This weeks stories: Government Soft On Immigration Slavery...Trying To Kill Yourself Is A Sane Response To Refugee Detention...No Cash Discount...Government Doesn't Know Why People Won't Take Public Transport...Quotes of the Week.
Four people have been charged with slavery in Melbourne. They are accused of bringing in Thai women and forcing them to work as prostitutes. Kathleen Maltzahn from Project Respect says that at any one time there are roughly 1000 women working as slaves in Australian brothels. The traffickers are laregely protected by Australia's restrictive immigration system. Ms Maltzahn said that the government generally dealt with slaves by deporting them, rather than charging the traffickers. The traffickers themselves often inform on the women to the Department of Immigration. In 2001 Puongtong Simplee died days after being arrested and sent to Villawood Detention Centre. She said that she had been brought to Australia and sold into prostitution when she was 12. No one was charged. The women are also often deprived of food and water and beaten if they try and escape. (Melbourne Times, July 23). A 14 year old boy who tried to kill himself in a refugee detention centre hadn't seen a psychiatrist because he didn't need one, according to lawyers for the government. The boy tried to hang himself in July last year. (AAP, July 28). Despite claims that the GST would end the 'cash economy', Australians are evading tax on a total of about $100 billion income per year. A report by economics lecturer Christopher Bajada found that the GST "doesn't seem to have changed behaviour significantly". Cynthia Cole, an associate professor in taxation law, said that "there is not a country in the world" where a tax like the GST has reduced the cash economy. (The Age, July 26). An investigation of Melbourne's rail system has found at least 30 sites where trains could potentially crash into each other, in the same way as a crash at Epping last year. (The Age, July 26). Quotes of the week: "We should not succumb to democratic dogmatisms about men being the best judges of their own interests." Harold Lasswell, writing in the Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, 1933. "Alamdar said he lived with his father and "about 40 other men" and three boys in White 3, in virtual isolation from other compounds. (White 3 houses 33 males.) He said he cannot play with other children without first obtaining permission, which is not always given". Interview by the Age newspaper with a 15 year old boy in Baxter refugee detention centre. "If the US government concludes that torturing Mohammed is necessary for the protection of lives, it should add a reservation to its treaty obligations with regard to torture". Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, arguing that torture should be legalised in cases similar to that of Al Qaeda suspect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Mohammed is said to be suffering what intelligence sources call 'torture lite' involving techniques such as sleep deprivation. "Actually, there is another article in the New York Times that describes how the professors are antiwar activists, but the students aren't. Not like it used to be, when the students were antiwar activists. What the reporter is talking about is that around 1970 - and it's true - by 1970 students were active antiwar protesters. But that's after eight years of a U.S. war against South Vietnam, which by then had extended to all of Indochina, which had practically wiped the place out. In the early years of the war-it was announced in 1962-U.S. planes are bombing South Vietnam, napalm was authorized, chemical warfare to destroy food crops, and programs to drive millions of people into "strategic hamlets," which are essentially concentration camps. All public. No protest. Impossible to get anybody to talk about it. For years, even in a place like Boston, a liberal city, you couldn't have public meetings against the war because they would be broken up by students, with the support of the media. You would have to have hundreds of state police around to allow the speakers like me to escape unscathed. The protests came after years and years of war. By then, hundreds of thousands of people had been killed, much of Vietnam had been destroyed. Then you started getting protests. But all of that is wiped out of history, because it tells too much of the truth. It involved years and years of hard work of plenty of people, mostly young, which finally ended up getting a protest movement. Now it's far beyond that. But the New York Times reporter can't understand that. I'm sure the reporter is being very honest. The reporter is saying exactly what I think she was taught - that there was a huge antiwar movement - because the actual history has to be wiped out of people's consciousness. You can't learn that dedicated, committed effort can bring about significant changes of consciousness and understanding. That's a very dangerous thought to allow people to have". Noam Chomsky. anarchist news service write to James, PO Box 503, Newtown NSW 2042 or email [EMAIL PROTECTED] contact us to get ATNTF emailed directly to you. If you like All the News That Fits, forward it on to people or lists who might be interested in it, or post it on your local Indymedia: http://www.indymedia.org. Some other Australian anarchist contacts: Love and Rage is an anarchist, non-profit record label. Our CD is available by mail order. 20 songs for $10 within Australia, $15 in New Zealand, $10 in the USA, $10 in Canada, 5 pounds in Britain, or 10 euros in the rest of Europe. Other countries, or enquiries from shops and distroes, email us and ask. Address for orders is PO Box 1191, Richmond North VIC 3121 (Australia). Please make cheques or money orders out to J. Hutchings. http://www.loveandrage.rocks.it http://www.angry.at/thegovernment - anarchist website with fliers for download, contacts etc. http://www.angry.at/racists - Anarchist/anti-racist music site with free mp3s, Real Audio, Real Video, internet radio, band interviews etc. Also includes the text of 'Escape', an anarchist novel - http://www.geocities.com/skipnewborn/novel.doc http://www.dolearmy.org - information for unemployed people. http://www.activate.8m.com - anarchist magazine aimed at teenagers. All the News That Fits appears in the Anarchist Age Weekly Review (http://www.vicnet.net.au/~anarch - PO Box 20 Parkville VIC 3052) and The Ham (http://www.theham.cat.org.au). Media outlets mentioned in All the News That Fits are sources - items are not direct quotes from news media. Background information may have been gathered from sources in addition to media outlets cited. Where no source is cited, the information has been gathered from direct sources. .. -- -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Sub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
