WHAT: A political fuckwalk WHEN: Friday, June 25th 2pm-3pm WHERE: Flinders St Steps -> Bourke St Mall WHY:
The Victorian Government began a three-year trial, from July 1, 2008, in which police were empowered to issue on-the-spot fines to people aged over 18 for a number of common offences, including indecent language. As a result:
Nearly 800 people were slapped with fines between 2009 and 2010 for using language deemed indecent by police under trial powers about to be made permanent by the Baillieu Government.
Between the 2009 to 2010 financial year just under 4,700 people were fined for offensive behaviour and 793 for indecent language, according to figures released by the Attorney General’s office.
The Baillieu Government will this week enshrine in parliament, on-the-spot fines of about $230 for language deemed to be offensive, indecent and/or threatening.
Attorney General Robert Clark said immediate fines meant the matters could bypass courts and, in turn, free up police time.
Hold your flow. I said, “Tomorrow John” and he said, “I know where your sympathies lie”, and I said, “I couldn’t give a fuck. I have no sympathies any more. You’re all a pack of shits and tomorrow I’m going berserk”. Well he went off his brain and in the end I said to him, I said, “Howard. You’re a cunt. You haven’t got my support, you never will have and I’m not going to rubbish you or the party tomorrow but I feel a lot better having told you you’re a cunt.”
Update (June 30) : The gig has been cancelled. A statement on the withdrawal is below.
Update : Appeal to Jello Biafra: Do not cross our picket line, June 12, 2011: “The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) sent an appeal to Jello Biafra on 7 June 2011, but its receipt was never acknowledged. In light of the public conversation around Biafra’s performance in Tel Aviv, PACBI has decided to publicize its appeal to him to cancel his ill-conceived show.”
Jello Biafra (and the Guantanamo School of Medicine) has decided not to join the BDS campaign and is playing a gig in Tel Aviv on July 2. In response to criticism, he wrote the following letter to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign explaining why the band has decided to play and posted it on the band’s FaceBook page (where it has generated a good deal of debate).
Thank you for your letter. Believe me, the decision to play in Tel Aviv was not taken lightly by me or the band. We have been through weeks of intense ongoing debate and discussions, soul searching and research. We have met with two peace activists, one of whom is Palestinian and lives in Ramallah. Our thoughts at present are these:
1. The more we know about the many sides to this horrible conflict, the more we realize we don’t know.
2. It certainly appears that both the Israeli Left and the Palestinian Left are divided right down the middle as to whether this kind of a boycott is a good idea at all. It is nowhere near as solid or as unified as the boycott against apartheid South Africa.
Setting foot in Israel does not automatically make us supporters of the Netanyahu regime or the policies we all oppose. Quite the opposite, in fact.
3. I agree with [p]eace activists who have said how important it is for someone like me to actually go there and see for myself what is really going on. Then, back home in America, I will be able to speak more knowledgeably from eyewitness experience, at a time when most Americans only get their information from dumbed down, censored corporate McNews.
It was never our intention to play the gig, hang out at the beach, and go home. After the gig I am staying around for several days. Am I going to Palestine too? Absolutely.
We know this issue is so multifaceted and volatile that no matter what I or the band do, someone is going to be upset. Sort of the story of my life, in a way. I hope that by making this trip we can in some small way help bring down that goddamn wall.
For peace and justice,
Jello Biafra.
You may remember the BDS campaign from such moments as the December 2010 decision by Marrickville Council to endorse it and then in April of this year to rescind its decision (on the basis that it ‘cost too much’ to implement).
A few points:
1. Like other conflicts–and campaigns intended in some way to address them–Jello is right to note that the issue is complex.
2. I don’t know if “the Israeli Left and the Palestinian Left are divided right down the middle” on the campaign, but: a list of those who’ve endorsed the campaign is available via the BDS site; assuming a position on the campaign on this basis is problematic; certainly, leading figures in the anti-apartheid movement endorse the campaign.
3. The BDS campaign–especially its ‘Cultural’ component–does not, on my reading, call on artists, musicians and intellectuals not to visit Israel, but rather not to perform there. If correct, Jello remains at liberty to set foot in the country, and to investigate its conditions.
Otherwise, British blogger Bob from Brockley, as well as being a big fan of Uncle Noam, has boatloads of debate on Israel/Palestine, and reckons that “The boycott, divestment, sanctions idea has zero chance of contributing positively to peace or justice in Palestine; its only role is to give liberals an outlet for their moral ejaculations and to engrave in indelible letters the idea that Israel is the last word in evil”.
See also : Anarchists Against the Wall | ‘Israeli anarchism: Statist dilemmas and the dynamics of joint struggle’, Uri Gordon, Anarchist Studies, Vol.15, No.1 (February 2003) [PDF].
Steve Ignorant speaks about all things Crass, Conflict, his new-found love of the Collingwood Football Club and his new autobiography, The Rest is Propaganda, before taking to the stage at the Tote the following evening. Supported by A Commoner’s Revolt and Ducks in the Mud.
In Canada, two members of the Western European Brotherhood (aka the White European Brotherhood/White European Bloodline or WEB), Robert David Reitmeier and Tyler William Sturrup, have been arrested and charged with the murder in October 2010 of Mark Mariani. Anti-Racist Canada blog has heaps more on the Canuckistanian nutzis.
The WEB split from the ‘Aryan Guard’ several years ago; both groups have participated in various ‘White Pride World Wide Day’ activities, an annual event with origins in the Australian neo-Nazi milieu and also celebrated by nutzis in New Zealand organised under Kyle Chapman‘s various banners.
In Russia, another neo-Nazi activist, Darya Tikhanova, has been arrested and charged with taking part in the murder of a Dagestani man in Moscow in June 2007. Also in Moscow, Peter Tatchell writes on the repression of the 2011 Gay Pride march: “Either the police were actively facilitating the right-wing extremists with transport to the protest or many of the neo-Nazis were actually plainclothes police officers. They did to us what their uniformed colleagues dared not do in front of the world’s media: give many of us a good beating.”
In the UK, occult publisher ‘Scarlet Imprint’ has issued a statement on ‘Occultists and Fascists’ (June 10, 2011), distancing them from fascist bizarro and ‘national anarchist’ Troy Southgate.
We were approached recently to contribute to Troy Southgate’s Black Front Press whose last published work was a Crowley anthology.
After a little research, we were disturbed to find their rather murky history hidden beneath the anti-corporate, anti-capitalist and permaculture ideals.
Though we are very happy to promote the independent esoteric and occult authors and publishers whose work and dedication invigorate and stimulate our community, it is entirely another matter to contribute our energy to a project which would seem to be attempting to use a multiplicity of voices from the occult scene to promote the ideas of the so-called New-Right.
See also : The Big Neo-Nazi Crib, antifa.cz, March 1, 2011: Have you noticed the shift in image of some neo-Nazis – a shift from the skinhead-look to an anarchist/antifascist image? Whether or not you’ve noticed, you can learn more about this recent strategy of certain factions of the neo-Nazi movement from the following analysis.
Also in the UK, Andrew Brons is challenging Nick Gri££in to become leader of the British National Party as the BNP gets ready to rumble (Nick Lowles, June 11, 2011).
Earlier this year, the anti-Muslim group the ‘Australian Defence League’ (ADL) splintered in two. The new ADL is organising an anti-Muslim rally in Sydney on Saturday, July 30.
In summary, the attempt to import the EDL into Australia–and to mobilise Australians in opposition to Islam under its umbrella–failed; the ADL’s street presence apparently existing in inverse proportion to the volume of hot air its supporters generated on sites like Facebook.
Yaxley-Lennon & Martin Brennan
At the beginning of 2011, however, former BNP member, convicted criminal, tanning salon owner and leader of the ‘English Defence League’, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, appointed fellow Englishman Martin Brennan to lead a reinvigorated ADL. It was this 2011 version of the ADL that organised a small rally at Federation Square in Melbourne last month, and is organising an anti-Muslim rally to take place in Sydney on July 30.
In an interview with Martin King on Melbourne radio station MTR following the rally Brennan, inter alia, identified the Sydney Islamist group ‘Shariah4Australia’ as a target, claimed that 70% of Australian meat is halal, that sales of this meat funds terrorism, complained about Clayton pool being made available for use by Muslim women, stated that the keffiyeh is a symbol of Hamas and that England is now an ‘Islamist hellhole’ (which presumably explains his migration Down Under). Also, that the ADL is not racist. (Note that Brennan’s ADL has also won the approval of the leader of the EDL’s ‘Jewish Division’, Roberta Moore.)
…and the Australian Protectionist Party
While their foreign leader has proven slightly more adept at generating support among the convicts than the (other) “Official”, “2009” ADL, it still putters along. Last month, the group/network organised meetings in Brisbane and Sydney. In Sydney, just eight people attended the meeting, most of them members of the White nationalist ‘Australian Protectionist Party’ (APP).
The APP, established as a 2007 splinter from the ‘Australia First Party’ (to be confused with The Mad Katter’s latest party-political incarnation; Katter being “the greatest federal minister for Aboriginal affairs Australia never had” according to Noel Pearson) has won some small degree of support online, but failed to attract more than a tiny handful of supporters to its numerous public protests. Joining in support of the ADL will therefore help to boost its public profile (and perhaps even vice versa).
In general, marginal groups such as the ADL and the APP serve to reinforce but are also in competition with the more mainstream anti-Muslim sentiment expressed by Tory politicians such as Cory Bernardi and members of the Christian right. Revulsion at the Muslim presence in Australia is also often combined with skepticism at anthropogenic global warming.
Finally, in ‘Where Have All The Progressive Atheists Gone?’ (New Matilda, June 8, 2011), Jeff Sparrow argues that It’s getting hard to tell a New Atheist from a neo-fascist; Adam Brereton replies in ‘Atheists Who Scramble The God Egg’ (New Matilda, June 9, 2011), noting that The neo-conservative politics of individual atheists aren’t necessarily the product of their non-belief.
I’m going to be taking a break from blogging over the next few weeks (Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn, the Annunaki are angry and ZOG has demanded I attend some important meetings in Tel Aviv), so this will be one of my last posts for a while. When I get back I may (or may not) publish an interview with Propagandhi (or maybe some other band).
While AF’s ruling triumvirate provide a potted history of groups on the far right and their inter-relationships (mainly focused on Sydney), they make one especially interesting reference to a group in Melbourne they call ‘Men in Black’, and a campaigning group called ‘Defend and Extend Medicare Group’, established in mid-2003 and terminating at the time of the 2004 Federal election. Tony Abbott, Australia’s next Prime Minister, denounced the Group as comprised of anarchists and communists and such, his denunciation being a feature of several articles published in the Murdoch press at the time (Radicals ‘seize health debate to panic public’ / Government accuses DEMG of having anarchist agenda, Charles Miranda and Keith Moor, The Daily Telegraph / Herald Sun, December 5, 2003; PM accuses Labor MP of anarchy link, Keith Moor, Herald Sun, December 6, 2003; Health activists on file, Keith Moor and Charles Miranda, Herald Sun, December 6, 2003; Activists reject ‘extreme’ tag, Keith Moor and Charles Miranda, Herald Sun, December 8, 2003). My vote for best line in the reportage goes to Keith Moor (PM accuses Labor MP of anarchy link): “Acting Prime Minister John Anderson yesterday accused Labor frontbencher Martin Ferguson of supporting a bizarre activist group controlled by an anarchist.”
Asked in Federal Parliament a series of questions regarding the DEMG, in early 2004 The Mad Monk (then Minister for Health and Ageing) denied the existence of any investigation. A subsequent article in The Age (Inquiry on health group dossiers, Paul Robinson, December 13, 2003) states that “The Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security will be asked to investigate whether the Federal Government used police and intelligence agencies to discredit a campaign to defend Medicare”.
The Inspector-General made the obvious conclusion.
ASIO will be able to engage in industrial and economic espionage as well as spying on groups such as WikiLeaks on behalf of Australia’s two foreign spy outfits, under one of the most significant widening of its powers in a decade…
PRIME Minister Julia Gillard’s department has revealed that WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, were the subject of Australian intelligence reporting last year as the government anticipated the whistleblower website would spill ”highly sensitive and politically embarrassing” secrets…
THE killing of Osama bin Laden was a symbolic victory but will not diminish the terrorist threat to Australia, even as the dangers posed by cyber espionage and cyber theft continue to grow, the head of Australia’s most powerful spy agency says…
…What are the likely consequences of the killing of bin Laden? For the Arab world, it will probably mean little. He had long been a fading presence, and in the past few months was eclipsed by the Arab Spring. His significance in the Arab world is captured by the headline in the New York Times for an op-ed by Middle East/al Qaeda specialist Gilles Kepel; “Bin Laden was Dead Already.” Kepel writes that few in the Arab world are likely to care. That headline might have been dated far earlier, had the US not mobilized the Jihadi movement by the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq, as suggested by the intelligence agencies and scholarship. As for the Jihadi movement, within it bin Laden was doubtless a venerated symbol, but apparently did not play much more of a role for this “network of networks,” as analysts call it, which undertake mostly independent operations.
The most immediate and significant consequences are likely to be in Pakistan. There is much discussion of Washington’s anger that Pakistan didn’t turn over bin Laden. Less is said about the fury in Pakistan that the US invaded their territory to carry out a political assassination. Anti-American fervor had already reached a very high peak in Pakistan, and these events are likely to exacerbate it.
Pakistan is the most dangerous country on earth, also the world’s fastest growing nuclear power, with a huge arsenal. It is held together by one stable institution, the military. One of the leading specialists on Pakistan and its military, Anatol Lieven, writes that “if the US ever put Pakistani soldiers in a position where they felt that honour and patriotism required them to fight America, many would be very glad to do so.” And if Pakistan collapsed, an “absolutely inevitable result would be the flow of large numbers of highly trained ex-soldiers, including explosive experts and engineers, to extremist groups.” That is the primary threat he sees of leakage of fissile materials to Jihadi hands, a horrendous eventuality.
The Pakistani military have already been pushed to the edge by US attacks on Pakistani sovereignty. One factor is the drone attacks in Pakistan that Obama escalated immediately after the killing of bin Laden, rubbing salt in the wounds. But there is much more, including the demand that the Pakistani military cooperate in the US war against the Afghan Taliban, whom the overwhelming majority of Pakistanis, the military included, see as fighting a just war of resistance against an invading army, according to Lieven.
The bin Laden operation could have been the spark that set off a conflagration, with dire consequences, particularly if the invading force had been compelled to fight its way out, as was anticipated. Perhaps the assassination was perceived as an “act of vengeance,” as Robertson concludes. Whatever the motive was, it could hardly have been security. As in the case of the “supreme international crime” in Iraq, the bin Laden assassination illustrates that security is often not a high priority for state action, contrary to received doctrine…
slut • noun a slovenly or promiscuous woman.
– DERIVATIVES sluttishadjective.
– ORIGIN of unknown origin.
Yeah so there’s a ‘SlutWalk’ in Melbourne next weekend (1pm, Saturday May 28), inspired by an event in Toronto earlier in the year, organised in response to a Canuckistanian cop’s comment that “women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized” (see : ‘Sluts’ take to the streets, Michelle Griffin, The Age, May 10, 2011).
The SlutWalk takes place at the same time as the Feminist Futures conference (May 28/29), ‘Melbourne’s Largest Feminist Conference In Over A Decade’.
Anyway, the SlutWalk has obviously provoked a fair massive amount of debate–which I guess is a good thing. Paula Matthewson reckons it’s not a Good thing; Gail Dines also thinks it’s unhelpful. A coupla days ago, there was some disco on ABC radio on the subject, featuring co-organiser Clem Bastow. Clem has a few moar thoughts on the subject here too.
While Slutwalk may like to present itself as a movement, I would argue that it isn’t. Rather, it is simply one part of a broader movement to end violence against women. Similarly, my reflection is just that — one person’s rant in a wider spectrum of opinion. It does not (pejoratively) imply that I am a “sister who fell for Slutwalk,” nor does it imply my uncritical endorsement. As Berthold Brecht said: “In the contradiction lies the hope.” Whether or not Slutwalk is around, there are hundreds of thousands of us who continue to live and organize every day to eliminate heteropatriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism and colonialism.
punk • noun 1 (also punk rock) a loud, fast form of rock music characterized by aggressive and anarchic lyrics and behaviour. 2 (also punk rocker) an admirer or player of punk music. 3 informal, chiefly N. Amer.: a worthless person; a thug or criminal…
– DERIVATIVES punkish adjective punky adjective.
– ORIGINS perhaps, in some senses, related to archaic punk ‘prostitute’, also to SPUNK.
Anarchism and Poststructuralism
by Paul Nursey-Bray
Discipline of Politics
University of Adelaide
Conventional anarchism relies too heavily upon categories that are politically and epistemologically suspect. These include scientific discourse, humanism and rationalist semiotics. As long as anarchists continue to employ this suspect thinking it is extremely unlikely that they will be able to develop a revolutionary theory or praxis that will provide meaningful challenges either to capitalism or the state apparatus that sanctions that economic system.
~ Lewis Call [1]
There have been a number of attempts in recent year to achieve a meld of anarchism and poststructuralism. These attempts have been based on perceived similarities between the two bodies of theory, particularly with respect to the iconoclastic approach of anarchism to the state, authority and accepted norms, and its proposal, as an alternative to centralised power, of diffused networks of local empowerment. Such attempts have received added impetus from a desire to render anarchism more relevant to the current age. The traditional anarchism of nineteenth century origin is held to be an anachronism in the contemporary world, a hoary, theoretical remnant from the days when dreams of reason, revolution and progress could still be entertained and applauded. As Lewis Call comments;
It is becoming increasingly evident that anarchist politics cannot afford to remain within the modern world. The politics of Proudhon, Bakunin and Kropotkin — vibrant and meaningful, perhaps, to their nineteenth century audiences — have become dangerously inaccessible to late twentieth century readers. [2]
Thus, the argument runs, in a postmodern society, where ‘metanarratives’ such as anarchism are, as Jean-François Lyotard insisted, to be regarded with ‘incredulity’, [3] anarchism has no purpose or immediacy unless it can be reworked to make it appropriate to the age. The tools for this job are to be found it seems, somewhat paradoxically, in the very theories, of poststructuralism and postmodernism, that its critics have claimed reveal its deficiencies and irrelevance.
The shape of the argument is very similar to that pursued by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe in their Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Position, [4] where they argue for a reworking of Marxism in the light of poststructuralism. The post-Marxist debate that this engendered was fast and furious. The parallel attempt at reformulation in anarchist theory has occurred later, and has occasioned nothing like the clamour. But it is worth noting in this context that the term ‘post-anarchism’ has been used. [5]
The present paper will survey a number of approaches taken to anarchism from a poststructuralist standpoint, and develop a critique of the various arguments presented. While there will not be as vehement a reaction to post-anarchism as that of Norman Geras [6] or Ellen Meiksins Wood [7] to post-Marxism, nevertheless it will be contended that, just as Geras and Meiksins Wood argued that a poststructuralist Marxism was simply not Marxism, so a poststructuralist anarchism has lost those essential characteristics that go to make up a distinctly anarchist view of the individual and society. Indeed, it ends not so much as a political theory as an extension of the poststructuralist critique. At the same time the historical or traditional form of anarchism will not be defended without reservation. The call for contemporary relevance has some force, and poststructuralist scepticism towards the legacy of the Enlightenment can be instructive in the framing of approaches that may address the issue.
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?"
