What needs to happen to the Greens in order to save the Greens from their continuing devolvement from who they once were is for the voters to not vote for them in coming elections. They need to mend their ways. "Example is our only immortality." (Gerry Georgatos, 1991)
Only Alison Xamon of the Greens WA had the propriety and honour to support me. The others have hid behind silence. Lynn and I met at Fidel's cafe in Fremantle as she tried to quell the damage to her 'reputation'. I let her speak at length so I could qualify the truth. She can revise everything all she likes however she knows I consider her a 'dirty politician'. I wish Lynn learned something however she did not and therefore I believe she should resign from Parliament as she does not represent the prescribed values of the Greens.
Within a week of their treachery I resigned from the Greens. In line with who I am for the sake of the Greens WA membership and for the Greens as a growing political balance and check I contacted the other Greens parliamentarians. I contacted Giz Watson, their nominal parliamentary leader. I asked of them to ensure a robust process to investigate the Willagee preselection. I still remember Giz saying to me "I hear you Gerry, I hear you."Giz had a chat with the party room and with Lynn. This is it and no more. Giz left me a phone message to declare that the matter was at an end! Where was the participatory democracy, the natural justice and robust procedural fairness? I was in shock, the same type of shock I floundered in after the Greens preselection outcome while driving home on an empty South Street lost in puzzled wonder, demoralised and disillusioned. Giz and I greet each other at rallies and campaigns however Giz is not the type of leader I appreciate, as she delivered the type of blow to me I've come to expect from corporate bullies. I am stunned by the hypocrisy of the Greens and by their shameful culture. I am stunned that the Greens WA do not understand that "...to be moral is to be prepared to give reasons of a certain kind for one's actions; in particular those actions affecting the interests of others persons."
I wanted the Greens WA to admit their mistakes and ensure remedies so as to truly respect their values. I wanted this not only for the Greens WA and their future prospects, not only for their membership and not only for the voters however also for myself, so I could continue with some belief and hope in them as a just political force. I don't want to despair that they too are phony baloney.
The Greens membership has few checks and balances in terms of monitoring their parliamentarians. Once you are elected as a Greens parliamentarian it's as if you are unaccountable and have a blank cheque. There is little scrutiny of the parliamentarians as the membership present at meetings and at the AGM merely accepts everything they say as Gospel and with a warm and fuzzy ambience just sycophantically clap and clap.
I contacted the Fremantle-Tangney conveners so I could speak at a branch meeting about the Willagee preselection debacle. I wanted them to protect the future prospects of the Greens with a robust consideration of what occurred at Willagee. The conveners rejected this and suggested I should write to them. How could I when one of them was one of the secret whisperers? I left the Greens shattered by their shambolic processes.
Freedom of thought, speech or action by individuals or groups even if interpreted as criticising authority or government should not be ruthlessly eliminated. Without freedom the human spirit, all that we really have, must perish. The highest social principle, as the language of equitable human rights unfolds, can be argued from each according to their ability, to each according to their need. We are only free if we are allowed to have a view of the world, and this is enshrined when the views of others are heard.
I am one person who wants the Greens to find their way, and if it means they need to change their ways to accommodate their prescribed values then this is what I hope they do. The Greens should be careful in promoting themselves as change agents and in presuming that they have been responsible for the 8% of the vote that has carried their formal representation into parliaments. They have been carried by the work of others, by the cultural waves typified by Rachel Carson's Silent Springs (1962) and Dr Suess's The Lorax (1971). The degradations of the environment are on the minds of many throughout our world and in most countries the ecological or green parties pick up between 3% to 10% of the vote. They don't have to work for this basic vote merely just be there. I argue that the Greens in WA and Australia have devolved from the eco-warriors they once were and like the former Democrats are not who they originally were. The Greens are not a left wing progressive party rather a middle of the road group of information gatherers. They do hold many good views in keeping with burgeoning cultural waves however they are weak on substantive policies, weak on deep knowledge and they are without policies on economic management systems. As with other Australian Senators, they are an embarrassment on Senate Committees where for instance Glen Stevens, Ken Henry, the Reserve Bank and the ATO run rings around them. If they were to govern they would be no different to Labor and Liberal governments, and would be blindly led by the Reserve Bank, the ATO, the multinationals and mainstream right-wing think tanks and media. To challenge these institutions the Greens need to underwrite their views with viable economic management systems - and believe in them.
I argue that it is not only the Labor and Liberal parties who have seemingly converged in ideologues, I argue that the Greens have compromised themselves to converge towards the right wing ideologues of the contemporary Labor and Liberal parties. The doctrines between all three parties, Greens, Labor, Liberals, are sadly converging, blinded by the fallacy of working constructively with each other. Throughout Australia Greens parliamentarians are increasingly voting against their principles and prescriptions. They sold out arts and culture in Victoria, refused to endorse the Stop War marches in NSW, do preferences with the Liberals and Labor, and the Family First party, in an unashamed will for power rather than stepping back from preferences altogether. I gave my nominal preferences in the Willagee by-election however I did not run a How-To-Vote-Card. I will not insult the constituent.
Increasingly many political aspirants within the Greens are about themselves rather than any cause and once in Parliament they do no more than profile themselves while being dismissive of their former hardened styles, which had worked for them. You can say all the right things and be loved by your supporters and actually do nothing!
I do not know whether the Ecological, Social Justice, Aboriginal party (the Eco/Socials) will wax and wane. However we will give it every conceivable shot. We have 930 members and every indication is we will build membership in the thousands. We now have more members than the Greens WA, and we will pass the other two major parties. We will ensure that our Aboriginal brothers and sisters will have their right to self-determination, to their own voice, an undiluted voice, and to achieve this we will run as many Aboriginal candidates as we can. The WA Labor Party has only two Aboriginal parliamentarians, both reigned in by Labor caucus, ala Peter Garrett, and the Liberals and the Greens have not one Aboriginal parliamentarian, though all of a sudden both endorsed an Aboriginal candidate. There you go, the Eco/Socials have made an impact! Recently, a Greens parliamentarian disgusted me when challenged by a potential Aboriginal candidate for the Eco/Socials about the Greens' lack of history with Aboriginal candidates with, "Well we once had an Aboriginal person, a long time ago, volunteer in our Greens office." Oh my God!
Affirmative actions have brought on more women, and their voices, into our Parliaments. We must now address the two major issues of under representation - 1) Aboriginal representation in Parliament, and 2) The best candidates into Parliament and not those delivered by party dues, nepotism and allegiances. Achieve these and Australia will deliver social justice like it has never before known.
We need to be soldiers of the mind where our greatest strength is not to fight but to rise, to stand, and to make our voices heard. We must bring to Parliaments exemplary change agency, transformative attitudes, and never to compromise on policies that will only continue to allow people to slip through the faults in our inequitable management systems. We must educate to politicians that that politics is a calling. We must be the cultural waves and we must lead from as far out from the front, knowing full well that the frontiers can be ugly.
People need to trust and hence they do follow the views and policies of their politicians. Most of us invest modicums of trust in government. We must ensure that the political debate is an honest one so as to protect humanity's unfolding. We must speak truthfully on all issues rather than pander to fear campaigns and we must educate society by disseminating for instance the fact there are no threats to Australians from asylum seekers, from refugees, those very few who reach our shores. Politicians have an educative responsibility that people have a right to protect themselves from persecution, poverty and other unwarranted harm and that people have a right to transmigrate, to go wherever they may so choose in our world. Politicians have a responsibility to educate Australians that the majority of our Aboriginal brothers and sisters continue to live in the horrific consequences of an evil Apartheid that was imposed upon them. Politicians need to educate Australians that we do require a Human Rights Charter, that we do need to prescriptively regard each other and affirm our rights, that we do need to radicalise the redistribution of equity to nourish the many social benefits that will deliver us from the inequity of inappropriate class divisions, that we are more than just the sum of ourselves, that the ecological natural systems of our Earth are finely balanced and that we need to protect this fine balance, and that there is magnificent personal, social and collective benefits from leading meaningful lives, honest ones, ones free the from the ugly pursuit of over consumption, and as the education grows, unfolds and becomes erudite that it may free us from the brute force of competing with one another.
Having witnessed abject poverty we need to truly respect, and be emotively hurt by the sincere realisation that 5/6ths of our world coldly lives in the brute of poverty while 1/6th wrongly covets and enjoys 9/10ths of the world's resources. We need to continue unfolding a morality that asks us to question our actions when they affect the interests of others. As we achieve this we will change our ways, and hence the ways will change. We need to move away from blind obedience to major political parties, and live the intentions of the Commonwealth Constitution by providing numerous Independent voices in Parliament in order to ensure bona fide conversations, examinations and a real ethos of care. Good policies of equitable and inclusive social justice will arrive when discussions are unfettered from the excessive self interests and allegiances that cripple major parties.
I hope this article helps those who think about many of the issues I think about. A Czech philosopher, Karel Kosik, once wrote, "A theologian said that all will be well with me and all permitted to the degree that I obey the Council, and he added, 'If the Council were to declare that you have but one eye, despite the fact that you may have two, it is your duty to agree with the Council.' I replied to him: 'Even if the whole world were to affirm that, I, utilising whatever reason I may possess, could not acknowledge such a thing without a rejection of my conscience.'"
40% mining tax - the few verse the many
by Gerry Georgatos
AUSTRALIAN DEATHS IN CUSTODY - 1,442 between 1980 to 2000. 601 from 2000 to 2007 and counting.
- more deaths in custody in Australia than during the peak of Apartheid in South Africa.
by Gerry Georgatos
I am a Committee member of the Human Rights Alliance and a Trustee of the Deaths In Custody Watch Committee WA, and through both during the last couple of years I have been stunned by the fact that Australia has one of the world's worst deaths in custody records. More people die in custody in Australia than all deaths in custody in South Africa during the peak of Apartheid. There are more non-Aboriginal deaths in custody in Australia than Aboriginal deaths however there are more Aboriginal deaths in custody in Australia than there were all deaths in custody during the peak of Apartheid in South Africa!
I am so appalled with Australia's record that I will do a PhD in Australian deaths in custody. We need to definitively document the reality so we can exact genuine remedies and the saving of lives. I have been educating Human Rights groups and even my own Deaths in Custody Watch Committee, who had not realised the extent of deaths in custody in Australia. My God, it is 601 deaths in custody in Australia from 2000 to 2007 alone and the same rates continue. These 601 deaths in custody over 8 years compares badly with the horrific tally between 1980 and 2000 where Australia recorded 1,442 deaths in custody. It is increasing!
The 99 Aboriginal deaths in custody from 1980 to May 1989 which led to the 1991 Royal Commission Reports into Deaths in Custody do not describe the total numbers of Australian deaths in custody. They do not describe the obviously bottom of the barrel sub-standard custodial services, whether police or prisons. Aboriginal deaths in custody inhumanely continue at the same rate, twenty years after the Royal Commission Reports. 339 recommendations arose from those Reports however in terms of police and prison custodial handling and services the majority of recommendations have not been implemented or substantively budgeted for. Non-Aboriginal deaths in custody have blown out to despicably unacceptable and inhumane terms. We have a scandal-in-waiting. A Royal Commission into Australian Deaths in Custody is urgently required. Our Australian Senators, 76 of them, are derelict in their Constitutional duties in having failed to call for and implement such a Commission, and derelict in having failed to educate the Senate and the House of Representatives of the horrific statistics in terms of Australian deaths in custody. I have educated a number of Senators and politicians to the facts. It seems many politicians are inspired to act only when the community at large is aware of a horrific wrong. Our politicians need to oblige their moral duties and not be guided by the polls. With the Human Rights Alliance and the Deaths in Custody Watch Committee we are beginning public talks so as to educate community in order to 'inspire' our parliamentarians into action.
Of the 1,442 deaths in all forms of custody between 1980 to 2000, 1,367 were males, with 75 being females. 248 were Aboriginal deaths in custody and therefore 18% of all deaths in custody. Of the 75 female deaths, the Aboriginal female deaths were 32%. These correlate closely to incarceration rates. There are higher incarceration rates of Aboriginal persons in terms of proportion of Aboriginal people to total population. This indicates that systemic racism to Aboriginal people does not directly underwrite their deaths in custody and rather that deaths in custody are the direct result of the poor and substandard treatment towards prisoners in addition to the probable accompaniment of prejudices towards the incarcerated that the criminal justice system and Australians in general may have. Therefore discrimination can be argued as en masse against all prisoners rather than targeted to only Aboriginal prisoners. Systemic racism can obviously be argued as underwriting the disproportionately high Aboriginal incarceration rates. Deaths in custody appear proportionate to incarceration rates in terms of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal incarceration rates. An Aboriginal person is eleven to twelve times more likely to be incarcerated than a non-Aboriginal Australian. It varies from state to state, however in WA 68% of incarcerated juveniles are Aboriginal.
In 1991, in the year of the Royal Commission Reports, there were 70 deaths in custody, with 13 Aboriginal deaths in custody. Ten years later there were 87 deaths in custody, with 19 Aboriginal deaths in custody. For both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians nothing improved, and the statistics worsened. In 1997 there were a record 105 deaths in custody. During 2007 there were 74 deaths in custody with 9 Aboriginal deaths in custody. Every year has been thereabouts similar. There has been an Aboriginal death in custody somewhere in Australia every month of the last 18 months. For each Aboriginal death in custody there are thereabouts eight to ten non-Aboriginal deaths in custody. How can Australia have more deaths in custody than peak Apartheid South Africa, and one of the world's worst records? The time has come for us to have a good look at ourselves and find out what is going on, and on this occasion empower any Royal Commission to ensure the recommendations are implemented, and that they monitor prescribed remedies and report annually to the Australian Senate.
We cannot turn a blind eye. Our prisons are filled with the poorest amongst us, and with people from the working classes. The middle and upper classes are not the majority of prisoners and generally serve less time for similar offenses and for their predominant white collar crimes. We maybe turning a blind eye because the majority have taught to be harsh on the poor, and on our Aboriginal brothers and sisters who suffered under Australia's own Apartheid practices. We need to invest in services that assist those souls incarcerated from amongst our poorest classes to rise above their lot and we need to treat them fairly when judging and sentencing them. However foremost we need to improve the police and prison services, their protocols, manuals, procedures and their supervision, handling and treatment of all prisoners. We need Australia to ensure that it is a just and civil society.
Gerry Georgatos
Facts on all Australian deaths in custody
I am a Committee member of the Human Rights Alliance and a Trustee of the Deaths In Custody Watch Committee WA, and through both during the last couple of years I have been stunned by the fact that Australia has one of the world’s worst deaths in custody records. More people die in custody in Australia than all deaths in custody in South Africa during the peak of Apartheid.
There are more non-Aboriginal deaths in custody in Australia than Aboriginal deaths however there are more Aboriginal deaths in custody in Australia than there were all deaths in custody during the peak of Apartheid in South Africa!
I am so appalled with Australia’s record that I will do a PhD in Australian deaths in custody. We need to definitively document the reality so we can exact genuine remedies and the saving of lives.
I have been educating human rights groups and even my own Deaths in Custody Watch Committee, who had not realised the extent of deaths in custody in Australia. My God, it is 601 deaths in custody in Australia from 2000 to 2007 alone and the same rates continue. These 601 deaths in custody over eight years compares badly with the horrific tally between 1980 and 2000 where Australia recorded 1,442 deaths in custody. It is increasing!
The 99 Aboriginal deaths in custody from 1980 to May 1989 which led to the 1991 Royal Commission Reports into Deaths in Custody do not describe the total numbers of Australian deaths in custody. They do not describe the obviously bottom of the barrel sub-standard custodial services, whether police or prisons.
Aboriginal deaths in custody inhumanely continue at the same rate, twenty years after the Royal Commission Reports. There were 339 recommendations from those Reports, however in terms of police and prison custodial handling and services the majority of recommendations have not been implemented or substantively budgeted for. Non-Aboriginal deaths in custody have blown out to despicably unacceptable and inhumane terms.
We have a scandal-in-waiting. A Royal Commission into Australian Deaths in Custody is urgently required. Our Australian Senators, 76 of them, are derelict in their Constitutional duties in having failed to call for and implement such a Commission and derelict in having failed to educate the Senate and the House of Representatives of the horrific statistics in terms of Australian deaths in custody.
I have given the details to a number of Senators and politicians. It seems many politicians are inspired to act only when the community at large is aware of a horrific wrong. Our politicians need to oblige their moral duties and not be guided by the polls. With the Human Rights Alliance and the Deaths in Custody Watch Committee we are beginning public talks so as to educate community in order to “inspire” our parliamentarians into action.
Of the 1,442 deaths in all forms of custody between 1980 to 2000, 1,367 were males, with 75 being females, 248 were Aboriginal deaths in custody: 18 percent of all deaths in custody. Of the 75 female deaths, the Aboriginal female deaths were 32 percent.
These correlate closely to incarceration rates. There are higher incarceration rates of Aboriginal persons in terms of proportion of Aboriginal people to total population. This indicates that systemic racism toward Aboriginal people does not directly underwrite their deaths in custody but rather that deaths in custody are the direct result of the poor and substandard treatment towards prisoners.
This is in addition to the probable accompaniment of prejudices towards the incarcerated that the criminal justice system and Australians in general may have. Therefore discrimination can be argued as en masse against all prisoners rather than targeted to only Aboriginal prisoners. Systemic racism can obviously be argued as underwriting the disproportionately high Aboriginal incarceration rates.
Deaths in custody appear proportionate to incarceration rates in terms of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal incarceration rates. An Aboriginal person is eleven to twelve times more likely to be incarcerated than a non-Aboriginal Australian. It varies from state to state, however in WA 68 percent of incarcerated juveniles are Aboriginal.
In 1991, in the year of the Royal Commission Reports, there were 70 deaths in custody, with 13 Aboriginal deaths in custody. Ten years later there were 87 deaths in custody, with 19 Aboriginal deaths in custody. For both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians nothing improved, and the statistics worsened. In 1997 there were a record 105 deaths in custody. During 2007 there were 74 deaths in custody with 9 Aboriginal deaths in custody. Every year has been thereabouts similar.
There has been an Aboriginal death in custody somewhere in Australia every month of the last 18 months. For each Aboriginal death in custody there are around eight to ten non-Aboriginal deaths in custody. How can Australia have more deaths in custody than peak Apartheid South Africa, and one of the world’s worst records?
The time has come for us to have a good look at ourselves and find out what is going on, and on this occasion empower any Royal Commission to ensure the recommendations are implemented, and that they monitor prescribed remedies and report annually to the Australian Senate.
We cannot turn a blind eye. Our prisons are filled with the poorest amongst us, and with people from the working classes. The middle and upper classes are not the majority of prisoners and generally serve less time for similar offences and for their predominantly white collar crimes. We may be turning a blind eye because the majority have been taught to be harsh on the poor, and on our Aboriginal brothers and sisters who suffered under Australia’s own Apartheid practices.
We need to invest in services that assist those souls incarcerated from amongst our poorest classes to rise above their lot and we need to treat them fairly when judging and sentencing them. However foremost we need to improve the police and prison services, their protocols, manuals, procedures and their supervision, handling and treatment of all prisoners. We need to ensure that Australia is a just and civil society.1. The Greek Uprisings - Deaths of Alexis & Michel
2. Food should be our medicine
3. Corruption and Anti-Corruption
4. The Political Calling - & an insight into the Greens WA, minority parties & Independents, & an introduction to the Ecological, Social Justice and Aboriginal Party
5. The Political Calling - edited
6. 40% Mining Tax - the few verse the many
7. ALL AUSTRALIAN DEATHS IN CUSTODY
2. Food should be our medicine
3. Corruption and Anti-Corruption
4. The Political Calling - & an insight into the Greens WA, minority parties & Independents, & an introduction to the Ecological, Social Justice and Aboriginal Party
5. The Political Calling - edited
6. 40% Mining Tax - the few verse the many
7. ALL AUSTRALIAN DEATHS IN CUSTODY
