Australia, which has oft been referred to as “the lucky country”, is now embracing workplace reform — yet again!

Under aegis of the PR friendly title of “Work Choices” the new industrial system that has been introduced by the Howard Liberal/Country Party federal government is designed to force workers onto individual contracts and do away with the shop floor relevance of trade unions by among other elements, making striking illegal.

Australia which used to be one of the most highly unionised countries in the OECD can now only boast a trade union membership of some 23% — although 20 years ago trade union coverage was closer to fifty percent of the workforce.

The brutal irony is that this fall in union strength and coverage occurred primarily during the years of a federal Labor government– the Hawke/Keating ALP governments, 1983-1996. This fall was a consequence of a consensual agreement between the bosses, the government and Australia’s peak trade union body the ACTU. The Accord (aka the Prices and Incomes Accord was rigorously policed such that this so called empowerment of trade unionism was in fact a fast track to corporatization and the ACTU became an arm of federal government policy.

Bob Hawke had been federal president of the ACTU before shifting to politics.

The added irony was that the Accord strategy was hatched and advanced in the trade union movement by the Communist Party of Australia. Generally, the official trade union left embraced the Accord as a ticket to a new era of political relevance for the trade unions and is was this left that was the Accord’s most dedicated champions.

Total hours worked climbed and workers’ share of the GDP fell. Labor’s Accord was more succesful in driving down wages and working conditions than the economic rationalism and coarse aggressiveness of a Reagan or a Thatcher. It was Australia under the ALP that was the inspiration for Blair’s New Labor in the UK.

No wonder, therefore, that trade union membership and combativity collapsed.

So today, a weakened and a chastised trade union movement faces a major challenge to its future existence and all it can offer the ranks is a “vote Labor” strategy.

Does that sound familiar?

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The question of religion, specifically Islam, is being played out as a stalking horse on the political left. As so many left intellectuals sign on with Islamophobia there has been a lot of chatter dedicated to the business of proving how right it is to see Islam as on par with rabid imperialism as the twin apocalyptic enemies of our time. Such is this determination to claim the high moral ground that Bush’s incursion into Iraq is seen as a necessary evil in order to assert the values of the European Enlightenment against the barbarity of fundamentalist Islam.

At stake is a new way to view religion as a sin unto itself without allowing it the leeway of its actual everyday social and political context –as though religiosity is something that is sucked from the thumb of a deity or the mind of a diabolical mullah. So too is a negligence in addressing religion, specifically Islam, as without mass appeal, even necessity, and takeup — as though millions of Moslems are prone to terrorism because they choose to visit mosques to pray.

Here’s a great review by Terry Eagleton of Richard Dawkins new book The God Delusion, which touches on these very topics with considerable aplomb.Check it out.

In way of political irony and hypocrisy,here’s a free speech fight you won’t hear about, say, in comparison with some hue and cry over free speech when it supposedly came to the right to cartoon: Danish journalists on trial for publishing leaked intelligence reports on Iraq.

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Excerpts from several videos showing unprovoked beatings by LAPD officers, including the one we posted, will air on CNN’s American Morning on Monday as part of their report on what’s up at LAPD with all the beating videos.

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The move comes hours after a protest march by more than 200 students.

This is the lead story in the L.A. Times this morning, with a big photo of the protest in the print edition front page.

The person chosen to head the probe, Merrick Bobo, probe is seasoned and has done other investigations into police misconduct, including the Rodney King beating.

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Lefti on the News wonders how mainstream media could possibly know the kidnappings at the Education Ministry in Baghdad were carried out by militia masquerading as police, given there is no proof of this.

Since the kidnappers haven’t been captured, how could they possibly know that? To be specific, how do they know that these kidnappings weren’t carried out by the actual security forces rather than people masquerading as them?

Ditto for the four Americans kidnapped near the Iraqi border by “gunmen wearing police uniforms.” Yet nothing I’ve seen gives any evidence supporting this. Again, they could easily have been real police.

The kidnapped men were apparent mercenaries employed by Crescent Security Group, and were working out of a base in Kuwait making incursions into Iraq. What were they doing there? But, if you’re a mercenary then it’s assumed you know the work is both dangerous and lucrative. While I think mercenaries tend to be despicable, let’s hope their corpses aren’t found riddled with holes from power drills. No one should die like that.

The U.S. war machine and media can’t admit these attacks may have been carried out by actual police, as that wouldn’t play at all well at home. So instead, they have harnessed apparent startling and powerful psychic abilities and have determined the attackers must be rogues masquerading as cops instead.

Because if the insurgency and militias includes lots of police too, then the U.S. invasion is doomed. They will have no idea who to trust. Sure, the militias fight with each other. They also fund their weapon purchases through crime, but this is nothing new for guerrilla armies. It’s not like they can go to the bank and get a loan for Uzis and RPGs. But because they may be criminal doesn’t negate any political beliefs they may have, and it’s clear the insurgents and militias want the U.S. out of Iraq.

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But it’s not because of “some accident in planning,” goodness no, not that. It’s because those darned insurgents keep insisting on fighting back, says Tony The Befuddled in a stunning escape from reality and logic.

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LAist has photos and coverage of the UCLA protest.

Photo by Henry David for LAist.com

Some have asked, why didn’t students protest more against the tasering while it was happening. For those of you who who don’t live in Los Angeles, confronting cops like that here, even university police, could get you tasered, shot, and arrested for a felony - that’s just the reality here.

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