Don't Vote 2004 - NAPNT Election Message : Melbourne Indymedia

The NAPNT 2004 Election Message

Available with links at: [http://www.napnt.org/dont_vote_2004.html]

Don't Vote

Introduction

The Network Against Prohibition (NAP) is a network of drug users and other community members who are angry about the harmful impact of the war on drugs in all of its manifestations, on a local, national and international level.

NAP engage in a range of activities including harm reduction activities with people who use illicit drugs, direct action and protest activities and an ongoing community education campaign to highlight the real motives behind drug prohibition and zero tolerance policing.

Occasionally NAP engages in electoral work. During the 2004 Darwin City Council Election Campaign NAP stood 3 candidates including veteran activist Stuart Highway, who stood for the position of Lord Mayor. This doesn’t mean we have faith in Australia’s electoral system, far from it. What it means is that from time to time we will use election campaigns to further our community education agenda.

As this election message is written, we are surrounded by people with election fever. “Howard out” and “End the Lies” are the catchcries on everybody's lips. Electoral politics in Australia are mirroring the tweedledee/tweedledum state of politics in the USA right down to the Green Left Weekly as our very own Michael Moore. “The system ain’t broke, we just got the wrong people in power”, ain’t that right Mike?

It ain’t the corporations is it Mike?

Mike Moore is the smiling face of fascism, or as Bennito Mussolini put it so well – corporatism. Mike ensures that the system maintains its façade of humanity and credibility, masking the murderous policies of lunatic Western governments, beholden to their corporate masters.

The saddest part of all of this is that everyone has taken it all hook line and sinker. Everyone has been to see Fahrenheit 911 and everyone knows that things are going to be AOK when they get George Dubya out of the White House. The Green Left Weekly whose minions held special screenings of the Moore film around Australia are clearly playing the “system is ok” game:

“…if a Labor Government is elected, we can force it to implement its promise to withdraw troops from Iraq by Christmas.” Editorial, Green Left Weekly, September 29, 2004.

Don’t Vote 2004

In the light of this corporate bum-licking by Australia’s phoney left wing political alternative, NAP have decided to take a stand. Your vote does not count on October 9. We say “Don’t Vote”, don’t lend any credibility to the myth that we have any semblance of democracy in this country or by default the United States.

Hitler and Mussolini’s brand of fascism did not suit their corporate masters. The corporations have worked with the governments of the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia to implement a new brand of facism which ensures the continued domination of the world by corporations, our new world leaders.

NAP have already exposed one aspect of the corporate manipulation of Western Governments and international aid agencies, including the UN and the World Health Organisation with our Syringegate article on retractable syringes.

For members of NAP the damage caused by this corporate leadership is obvious. Another blatant example of this corporate profiteering is the “war on drugs”. As has been said by NAP members previously – there can be no war on drugs and no war on terror, only war on people. The war on drugs is motivated by greed and fuelled by racism.

Even though the war on drugs cannot be won, royalties flow to the corporations to pay for the pharmaceutical drugs to poison drug users and the Round Up used to poison Colombian coca crops (in anti-US areas). The royalties pay for the helicopters and weapons for the Thai and Colombian Governments and the incarceration of the hundreds of thousands of people around the world in the private prison system as a result of the war on drugs.

The war on drugs is not motivated by honourable intentions. As Martin Luther King Jr. stated in his speech "A Time to Break the Silence" given at Riverside Church, New York City on the 4th of April, 1967:

“We have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. Our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony and maintain social stability for our investments. This tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and Peru. Increasingly the role our nation has taken is the role of those who refuse to give up the privileges and pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.”

Royalties also flow to the newly militarised police forces (professionally and personally), the domestic intelligence agencies, the scientifically inadequate public and mental health authorities and the doddering old fools presiding in the court rooms of Western “democracies”.

The “democratically elected” Australian Government is complicit in the War on Drugs. In 1998, representatives of the Australian Government signed UN protocols promising to eradicate all illicit drug use by 2008. If you vote, you are a part of it too.

The Westminster system – The big lie

Communities in Western nations have fought against Westminster style parliaments for hundreds of years. Too many activists and “intellectuals” have been bogged down in the process of attempting to reform government policy by writing to or approaching members of parliament. This lobbying continues today. Community organisations continue to waste their time on letter writing campaigns, petitions and by lobbying the major forces of electoral politics. They waste their energy and ultimately burn out.

This wasted energy needs to be directed into grass roots community development and activism, if we are ever going to see an end to the corporatism that is killing so many of our children. Our energy must not be wasted on encouraging people to vote.

Triple J have been beating the corporate drum, conning thousands of Australia's young people into enrolling to vote. Don’t contribute to the lie by telling them that their vote counts. In the words of Mohandas K. Gandhi, “The exploitation of the poor can be extinguished not by effecting the destruction of a few millionaires but by removing the ignorance of the poor and teaching them to noncooperate with the exploiters.”

The parliament serves as a buffer between you and the evil bastards who are really in control. Any "victory" you have is only short lived. Subsequent governments can and will take away any rights they choose.

Our detractors would say that things “ebb and flow”. While parliaments “ebb and flow”, there is one figure that has stopped ebbing and flowing, it only increases – the number of children who die by the minute as a result of malnutrition, lack of access to clean water and AIDS.

While injecting drug users in Australia argue about the lack of access to sterile water with which we inject our illicit drugs, children in Africa don’t have clean water to drink. The corporations have realised that malnutrition and lack of access to water are going to be major developments. Robert Fraley, the Chief Technology Officer of Monsanto told The Hindu on the 1st of May, 1999:

“Since water is as central to food production as seed is, and without water life is not possible, Monsanto Co. is now trying to establish its control over water.”

The grotesque irony of it all, is that while Australians argue about who is going to represent us in Aryan City (1), our closest neighbours starve to death. Since 1975, over half a million people have died in Papua New Guinea as a result of malnutrition. 230 children die from preventable illnesses every week in PNG.

The corporations and their media have managed to keep this from you with the assistance of corrupt public health officials and the mass media. They have done this with a marketing strategy devised to market malnutrition as AIDS. Dr Ninkama Moiya, Director of PNG’s National AIDS Council Secretariat told delegates at the 16th Annual Australasian Society of HIV Medicine conference, held in Canberra in September 2004, that AIDS is the leading cause of death in the wards of Port Moresby General Hospital amounting to 50% of all deaths.

This evil propaganda campaign takes your attention away from the real reason that our neighbours in PNG and our sisters and brothers in Africa are dieing. Can we really be that racist? Do we really think the Africans and Papua New Guineans are dieing as a result of their "promiscuous" behaviour? Is this how we absolve ourselves of guilt? Is this how we are able to ignore the deaths as we focus our political attention to the "important" task of electing a white man to head Aryan City?

Death by promiscuity is one of many lies and is the predominant theme of the corporate/public health juggernauts that are sweeping across developing nations. Dr Yuichi Shiokawa told the 10th International AIDS Conference in Yokahama that the African AIDS epidemic could be brought under control only if Africans restrained their sexual cravings.(2)

Mussolini would be very proud. He told The London Sunday Express in 1935: “The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, for the vast masses of the nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily deceived than they are consciously and intentionally bad. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies but would be ashamed to tell a big one.”

Howard v Latham - choose your puppet

In this context, does it really matter if we have a Liberal, Labor or for that matter Green government in Aryan City? Without doubt the biggest lie of the election campaign has come from the Green Left Weekly who said in their September 29 editorial: “…the question of which major party forms government is not irrelevant.”

Whether our parliament is dominated by left-nazis, right-nazis or enviro-nazis is absolutely irrelevant.

What is really scary is that when NAP actually analysed the drug policies of the two major parties, John Howard and his conservative buddies came out on top. Do the people who are advocating preferences for Mark Latham know what the Labor Party have in store for us?

The NSW Premier, Carrligula, has implemented a frenzy of zero tolerance policing tactics. He has militarised the NSW police force and increased its size. He has given the go ahead for the construction of new prisons as his Operation Vikings net more and more fodder for the prison system, public and private. He has put sniffer dogs on every train and every street corner. In Redfern, the cops do laps every fifteen minutes. If you stand on a street corner for longer than three minutes you will be searched.

In fact in every state and territory in Australia where Labor have the reins, incarceration is on the rise. In the Northern Territory the Labor Government preside over the highest indigenous incarceration rates ever – close to 90% of prisoners in the Northern Territory are aboriginal. In November, the Labor Government will introduce the Volatile Substance Abuse Prevention Bill, making it illegal to sniff petrol, further increasing the prison population and continuing a policy of genocide.

At least the Liberal Government in the ACT is looking at increasing the number of pharmacotherapies available to "dependent" drug users.

Justice Action recently informed us that there are enough prisoners in Darwin’s Berrimah jail to swing the marginal electorate of Solomon. This explains the recent law that prevents prisoners who have been in jail for three years or more from voting.

This US style reduction of the electoral rolls is reason enough not to be complicit in their lies by voting on October 9.

Greening Australia

This brings us to the Greens. Don’t be fooled into thinking that they will do us any favours. It is not often that members of NAP agree with Prime Minister John Howard but we certainly agree when he says that it is important the Green’s agenda is fully exposed. For starters, the Green Party is made up of people on both sides of the political spectrum. The United States even boasts a Green NAZI party.

While we try to focus on the greed and racism of Western Governments and the profiteering and corruption of the corporations, our “political alternative” the Greens push to make us eat less meat and ride bicycles more frequently. How can anyone take this seriously?

Apart from propping up our sham of an electoral system, the Greens fail miserably when it comes to the war on drugs. NAP members are still getting over the shocking revelation that Greens leader Bob Browne doesn’t even smoke dope. He has adopted the corporate mantra: “I advise people not to (smoke marijuana) - the medical evidence is not good.” (3)

At a joint press conference with Australian Democrats leader Andrew Bartlett to announce preference deals, Bob admitted smoking marijuana but said he had learned better since.

“When I was in London back in 1970, I did sit in a circle with some Eritrean students and puffed on some marijuana, and I did inhale,” Senator Brown said. “But I haven't since."

Bob even supports the corporate approach to addiction, but being a general practitioner, that is no surprise. “Over many years, as a doctor and as a Senator, I have advised young people to avoid illicit drugs. I have also worked to help addicts, people caught up in drugs and hurting both themselves and others, get back to a good life in society."

As a doctor, Bob should know that the concept of “addiction” is hotly disputed.

Bob Brown doesn’t have the guts to tackle the war on drugs. While our prison population has increased by 50% (100% for women) over the past decade, Bob has been skating on thin ice when it comes to drug policy. He is so scared that he will lose his conservative middle class voting base that he won’t dare challenge the power dynamics behind the war on drugs. His Senator’s wage overrides any principles he may have had.

If Bob really wanted to reduce the harm associated with drug use and drug prohibition he would legalise all currently illicit drugs and would stop blabbering about decriminalisation.

Decriminalisation is not the answer. Decriminalisation is already prevalent in Australia. Although mainly for cannabis, in some states other drugs have been included. The racist and corrupt NT Country Liberal Party decriminalised cannabis. Now NT Labor has introduced a “drug court”.

In practice decriminalisation increases the power of the police. Police have discretion as to whether or not you will receive a fine or warning or if you will appear before a judge or magistrate. In the Northern Territory, the police know that the second time they send you to court (and any subsequent times) for a breach of the Misuse of Drugs Act, you will get a mandatory 28 day jail sentence.

Under decriminalisation, the state and territory governments can still send their para-military police forces to kick down your front door, arrest you, question you, deny you bail, take your assets and your children - all in the name of the war on drugs. The Northern Territory "drug house" laws exist under decriminalisation. Your house can be signposted whether or not you are charged, let alone found guilty.

Reluctance to use certain words or terms is a theme of the Green's approach to drug policy. In a statement released on the 1st of October, Bob takes advantage of the widespread confusion around the difference between harm reduction and harm minimisation. Bob uses the term harm minimisation. The confusion ensures that those who support a liberal drug policy will be happy with this and so will those who support a zero tolerance approach to illicit drug use.

The “harm minimisation” that Bob refers to is already current Federal Government policy and it has three arms:

* Supply reduction – this is the police, customs and military side of the equation. These guys get 90% of the funding.
* Demand reduction – this is the treatment side, where the Christian right and the drug companies make their cut – around 8%.
* Harm Reduction – Needle/Syringe Programs, drug user groups, netting 2% of government resources dedicated to Harm Minimisation.

The following quote from Alison J Ritter et al, Medical Journal of Australia, Reporting on the 15th International Conference on the Reduction of Drug-related Harm, “ ‘Harm reduction’ in relation to drugs refers to policies and practices intended primarily to reduce the health, social and economic costs of mood-altering drugs without necessarily restricting their consumption.”

The Police Commissioners Drugs Committee stated in 2002: “Harm minimisation has the support of police in Australia and it should remain the primary objective of Australia’s drug policy.”

Bob makes one more very dangerous mistake.

In his October 1 election statement he says that: “Two factors make drug abuse worse. One is the criminal dealers – they should be jailed. The other is the narrow view that criminalises young addicts and drives their activities underground.”

Bob refuses to face up to the fact that just about everyone who uses illicit drugs is a “criminal dealer”. Every time we go halves with someone in a deal, pass a joint to the person on our left or pick up a stick for someone from that woman up the street we are “criminal dealers”. When we travel from point A to point B with drugs on us because we don’t have time to score at the other end – we are trafficking.

Bob said that the narrow view that criminalises young drug users is a factor that makes “drug abuse” worse when at the same time he exhibits all of the characteristics of those who criminalise drug use by sending us all to jail as dealers. If you passed that joint to one of those Eritreans Bob, you are a dealer yourself.

If you are a drug user, voting Green will change nothing. In some electorates they have preferenced Liberal, in others (including Solomon) they have preferenced Labor. In all their election propaganda, the Greens don’t tell you that your vote will be going to their corporate bum-licking colleagues in the Liberal/Labor coalition.

They’re probably not worth mentioning but for the record:
“The Australian Democrats do not support over the counter sales of ecstasy and believe legalising drugs is unwise and unlikely to decrease the quantities used."

Senator Lyn Allison, Democrats health spokesperson said "the Howard Government’s prohibition drug policy has been expensive and ineffective and drugs are still the root cause of major corruption and crime in every state.”

Sorry Lyn, your drug laws, not drugs, are the root cause of major corruption and crime.

Are they ready to be unplugged?

Not voting is a protest against the State's domination by corporate interests and the repression taking place in Australia to serve those interests.

Voting gives the state a mandate for the American/Australian war on drugs, the Iraq war, the theft of East Timor's resources, the caging of refugee children and the continued repression of 'Australians' as security/police powers are broadened.

We must demonstrate our opposition - we must withdraw our mandate. It is time to unplug ourselves from the Matrix.

Elections have become the domain of media image makers and wealthy campaign contributors. Policies have become interchangeable. Voting is not a means of achieving change in Australia. Not voting is the ultimate protest vote. Don't feed the lie - Don't vote.

We hope that this election message will inspire you to opt out of this corporatist “democracy” and get involved in grass roots community development and activism in your home town. For those of you who have been fantasising about voting on October 9, it may seem like you are giving up your right to vote. Just remember that it isn’t a right, it is an obligation. The bastards will fine you if you don’t vote, and they sometimes even jail people.

Voting for one of the phoney left wing parties will make no difference. They are our enemy. Morpheus explained the problem we face perfectly in the Matrix:

"The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. And when you're inside, and look around, what do you see? Businessmen. Teachers. Lawyers. Carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But, until we do, these people are still a part of that system. And, that makes them our enemy. You have to understand: Most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.”

Footnotes

1. “Meanwhile federal parliamentarians selected a site for a national capital on a grassy plain on the high country between Sydney and Melbourne and the members of the cabinet considered various names for it: Wattle City, Empire City, Aryan City, Utopia. In the end they settled on a local Aboriginal word, Canberra.” – Macintyre, S. (1999). A Concise History of Australia. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.

2. Ransom & Day. (2000). World Without AIDS. Credence Publications: Kent. [http://www.credence.org]

3. Brown backs off Green drug ideas. The Advertiser, 1st September 2004.
[http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v04/n1234/a09.html?154098]

4. A message from Bob Brown. Via email; 1st October 2004