Bloody Michael is insisting that I take note of the fact that his (quote) “Favourite Band in the Whole World” (unquote) is playing @ The Corner tonight and tomorrow night. Apparently, Attack Attack! is bringing crabs to Australia for the benefit of its yoof.
Or something.
I dunno: Michael’s enthusiasm for crabcore makes me feel old. In any case, I’m prolly gonna sell him my copy of Take Action! Volume 1.
Stephanie Rice’s comments were offensive but she’s not homophobic, says Matthew Mitcham
Paul Tatnell
The Age
September 8, 2010
Mitcham wrote that the furore surrounding Rice’s comments is “a wake up call” to parts of society “that they can easily offend without meaning to, eg. that’s so gay”.
“She’s not a homophobe. She luvs gays but used very ill-chosen language,” he wrote.
See also : DAVENPORT UNDERWEAR COMMERICIAL- CUT & PASTE-30 second.
The right room for an argument this Thursday may be found @ The Dan O’Connell, 225 Canning Street (cnr Princes St) in Carlton. ‘The Monthly Argument’ is part of a regular series of debates concerning some Very Important Questions. September’s debate is titled ‘Renewable Energy: Should We Make the Switch?’, and is the second that’s been organised thus far. Prof. John Daley (Grattan Institute) says ‘Yes’ to renewable energy, while Dr. Alan Moran (Institute of Public Affairs) says ‘No’.
Moar infos here.
A comrade has written the following and at their request I’m publishing it here to facilitate further disco. Write dr.woooo[at]gmail[dot]com for moar.
The ‘Autonomous Web of Liberation’ (AWOL) was a Melbourne based ‘networking hub’ that brought people together to share skills, network and exchange ideas in preparation for protests against the World Economic Forum in September 2000. This experience does not have the recognition it deserves, not only in terms of the blockade, but also the later networks that sprang from people having come together at this time, and the wider effects this experience had on their subsequent political practice.
For a long time I’ve been thinking about relaying my experience. I’ve hesitated because I’ve not felt that one person’s perspective can do justice to this subject. Many of us were involved in this experience: at times, up to 100 participated in the meeting/doing/happening that was ‘AWOL’. I’m hopeful that others will seek to collaborate on a larger piece, comment on this one publicly, or write their own story, in order to develop our history and our theory.
I have so many comrades that I still have some contact with who were involved in this project, but also those that span off from it at later times. It is rare I think in political movements over time to have such a sense of shared experience. I still feel that many of you out there got my back, that I can rely on many of you, that I share levels of affinity with many of you that I could not have anticipated at the time. That said, there is a fair bit of hate still around from people who felt left out, or who didn’t have great affinity to begin with, or that grew apart as time went on. There are yet others that I have no idea where they are or what they are up to now, and some I should try to catch up with more. I hope that some of what is said in this ramble will get us asking question about relationships of affinity and questions of organisation, then and now.
There was a sense among us – well, I can only speak for myself really – that the organising method of the ‘S11 Alliance’ was really problematic: it was too slow, it tried to speak for everybody, and meetings didn’t achieve much but rather served as a space for the pursuit of various agendas belonging to various little political parties, fighting about the demands appropriate to a united front. This had very little relationship to my politics, or those of the Seattle events that it claimed to be building on. The authoritarian left really did not get it. Or maybe they did, but wanted to use the rhetoric of Seattle for other ends – mainly building the parties and personality profiles of select others.
Back in early 2000, a number of ‘direct action folk’ – anarchists, autonomists, forest blockaders and other ratbags – had started attending the organising meetings for the protests against the WEF. Many of us found the authoritarian politics of the Alliance impossible to work with, and called a meeting for an alternative networking space. This became S11 AWOL.
Precisely when S11 AWOL began is debatable, as a number of people with roughly the same ideas had meetings at around the same time, but at the first meeting I attended (held in a little tin shed) we wrote ‘Who We Are’, and with some further brainstorming came up with the name AWOL. (“I want the word autonomy to be in it.” “Er, um what about ‘network’?” “Can we use the word web instead?” asked one beloved, bearded forest blockader. Bingo! ‘Autonomous Web of Liberation’: AWOL.) I thought to myself, how funny, this is exactly what we’ve done: gone AWOL from the traditional left.
I was pretty happy with the name and statement of ‘Who We Are’: it focussed on practice and not names or political identities but rather how we organise and what we are against, rather than ‘we are anarchist’ or ‘we are autonomist’ or we are this or that group. In so doing, and with some hard work, it became a very efficient, practical space for getting stuff done for a broad section of largely anti-statist and anti-capitalist types that avoided shit fights between people with very different politics. It changed how I saw things in a big way, and I think for many people in it, the relationships that went onwards into other projects are something we should not forget.
Who We Are
S11 AWOL is non-hierarchical, decentralised and autonomous. It aims to facilitate actions, hold skill-sharing workshops, and empower peoples with information and knowledge, to enable us all to most effectively shut down the World Economic Forum and say NO to global corporatisation and capitalism…
S11 AWOL gives a big thumbs down to those with racist, sexist, ablist, homophobic or nationalistic agendas.
I’d been involved in some stuff when I lived in London – the G8 protests, the ‘carnival against capital’/J18 protests – and we had all been surprised by Seattle. It really felt like something big was kicking off and for several years it did. Then came the slow recuperation and decline of the movement, as well as many of its limitations being reached in the changing times of the ‘war on terror’, the shite politics of the anti-war movement, the rise and fall of the detention centre actions … WorkChoices, followed by global recession, the pseudo-left ‘pink tide’ in Latin America, and now bio-crisis, climate change and the rest.
I’ve had a number of years where I haven’t been involved in much, and I’ve had little new to say: I’ve felt ideologically and practically stuck. For some of the people I still have contact with from this time, I don’t think I’m the only one who feels this way. Maybe some joint reflection will spark some debate and action!
What I took from the experience of AWOL into later stuff, and what I saw carry forward or be altered in later stuff…
• May Day ‘Reclaim the Streets’ action (May 2001)
• Genoa solidarity action (July 2001)
• ‘Media Circus’ conference (July 2001)
• Tent City (October-November 2001)
• Woomera (March-April 2002)
• Baxter (April 2003)
• ‘State of Emergency’ conference (May 2004)
• Anarchist and autonomist conferences (2001-2005)
Questions Regarding AWOL And The Revolutionary Struggle, Intended To Be Discussed, Corrected, And Principally, Put Into Practice Without Delay…
• Hanging on to the AWOL ‘brand’ after S11. • Falling back into big ‘A’ politics: brand ‘Anarchist’ versus brand ‘Autonomist’. • Anti-media / radical media: questions of representation versus self-imposed silence, infodesks, media-spin games, multiple-name games… • Burnout and networked politics. • ‘What’s my new project?’ activism. • Yoof activism. • Giving up activism. • Where are we now? • What I reckon now / stuff I’d like to be doing now: workers’ enquiry, climate justice, how the experiences of AWOL shaped my current trajectory…
See also : REFLECTIONS ON JUNE 18: discussion papers on the politics of the global day of action in financial centres on June 18th 1999 | Review of ‘Reflections on J18’ – Undercurrent | Reflections and strategies 10 years on from J18 and Seattle 1999.
Robert Rodriguez’s new Mexploitation film Machete is apparently causing a whole lotta butthurt among White supremacists in the U$A. In response to its release, one group, known as BANANAs, declared its intention to protest the film’s opening, armed with flyers… and machetes.
*boom-tish*
The prospect of a Hollywood-inspired, White civil uprising was dampened somewhat when just five BANANAs, led by some guy called Andrew Steve Yeoman, managed to drag their aching bottoms along to a sinema in Livermore (Livermore protesters target ‘Machete’ film as ‘anti-white’, Janis Mara, Contra Costa Times, September 4, 2010). The fascist kook who led the quarrelsome quintet “said he has not seen the movie, but based on the trailers he has seen, he feels the film should not be shown in theaters”.
The film *s Danny Trejo as Machete, “a legendary ex-Federale with a deadly attitude and the skills to match”; Michelle Rodriguez as Luz aka Shé, “a taco-truck lady with a rebellious spirit and revolutionary heart”; Jessica Alba as Sartana, “a beautiful Immigrations Officer torn between enforcing the law and doing what is right”; and Lindsay Lohan as April Booth aka The Sister, “a socialite with a penchant for guns” and “a nun with a gun”.
What’s not to like?
Well, on May 8, 2010, crazy person Alex Jones predicted that the release of the schlock horror film would trigger race riots, and was part of an elaborate conspiracy to blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Machete hasn’t triggered any race riots, but the attention whores who assembled in Livermore should nevertheless be given props for bringing the lulz. (The BANANAs’ last attempt to capitalise upon anti-immigrant feeling in May ended in tears when Yeoman and a sidekick got broke.) Fingers xed, screenings of the film in Melbourne will entice former gnat Reverend Scott Harrison and his legion of followers to engage in similar Machete-inspired shenanigans.
Yeah. Stephen Jolly of the Socialist Party — one of only two Socialist councillors in the country — is gonna be contesting the seat of Richmond in the Victorian state election (November 27). The official campaign launch is on Saturday, October 2, upstairs @ the British Crown Hotel (14 Smith Street, Collingwood — opposite 3CR).
Stephen is standing in one of four seats in which Labor faces a serious challenge from the Greens. The seriousness of this threat was reinforced by Adam ‘I’ll give a voice to the movements’ Bandt’s recent victory in the Federal seat of Melbourne. Bandt’s decision to support the Federal ALP has meant the Victorian branch is Not. Happy. Joolya. (Greens pact stirs Labor anger, Royce Millar, The Age, September 3, 2010). Still:
While sitting candidates and ministers Richard Wynne (Richmond) and Bronwyn Pike (Melbourne) are known to be squeamish about a full-blown war, Fiona Richardson (Northcote) and Jane Garrett (Brunswick) are keen to fight and are attracting strong financial support to do so.
Wynne and Garrett are members of the ‘Socialist Left’ faction of the ALP, Bronwyn Pike is nominally non-aligned, while Fiona Richardson is ‘Labor Unity’ (‘Right’). Wynne will be confronting Kathleen Maltzahn, Pyke will battle Brian Walters, while Richardson will face off against Anne Martinelli and Garrett Cyndi Dawes. The ALP currently holds Melbourne by a margin of 2.0% (v GRN), Richmond by 3.6% (v GRN), Brunswick by 3.6% (v GRN) and Northcote by 8.5% (v GRN).
The fight for inner-city Melbourne is a tough one for Labor, as appeasing ‘progressives’ likely to support the Greens has to be balanced against the need to placate a broader constituency. As in the case of the federal election campaign, and the battle for Melbourne in particular, unions (one of the sources of the “strong financial support”) will be pouring large sums of money into the campaigns to re-elect Labor. Presumably, they’ll be expecting a much better return on their investment this time around.
See also : Federal deal means nothing to Victorian Greens, Labor, Farrah Tomazin, The Age, September 2, 2010 | Victoria: the left-leaning state? (August 14, 2010) | In Studio: Mark Aarons on the hollow men of the NSW Right, SlowTV, July 2010 | What happened to the Left? (February 27, 2010) | Melbourne : ALP ~versus~ Greens (August 24, 2009) | Bump Me Into Parliament (July 2, 2009).
An attempt on life of anarchist anti-fascist in Moscow
avtonom.org via libcom.org
September 3, 2010
A 25-year old Vladimir Skopincev is registered in Troick, one of the numerous towns of Moscow region. He is an anarchist and known as the member of groups “PolitZek” and “Change the world without taking power”. Both groups have several thousands of fans. His photos and registration address were frequently posted on fascist web-pages, along with demands of execution.
Vladimir’s father and younger brother – 21-year old Andrew – were present at home in the evening hours of September the 2nd, when an attempt on Vladimir’s live took place. What follows is Andrew Skopintsev’s take on the events:
Somewhere around 11 pm Andrew went out on the balcony to talk over the cell phone. And next moment a bullet hit the wall 30 centimeters away from his head. He heard the noise of a car taking off from the scene. Militia was immediately notified of an attempted murder. According to Andrew, the preliminary analysis showed that he was fired at from a hand-made firearm.
Cops examined the crime scene, and insisted that Andrew and his father to accompany them to the town’s police department (UVD). After the formal interrogation, father was asked to wait in the corridor, and young man was taken in one of the offices for interrogation.
Cops decided not to go lightly on the guy, who had just miraculously escaped death. He was interrogated by two unidentified agents, who were most probably the employees of “centre E” (“antiextremist” police division in Russia).
“They interrogated me Gestapo-style. I was shouted at, abused. They demanded that I “tell everything” about my brother and myself. Took my ID and cell phone by force, copied all the numbers from the phone-book. I was beaten up, but they did it carefully – so that no evidence of it remained.” – This are the words of Andrew, who was lucky to escape from the police department.
Andrew and his father spent whole night in the department and escaped – for lack of better word – in the morning. Formally they were not detained, but Andrew’s ID were confiscated until “the arrival of our boss” in cops’ wording.
As of this moment, Andrew Skopintsev is consulting with local human rights organizations.
[Original in Russian @ Novaya Gazeta.]
A blast from the past.
Note that Saleam is a key speaker at the Sydney Forum (September 18/19). Also scheduled to speak is Canadian Holocaust denialist and neo-Nazi (“free speech activist” according to his friends and Uncle Rupert’s Fox News) Paul Fromm. Fromm’s most recent stalking horse has been (‘Boo! Hiss!’) Tamil refugees: presumably, Fromm would look with envy upon the KRudd Government’s decision in April to suspend refugee applications from Sri Lanka for three months — and for those from Afghanistan for six.
The two key organisers of the event are Nicole Hanley and Welf Herfurth. Both Hanley and Herfurth are involved in the local franchise — ‘Volksfront Australia’ — of the US-based Volksfront. (A member of the group, Corey J. Miller, got into some minor trouble in July; in May, one of his kameraden, John Edward Grogan, got sentenced to 5 years jail for defacing a synagogue in April 2009.) Peter Spencer, a farmer who hates trees and loves property (and sitting on poles), will also be speaking. Both Fromm and Saleam intend to address a meeting in Melbourne on September 25 — the date of the annual ‘Ian Stuart Donaldson’ memorial gig. Brendan Gidley, the middle-aged leader of the Eureka Yoof League, will chair the meeting.
The extreme white
Malcolm Brown
The Sydney Morning Herald
November 26, 1988Jim Saleam initially wanted to study Bolshevist movements but today, Malcolm Brown reports he heads the extreme right National Action group.
National Action is not ashamed that it recognises the role of radical force to overcome reactionary force… “We are arguing for street action, militancy … we must be prepared to struggle, sacrifice and … dare we say it? … kill or be killed.”
These are the words of James Saleam, MA, chairman of the extremist National Action.
For years Mr Saleam has been a front man for a shadowy group of people, linked to groups in other states, who specialise in direct action against nominated individuals.
National Action does not claim responsibility for violent acts – firebombings, shotgun blasts, bricks through the windows at night – but it admits it has produced literature that has nominated people (sometimes with address and phone numbers) who later became targets.
Mr Saleam is, by far, the most articulate leader of the extreme Right in recent years. He is a prolific writer. He does not reveal what he does for a living and resents being asked.
The periodicals he has written for and edited, under various names – Audacity, Ultra, National Action – have the same message: a general opposition to liberal ideas, opposition to a multiracial Australia and warning of a world conspiracy that will disadvantage Australia.
Mr Saleam says he is dedicated to the principle of an independent, non-aligned, more or less racially homogeneous Australia.
He believes National Action will one day be accepted into the main-stream of Australian politics, although the group did poorly when it contested two Federal seats in 1984 (Mr Saleam stood for one) and the state seat of Rockdale this year.
Mr Saleam denies National Action is a Nazi or extreme Right organisation. It was formed in April 1982, combining a so-called Immigration Control Association and other organisations.
Its policy, Mr Saleam said, was consistent with the aims of groups overseas such as the National Front in Britain, the Third Way in France and sections of the National Democrats in Germany.
Mr Saleam admits using the words attributed to him about street fighting and militancy. They were in his booklet Australia’s Road to National Revolution, published four years ago, he claims, to invoke the spirit of World War II nationalism.
Slightly-built, 33 and recently married, Mr Saleam began his higher-degree studies at Sydney University by reading up on British Fascism. For his Master of Arts degree, he elected to study American Nazism. In 1981, the university’s history department suddenly realised that young James was so keen on the subject he has formed his own party, then called the Progressive Nationalist Party, whose platform included restricting Asian immigration.
“It came as quite a shock,” said the then associate professor of history, Richard Bosworth. “Nobody knew he was getting up to all this.” Dr Bosworth, now Professor of History at the University of Western Australia, said Mr Saleam, an arts graduate from Queensland University, had come to Sydney University wanting to do a qualifying course for his MA. “He came to see me, wanting to [do] a dissertation on the Italian Neo-Fascist Party,” Dr Bosworth said. “I said, ‘can you read Italian?’ He said no, and that was the end of the meeting.”
Dr Graham White, a senior lecturer in history at Sydney University, was reluctant to discuss Mr Saleam as a student: “I did not know till halfway through his MA course that he has formed a party of his own. Saleam rang me at one time and said: ‘I owe an explanation.’ But I said: ‘No, you don’t.’ I did not want to discuss it with him. I told him our relationship was strictly an academic one and I was not interested in other dimensions of the subject. His political activities were not a factor in the decision whether or not to award him a MA.”
Jim Saleam got his MA in 1985. The same year, coincidentally, that Dr Bosworth who was publicly speaking against racism in Australia had a brick through the window of his terrace home in Annandale.
Jim Saleam was born in Maryborough, Queensland, son of a commercial property owner in the town. The family has mixed ethnic origns. Some of Mr Saleam’s father’s forbearers were ethnic Greeks living in Turkey; others came from Ireland in colonial times. His mother’s side was British.
Young Saleam went to school at Maryborough, got interested in a Maoist movement, the Worker-Student Alliance, and went to Queensland University in 1973. From the start, he was interested in radical political movements – a Maoist group on the university campus and the right-wing League of Rights.
Another group, the Radical Nationalists, opposed to liberal migration policies and left-wing politics, also attracted his attention and, apparently, his enthusiasm. In 1973 he was convicted and put on a good-behaviour bond for an attack on a Maoist bookshop.
But Mr Saleam was having other troubles: “Special Branch wanted me to break into the Queensland University Students’ Union and steal their activities list and documents relating to what they were going to do in Brisbane in 1974.”
“They told me I was on this bond and I had better co-operate. I just disappeared out of Brisbane for a while. It took me an extra year to get my degree.”
Jim Saleam arrived at Sydney University in 1977. He planned to study Bolshevist movements in Europe, but switched to the other end of the political spectrum.
He became actively involved in fringe politics. The first group was National Resistance, formed in July 1977. It changed its name to National Alliance in 1978. In 1981 he formed a new group, the Progressive Nationalist Party, which sought to home in on growing dissatisfaction in some areas, particularly the outer-western regions of Sydney, to recruit members.
He became associated with Sydney’s home-grown Nazis, but claims he never joined them. Nazi members included the shaven-headed heavy weight Ross “The Skull” May, who invariably opted to handle “security” matters for the party.
A photo of Mr Saleam wearing a Nazi uniform at a rally still haunts him. He told the Herald: “I was only infiltrating the Nazi Party to find out something about them. I was at the place where I was photographed because Robert Cameron told me that if I did not stay there, The Skull would bash me.”
Mr Saleam, despite his assuredness, has lived a long time with uncertainty. He has been convicted in more recent times of a fraud offence and spent about two weeks in jail, but he is appealing against the conviction. Perhaps inevitably, he said there has been a conspiracy against him.
See also : Dr James Saleam ~versus~ Good Weekend (August 3, 2010).
minus one
AK Press has just published In the Crossfire: Adventures of a Vietnamese Revolutionary, an English translation of Ngo Van’s Au pays de la Cloche fêlée (Paris: L’Insomniaque, 2000) and of excerpts from Ngo Van’s Au pays d’Héloïse (L’Insomniaque, 2005). From the ‘Introduction’ by one of the translators (Ken Knabb):
“History is written by the victors.” With the increasing spectacularization of modern society, this truism has become truer than ever. The most radical revolts are not only physically crushed, they are falsified, trivialized, and buried under a constant barrage of superficial and ephemeral bits of “information,” to the point that most people do not even know they happened.
Ngo Van’s In the Crossfire is among the most illuminating revelations of this repressed and hidden history, worthy of a place alongside such works as Voline’s The Unknown Revolution and Harold Isaacs’s The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution. It is also a very moving human document: dramatic political events are interwoven with intimate personal concerns, just as they always are in reality. In this respect Van’s book is perhaps more akin to Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia or Victor Serge’s Memoirs of a Revolutionary.
The two-stage Vietnam war against French and then American occupation (1945-1975) is still fairly well known; but almost no one knows anything about the long and complex struggles that preceded it, including the fact that many of those struggles were inspired by an indigenous Trotskyist movement that was often more popular and more influential than the rival Stalinist movement under Ho Chi Minh. While Ho’s Communist Party slavishly followed the constantly shifting policy lines ordered by his masters in the Kremlin (which often called for alliances with the native landowners and bourgeoisie in the name of “national unity,” or at times even with the French colonial regime when France happened to be allied with Russia), the Vietnamese Trotskyists expressed more consistently radical perspectives. The situation was somewhat analogous to what was going on in Spain during the same period. In both cases a radical popular movement was fighting against foreign and reactionary forces while being stabbed in the back by the Stalinists. One significant difference was that in Spain the popular movement was predominantly anarchist, whereas anarchism was virtually unknown in Vietnam. Many Vietnamese rebels thus understandably saw the Trotskyist movement as the only alternative, the only movement fighting simultaneously against colonialism, capitalism and Stalinism…
[h/t : Viola]
She said the proposal was “akin to running Queensland as an anarchist collective”.
zero
one
V V reviews The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland South East Asia (Yale University Press, Orient Blackswan reprint) @ The Business Standard (India).
two
The World that Never Was: A True Story of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists, and Secret Agents by the English writer Alex Butterworth is reviewed by the Yanqui scribbler Matthew Price here. “For all the mayhem — alleged and actual — of the anarchists, they existed on the fringe. They experienced very little of what it was actually like to rule.” Which is kinda, like, the point.
three
Yanqui crackademic Arthur Versluis asks have we witnessed the death of the Left?. He’s a bit of a dumbass, but it’s sometimes useful, and often amusing, to keep an eye on what ‘conservatives’ understand to be their opposition.
four
Versluis makes reference to the IWA in his essay; of similar vintage is the Pittsburgh Proclamation, adopted by the Founding Congress of the American Federation of the International Working People’s Association on October 14, 1883.
five
The Canadian ‘New Socialist Group’ has produced another short essay on the subject of ‘Anarchism versus Marxism Today’. The NSG was formerly a member of the iSt, and continues to espouse a ‘socialism from below’.
See also : Leninist critiques of anarchism (March 25, 2010).
six
I thought I already done linked to this before, but obviously not: History and Actuality of Anarcha-feminism: lessons from Spain (Marta Iniguez de Heredia, Lilith, No.16, 2007).
seven
The figure of Nestor Makhno (1888–1934) continues to generate disco among historians of early twentieth-century Russia and Ukraine. A recent essay by Volodymyr Horak compares the mob Makhno assembled beneath the black flag of anarchy with that gathered around the blue and yellow flag of Petliura’s nationalists.
Otherwise, and as ever, Poumista continues to kick historical butt.
See also : The Russian Revolution in the Ukraine (March 1917 – April 1918) by Nestor Makhno (Foreword by Daniel Guerin / Introduction by Alfredo M. Bonanno / Translated by Paul Sharkey). Speaking of which…
eight
Digital Elephant is an excellent resource, containing online versions of the many and varied and highly subversive texts Elephant Editions has published over the last 30 years or so.
nine
Peter Gelderloos complains What’s Missing is Solidarity: The Decline of Resistance from the Red Scare to the War on Terror (Counterpunch, August 23, 2010). I suggest he looks under the kitchen sink.
ten
Blaggers ITA. Not anarchist, but apropos.
Prisoners celebrate life behind bars in Curtin prison in March 2001.
Update : Hopes of copycat escape bids after asylum-seekers’ breakout, Lex Hall and James Madden, The Australian, September 2, 2010: “SCORES of Afghan asylum-seekers spent last night in the Darwin watchhouse after a dramatic mass breakout from the city’s immigration centre, amid hopes the incident could spark copycat escape bids from other detention facilities.” Those involved in the break-out are gonna be transferred to the Curtin prison in Western Australia. The prison was closed in 2002 “following a series of riots and incidents of self-harm by prisoners”, and re-opened in June 2010.
[h/t jewonthis]
Asylum seekers stage break-out protest (David Coady, ABC): ‘More than 90 Afghan asylum seekers have broken out of the Darwin detention centre and are holding a mass protest on the side of a busy road. The asylum seekers are holding signs which read: “Please help us”, “Show us mercy”, and “We are homeless, defenceless and we seek protection”…’
I support the Darwin Breakout, and so did Sham 69. In 1978, in fact, when they wrote a song in anticipation of its occurence. And do did Extreme Noise Terror when they covered Sham 69’s musical contribution to prison liberation in 1991 (see below).
Incidentally, following the Woomera Breakout of March 29, 2002, police in Melbourne searched Barricade infoshop looking for escapees. They didn’t find any, however, as a kindly wizard from New Zealand had cast an Invisibility Spell upon them.
True story.
Refugee advocates say the men are Shia Muslims, a minority group often targeted for violence in Afghanistan because of their beliefs.
The break-out follows disturbances at the center in Darwin Saturday and Sunday involving a group of Indonesians accused of smuggling asylum seekers into Australian waters.
Darwin Detention Centre, the prison from which the 70 or so men briefly escaped, is one of many prisons to be owned and operated by a private company: Serco Australia Pty Ltd. Serco is “a joint venture company formed in 1993 between two global service support companies”, the multi-billion dollar Serco Group (UK) and Sodexo (France). Serco won the much-coveted ‘War Profiteer of the Month’ in February 2009; Sodexo has to be content with a website called Clean Up Sodexo.
Note that the policy of sticking asylum seekers in prison commenced in 1992, under then Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, Gerry Hand (Hand has since gone on to enjoy a career in the mining industry). The policy enjoys the support of both Labor and the Coalition (although renegades occasionally make squeaking noises in protest), so it’s unlikely that the prison gates will be thrown open any time soon. Rather, the major parties have been engaged in relentless squabbling over who’s toughest on crime / seeking asylum in Australia — thereby seeking to capitalise upon widespread paranoias — and their kinky behaviour doesn’t look like it’s gonna come to a climax any time soon…
