I am one of 24 local authors in Can You Believe It… which each story illustrated by a local artist.

I wrote none of the five stories of 5 Bricks.

You can read them on a Kindle by converting from ePub to Mobi using the free conversion program from Calibre. (Just ignore that last sentence of you do not know what I am talking about).

See below Karzai strategy to shore up his survival- desperate to get refugees to return!!! See dateline Tuesday 21 Feb 2012 on SBS. May be available on-line.

Then and now, people do want to change governments, but we need to change the system.

We should not point the finger solely at 4ZZZ for pretending to be radical or revolutionary or for seeking Left cover, or tapping into movements for change when it is cool to do so — Zed is but one organisation among many who sought not to organise to change the system.

Hi Ian Curr.

You might remember me. I’m one of the founders and early staff members at 4ZZZ-FM, and I’m in Peter Gray’s footage (above). I remember Pic and Andrew very well – they were heavily involved in the construction of the studios in late 1975.

4ZZZ-FM has had many distinct iterations since then, and I daresay all of them had both good and bad points.

The fundamental debate at the station in those days was whether it was going to be a legal station seeking to influence a large audience, or a megaphone “preaching to the converted”, and probably taken off air by the authorities (as the Draft Resisters Radio had been in Melbourne a few years earlier).

The massive effort that went into planning for, building and running 4ZZZ-FM was possible because the vast majority of those involved believed strongly in the first approach. And this inevitably meant some compromise.

I had moved on by the time Denis Reinhardt had become Station Coordinator, so I can’t comment on the specific incident you raise. However I will say that even Denis (who I agree was a “colourful character”, even for 4ZZZ-FM) would probably not have been able to ban a program, and make it stick, without the support of other key staff at the station.

The “experimental” licence that 4ZZZ-FM (and a small number of other stations) was offered in late 1975 came with a new Minister in (what turned out to be) the dying days of the Whitlam government. We were still building the station (probably just a couple of weeks after Peter Gray’s footage was taken) when G-G John Kerr sacked the government.

After some initial outrage, we went back to building the studios, and quiet negotiations began. They wanted us to be a “university” station, even though that wasn’t whom the licence had been offered to, so we created a slab of “educational” programs. This confused the listeners; gave new power to the megaphone faction; encouraged the creation of a revisionist version of the station’s history and purpose; but, most ironically for the new conservative government, produced moments of far more stridently-radical broadcasting than that planned for or then heard on the core station.

They also sent bureaucrats along with the ASIO files of troublesome former student activists involved in the station, and the station was forced to demote both Jim Beatson (Station Coordinator) and myself (Financial Coordinator). This was particularly galling for Jim who was the true “founder” of 4ZZZ-FM.

Finally, we postponed the opening by a week, and then the new Fraser government signed our licence, and the station went to air on 8 December 1975.

I suspect you were right about the real reason that your show didn’t go to air back in the day, but I should also note that striving for high quality on air was always a core (and demanding) goal at 4ZZZ-FM.

We insisted that all announcers (paid and volunteer) do training and/or an audition. Technically-bad material was rejected unless it was from an irreplaceable (and usually external) source. We also spent scarce dollars on LP’s (before the record companies realized the benefits of giving us back-catalogue and obscure artists) so that we weren’t beholden to individuals with good record collections (as was common in some stations).

As to “Won’t Get Fooled Again”, we were well aware that it was a less than ideal choice, but it was the best of a bad lot. We needed a rock anthem, and we needed to make a non-Party statement about the political atmosphere of the time.

2JJ (AM) went to air in Sydney earlier the same year with Skyhooks “You Just Like Me ‘Cause I’m Good In Bed”. Not a great song, and of questionable values, but it was chosen because it had been banned for broadcasting.

I can appreciate your personal disappointment with the incident you raised, but it’s a stretch to say that 4ZZZ-FM “turned out to be a disappointment politically”.

In my view, 4ZZZ-FM was mostly good most of the time, and astoundingly it’s still there after 36 years.

More importantly, 4ZZZ-FM, and that means the people who built the station and kept it on air, did exactly what they set out to do all the way back in 1975.

it is also not new that all three entities lie collectively to protect themselves and the police especially. the cover-up and white-wash of the death of tj hickey examples that most easily.

the blame for the rangarella incident shows very clearly that they fear us. they fear our presence in both small and large numbers of those who will not accept their assimilation policies. they are also arrogantly stupid. the cafe is virtually on the edge of the embassy. both gillard and abbot have been disgustingly venal in their attitudes towards aboriginal problems. gillard not only kept howards nt intervention based on the most dastardly of lies but she is expanding it. this upsets a lot of aboriginal people. on that very day abbot made his usual disparaging and dismissive remark that if and when he became pm then the tent embassy would go. this certainly upset those at our embassy.

so they both attend a medal giving function right on our border. what the hell did they expect? bouquets and kisses? respect? turn the other cheek? not bloody likely.

one of gillard’s minders had informed the embassy where abbot was going to be whilst apparently forgetting that we were no more fond of his boss that we were of abbot. he is now moving to, perhaps, greener pastures.

of course we moved to the cafe and why wouldn’t we.

a disclaimer. i was not there as i was watching an excellent video called ‘keep our campfires burning.’ a most impressive video on youth suicide and the stolen generations that was shown at the national library by robert eggington. i highly recommend it.

but i have read the lies and i have read the truths. i have watched as much video footage as i can find. i have sought the opinions of those who were there. whilst our people from the embassy, both black and white, male and female, young and old, even aunty pat eatock in her motorised chair was there.

yes they shouted as loud as possible, yes they banged on the reinforced glass windows of the cafe and yes some moved to the front of the cafe as gillard’s police and security detail unceremoniously bundled her out and caused her to lose her blue suede shoe that somehow finished up at the embassy where it was protected from any further abuse. it was later, i believe, handed back to her via her appointed delegate.

gillard showed concern for abbott’s safety and security but she was assured that he was well looked after. no apologies are due to either politician and nor to any one else. one could quite easily suspect that the whole thing was a political set-up. it certainly smells like it.

below are several articles and videos that clearly show where the fault lies and it is not with those at the embassy.

politicians need to learn respect to others also.

even those they fear.

fkj

ray jackson
president
indigenous social justice association

isja01@internode.on.net
(m) 0450 651 063
(p) 02 9318 0947
address 1303/200 pitt street waterloo 2017

http://www.isja.org.au

we live and work on the stolen lands of the gadigal people.

sovereignty treaty social justice

The media lies about the Aboriginal Embassy

http://indymedia.org.au/2012/01/29/a-put-up-job-that-boomeranged

In almost twenty years of existence CLR-News has only rarely reviewed books that tell the history of the building workers’ trade unions. Humphrey McQueen’s book We Built this Country is an exception. The reason why we have picked it up is rather simple. McQueen, who calls himself a Canberra-based activist and freelance historian, has written a remarkable book that covers more than 200 years of building workers’ experiences and thus opens ‘a window into the making of the Australian working class’. Although the research and writing were commissioned by the Construction Division of the Australian CFMEU (the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, the successor organisation of the Australian Building Labourers’ Federation), the financing of its publication owes nothing to the union.

The building labourers entered the CFMEU in 1994 but it took a while before this unofficial history that wants to be ‘sympathetic to the union’s difficulties but not apologetic for their failures’ could come on the table. One of the reasons was that the twenty-five years before the merger had been a period of bitterness, with media-highlighted de-registration, criminal convictions and internal conflict. McQueen’s book includes defeats as well as victories because ‘nothing is gained by recounting only the good side ́. Some of his used concepts are extremely topical. For instance, the notion that the expansion of capital depends on the disciplining of labour-time or that re-skilling around concrete gave the labourers the chance to lift themselves from the bottom of the labour market. The book is rich in stories and case studies. Therefore, a review is an incredible challenge; it is easier to recommend reading. Nevertheless, I want to highlight a few parts.

In the early days of British colonialism tradesmen landed with ideas about who should do what on a building site and found out that it was impossible to maintain these rules in a society where the demand for craftsmen outran the supply. Assistants learned how to manage the job alongside the tradesmen and started chasing contracts. Subcontracting increased sweating. Changes in materials and methods in the late 1890s opened more pathways for labourers. However, the temporary and mobile nature of the work on building sites and the fluctuations in urban development with ‘men following for two weeks at the job’ and labourers shifting between industries and trades remained the key characteristics of the building sector. The history of the ABLF, created in 1910, and the preceding organisations and initiatives, therefore, was a history of ‘ups and downs’ and sometimes of ‘stumble and fall’.

An interesting chapter is dedicated to the appearance of ‘weird mobs’ (named after They’re a Weird Mob, a popular book in the 1950s about an Italian journalist moving to Australia and finishing up laying bricks). If Australia was a country of migrants, than construction was the main industry for people to end up in. For ABLF officials building labouring was the work available to men at the bottom of the heap, irrespective of colour. Therefore, they took pains to make sure that the newcomers got their right money under decent conditions. In 1966 ABLF leaflets on the Sydney opera house site were in English, Spanish, Greek and Italian. Notwithstanding this basic principle of equal treatment, there were also times, most often coinciding with a downturn in the economy, with rumours about foreigners on sites.