HOTTT PIES!

Posted on August 8, 2010 by @ndy

COLLINGWOOD 4.5 8.9 12.15 14.23 (107)

GEELONG 3.1 9.4 11.8 12.13 (85)

Posted in Collingwood | 10 Comments

Mission Australia First Party

Posted on August 7, 2010 by @ndy

Above : Boneheads gather outside the Virginia Palms Hotel in Brisbane. The meathead on the right reading the newspaper is wearing a ‘Ravenous’ t-shirt — Ravenous is a Melbourne-based neo-Nazi reich ‘n’ roll band: the band’s merch is available for purchase through local neo-Nazi outlet 9%.

Australia First Party members and supporters and various other racist trash — including neo-Nazi skinheads — have this week unexpectedly joined multi-million dollar Christian charity/business ‘Mission Australia’ in Brisbane, ostensibly in order to “TRANSFORM the lives of homeless Australians who don’t have the power to choose where they sleep each night” as part of ‘National Homeless Persons Week’ (August 2–8, 2010). Thus a handful of racist cranks, in response to Mission Australia’s appeal to organise a ‘Winter Sleepout’, organised one to take place outside of the Virginia Palms Hotel in the Brisbane suburb of Boondall. The Hotel briefly came to public attention when in May 2010 homeless advocacy group / private equity firm CVC Capital Partners revealed that approximately 80 asylum seekers had been transferred there from their prison on Christmas Island.

Women and children last

The Australia First Party has come up with its own win-win solution for raising funds for the homeless and awareness about the plight of boat people this National Homeless Persons Week.

Under Mission Australia’s Winter Sleepout banner, a goon squad of AFP members camped outside the Virginia Palms Hotel in the Brisbane suburb of Boondall.

The choice of campsite was influenced by the 80 women and children seeking asylum being put up in the hotel instead of Christmas Island.

Mission Australia become incandescent with outrage when it learnt AFP was subverting its Winter Sleepout. It demanded an immediate end to fund-raising activities as it considered the political party pushed “hateful and divisive views”.

The AFP’s Jane Mengler offered to return funds collected during the sleepout.

Mission Australia has declared that it’s been “Sleeping out since 1988!” — that is, 10 years prior to it becoming one of a handful of similar charities/businesses to take advantage of the privatisation of the government un/employment networks under HoWARd — but the intervening decades don’t appear to have lessened the problem by any significant degree. Presumably, the $20,000+ Mission Australia has raised this year through its stunt activity will help supplement its $220 million annual budget, although I’m guessing that in 12 months time another Winter Sleepout may be scheduled.

It’s a smart move by AF to draw attention to the seeming disparity between the treatment homeless persons in Australia receive and that provided to asylum seekers; certainly, politicians are unlikely to announce that, such is the pressing need for housing, their governments will provide emergency hotel accommodation to the thousands who sleep rough. Of course, governments do provide millions in short-term funding to slumlords, but that’s another story — as is an analysis of the social structures which produce both homes and homelessness.

“Let every dirty, lousy tramp arm himself with a revolver or a knife, and lay in wait on the steps of the palaces of the rich and stab or shoot the owners as they come out. Let us kill them without mercy and let it be a war of extermination without pity.” (Lucy Parsons quoted in Women Building Chicago 2001, p. 671)

Posted in Anti-fascism, State / Politics, That's Capitalism! | Tagged , | 17 Comments

The Old School of Capitalism

Posted on August 6, 2010 by @ndy

Before I saw it, I didn’t know that The Old School of Capitalism (in addition to REAL! LIVE! WORKERS!) *ed Ratibor Trivunac (as well as Tadej Kurepa), but I do now… having seen it screen as part of MIFF. Art imitates life imitates art, and the troubles facing the anarchists on film came to a head IRL in the Serbian state’s botched attempt to frame Trivunac, Kurepa and four others for the crime of international terrorism — a legal predicament which stretched from August 2009 through to June 2010.

The film itself is long (perhaps overly-so — several walked out before it ended) and overly-didactic… although maybe not, as I found the scenes in which there was intense discussion kinda interesting, as well as unusual. Nonetheless, at over two hours, the lessons being taught became repetitive, and the drama could easily have been compressed into a shorter time-frame…

A quasi-documentary, the film’s depiction of the “deteriorating socio-economic landscape” of Serbia sits somewhat uneasily alongside the film’s narrative. On the one hand, the general dynamic governing this decline — privatisation (corporatisation) of state (public) assets, and the general marketisation of social relations — is dramatised fairly well, and often humourously, but whatever is distinctive about the Serbian experience of these changes is unclear. That is, I didn’t feel like I gained any particular insight into how these general processes applied in the particular case of Serbia. Thus, while the film utilises footage from a small number of recent public protests, I never really got a sense of these having developed in any particular manner, or understood how they related to previous decades of struggle.

I dunno: maybe I need a little more time to reflect.

(Otherwise: Russian Lessons was good.)

On further reflection: zmkc has a slightly caustic (“almost certainly the worst film I have ever seen”) review of the film here; @ MUBI; somebody called Olaf Möller reckons The Old School of Capitalism is “A heady yet lucid mix of documentary and fiction created during the first wave of mass strikes in Serbia since the advent of capitalism. It’s cinema verité meets the Western meets noir, shot fast and loose, and featuring a number of scenes in which the “characters” (many of them real-life activists) and actual strikers interact. Stellar partisan filmmaking” — while Vienna based philosopher Ljubomir Bratic takes a closer look at the new film of the Serbian film-maker Zelimir Žilnik in which he poses the question of a common struggle of workers and precarized anarchist intellectuals… in German.

Posted in Anarchism, Film, History, State / Politics, That's Capitalism! | Tagged | Leave a comment

“I Am The Walrus” claims Andrew Bolt

Posted on August 5, 2010 by @ndy

Hi, we’re Obvious™. Our goal is to create interesting things that matter to the world—and a great place for creative, smart people to work.

LOL.

HERALD Sun columnist and blogger Andrew Bolt has hit out at the person behind a Twitter account impersonating him.

Fake Andrew Bolt is threatening to sue Real Andrew Bolt. Note that the fake UK trollumnist who writes for The Daily Mail using the pen name ‘Melanie Phillips’ was similarly irked by The Real Melanie Phillips http://twitter.com/mphillips51 on Twitter. Several days ago she successfully had the account pulled.

Twitter is not a great place for creative, smart parodists to work… Obviously™.

See also : The Real Dorothy Parker on Fake Andrew Bolt pranks the real Andrew Bolt and so spreads a little joy in the world … Andrew Bolt on Andrew Bolt vs Andrew Bolt.

Posted in !nataS, Media | Tagged , | Leave a comment

2010 Australian Federal election notes (August 4, 2010)

Posted on August 4, 2010 by @ndy

Those numbers again…

1. Building Australia Party : These blokes wanna build stuff. But government red tape stops them. If you wanna help build a BETTER Australia, Vote 1 BAP in Bennelong, Greenway, Macarthur in NSW and in the NSW, SA and VIC Senates.
2. Ecological Social Justice, Aboriginal Party (WA) / First Nations Original Peoples Party (NT) : Apparently, the two have amalgamated, and “[t]he united party has swelled its membership to over 2,000 members and intends to attain 5,000 members by the year’s end.” The ESJAP is standing Gerry Georgatos, Bill Hayward, Marianne Mackay and Lara Menkens for the WA Senate. Dot Henry is standing for the party in Hasluck and Geoffrey Stokes in O’Connor. In the NT, Maurie Japarta Ryan and Ian Lee want a seat in the Senate, while Kenny Lechleitner is looking to the Lower House seat of Lingiari.
3. Republican Democrats : Michael (Ghillar) Anderson was a Greens candidate in 2004; he’s standing (as Michael Eckford) alongside Criselee Stevens for the Republican Democrats in the NSW Senate in 2010.
4. Stable Population Party of Australia : “Our candidates are now standing as a group of Senate independents in column T on the ballot paper. We are: William Bourke – Businessman and Stable Population Party convenor; and Mark O’Connor – Writer and Co-author of Overloading Australia.”
5. WA First : NOBODY expects WA First… to er, win. Their chief weapon is Scott Cowans… Scott Cowans and John Goodlad… John Goodlad and Scott Cowans… Their two weapons are John Goodlad and Scott Cowans… and James Versteegen… Their three weapons are John Goodlad, Scott Cowans, and James Versteegen… and an almost fanatical devotion to WA… Their four… no… Amongst their… Amongst their weaponry… are such elements as John Goodlad, Scott Cowans… I’ll come in again.

6. Bryan Pape : Vote [1] Pape to Uphold the Constitution and to Fix the Federation : Vote [1] Pape to Uphold the Constitution and to Fix the Federation. If you’re into it.
7. In Tasmania, Dino Ottavi is again aspiring to become a Senator. If he succeeds, it will be third time lucky for Ottavi (having failed at previous attempts in 2007 and 2004).
8. In the battle for a seat in the NSW Senate, Christian men and women can thank God they have Nicholas (Hunter) Folkes (Australian Protectionist Party) on their side. Folkes is probably the only thing that stands between them and Islamic rule, global warmingists, Muslims, Fabians within the Labor Party, someone whose religion is Islam, anarchist Greens, Islamists, Communist teachers, Moslems, rampant homosexuality, followers of Muhammad, the Education Department, and numerous other dangers.

Gone but not forgotten…

What Women Want

Also : 4Change / Australian Shooters Party / Climate Change Coalition / Conservatives for Climate and Environment (Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy Australia) / Hear Our Voices / Nuclear Disarmament Party / Pauline’s United Australia / The Fishing Party.

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Dr James Saleam ~versus~ Good Weekend

Posted on August 3, 2010 by @ndy

The latest in Herr Doktor’s tussles with the Australian Press Council (Adjudication No. 1464, adjudicated July 2010).

Good Weekend and Dr James Saleam
The Sydney Morning Herald
August 3, 2010

THE Australian Press Council has considered a complaint by Dr James Saleam about an article, ”The audacity of hate”, in The Sydney Morning Herald‘s Good Weekend magazine on September 26, 2009. The article focused on the life of Dr Saleam, who is a member of the Australia First party that seeks to be registered as a political party for the next federal election. [NB. The party has subsequently been registered and is contesting a handful of seats in NSW, QLD and VIC.]

Dr Saleam said that the article was unbalanced, unfair and suppressed relevant facts. He rejected a large number of claims made in it and the reliability of a number of its sources, some of whom were not named in the article. He said that, although the journalist had interviewed him twice at length, he was not given the opportunity to respond to these claims and the article bore little relationship to the interviews.

Dr Saleam denied the assertions that he had had an association with Nazism and that the National Action organisation was associated with racism and criminality at the time he was a leading member of it. He disputed instances of that type of behaviour that were alleged in the article and also the impression that was conveyed about his childhood in Maryborough. Dr Saleam complained that the article focused excessively and inaccurately on his racial background and included offensive and inaccurate claims about his mother and the end of his parents’ marriage.

The magazine said that the story was a serious and careful portrayal of a person who was well-known for his views but had not previously been the subject of a detailed profile of this kind. The journalist, Greg Bearup, had researched the story at great length and spoken to about 50 people, some named and some anonymous. It stood by the assertion that Dr Saleam had been associated with the Nazi Party and had led National Action when it was a violent and racist organisation that harassed and bullied people who disagreed with him.

The magazine said that the article included these matters because they were true and pertinent. It pointed out that, as stated in the article, Dr Saleam has several criminal convictions for offences related to behaviour of this kind although he alleges that they are part of a conspiracy against him. It said that the material on his ethnic background was accurate and highly relevant in light of his vigorous support for a White Australia policy. It disputed Dr Saleam’s view that the remarks by a named source about his mother were offensive to her and irrelevant to the article.

The Council has considered Dr Saleam’s complaints but, with one exception, dismisses them as not establishing a breach of its principles. The article concerned matters of legitimate public interest to which the assertions in it were relevant and supported by a reasonable degree of evidence, including photographs and judicial decisions. The use of anonymous sources was limited and acceptable in the circumstances.

The exception to this conclusion concerns the final sentence of a source’s quoted assertion about Dr Saleam’s mother. The Council considers that this sentence, which is reasonably capable of being interpreted in a highly offensive manner, was not of such substantial importance to the purpose of the article as to justify its publication, especially as it had not been put explicitly to Dr Saleam or his mother for comment.

A related adjudication concerning Dr Saleam’s former wife, Jane Mengler, will be published soon.

In September, Saleam will be speaking alongside Canadian Holocaust denialist Paul Fromm at the Sydney Forum — an event usually held at one of Sydney’s many RSL clubs (last year’s hosts being Petersham RSL) or ethnic clubs.

See also : God Hears Pleas of the Innocent (May 21, 2008).

Posted in Anti-fascism, Media, State / Politics | Tagged , | 3 Comments

(This was) Pisschrïst : 2004–2010

Posted on August 2, 2010 by @ndy

Pisschrïst played their first gig @ Irene Warehouse in May 2004, alongside of US performer Wendy-O-Matik (the “Bay Area based freelance writer, poet, performance and spoken word artist, and radical love activist” / “freelance writer, published poet, and certified holistic nutrition consultant who specializes in diet and stress reduction”). Like many subsequent performances, it was a benefit gig, on this occasion for Barricade infoshop. The band‘s last gig was on Sunday in Footscray, along with local boys Pathetic Human and Tear Gas a Scottish rock band originally known as Mustard who recorded two albums in the early 70s a Melbourne heavy metal band which split in 2008 a Brisbane punk rock and/or roll band.

Word on the street is that the band has split due to bass player James’ desire to take the band in a new musical direction; while video footage of the pop concert will soon be posted online, I’ve been given exclusive access to the following extract:

So long, and thanks for all the tofu.

See also : Hardcore Victim | Australian Hardcore Dished Up, Tim Scott, mess+noise, July 30, 2010.

BONUS TEARGAS!

BONUS PISSCHRIST!

Posted in Death, History, Music | Tagged | 2 Comments

Fair Go For Billionaires

Posted on August 1, 2010 by @ndy

Fair Go For Billionaires. See also : Billionaires For Bush.

BONUS!

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2010 Australian Federal election notes (July 31, 2010)

Posted on July 31, 2010 by @ndy

White supremacists are go!

The latest vehicle for Dr James Saleam’s vaulting political ambitions, the Australia First party, is fielding one solitary lonesome single candidate in Victoria, a bloke by the name of Alex Norwick, in the Labor marginal seat of Deakin. Norwick is a veteran fascist, having founded the Australian Nationalist White Workers’ Party (ANWWP) in the early ’70s, and since then having been active with National Resistance, Australian National Alliance, National Action, Australians Against Further Immigration and One Nation. Norwick’s electoral material proclaims, inter alia, that AF would like to establish a People’s Bank (something that the anarchist candidates for the Victorian Senate also endorse).

The other AF candidates are Peter Schuback and Nick Maine for the QLD Senate, Tony Pettitt in Greenway (NSW) and Mick Saunders in Lindsay (NSW).

Disappointingly, racist blabbermouth Nicholas (Hunter) Folkes (Australian Protectionist Party) is not running for the seat of Sydney; in good news for spotters, Denis Doherty (Communist) is. In even betterer news, Folkes is running for the NSW Senate, hand-in-hand with the former ‘national anarchist’ Darrin Hodges. Note that another former ‘national anarchist’, Scott Harrison, is now a Creatard, while current ‘national anarchist’ Welf Herfurth is busily preparing to welcome fellow Holocaust denialist Paul Fromm to Australia on behalf of AF. (Fromm, incidentally, is scheduled to address a meeting (September 2–5, 2010) of fellow neo-Nazis Volksfront soon — Mister Wolf is their Australian franchise holder.)

In other spotterly news: the Building Australia Party is fielding candidates, as is the (unregistered) ‘First Nations Political Party’ (the latest in a series of attempts to establish somesuch party; ‘Reconcile Australia’ is also running candidates in 2010, as it did in 2007, when it received 0.02% of the vote for the NSW Senate).

One Nation is also going to be losing a large number of contests, especially in NSW, putting up patriots in Banks, Bennelong, Blaxland, Chifley, Cook, Hughes, Hunter, Kingsford Smith, Macarthur, New England, Paterson, Riverina, Robertson and Shortland. ON is also losing in Solomon (NT); Makon and Sturt (SA); Bowman, Fadden and Wide Bay (QLD) and Moore (WA), and in Senate contests in each of the mainland states. Kate McCulloch is the * candidate in Macarthur — it remains to be seen if she really is the Great White (Red Haired) Hope.

And in news that warms my heart, Ronald Poulsen (Communist League) will not be standing in Watson… but he will be standing in Blaxland — against the SEP (?).

See also : 2010 Australian Federal Election (Miscellaneous) (July 30, 2010) | Socialism vs. 2010 election (July 27, 2010).

Posted in State / Politics | Tagged | 2 Comments

2010 Australian Federal Election (Miscellaneous)

Posted on July 30, 2010 by @ndy

Coalition Greens Labor Coalition Labor Greens Greens Labor Coalition Greens Coalition Labor Labor Coalition Greens Labor Greens Coalition…

But!

Have you considered…

Champions of the ‘free market’, the Liberal Democratic Party are determined to show those faceless bureaucrats in Canberra who’s boss (and to put Two Cars in Every Garage and Three Eyes on Every Fish); the Democrats — much to everybody else’s surprise — are still cranking (Campaign Details Coming Soon!), while the Australian Fishing and Lifestyle Party (“real people with real solutions and the courage to stand up for what is right”), the Australian Sex Party (“a political response to the sexual needs of Australia in the 21st century”) and the Shooters and Fishers Party will be representing the interests and obtaining the votes of thousands of fishers, shooters, lifestylists and rooters.

Presumably.

In summary, Seranna Shutt will be sexing it up in NT, in SA Ari Reid and Jason Virgo are aspiring Sex senators, while Austen Tayshus (aka Alexander Gutman) is running in Warringah against The Mad Monk.

The Non-Custodial Parents Party (Equal Parenting) will be fielding candidates for both the NSW Senate and the House of Reps in NSW and Victoria.

Senator Online is either the rather forlorn face of e-democracy in the early twenty-first century, or the bastard child of a mad, amateur, political scientist — one whose creation is sure to turn against its master and destroy his house cum laboratory in a cybernetic fit of rage!

Maybe.

In the meantime: Senator Online candidate Wes Bas volunteers with a number of charities in his spare time; having grown up on Sydney’s northern beaches, Brianna Roach is proudly Australian and is keen to contribute to society. In Victoria, Glenn Sargent is a passionate Australian. One of the things he’s passionate about is the Greens. Namely, keeping them out of the Senate; perhaps by way of installing sensible people like him instead. “Recent Australian News Poll puts the Green Vote at 15%, up from 7.8% at the last election. This could be an extremely dangerous development for Australian Politics and all who live in the land.” In Queensland, Scott Reading has the drive and determination to get the job done.

“Never has the barrier for entry into the marketplace of ideas been so low…” Seemingly the brainchild of David Stockwell, the Climate Sceptics Party is “The world’s first political party representing scepticism and objectivity in climate policy”. Currently, the party has one candidate: Party President Leon Ashby is running for the Senate in SA. Ashby is a founding member of the Australian Environment Foundation, to which Liberal Senator Cory ‘Turn your lights on!’ Bernardi will be making a valuable contribution in October 2010 at their annual conference.

Variations on the Christian right may be found among the Christian Democratic Party (Fred Nihilist), the Democratic Labor Party (Catholic) and Family First (Assemblies of God). The CDP is fielding 26 candidates, the DLP Senatorial candidates in every state and territory, while Australia First Earth First! Family First is attempting to put God back into politics just about everywhere: in NSW (presumably) QLD, SA, in VIC (presumably) WA — except maybe TAS. And ACT. (And NT.)

Family First (a limited liability company) is almost certain to lose its only Federal rep in Steve Fielding — the Victorian ALP’s gift to the Australian public has a use by date of 2010.

Drugs, Poisons and Controlled Substances Amendment (Prohibition of Display and Sale of Bongs) Bill 2010. A Bill for an Act to amend the Drugs, Poisons and Controlled Substances Act 1981 to provide for a prohibition on the display and sale of bongs and for other purposes.

“Indeed, from this building one can walk not very far at all down Bourke Street, to the second shop after Russell Street, to see this. Two weeks ago I did this and counted more than 200 bongs in the front window, including probably more than 50 different types of bongs, some of which were in the shape of a human skull, for example.”

“A bloke cannot marry his brother; it is not right”, he said. ”A woman cannot marry their sister; it is not right. A bloke cannot marry a bloke because it is not right, and a female cannot marry a female because it is not right. I don’t support this.”

The Carers Alliance is keeping the masses in suspense, declaring of their many candidates “Watch this space – details coming soon”.

The Building Australia Party meanwhile is, like The Future, a mystery, while “The Nimbin-based Help End Marijuana Prohibition Party has had [its] political party registration hopes dashed for another term – by an agonising four-day shortfall”.

And remember folks: “Only the Secular Party supports comprehensive secularism”: Our Candidates – Election 2010.

PS. http://republicandemocrats.org.au

See also : Socialism vs. 2010 election (July 27, 2010).

Posted in State / Politics | Tagged | 5 Comments