Counago & Spaves & Anarchy & !nataS

1) Counago! Spaves!

counago & spaves is a neat-o blog maintained by people (i assume) with very good taste. it’s also got a link to a rather awesome arty blog too, called who killed bambi?. speaking of expensive trinkets, john hutnyk (sounds troublingly foreign to me) has a blog called trinketization, and on it a post all about rock against racism, which recently celebrated its 30th birthday. jm, on the other hand, is just a working man living in the gentrified inner city of seattle, trying to make ends meet until the revolution. ladies, he’s also single. and a blogger. on marx. and coca-cola.

aaron’s blog has some interesting stuff. so does chuck, despite — or perhaps because — he’s a negative nellie. chuck also links to a new journal called resistance studies; from sweden, of course. the journal of aesthetics and protest has also just published its fifth issue. it’s also got an article by stevphen: who also has a blog… but i already said that.

2) Wewease Bwogger Weport!

“VICTOWIAN Wiberal weader ‘Wed’ Ted Bailwieu has called for the party’s internal report into the blogging scandal to be publicly released, even though this would provide more details of the affair” (Release blogging report: Baillieu, Rick Wallace, The Australian, May 19, 2008). It’s a sensitive issue for the Tories, as not-former PM Peter Costello is soon to vacate his extremely comfortable seat of Higgins, in the heartland of ‘Aussie battler’ territory, Toorak. “Costello is supporting the party’s outgoing state director, Julian Sheezel, if and when the former treasurer decides to quit politics. But Kroger, in the absence of an outstanding candidate emerging, is backing his former employee and ex-Crosby Textor executive Jason Aldworth” (Spoils of failure, Ewin Hannan and Rick Wallace, The Australian, May 17, 2008):

The Higgins contest has become entangled in the Victorian blogging affair, which erupted following the discovery that two Liberal staffers, Simon Morgan and John Osborn, were the authors of a vitriolic anti-Baillieu website set up inside party headquarters.

They were sacked a month ago, but the details were leaked weeks later in what some Liberals insist was a concerted attempt to sabotage Sheezel’s bid for Higgins.

Morgan and Osborn worked on the same floor as Sheezel at the party’s Exhibition Street headquarters and Morgan has been represented as Sheezel’s right-hand man.

Sheezel was forced to deny any knowledge of the rogue website but has copped flak from his detractors, who argue that if he didn’t know about the blog, he is not competent enough to be a federal MP on the path to a ministerial role. “This effectively ends his bid for Higgins,” one says…

Curiously, another yuppie has been forced to fall on his sword over the scandal:

The leaked emails forced a young Liberal member working at the Property Council, Luke Dixon, to resign for suggesting that Baillieu adopt a more business-friendly stance on plans to dredge Melbourne’s shipping channel.

Dixon became the fourth scalp in the scandal. As well as Morgan and Osborn, campaign manager Susan Chandler was forced to quit after Osborn retaliated by releasing an email in which she called a Liberal candidate a “greedy f..king Jew”. It is understood Liberal MPs are now asking Baillieu where he intends to draw the line on internal criticism. “MPs are saying that if private criticism of policy is treachery, how are we going to have a free and frank policy debate?” one MP asks.

The Kroger camp believes Sheezel’s association with the blogging debacle will ensure he doesn’t win the support of preselection delegates in Higgins, who are are appalled by the debacle and the further damage it has caused to the Liberal brand. Kroger’s allies say branch officials in Higgins have this week indicated they won’t support Sheezel…

See also: Menzies’ house divided, Sherrill Nixon and Paul Austin, The Sydney Morning Herald, May 17, 2008: “Accusations of reds, morons and treason have lit a new fire under the Victorian Liberal Party… Baillieu wasn’t the only senior Liberal savaged: the former prime minister Malcolm Fraser was “that epitome of treachery”, the federal MP Petro Georgiou was a “waste of space” and his colleague, the former Howard minister Fran Bailey, was a “stupid fat bitch”.”

Sheer class.

3) Anarchy & !nataS

In Scotland, John “Ginger” Bowden, 51, has done a runner: “A SADISTIC killer who cut up a man with a saw while he was alive is on the run after being allowed to go shopping” (Saw killer John Bowden goes on run from prison, Brian McCartney, Daily Record, May 17, 2008). Oddly, “the decision by the killer — who was given a life sentence in 1982 — to go on the run has puzzled prison insiders, as he was due to go before a parole hearing which could have won him freedom in just a few days”. More oddly, “Bowden’s suitability for parole was reviewed a year ago because of his contact with the group Anarchist Black Cross – who campaign for the abolition of the prison system”.

Speaking of killers, what about Helen Keller? Or should I say Helen Killer? “The story of how Keller was given sight and vision via a pair of high-tech spectacles and employed as a government assassin to protect the president from anarchists” is available as a comic:

[Lit small bomblet casually tossed in the direction of Lumpen.]

And ah, while John “Ginger” Bowden killed someone in real life, and Helen Killer is the fictional portrayal of a superhero dedicated to saving the world from anarchist assassins, in the US, Lauren Weiner is possibly about to go to jail after being convicted of planning acts for which Eric McDavid has just recently been sentenced to twenty years (for planning). “Out of jail since her plea deal on $1.2 million bail and living with her mother near Scotts Corners, the 2004 Fox Lane High School graduate said she feels freer now than she ever did on the road, eating out of trash bins and forsaking roots in the quest for experience. As Weiner said recently during a telephone interview about how she went from a rich Westchester girl to a West Coast radical, she was running away from herself” (Woman, a reformed radical, ready to face sentence, Rob Ryser, The Journal News, May 18, 2008):

The prodigal daughter

In the parable, the child of a wealthy landowner leaves home for a foreign country, gets caught up in riotous living with fickle friends and winds up destitute enough to return home repentant. The wealthy father accepts the youth back unconditionally, even though his mercy scandalizes others.

While Weiner’s supporters – such as her mother, her attorney and the head of a charity in White Plains where Weiner volunteers – say they can’t figure how such a smart, spirited woman got duped into such a dead-end plot, Weiner’s own explanations suggest her situation is similar to the prodigal’s.

“You go through pain, you go through anger, you go through sorrow, depression, confusion, then finally acceptance,” Weiner said. “I have really spent the last 2 1/2 years figuring out who I am, because that was something I never knew.”

Her Web posts while in college in 2005 at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia speak of meeting “inspiring radical folk” who “I have been looking for my entire life.” She writes June 23, 2005, about being prepared to get arrested during a protest of a biotechnology convention in the city. She writes, “I am not welcome” in this social structure…

Lauren Weiner insists that home is now her source of strength, crediting her good spirits to strong people in her family.

While supporters say she has to suffer the cliché of the poor rich girl who got bailed out of trouble by her parents, there is nothing fake about this prodigal’s return home.

“She understands the depths of people’s needs, and those principles were there in her from the very beginning,” Boone said. “They were just lost for a little while.”

See also: “Anna” Goes to Elle (April 24, 2008) | Neigh (February 25, 2008) | Eric McDavid found guilty; ecoterror plot foiled; US citizens and planet breathe easy (September 28, 2007) | “My name is Anna, and I’m an FBI informant.” “Hi Anna!” (September 25, 2007) | FBI confidential informant also said to be provocateur (June 11, 2006)

Finally…

4) Terror on teh Interwebs!

Spanish police arrest five ‘active’ hackers
May 18, 2007

MADRID (AFP) — Spanish police on Saturday announced the arrest of five suspected hackers, including two 16-year-olds, who are accused of attacking government websites in the United States, Asia and Latin America. The youths belonged to “one of the most active groups of hackers on the Internet,” having disabled 21,000 Web pages over a two-year period, a police statement said. “They would substitute the contents of the Web pages attacked with protest messages and included the same anarchist symbols,” it added. Although the group had never met, it is alleged that they organised and coordinated their attacks over the Internet, working in particular with hackers in Latin America. Police did not identify which government sites were targeted, but the online edition of the El Mundo newspaper reported that the Internet sites of NASA and the Venezuelan national telephone company were among the targets. The five were arrested this week in the Spanish cities of Barcelona, Burgos, Malaga and Valencia. The arrests follow a probe launched after the website of the left-wing alliance Izquierda Unida (United Left) was hacked and caricatures of politicians inserted, days ahead of the March 9 Spanish elections. If convicted, they face jail terms of between one and three years.