• a reminder : the second annual melbourne anarchist bookfair takes place on caturday, august 4 at the abbotsford convent. nice location, dozens of stalls, many workshops, free entry, and more deets here.
• also in melbourne, on the following caturday (august 11), the melbourne anarchist club is launching an infoshop.
• anarchists in brisbane are organising a summer skool for january 2013. (i’m not sure, but i think the last such gathering took place in 2003.)
• exilio libertario have published a fascinating history of spanish anarchist exiles in australia which you can download here.
On his 90th birthday, I and another comrade spent the evening with him and his companion, Ella Twynam, at Walthamstow. During the two hours that we were with him he brought to life the story of his part in the working-class struggles of more than 70 years. We asked him what he thought of the Labour Government. “£1,000-a-year men – all of them,” he answered, “they’re doing the Tories’ work well.”
In the same week Chumbwamba deaded, What-Was-Once-Crass-But-Now-Knows-Better-Than-Not-To-Enforce-Its-Copyright successfully complained to file-sharing site Mediafire to have several of its recordings removed. Further, in response to the complaint, Mediafire apparently removed not only the Crass material (por ejemplo) but over 3000 other albums uploaded to the site by accounts closely associated with the ANARCHO-PUNK and PIRATE-PUNK websites. I’m surprised there’s been (or seems to have been) little or no music industry reportage on the incident… but, like, whatever. You can read the butthurt on the anarcho-punk site here.
Have Crass become the anarcho-punk equivalent of Metallica?
Enquiring minds want to know!
On a more serious note, the incident raises some really interesting questions about copyright, intellectual property, love and labour, and if I wasn’t so jaded I’d probably even explore them. Speaking of which, here’s an old song by a band a guy in which later wrote a really annoying shampoo jingle.
In the three-way race (2009) between Toscano, Patten and Collyer, Patten is again coming first, with Toscano second and Collyer bringing up the rear. Sex Patten has also managed to again defeat Stephen Mayne: in Patten v Mayne v Whitehead, results are very similar to those of 2010.
• Ian Tomlinson was not killed by PC Simon Harwood.
• The murder did not take place during protests against the G20 meeting in London in April 2009.
• The G20 will not be meeting in Brisbane in 2014.
• Not commenting on the decision to award Brisbane the meeting, the Melbourne Lord Mayor Robert Doyle, who is
• nota fucking cunt
• did not state that “When it happened in Toronto in 2010 it locked up [the] city, it had fly in professional protesters, the so-called black block, they had police cars set on fire, they had to arrest over 1000 people, and there are still something like 200 charges pending — it was just a nightmare…”.
Last week, ten activists were sentenced to lengthy prison sentences for crimes against property, committed during the G8 summit in Genoa in 2001. Italy Calling writes:
The Italian High Court confirmed on Friday 13th July the sentences for the 10 activists on trial for crimes of “devastation and looting” during the G8 summit in Genoa in 2001. While some of the sentences have been slightly reduced, all 10 activists have been declared guilty of devastation and looting crimes against private property…
[On the other hand] the police forces who stormed into the Diaz school battering sleeping people are still on the loose, with a slight possibility of losing their jobs, their bosses have been acquitted of all charges and promoted; in the meantime, ten people who did nothing but damage cars and shop windows and never harmed anyone are going to spend in some cases 14 years of their lives in jail. As usual, the Italian justice system clearly shows who it serves.
Elena Giuliani, Carlo’s sister, commented on the sentence: “It wasn’t enough that they judged his murder a lawful murder. After 11 years, they still had to take more lives. And they were not the lives of those who killed, tortured, battered, or the lives of those who ordered the beatings and covered them up. Once again, they took the lives of our comrades”.
Update (July 13) : While having earlier succeeded in having FWA ban solidarity action at other Coles’ warehouses, today Toll failed to convince the industrial umpire to blow the whistle and declare the Somerton picket unlawful. As a result, Toll is applying to the Supreme Court for an injunction against the picket tomorrow (Saturday, July 14). A community rally in support of the striking workers is to take place on Sunday (July 15) at midday. Supposedly, ‘Coles [remains] hopeful of smashing workers’ picket at warehouse’ (Stephen Drill, Herald Sun, July 13, 2012).
Hundreds of Toll workers are currently on strike at one of three National Distribution Centres belonging to Coles, this one on the corner of Union and Somerton Roads, Somerton. The workers have been on strike since 6am, Tuesday morning (July 10) and appear determined to continue until a satisfactory EBA is obtained.
The last EBA (Enterprising Bargaining Agreement) between Toll and the NUW (National Union of Workers) ceased at the end of June. In essence, workers and the NUW are demanding parity in wages and conditions with workers in other Coles’ warehouses: Toll refuses. (NB. Coles out-sources its distribution network to Toll.) The union has expressed concern over five key issues:
1. Time for workers to have with their family: the creation of a roster for day shift workers that allows them to take a rostered day off and voluntary public holiday system – so that workers can choose rather than be forced to work public holidays
2. Shift loading to be paid for the entirety of a shift to a worker who does afternoon or night shift – not a couple of hours per shift as proposed by the company
3. The automatic option for direct and indirect casuals to become permanent employees after 6 months
4. Inclusion of basic union rights in the Agreement – such as Right of Entry
5. A decent wage increase to catch up to other Coles warehouses
Large numbers of police have also assembled at the warehouse in an attempt to intimidate workers into accepting Toll’s sub-standard offer; today (Thursday, July 12) workers voted to reject it. It’ll be interesting to see if Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu orders police to smash the picket (an unsuccessful attempt to do so took place during the strike at Baiada Poultry last year). Otherwise, last week Uncle Ted triggered a mass rally by construction workers protesting a new, union-busting code for the industry. Inter alia, “The code, which comes into force on Sunday, will push companies bidding for government construction contracts to crack down on the display on building sites of union logos, mottos and insignia that imply union membership is compulsory.”
The equally tricksy Toll is happy to spy on its injured workers. A pointyhead from Adelaide University (Injured workers spied on by transport giant Toll, Clay Lucas, July 2, 2012) reckons s’all good but: Employment law expert Andrew Stewart, from Adelaide University, said this kind of surveillance was legal and ”not unknown – though it’s more commonly used to resist a workers compensation claim. There’s nothing unlawful about it, so long as the investigators don’t engage in trespass, secretly tape conversations [or] tap phones,” Professor Stewart said.
Phew.
As for the strike, Workers’ Solidarity Network has published a list of six ways you can help Toll workers win their dispute here. There’s a Facebook event page here too. One way you can help is by visiting the picket.
PUBLIC TRANSPORT
The nearest train station is Roxburgh Park, in zone two on the Craigieburn line. From the station walk back to Somerton Road, and over the railway bridge to the warehouse on the corner of Union Road and Somerton Road. The community assembly will be a short walk up Union Road. The walk from the station is 20 to 30 minutes.
CAR POOLING
If you need a lift out to the dispute, call WSN on 0431 445 978. Socialist Alternative will have cars leaving from Trades Hall daily. Call 0405 736 265.
The hashtag for disco on the strike on Twitter is #StrikeColes.
Of course, every cloud has a silver lining, and in this case it’s the golden handshake given to departing CEO Paul Little. Upon leaving his position in October last year:
TOLL Holdings’ departing chief executive, Paul Little, will receive $3 million in farewell payments and for work as an adviser to his successor, Brian Kruger.
The exit payments are on top of as much as $2.41 million he will pocket for his final six months as Toll’s boss.
After he missed out on long-term bonuses, Toll will make an ex-gratia payment to Mr Little of $1.255 million.
As well, he will receive $250,000 for not competing against Toll for a year.
Mr Little will also be paid $1.5 million for offering advice to his successor next year, and for representing Toll on the board of the Singapore government business.
Mr Little, who will step down as managing director on January 1, received a total package of $6.04 million – including a cash bonus of $2.3 million – for the year to June 30.
232. The evidence summarized in this book reveals three stunning, shameful and incontrovertible facts about the governance of the Catholic Church since Joseph Ratzinger became an archbishop (1979), the head of the CDF [Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith] (1981) and Pope (2005):
a. Tens of thousands, perhaps even a hundred thousand children and teenagers, mainly boys, have been sexually abused by the clergy, and most have been caused serious and long-term psychological damage.
b. Thousands of clergy, known to be guilty of very grave crimes of a kind which most perpetrators have a propensity to commit again, have not been defrocked. They have been harboured by the church, moved to other parishes or countries and protected from identification and from temporal punishment — usually a prison sentence — under Canon Law protocols that offer them forgiveness in this world as well as the next.
c. The Holy See, a pseudo-state, has established a foreign law jurisdiction in other friendly states pursuant to which, in utter secrecy, it has dealt with sex abusers in a manner incompatible with, and in some respects contrary to, the law of the nation in which it operates, and has withheld the evidence of their guilt from law enforcement authorities.
233. These three facts are incontestable — and inexcusable. There have, of course, been efforts by the church to excuse them, but they are either irrelevant or irrational. Originally, in November 2002, Cardinal Ratzinger was asserting that the crisis was no more than a ‘manipulated and planned campaign by the media: less than one per cent of priests are guilty of acts of this type’. This is demonstrably false: 4.3 per cent was the understated John Jay College figure and others put it as high as 6-9 per cent and warn that it might be higher if clergy misbehaviour in the developing world is ever subject to the kind of investigation that has been undertaken in Ireland and in America. The Pope and his Secretary of State, Bertone, then attributed the phenomenon to homosexual infiltration of the priesthood and to ‘gay culture’ — implying that gays are potential paedophiles — but the link has long been exploded by the John Jay study and the Vatican’s own 2003 Commission.
234. Many good Catholics, led by the eminent theologian Hans Kung, consider that the blame lies not only with the fallibility of the Pope and the secrecy and incompetence of the Vatican and the irresolution of its bishops, but with the rule that requires priests to remain celibate — a rule of no biblical origin (Christ’s disciples appear to have been married), but a dogma introduced in the eleventh-century and almost abolished by the sixteenth-century reformers. A strong case can be made, on compassionate and on theological grounds as well, for permitting Catholic priests to marry, which would encourage more recruits to join the clergy and would alleviate the problem of some ‘problem priests’. But marriage does not ‘cure’ paedophilia. Many offending priests are not paedophiles: their disordered personality is often ascribed to loneliness in their private lives or to the drugs and alcohol they take to oblivianize it. There is no overwhelming obstacle to their departing from the priesthood if they seek conjugal sex, and for this reason some do depart, while others lead a double life. The priests who molest children are frequently those who are the most punctilious in religious observances and in good works. The suspicion must be that for many, the combination of spiritual power, genuine affection and sexual craving led to acts which were committed because — and only because — there was no deterrent in the form of any likely prospect of arrest and punishment.
235. These men believed, with good reason, that they would get away with it, because priests usually did. They believed — with bad reason although it must have seemed the case — that they had exemption from local law because where sex abuse was concerned they had the grace of the bishop and the protection of a Canon Law which would rarely convict them, never punish them and only occasionally defrock them. They were led to believe that they had a dual form of nationality: they were subject to local law if they killed or robbed or parked illegally, and subject to church law if they sinned, whether by giving the sacrament to Baptists or Presbyterians, or by raping small children. They believed that the Holy See was a sovereign state with exclusive sovereignty over them in respect of child sex abuse, and the spiritual power to seal the lips of their victims. And every erring priest who underwent prayer and penance was promised forgiveness in this world and redemption in the next. Jesus may have said that those who make children suffer are to be drowned in the depths of the sea, but Pope Benedict XVI told his paedophile priests in Ireland that penitence offered them a life after death-jacket.
236. The Vatican’s pretension to statehood cannot be separated from its child abuse crisis, because the crisis has exposed the fact that the church has operated a parallel, para-statal jurisdiction, forgiving sins that host states punish as crimes. Vatican critics have long harped upon how priests manned the ‘ratline’ that permitted some of the worst Nazis to make their escape to South America, but the real ‘ratline’ that it has been offering is an escape route to child sex abusers — not so much a ‘get out of gaol free’ card as a freedom never to be at risk of gaol. Through a mixture of arrogance, negligence, and recklessness borne of belief in its state immunity and its overweening desire to be a political actor on the world stage, the Pope and his army of cardinals, nuncios, archbishops and officials have run a church in which children have been suffering widespread and systematic abuse…
245. What will be required of the Vatican, as a signal of a new commitment to put children first, is the complete abandonment of Benedict’s claim that the Holy See has the right to deal with suspected felons under an obscure, inefficient and secret ecclesiastical process. But Canon Law provides a form of power, and perhaps Benedict’s fatal flaw is his attraction to power — to the pomp and circumstance of statehood, to the queues of world leaders who come to bend at his knee and kiss his fisherman’s ring, and to the satisfaction of having delegates promote his ideology with six seats at UN conference tables. Journalists often tell how this kindly old man offers to share his food with them, but an analysis of his behaviour suggests a man in thrall to power and unable to give any of it up — even for the sake of innocent children. When it ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Holy See quoted the words of John Paul II, to the effect that children ‘are that precious treasure given to each generation as a challenge to its wisdom and humanity’. John Paul II himself, as we now know, failed that challenge by cosseting notorious child molesters and turning a blind eye to the mounting toll of child victims. So did his closest lieutenant, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. On the question of whether Benedict XVI is capable of the wisdom and humanity to protect the children of his church, the jury is out.
• I didn’t realise this ’til now but Anna Funder‘s debut novel All That I Am is ‘anti-Nazi’. See : Anti-Nazi novel scoops Book of the Year, Antonette Collins (ABC, May 21, 2012). Ernst Toller gets a guernsey in the book; you can read more about his erstwhile comrade Erich Mühsam here.
• Local nazis are organising a gig in Melbourne on September 8.
• Sadly, German-speaking lovers of nazi muzak can no longer avail themselves of thiazi.net. In mid-June, German police raided 24 houses and arrested several people alleged to be responsible for administering the site. Supposedly, one of those involved in maintaining the site is a member of the Chaos Computer Club — but that’s another story.
• “Blut muss fließen” – Undercover unter Nazis/”Blood must flow” – Undercover among Nazis, a new German documentary film exposing the underground world of reich ‘n’ roll, premieried at the Berlin Film Festival in February. The Toronto Star has some more recent (July 7, 2012) blah on the film here.
• Last week, Swiss bonehead Sebastien Nussbaumer was extradited from Hamburg (where he was arrested in May) to Switzerland, where he faces charges of having shot someone in Zurich.
• Meanwhile, back in the Fatherland, an article in DW (July 4, 2012) shows social workers to the rescue; according to Der Spiegel (July 9, 2012) some nazis have apparently been stopped from setting up a neu group; in response to tricksy nazis booking hotels under false pretences, the state of Brandenburg has issued a pamphlet designed to help hapless hoteliers spot Hitler-loving swastika-lickers before they pack their bags (State Teaches Hoteliers How to Identify Neo-Nazis, Jochen-Martin Gutsch, July 3, 2012).
• Imprisoned US nazi Bill White continues to have extreme adventures. In a letter dated June 17 he writes:
What I have discovered is that these nightmare images were really projections into my mind of the dreamscape of a demonic being. As I outline in my Centuries of Revolution, America has been created by cults dedicated to a demonic beast with three aspects. In Centuries, I don’t really address the theme of this being’s binding or sleeping in the earth, but I have discussed this elsewhere. Both America and the New World Order it has attempted are the product of this beast imposing its will upon reality – its dreaming. Its methodology is degradation – abuse of the outer forms so as to create inner transformation. My dreams are, or were, its thwarted desires. I had what it had desired – but it was clear that if I remained within its dream that I was doomed.
You see, Vishnu sits on the right hand of Brahma and Shiva on his left. Vishnu danced dharma into being, but in the Kali Yuga, dharma and karma are inactive. The substance of the world is maja and its changes are the dance. Kali and Shiva dance death – Time – into the world – Shiva’s serene dream shaping Kali’s moving form. Within this whirling maja are the demons, each of which shape their particular realm. Beneath the United States, a serpent lies dreaming. Its children – the Jews and reptiles and their cult – do its work. But the whole is but a figment of the monster’s imagination.
They appear to have turned from fascist, anti-immigration hate-mongers into laid-back liberals celebrating the joys of ethnic diversity and spreading a message of peace and love.
After escaping the all-controlling clutches of their mother, April, and battling serious health problems, Lynx and Lamb, now 20, say they have swapped their Hitler youth for a happy hippy lifestyle.
And, like so many other pop star transformations, the Gaede twins appear to have been helped along their journey of “enlightenment” by smoking a lot of marijuana.
“My sister and I are pretty liberal now,” Lamb revealed in a recent US TV interview.
“Yeah,” chipped in Lynx, languidly flicking her long blonde hair.
• “A Riverside judge set an October trial date Thursday for a 12-year-old boy who has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to murdering his Neo-Nazi father”, Jeff Hall of the National Socialist Movement. Jeff was shot dead on May Day, 2011.
“Coalition’s Speaker’s Notes”, July 1, 2012 (PDF, p.4):
3. We have introduced a four point plan to boost workforce participation that will significantly increase the numbers of workers and dramatically increase the strength of the Australian economy:
• mandatory work for the dole for all long term unemployment beneficiaries under 50 would improve their work culture and also send a strong signal that people who can work should work: preferably for a wage but, if not, for the dole;
• extending welfare quarantining from the Northern Territory to all long term unemployment beneficiaries would put more food on families’ tables and send a strong signal that welfare money should be kept for the necessities of life;
• suspending dole payments for people under 30 in areas where unskilled work is readily available would boost the size of the local labour force and send a strong signal to young people that job snobs won’t be supported by the taxpayer; and
• a more sophisticated approach to the disability pension that distinguishes between disabilities that are likely to be permanent and those that are not would help to prevent older unemployed people being parked on welfare.
Plan B:
Terry Eagleton, Reason, Faith, and Revolution (Yale, 2009, pp. 10–11):
God, in short, is every bit as gloriously pointless as Ditchkins tells us he is. He is a kind of perpetual critique of instrumental reason. John C. Lennox writes in God’s Undertaker that some scientists and philosophers think we should not ask after the reason for the universe because, according to them, there isn’t one. In this, however, they are unwittingly at one with theologians. If we are God’s creatures, it is in the first place because, like him, we exist (or should exist) purely for the pleasure of it. The question raised by radical Romanticism, which for these purposes includes Karl Marx, is that of what political transformations would be necessary for this to become possible in practice. Jesus, unlike most responsible [Australian] citizens, appears to do no work, and is accused of being a glutton and a drunkard. He is presented as homeless, propertyless, celibate, peripatetic, socially marginal, disdainful of kinsfolk, without a trade, a friend of outcasts and pariahs, careless about purity regulations, critical of traditional authority, a thorn in the side of the Establishment, and a scourge of the rich and powerful. Though he was no revolutionary in the modern sense of the term, he has something of the lifestyle of one. He sounds like a cross between a hippie and a guerilla fighter. He respects the Sabbath not because it means going to church but because it represents a temporary escape from the burden of labor. The Sabbath is about resting, not religion. One of the best reasons for being a Christian, as for being a socialist, is that you don’t like having to work, and reject the fearful idolatry of it so rife in countries like [Australia]. Truly civilized societies do not hold predawn power breakfasts.
The candidates for the July 21 by-election for the lower house seat of Melbourne (in order of ballot preference) are:
1. Berhan Ahmed (independent); 2. Ashley Fenn (Family First); 3. Gerrit Schorel-Hlavka (MAY JUSTICE ALWAYS PREVAIL); 4. David Nolte (self-described, centre-right, small ‘l’ liberal independent); 5. John Perkins (Secular Party of Australia); 6. Jennifer Kanis (Australian Labor Party); 7. David Collyer (Democrats); 8. Patrick O’Connor (Socialist Equality Party); 9. Michael Murphy (Democratic Labor Party); 10. Joseph Toscano (Anarchist Media Institute et al); 11. Stephen Mayne (independent); 12. Kate Borland (independent); 13. Adrian Whitehead (independent); 14. Fiona Patten (Sex Party); 15. Cathy Oke (Australian Greens); and 16. Maria Bengtsson (Australian Christians).
Of the independents, Ahmed is a (former) Greens member; Schorel-Hlavka is a man willing to think outside of the box; Stephen Maybe is a well-known Man About Town; Kate Borland is standing in order to draw attention to the parlous state of public housing (NB. Labor candidate and law-talking girl Jennifer Kanis sits on the Board of Housing Choices Australia); while Adrian Whitehead is a former Greens candidate (for the Federal seats of Chisholm in 1996 and Corangamite in 1998) and Maria Bengtsson is a Pastor at City West Church.
Christians and Communists, Sexyists and Secularists.
For the record, pundits agree that the winning candidate is almost certainly going to be either Green or Red.* That said… Uncle Joe and Fiona ‘Sex’ Patten last went head-to-head in the Higgins by-election in 2009. On that occasion, Fiona came out on top, with 2,144 votes (3.21%) while Joe managed 523 (0.78%). Also having a crack at the seat of Higgins in ’09 was David Collyer. He managed to squeeze in-between Joe and Fiona with 1,531 votes (1.29%). In the Victorian state election of 2010 in the Northern Metropolitan Region (Upper House), Patten also managed to come ahead of independent Stephen Mayne, snatching 14,163 votes (3.59%) ahead of Mayne’s 3,809 (0.97%), while Adrian Whitehead had to content himself with a mere 348 (0.09%).
Who’ll come first this time, I wonder?
We don’t need a landlord
For the houses are ours
We don’t need a factory owner
The factories are ours
Out of the way, capitalist
The last battle we will win
Throw away your gun police
The red front and black front are here
We do not need a strong man
For we ourselves are strong enough
We ourselves know what to do
Our head is large enough
Our fight means peace
And we are fighting your war
Each battle that we lose
Means our next victory
* NB. Hosni Mubarak’s National Democratic Party (NDP) in Egypt was a member of the Socialist (Second) International (SI) — alongside the New Zealand Labour Party, the Australian Labor Party and the British Labour Party — from 1989 until its expulsion in January 2011 [PDF], after the mass demonstrations emerged that brought down Mubarak (but not the NDP).
Matt Weston is looking for funding for a documentary film about Melbourne band the Cosmic Psychos. He needs to raise $28,000 by the end of August. Do yourselves a favour and pledge your support on pozible.
Two Greek anarchists are making molotov cocktails. One says to the other: "So who will we throw these at then?" The other replies: "What are you, some kind of fucking intellectual?"
