Image: Remah Naji, Post Office Square, Brisbane No Christmas in Bethlehem rally organised by Justice for Palestine Magandjin. Photo: JPEG @ Studio 9001 .
As 2024 fades, there are some acknowledgements that should be made by Workers BushTelegraph.
Best Painting: Phil Perrier
Best MC: Phil Monsour
Best journalism award for 2024: Palestinian journalists in Gaza and the occupied territories , Palestine.
For a list of Palestinian journalists murdered by Israel c the committee to protect journalists at https://cpj.org/2024/12/journalist-casualties-in-the-israel-gaza-conflict/
Best Film critique. This award goes to Peter Curtis. His review of La Nouvelle Femme went viral a couple of weeks ago. See https://workersbushtelegraph.com.au/2024/12/14/maria-montessori-feminist-and-educator/
Award for First nations campaign against coal mining on Jagalingou and Wagan land at Carmichael in Central Queensland: Adrian Burragubba.
Best Photographer. This is a tough one with a highly competitive field between Lachlan Hurse, Alex Bainbridge, Nick Chesterfield Manukoreri and JPEG @ Studio 9001. Here is some of their work:
Best organised activist group. That is an easy one. Justice for Palestine Magandjin.
Best Song Now that’s another tough one. It is a toss-up between Woolloongabba by Jumping Fences and Which side are you on? by Phil Monsour, Ethan Enoch, Matt Zu and Sophie Nishizara.
The award for most consistent commentator, bush lawyer and critic of ‘Leftism’ goes to John T.
Here is some of John’s critical work:
- Bob Brown. A short story about short selling – How the Bob Brown Foundation and the campaign against Adani’s Carmichael mine got hijacked by a US investment firm. (This story is fictional and any resemblance to any real entity is entirely coincidental.) – https://workersbushtelegraph.com.au/2024/12/19/adani-v-pennings-who-wins/#comment-816189
- Renewables. Solar and wind energy plants in India and Australia are owned by mining or fossil fuel companies. Adani is doing nothing Twiggy Forrest isn’t doing in steamrolling in his Australian windfarms. It is the market standard. The specific allegations against Adani Green energy in India @ https://workersbushtelegraph.com.au/2024/12/19/adani-v-pennings-who-wins/#comment-816193
- NIMBYISM. John’s qualified support for NIMBYISM while commenting on this article about Coal Royalties by Trevor Berril. See https://workersbushtelegraph.com.au/2024/07/23/coal-royalties-2/
Best speech In a year of many great speeches, this is my pick:
Best chants
Most outrageous group. Sadly, that is an easy one. It goes to the Queensland Council of Unions QCU for their behaviour on May Day in Magan-djin. The QCU called in the police to attack and assault a proud unionist protesting the government’s complicity in the genocide. They did so while yesterday’s man Steven Miles laid claim to his ‘working class credentials’. Who does the QCU represent? Certainly not rank and file unionists.
Non-violent resistance award goes to Jim Dowling: “Speak the truth about the issue as much as allowed and ask for no mercy.”
Special mention. One-woman-revolution award: Margie Pestorious.
Award for most consistent radio journalism: Andrew Fullarton, Bevan Ramsden and guest John Lander.
Best voice actor: Sue Phillips.
Award for Renewable engineering: Trevor Berrill.
Proof reading award: Katherine.
Best Graffiti award: Anonymous.
Best bike rider and best organisers: Lachlan Hurse. Rode 1,762 km and organised with Sue Monk From Australia to Cuba with Love campaign against the US blockade and organised The Big Ride for Palestine Australia 2024 with APHEDA.
Interstate solidarity: Gareth and Max from Byron.
Best Busker: Dublin singer, Allie Sherlock
Best poet: Elina Abou-Sleiman
There are no doves in August, only birds dead in the street. In one of the protests that have continued since October 2019, a bird suffocated to death on tear gas meant for resisting youth. ‘The birds stop singing,’ Darwish lamented, ‘and pay heed to the war’. On an Instagram livestream, I watched a young protestor crying while trying to revive a bird. Perhaps she hadn’t heard Darwish’s warning. Perhaps, she was only searching for a small heartbeat to assure herself that her country and its people were not long dead; that one day, the doves would return, and the waves would recede, back into the Mediterranean.
Best book:
Best live performance: Mark Cronin
Best pickets @ Shutdown Ferra thanks to Jess, Scout Waddah and the GC mob
BEST DRUMS: Rasheed and Emil
Best Social media
See you in 2025.
Ian Curr
23 December 2024
Social democracy is disappointing, isn’t it?
Predictions for 2025: The United States government will default on interest payments on $35 trillion US debt, most of which is owed to China.
Albanese will go to the polls in mid March after schools return. Queensland and New South Wales will vote for Dutton but Victoria won’t.
Fossil fuels will continue to provide the bulk of global energy supply.
Boeing will go broke if there is a ceasefire in Gaza.
The Houthies will block Suez Canal throughout 2025.
Happy New Year, Everyone … although that’s not likely.
Ian
2 Jan 2025
Oh, nearly forgot, WBT is predicting an energy crisis in Europe this winter.
Thanks WBT for this incredible honour. I also thank my parents, my agent and all the people who worked so hard behind the scenes.
I would however like to say I am not a critic of Leftism, I am a critic of bourgeois moral outrage masquerading as Leftism. Liberal-Leftism is the opiate of the urban elite, it is an escapist fantasy that only serves to massage the egos of its adherents while being totally irrelevant to any real struggle. Liberal-Leftism offers detached, patronising and voyeuristic sympathy to other people’s real struggles and calls it “solidarity”, which is irrelevant to the recipients of the solidarity and only gives pseudo-leftists the same warm inner glow that Christians get when they offer their “thoughts and prayers” for other people’s suffering.
In 2000 the Greens and Friends of the Earth organised the “S11” protests in Melbourne against the World Economic Forum (WEF) and its globalist agenda. Tens of thousands of people turned up and fought the police to blockade the WEF venue. In 2016 Green Senator Sarah Hanson-Young was appointed a “WEF Young Global Leader”. In the 2019 election campaign Adam Bandt promoted the “Green New Deal” based on economic recovery through globalised trade and its only specific project was Mike Cannon-Brookes’s “Suncable” project to build the world’s biggest solar plant in the Northern territory and sell electricity to Asia via the world’s longest extension cord. (Albo recently approved it) There were no other specific projects in the Green New Deal policy. Cannon Brookes is also a former WEF Young Global Leader, and he was a major contributor to Climate 200 which was a major contributor to Bandt’s local campaign in 2019. Today, with the exception of nuclear power, the Greens policy in climate, environment, urban planning and globalised trade is identical to the WEF program. Today the so-called “Left” is led by people who are either covert agents or useful idiots of the WEF agenda. These are the so-called Leftists I am critical of.
Happy new year.